Repression

The Baltimore City Council passed a resolution last night condemning Pakistan for "the systematic repression" of the Ahmadis, a minority Muslim sect teaching that Jesus "was a holy prophet who survived the cross and preached in India after his resurrection."A spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington denied the repression but said such a belief in Christ would not be possible for a true Muslim. Pakistan is a Muslim country.The resolution was introduced by council President Mary Pat Clarke at the request of a group of Ahmadiyya Muslims in Balti- more.

MOSCOW - Nobel laureate Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, the reclusive icon of the Russian intelligentsia and chronicler of communist repression, has died of heart failure, Russian news agencies reported. He was 89. Stephan Solzhenitsyn told the Associated Press his father died late yesterday, but he declined to comment further. The soulful writer and spiritual father of Russia's nationalist patriotic movement lived to be reunited with his beloved homeland after two decades of exile - only to be as distressed by communism's damage to the Russian character as he was by his earlier forced estrangement from the land and people he loved.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Hours after the Colombian Congress earlier this month cleared President Ernesto Samper of ties to drug traffickers, he vowed to spearhead a movement for national reconciliation.Yet many Colombians fear that "reconciliation" is a code word for whitewash and even repression by an administration determined stay in power despite evidence that the 1994 presidential campaign was financed by millions of dollars in drug money.Repression may not even be needed if jaded Colombians simply allow Samper to remain in office.

As one of the members of the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance who has been spied on by the Maryland State Police, I feel it important that people understand we in the Pledge of Resistance are the most peaceful, nonterrorist-type folks you could ever hope to meet. We are committed to raising awareness about the destructive forces of violence in our society and our country, which is one of the reasons we have protested the invasion of Iraq since before it occurred. It is because we love and value this country so much that we work to make it better, and we start by insisting that those in power obey its laws.

Journey from the Land of No, by Roya Hakakian. Crown. 245 pages. $23. The transcendent poignancy of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl lies in the coming-of-age story of a teen-ager against the backdrop of a gathering, obliterating evil force. In Anne, we recognize all the yearnings, petulance and wonder of a talented adolescent, knowing all the time that this precious bulb is doomed never to realize her full blossoming. Roya Hakakian, fortunately, avoids Anne's fate by safely emigrating to America with her family, but her story too is about the stunting of a vibrant young woman who, like Anne, stands in awe as she catches a glimpse of all the vast potential within herself precisely at the exact moment when an oppressive, annihilating regime makes her self-actualization impossible.

"The Remains of the Day," the powerful new Merchant-Ivory film that opens today at the Senator, is about the remains of the soul. What's left after a lifetime spent locked in the clammy grip of that most human of failings, the force called repression"The Remains of the Day," the powerful new Merchant-Ivory film that opens today at the Senator, is about the remains of the soul. What's left after a lifetime spent locked in the clammy grip of that most human of failings, the force called repression?

Something is going on in today's movies. Or, more precisely, something is not going on.In "The Age of Innocence," Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis are riding in a carriage, their unspoken passion throbbing in cadence with the horse's hoofs. Suddenly, Mr. Day-Lewis does something shocking. He unbuttons Ms. Pfeiffer's tightly knit glove and kisses her wrist.In "Shadowlands," Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger seek refuge from a rainstorm in an empty barn. They embrace, and she reaches under his sport coat to caress his back.

ON THE Great Wall, China - China is the kind of country where you can camp on the Great Wall without a permit, but if you sit down in Tiananmen Square you might get a kick in the head. Earlier this summer I went strolling through the square with my college roommates, Dan and Dave, who were visiting from California. As we walked around the vast expanse of concrete, the nation's political epicenter, police descended on clumps of simply dressed Chinese. They were members of the banned spiritual meditation group, Falun Gong, quietly demonstrating against a government crackdown in which tens of thousands of their comrades have been detained.

THE CONTACT group of six powers gave a weak ultimatum to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to end repression of the Albanian majority in Kosovo province: End brutality in a month or the world community would impose sanctions specified in an earlier ultimatum.Mr. Milosevic was not impressed. He gives in only to credible threats. In this case, the resolve of the United States and Britain were not enough to overcome the resistance of Russia, France, Germany and Italy.A let-up of police repression and talks with the shadow Albanian government in Kosovo might defuse the crisis.

Russia has a history of and a gut instinct for the authoritarian. When all else fails, or when you think it is going to fail, or you think that perhaps it might fail, or you just don't know, go for the iron fist.This philosophy kept the czars in power for a long time and the communists for a lesser time, and now the fading sometimes-liberalizing communists are trying to prolong their mandate by reversing course back to their basics, repression.Banning demonstrations in Moscow is just the latest example, though it is a good one, an attempt to parry several problems in one ill-conceived stroke.

Washington -- President Bush reached further into his administration's limited arsenal of sanctions to apply against Myanmar yesterday by targeting additional senior officials and supporters. He also called on China and India to join international efforts to promote human rights and democracy in the military-run Southeast Asian nation formerly called Burma. With his wife, Laura, who has taken a very public interest in the nation's political conditions, at his side, Bush said, "The people of Burma are showing great courage in the face of immense repression.

They said the grass would start growing soon. For a while the newly planted patch probably will remain distinct from the surrounding field, then its borders will fade over time, and eventually, the outline of where the little yellow schoolhouse stood, and where it was so horribly violated, will be no longer be distinguishable from the surrounding field. Meanwhile, about 150 miles to the northeast, another scarred piece of land remains an open wound. Five years after terrorists struck the World Trade Center and killed nearly 3,000 people, the site remains a yawning abyss, drawing both grievers and gawkers.

PHILADELPHIA -- The disconnect between President Bush's public push for Mideast democracy and developments in the region was in full view last week in Washington and Cairo. Last Friday, Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt's president and thus his presumed heir, was welcomed by Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House. The younger Mr. Mubarak is supposedly spearheading democratic reforms within his father's political party. But the day before Mr. Mubarak's White House confab, police in Cairo beat demonstrators protesting the punishment of two reform-minded Egyptian judges.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- When the Turkish government lifted its ban on the letter "W," it seemed like a breakthrough. After decades of repression of Kurdish ethnic identity and a deadly war with separatist rebels, the Islamist-led government made moves toward democratic reform in recent years, part of Turkey's bid to improve its chances of joining the European Union. Letters that appear in the Kurdish alphabet but not the Turkish one were no longer banned from print. Emergency military rule was lifted.

Iranian writer Azar Nafisi believes in using the power of imagination to change women's lives. Her best-selling book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, tells the story of a clandestine book group Nafisi held at her own home in defiance of government book bans. The literature she shared with her seven female students - works by Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald - offered temporary escape and perspective on the totalitarian regime in which they were living. Inside their teacher's home, the young women shed their veils and gained a new way of perceiving themselves as well as the fundamentalism oppressing them.

Journey from the Land of No, by Roya Hakakian. Crown. 245 pages. $23. The transcendent poignancy of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl lies in the coming-of-age story of a teen-ager against the backdrop of a gathering, obliterating evil force. In Anne, we recognize all the yearnings, petulance and wonder of a talented adolescent, knowing all the time that this precious bulb is doomed never to realize her full blossoming. Roya Hakakian, fortunately, avoids Anne's fate by safely emigrating to America with her family, but her story too is about the stunting of a vibrant young woman who, like Anne, stands in awe as she catches a glimpse of all the vast potential within herself precisely at the exact moment when an oppressive, annihilating regime makes her self-actualization impossible.

MOSCOW -- In the dank tunnels beneath the KGB headquarters lie the moldering documents, perhaps ruined by seepage or soiled by rat droppings, that could explain to Vladimir Yanin why he was arrested at 16 as "the son of an enemy of the people" and why his stepfather was shot.At least, that is what Yanin dares to hope, now that the KGB files on the millions who fell victim to Josef Stalin's brutal dictatorship are about to be opened."We need the archives to know the truth," the vigorous pensioner with a shock of white hair said yesterday.

Although a 37-year-old county police dispatcher experienced typical rape trauma symptoms that bolster her allegations against a former captain, she did not repress her memory of the incident, a defense psychiatrist testified yesterday.The woman, who is suing Donald F. Ward, a former county police captain, in U.S. District Court for $10 million, has testified that after the 1986 incident at the police academy, she was so upset that she buried the memory of it but had flashbacks and felt uncomfortable around Mr. Ward.

IT'S AN ISLAMIC country of about 22 million people with a repressive secular regime that brooks no dissent; thousands have disappeared into its gruesome prisons, and credible allegations suggest that some prisoners have been tortured or killed in vats of boiling water. It is not Iraq; it is Uzbekistan. Since 2001, the United States has had an Air Force base in Uzbekistan, the better to project force over neighboring Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia. American servicemen are under orders not to fraternize with the Uzbeks; that means they miss out on the strikingly beautiful mosques and madrassas of such ancient Silk Road cities as Samarkand and Bukhara, and on the warmth of most of the people.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Mild-mannered, frail and slightly bent, Riad al-Turk stood straight and powerful before the ruthless Syrian regime, preferring to spend 17 years in solitary confinement rather than renounce his political beliefs and bow to the will of a police state. He was tortured, endured three stretches in prison and sacrificed health and family life, all for an ideology with no prospect of success. "He's a communist, and communism in Syria is not a popular idea," says Omar Amiralay, a filmmaker who greets Turk with a reverent kiss on each cheek.