Sunday 8th June 1997
Search entire news archive by day | Search entire news archive by text |
Definitive Lifestyle Guide to over 5000 Australian webs | Global Web Builders Gold |
The Kid's Locker Room | World Wide Websters |
Gilford has the right to demand their death by execution - in Saudi Arabia that is done by public beheading with a sword.
Lawyers representing the two nurses, Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan have been in touch with Gilford's lawyer, Jim Phipps who said, "I think that Frank at the right time and in the right circumstances be inclined to meet them."
There is just over a week for Gilford, who has demanded an eye for an eye, to change his mind.
Yvonne Gilford from South Australia - The Victim
Deborah Parry from Alton, Hampshire, United Kingdom - Accused
Lucille McLauchlan from Dundee, Scotland. - Accused
Around Christmas of last year Yvonne Gilford was found brutally murdered in her room in a hospital compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Shortly afterward the saudis arrested two of her fellow nurses and charged them with Yvonne's murder. They were apparently interrogated for four days and allowed no contact with their consuls or legal representatives. During this intense questioning with little or no sleep, they were forced to confess to the crime and were told they would just be deported if they pleaded guilty to the judge. This has proved to be a lie. The confessions were revoked by the girls when they were told by their embassy of what the implications were of the confessions that were taken from them under extreme duress!
They will be shortly "tried" for the murder and if found guilty will be publicly beheaded by the sword in the public square in Dhahran! There are several possible outcomes. A royal pardon, which is very unlikely, or under muslim law, the nearest relative of the victim is given the option of deciding what the penalty should be. It could be anything from beheading, to prison, to being required to pay "blood money", to clemency with deportation.
The brother, Mr.Frank Gilford of 10 Creek St. in Jamestown, South Australia, therefore has the power of life or death over these unfortunate women! He seems to have the quaint notion that they have some chance of a fair trial, and has stated that he wants them beheaded if they are found guilty! Under Saudi Arabia's religious laws a woman can suffer the lash, or jail, or both, for merely being observed failing to avert her eyes when a man walks by! Fair trial?
...And pigs might fly!
An Australian nurse, Lydia Laube, that spent several years working in the King Fahd hospital in Medina, Saudi Arabia, related some hair raising tales in the Brisbane Courier-Mail on Sunday June 1st. She has written a couple of books about her stay in Arabia. They are "Behind the Veil" and "The Long Way Home". I'm sure they'll make riveting reading!
**********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Two women chose to spend their lives in caring for the ill,
They sought adventure in a savage land.
They stand accused of murder of a comrade and a friend,
Their lives held in the victim's brother's hand.
When the mullahs find them guilty and they're taken to the square
The flashing steel will end their lives on earth.
...A moment's entertainment for a crowd of laughing men
Will show us what a woman's life is worth!
Consider woman's sorry lot in this barbaric land
When out in public they must wear the veil,
Imprisonment and flogging, for just looking at a man
Will earn the wayward sinner time in jail!
Extracting a confession is an easy thing to do
When prisoners are scared and lacking sleep.
The questioners have no restraints.. conviction is their aim
And all is fair, where women's lives are cheap.
..Has he really thought it out,.. and has he wondered why
..It's happened in the same place twice before?
Two years before, another nurse was in the same place killed
Her room was found afloat with blood and gore!
Wouldn't that suggest to you that maybe someone else
Is prowling still around those compound halls?
And sometime in the future, yet another luckless nurse
Will die within that compound's cloistered walls.
I ask you Mr. Gilford now, what do you think Yvonne
would think about this deadly game with women held as pawns?
Alone in jail these long, long months, away from home and friends
I rather think that if she could, Yvonne would make amends.
Their lives are in your hands of course, I'm sure that you must know
the verdict was decided for them many months ago.
I feel your pain and anger friend, and I can understand
your wish to see a just outcome from this barbaric land.
They needed a conviction so the case could be resolved...
They forced the two confessions... so now their case is solved!
I'm sure your burden's heavy and I'm sure you know of course..
The wrong decision now may mean a lifetime of remorse!
What would Yvonne herself decide, ...a gentle caring nurse?
..To vent the rage upon her friends, I think would be perverse!
But time is short, and so is life, and you must soon decide
To hang your head in sorry shame,.. or hold it high with pride?
My wish for you is wisdom, friend, I hope that by your hand...
The blood of these two guiltless girls won't stain the desert sand.
Author Frank Halliwell.
This will allow our Australian readers to gain a better insight in exposing the lies, distortion and deception that seem to be the focus of the mainstream press.
Below you will find the document a copy of the document from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
See also the letter from Aimi in Singapore.
Subject: ABS DATA
thought you mite like this from the ABS site. This is only really from
the 1993-5 census data. The 1996,97 data is not compiled yet. (wonder
why?)
Grame Thompson
MAIN COUNTRIES OF BIRTH OF THE POPULATION
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1981 1991 1995
Country '000 '000 '000
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
United Kingdom and 1,175.7 1,244.3 1,210.9
Ireland
New Zealand 175.7 286.4 290.1
Italy 285.3 272.0 261.4
Former Yugoslav 156.1 168.0 179.8
Republics
Greece 153.2 147.4 144.7
Viet Nam 43.4 124.8 146.6
Germany 115.2 120.4 118.7
Netherlands 100.5 100.9 97.7
China 26.8 84.6 92.7
Philippines 15.8 79.1 91.8
Malaysia 32.5 79.9 91.5
Hong Kong and 16.3 62.4 91.3
Macao
Total overseas 3,111.0 3,965.2 4,122.3
Australia 11,812.3 13,318.8 13,931.7
Total population 14,923.3 17,284.0 18,054.0
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Australia in Profile (2821.0), Estimated resident population by
country of birth, age and sex, Australia (3221.0).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Comments on Australian News of the Day
Just a quick note to Ivan Re: Saturday 7th May
Firstly I am a follower of Pauline Hanson and I can tell you now I am no Simplton!!.
and secondly why don't you take your own advice, grab a chicken and STUFF IT, Or if the chicken doesn't fit in your mouth you could always try stuffing it full of Sorbent (that should fix your verbal diarrhoea, if you don't choke first).
Oh and one more thing, you mention that in two years time no one will remember who Pauline Hanson was, well how did you recall Joe for PM??????
Lachlan
P.S. Why don't you read Pauline's maiden speech, and you will understand the truth as it is TODAY.
Subject: What a non-discerning mind!
I tried to copy-n-paste the letters from Singapore today (7 June) so that I could not be accused of misquoting, but it has not been possible. Therefore, those interested must confirm them personally.
Dr Wan Kai Tak comments in the first sentence of his second paragraph on "multiculturalism" and then in the very next sentence says "There is no alleged racial discrimination here..." It is very obvious that he is so mixed up with his terms that he thinks "racial" and "multicultural" are synonymous. They most certainly are not. Surely, this is the whole point of the interest in Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. Most people in most countries (I get around the world a lot) think that immigrants ought to fit in with the ***culture*** of the country whither they emigrate. My ancestors had to this -- and some had to change languages -- when they came here in the last century. Whilst people may keep their old culture as a secondary one, and this is undoubtedly a good thing, it must be insisted that they adopt the new culture and mores as their primary ones.... as happens in USA.
Furthermore, he shows a decided cultural discrimination of his own within the sentence "Why should the lazy bones get a fair share?" How would he determine and administer that?
What really irks many "old white" Australians is that new immigrants are taught how to rort the welfare system, etc. on arrival. There is much evidence for this, albeit only anecdotal **at this stage**, but wait for the instantiation to prove it!! New arrivals (even whites from UK, for example) seem to be told that all established Australians are rich and that they should be screwed at every opportunity. Now, admittedly, the fault of much of that lies with the "pinks" more than any other colour.
However, the real crunch against the Wan Kai Tak letter comes from the following letter from Aimi Abas, also from Singapore. I defer to his/her exhortation for the use of better terminology -- to be more specific -- as I have said myself at the start of this letter and implied in the subject (heading). Additionally, Aimi Abas seems to contradict the thesis of the previous letter quite strongly. Isn't that interesting?
Notwithstanding the balance provided by these two letters, I wonder if this site should be posting communications from outside this country from those who have not lived here and undoubtedly would not know the situation. But maybe I have some extra insights here, since I get to USA once a year and stay in homes and listen to their TV and read their newspapers. It is most disturbing to see the same topic reported here in Oz when I return since it is so often "sanitized" for our consumption by our media. I'll let you in on a secret, Dr Tak, the media here is as frightened of Pauline Hanson as some of the political parties are. The reason is that people are discovering how sections of the media have their own agenda which does not reflect what the average Australian thinks. I suggest that you should be skeptical about your media too as you should have taught at university... otherwise you were simply trained and not educated.
Finally, on many trips to Singapore, I have heard very derogatory statements by some Asians, including academics, against other Asian races ('the snake in the grass and the one bullet left' stories of which you would be familiar), so to say that it is all harmonious there is sheer twaddle.
Barry Mollenhauer
Asian migrants to Australia.
Dear Sir,
We refer to the "You Say " section of Today's Headlines Internet
New Paper (7 June 1997),
Quote: "We will try to obtain the breakdown of migration by country
from the Australian Bureau of Statistics as we do not believe that the
majority of Asian migrants to Australia are from
China." Unquote. (See above)
Subject: Asian immigration.
With the least intention of being disrespectful, our bone of contention
is that Asian Immigrants who are Chinese and not necessarily from
China. Example, the writer who referred to Malays as lazy bones, Dr. Wan Kai Tak is Chinese. He may not be from China. You will face
no difficulties identifying the Chinese from Singapore and Malaysia
as they still retain their Chinese sir names such as Tan, Heng, Lim
etc. However Chinese immigrants who are former citizens of
Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines will be a problem. They do
not have Chinese Names Indonesian Chinese are easy to identify.
Their former race particulars will contain the term Tionghua or Cina.
We are not in the position to advise you regarding the Chinese of
Thailand and the Phillippines.
We find Peter Sarich comments regarding discrimination against Moslems in China, war against Tibetians, and China refusal to grant
citizenships to East Indians living in Hong-Kong, as points of extreme
interest. We will certainly follow issues up in Harimau's Home page
.A big thank you to Peter Sarich.
Lastly, we will like to deal in person with Dr. Wan Kai Tak, an
Aussie working in Singapore. He has to remember, first and foremost
that as he is a guest, it would have been very prudent for him to
stay away from issues, he does not understand. The Malays had
been discriminated against by the PAP since 1967. For his
information the Special Position of the Malays is enshrined in the
Singapore Constitution, Article 152. Calling Malays, lazy bones, is
not going to endear him to the Singapore powers that be. I hope the
YOUNG PAP members who surf far and wide, will bring this name
calling to the attention of Minister Abdullah Tarmugi and the lately
vociferous Member of Parliament Pakir Maidin. If Wan's work permit
is not renewed or that he has to leave Singapore quickly and quietly,
he will know why.
Best regards
Maybe I'm biased but I feel that Taylor should have been given the boot a long time ago and the damage that his self-selection in the team to play the first Ashes test to sideline well-performing players like Michael Slater is at best plain selfish.
A report by Quadrant Research on the kissing preferences of Australians came up with the following results:
Aimi Abass, SingaporeSport:
Australian cricket captain Mark Taylor made a ton last night. The Australians are still over 100 runs short of the English team's first innings with just one day to go and with Mark Waugh out with suspected appendicitus things do not look good.Social:
What's in a kiss?
Type of kiss | Male % | Female % | Total |
Long and passionate | 63% | 63% | 63% |
French kiss | 20% | 4% | 12% |
Peck on the cheek | 3% | 12% | 8% |
Some other kind | 4% | 7% | 6% |
Don't know | 6% | 8% | 7% |
Refused | 4% | 6% | 5% |
Number surveyed | 152 | 151 | 303 |
Have a great day.