UN TORTURE INVESTIGATOR IS DEPORTED

ZIMBABWE CANCELS VISIT UNITED NATION'S TORTURE INVESTIGATOR AND DEPORTS HIM TO SOUTH AFRICA

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - Zimbabwean immigration officials barred the United Nation's torture investigator from entering their country and returned him to South Africa Thursday, an act he termed a "serious diplomatic incident" that reflects a split in the coalition government. "There are certainly some parts of the government who do not want me to assess the current conditions of torture," Manfred Nowak angrily told reporters in Johannesburg upon arrival from Zimbabwe. Nowak said he had a meeting scheduled with Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a longtime opposition leader, on Thursday at the start of his mission to investigate alleged attacks on Tsvangirai supporters by militants linked to President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

Tsvangirai's spokesman, James Maridadi, said Thursday that Nowak's trip had been cleared and that he could not immediately say why he had been barred. Joey Bimha, the top civil servant in the ZANU-PF-controlled foreign ministry, said Nowak had been told he could not come because officials were engaged with Tsvangirai's temporary withdrawal from the Cabinet. A trio of foreign ministers from neighboring countries was holding talks with the factions Thursday and Friday in an attempt to end the impasse. "We had no option but to send (Nowak) back because we had informed him that his services were no longer needed here," Bimha said.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Ignorant persons, enmeshed as they are in worldly objects, always undergo suffering in the material world and are continuously in a state of fear. But the pure devotee or the intelligent person knows that Sri Krishna is the Supreme Controller. This is why those who worship Sri Krishna never fear anything or anyone, as there could never be any cause for them to fear. Maya enters the heart of the jiva and increases suffering, fear and lamentation born of ignorance in the same proportion as the separation that there is between the jiva and Sri Krishna.

Srila Bhakti Dayita Madhava Maharaj :
"Pearls of Devotion"
Bhaktivedanta Memorial Library - www.bvml.org/SBDMM