The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| More modern monarchs choose not to rule until death Posted: 06 Jul 2013 06:50 PM PDT  Retirement is not traditionally on the cards for queens, kings or popes, but a string of abdications in recent months, some unprecedented, show many are choosing to step aside instead of labouring on until death. Belgian King Albert, 79, became the latest to announce he will abdicate his throne, a little over a week after the emir of Qatar Hamad ben Khalifa Al Thani stepped down in favour of his son - a first for an Arab country. "For certain duties, which we thought ended with death, we now see a modern logic: abdication is possible," Belgian political analyst Pascal Delwit told private television station RTL-TVI. The abdication of queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in April was not a complete surprise, as both her mother and grandmother before her voluntarily gave up their crowns. However a decision by Pope Benedict XVI to step down that same month stunned the world. He was the first to resign the papacy -- an elected monarchy -- in some 600 years. In a nod to modernity he said that "in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith" he no longer had the strength of mind and body to do the job. Benedict's predecessor John Paul II hung on, stricken by Parkinson's disease, as the child sex scandal and corruption which would eventually dog his own rule mounted in the Vatican. Many other monarchies have been rocked by scandals, including that of Belgium's Albert who has faced a court case over his paternity of an illegitimate daughter and a financial scandal over taxes "These last 15-20 years the monarchy has evolved, it depends more and more on the popularity of the sovereign in place," said history professor Willem Otterspeer at the Leiden University in the Netherlands. "In this context it is better to retire at the right moment, instead of wanting to hold on to the end and attract negative publicity." But not all seem open to stepping down, such as Spain's 75-year-old King Juan Carlos, who has ruled it out despite numerous ailments and his family being mired in corruption scandals. Analysts say he is unlikely in the short-term to hand over to his son Felipe, who has taken a bigger role lead in official royal functions over recent months, as it could be seen as abandoning his duties while his country is in the grips of an economic crisis. In the United Kingdom, Europe's oldest monarch Queen Elizabeth, 87, shows no intention of handing over power to her son Charles, 64 and is seen as taking her vows to rule until death as irrevocable. "Elizabeth's attitude is clearly that from another time," said Otterspeer of the queen who has been in the throne for 60 years. Scandinavian monarchs show no sign of retiring in Sweden or Norway, while Denmark's 73-year-old Queen Margrethe II has assured she will stay on her throne until her death. - AFP, July 7, 2013. |
| The witches at the ‘Gates of Hell’: Norway’s darkest hour Posted: 06 Jul 2013 06:46 PM PDT Four centuries ago in the remote Norwegian Arctic, a region known as the "Gates of Hell" for its harsh climes, dozens of women were prosecuted for witchcraft and killed. Centuries afterwards, a sense of collective guilt lingers, and the women wrongfully convicted of non-existent crimes are remembered at a memorial in the small town of Vardoe, perched on the edge of the Varanger peninsula in Norway's extreme northeast. One woman commemorated at the memorial -- a 125-metre-long (410-foot) elevated structure built on stilts -- was burned at the stake for allegedly having cast a fatal spell on a child and two goats. Another was executed after being accused of triggering a storm that caused 10 vessels to sink and 40 sailors to drown. Poised gingerly on the edge of the Barents Sea, the monument, inaugurated in 2011, looks like a wooden bridge to nowhere, as if to symbolise the pointlessness of the women's deaths. At the site is one of the last works from late Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois -- four eternal flames that blaze in a spartan hall, a fitting piece to mark a tragic period in history. In the early 17th century, a mere 3,000 people lived in Finnmark, the northernmost county of Norway. From its modest population, 135 people were accused of witchcraft over just a few decades. Ninety-one, the vast majority of them women, were burned to death, if they had not already succumbed to torture. Even half a dozen girls were prosecuted, but were luckier than most other defendants and all acquitted. "This heavy toll puts Finnmark top of Europe," which was at the height of a frenzied witch hunt, said Liv Helene Willumsen, professor of history at the University of Tromsoe, also in northern Norway. "Proportionally it was worse (there) even than in certain parts of Germany or Scotland". But why this persecutory zeal in a region so remote? It is perhaps precisely the region's geographical isolation that enabled the population, weeks of travel from the seat of power -- which was in Copenhagen as Norway and Denmark formed a union at the time -- to fall prey to superstitious ideas. 'Unfinished chapter of history' Egged on by a clerical and administrative elite steeped in the dogmas of demonology, the idea that women could make pacts with the Devil caught on, reinforced by the belief that the Arctic was a sort of antechamber of hell. "People truly thought that there was a secret army around them which was allied to the Devil," said Willumsen. "Local courts were not controlled. You could be brought to court, made to confess and sentenced the same day." If torture was not successful in extracting the necessary confession, the court could order the "water ordeal" for a woman accused of witchcraft. This meant she was thrown into the sea, hands and feet tied. If she sank, she was innocent. If she floated, it was considered proof that she was indeed a witch. "Water was considered a pure element which could repel the impure," said Willumsen. In Finnmark, all suspects floated. One woman, Ingeborg Krog, took the test in 1663 after asking to be subjected to the water ordeal, apparently convinced that it would clear her of the charges. She floated "like a cork", explains a plaque dedicated to her at the memorial. Despite the agonising torture that then followed, the only confession her tormentors were able to extract was that she had fallen ill after eating a fish given to her by a relative of one of her accusers. Ingeborg eventually died under torture. Four hundred years later, the horrors have ended in Europe but are still happening elsewhere, say historians. "Witch hunts are an unfinished chapter of history," said Rune Blix Hagen, another historian of the University of Tromsoe. "It continues at full tilt, not in the West, but especially in Africa and also in Asia and South America." Today, just like centuries ago, the alleged witches are usually scapegoats accused of causing illness, death, a shipwreck, a failed harvest, or any other misfortune. About 50,000 people are believed to have paid with their lives in Europe during the medieval witch trials. But by comparison, the number of people killed for the same reason worldwide since World War II is estimated at between 70,000 and 80,000. "These are official figures and probably only the tip of the iceberg," says Hagen. "The monument in Vardoe is also a reminder that the persecution is not over." - APF, July 7, 2013. |
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