SAN JUAN, PHILIPPINES // Christian devotees were nailed to crosses in the Philippines on Friday as Asia’s Catholic heartland marked Easter with an extreme display of faith.
The gory crucifixions played out in dusty fields throughout the day with thousands of spectators looking on, and as other penitents flogged themselves bloody with whips.
Men dressed as soldiers of the Roman Empire hammered large metal spikes through the hands and feet of Willy Salvador, who grimaced in silence as he lay with his arms spread atop a wooden cross.
“This is my personal way of thanking Him for healing me,” the 59-year-old fisherman saids, moments before being dragged barefoot through San Juan village.
“I know you would not believe me, but God helped me recover from a nervous breakdown,” said Mr Salvador, who added he had been doing it every year since 2006.
Ritual crucifixions are among the Catholic world’s most extreme forms of worship and are done as part of Good Friday celebrations in some small villages in the Philippines, home to 80 million-plus Catholics.
They are held to re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, whom Christians believe was put to death so humanity could be cleansed of its sins.
The nails go through both hands and both feet, but do not bear the weight of the penitents, who spend only a few minutes on the cross before being taken down and having their bloody wounds treated.
After Mr Salvador, it was the turn of street vendor Alex Daranang, whose 20th crucifixion fell on the eve of his 60th birthday.
“The wounds heal fast,” the gap-toothed grandfather said. “In two days they are practically healed.”
The act is frowned upon by the church, but has become a tourist attraction.
Several thousand sightseers, including more than a dozen Western tourists, descended on the nearby village of San Pedro to witness the mock crucifixions and other extreme forms of piety.
Benjie Pazcoguin, a motivational speaker, said “there is a symbolic meaning to these crucifixions. Definitely, it reinforces my faith.”
“I will come to see it again next year,” he said, despite the gore.
Around a grass bank where three tall wooden crosses awaited the San Pedro devotees, vendors were seen selling souvenir shirts, hats, soft drinks and food.
A giant television screen displayed the macabre events to the rest of the crowd, who shielded themselves from the heat with bright-coloured umbrellas.
On the sun-scalded pavements of the village streets, hundreds of shoeless men, their faces shrouded in black cloths, shuffled in slow processions as they lashed their own backs with whips tipped with strips of bamboo.
The men stopped in unison occasionally to lie face down on the pavement, handing over the whips to assistants who administered more punishment.
Blood splattered on the spectators, while one of the penitents sank to his knees and began to throw up.
“You actually feel good, because you know some of your sins are being forgiven,” construction worker Joel Yutoc, 23, said as he smoked a cigarette after the ordeal.
The extreme practices serve as an alternative to acts of Good Friday penance prescribed by the church, such as abstaining from work or from eating meat, and visiting a series of churches on foot to pray.
“The church discourages these acts because Jesus Christ had already undergone that for all of us. There is no need to repeat it,” Father Douglas Badong, rector of the Quiapo Catholic church in central Manila said.
But San Juan village chief Claro Tolentino said crucifixions and self-flagellations were part of the culture of the country, which was converted to Catholicism during the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.
“This is the culture that we were born into. Everyone should respect the culture and beliefs of our people,” he added.
* Agence France-Presse
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Tax authority targets shisha levy evasion
The Federal Tax Authority will track shisha imports with electronic markers to protect customers and ensure levies have been paid.
Khalid Ali Al Bustani, director of the tax authority, on Sunday said the move is to "prevent tax evasion and support the authority’s tax collection efforts".
The scheme’s first phase, which came into effect on 1st January, 2019, covers all types of imported and domestically produced and distributed cigarettes. As of May 1, importing any type of cigarettes without the digital marks will be prohibited.
He said the latest phase will see imported and locally produced shisha tobacco tracked by the final quarter of this year.
"The FTA also maintains ongoing communication with concerned companies, to help them adapt their systems to meet our requirements and coordinate between all parties involved," he said.
As with cigarettes, shisha was hit with a 100 per cent tax in October 2017, though manufacturers and cafes absorbed some of the costs to prevent prices doubling.
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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1 Jeff Bezos $140 billion
2 Bill Gates $98.3 billion
3 Bernard Arnault $83.1 billion
4 Warren Buffett $83 billion
5 Amancio Ortega $67.9 billion
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7 Larry Page $56.8 billion
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5