All posts tagged: Arduous

Swiss face arduous task of identifying victims of deadly bar fire

Swiss face arduous task of identifying victims of deadly bar fire

Published by Sam Flores

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland: Investigators on Friday (Jan 2) set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies of a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed around 40 people at a New Year’s Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana. So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd of revellers in the Le Constellation bar that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all the victims of the fire that also injured 115, many of them seriously. Parents of missing youths anxiously issued pleas for news of their loved ones as foreign embassies scrambled to work out if their nationals were among those caught up in one of the worst tragedies to befall modern Switzerland. “The first objective is to assign names to all the bodies,” Crans-Montana’s mayor Nicolas Feraud told a press conference on Thursday evening. This, he said, could take days. Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais, said experts were using dental and DNA samples for the task. “All …

The Arduous Journey: How Secular Rescue Saved Me from Tyranny

The Arduous Journey: How Secular Rescue Saved Me from Tyranny

Published by skeptic

[ Adobe Stock | Jeanette Teare ] Pasoon The following article was written by Pasoon (an alias), an ex-Muslim Afghan rights activist, journalist, and former political programs presenter on TV and radio in Kabul. His brother was murdered by the Taliban just a few days after Pasoon contacted Secular Rescue to ask for help. The piece has been edited for clarity and space. In 1995, the year of my birth, Kabul was the main battlefield in Afghanistan’s civil war. When the Taliban came to power, my family had abandoned urban life; we lived in an old house in a remote village. I would go to the nearby school in the morning and then to the mosque in the afternoon to study Islam. The mosque’s mullah always clutched a stick, and anyone who neglected his lessons would be severely beaten, which I will never forget. I soon became an excellent student of Arabic books, spending most of my time at the mosque. I was a fiercely religious child. If someone at home was listening to music, …