Ukraine: Refugees’ ‘bubble of safety’
Elżbieta Jarmulska, a feisty Polish entrepreneur, is the founder of the Women Take The Wheel Initiative to provide Ukrainian refugees with a ‘bubble of safety’. She says, ‘Those women have been through so much already, walking or driving their way through a war zone and now are exposed to fear and exploitation here? I have no words for what that must be like’. Elżbieta has recruited 650+ Polish ‘amazing women’, as she describes them, driving backwards and forwards as often as they can to the Polish-Ukrainian border, in order to offer refugees safe passage. They show their ID card and proof of residence to officials, before asking if anyone wanted a lift to Warsaw. The car is full in moments. Small children are given water, chocolate and motion-sickness tablets if they need them. The women are so relieved when they see they have a female driver to help them to safety.
Ukraine: Mariupol suffers weeks of shelling
Vladimir Putin has told his French counterpart the shelling of the besieged city of Mariupol will only end when Ukrainian troops surrender. The key southern port city has been under heavy shelling for weeks. French officials said on 30 March that the Russian leader had agreed to consider plans to evacuate civilians from the city. They called the situation in the city ‘catastrophic’, adding that civilian populations must be protected and must leave the city if they wish. They must have access to food aid, water and medicine. France, Turkey, Greece and several humanitarian groups have presented Putin with a plan to evacuate the city. Officials said Putin told Emmanuel Macron that he will think about it. However after the talks with Ukraine the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, played down any hopes of a breakthrough. On 31 March Ukraine made another attempt to send aid and bring back evacuees.
Australia: more floods
Recently the east coast experienced the worst flooding on record; now extraordinary rain has caused thousands of residents to evacuate their homes again. Pray for NSW residents inundated by a month's worth of rain in six hours across already saturated landscapes. Pray for the half a million who have been told to evacuate, or be ready to, as torrents lash Sydney. Pray for those whose homes and businesses have been destroyed. In Lismore water breached the levee for the second time in a month. Flood defences were criticised when there was no official warning of the breach after sirens malfunctioned. The levee system was built to protect the area from extreme flooding, but it reduced flood risk by only 10%. Professor Pittock said the repeated flood risk to towns like Lismore highlights the grave risks of rebuilding in harm's way, ‘No amount of house raising or flood resilient materials will adequately reduce flood risks in some parts.’
Eritrea: 29 Christians arrested at prayer meeting
In mid-March, 29 evangelical Christians (17 women and twelve men) were arrested at a house church and taken to Mai Serwa prison camp. Such Christian gatherings have been in homes for twenty years after all churches were closed apart from Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran. Every neighbourhood has a government spy living there observing it and reporting unusual activity to the authorities. Churches have found government spies pretending to be Christians, joining and reporting on congregations. Mai Serwa houses more prisoners than it was built for. They are held in shipping containers holding 20+ detainees. Often prisoners take turns to sleep on bare floors because beds or mattresses are not allowed. The conditions were condemned by Amnesty International in 2020. With overcrowding and lack of adequate sanitation, healthcare, and food, conditions are inhumane; Covid-19 is a major concern. Prisoners' conditions have disastrous consequences on their mental and physical health.
