President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday inaugurated the first church built with government backing in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey’s 100-year history as a post-Ottoman state.

The Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church’s opening marks an important cultural and political moment for both Turkey and its powerful leader.

Erdogan drew widespread condemnation during his two-decade rule for converting ancient churches into mosques and making Islamic conservatism into a leading social force.

He has always countered that he was simply restoring the rights of pious Muslims in the staunchly secular republic founded by field marshal Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.

Erdogan laid the first stone for the church’s construction for Istanbul’s 17,000-strong Assyrian Christians in 2019.

“We are seeing big problems today across many parts of the world,” Erdogan told the faithful as all-out war raged between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

“But the solidarity shown here today — I find it very important,” Erdogan said.

“We always protect the oppressed against the oppressor. That is our duty.”

Assyrian Christianity traces its history to communities that lived in the first century AD in a region stretching from southeastern Turkey to Syria and Iraq.

Its main church moved from the Turkish city of Mardin to Damascus in 1932.

‘Love letter’

Some small Turkish churches have been quietly restored and re-opened in the past 100 years.

Erdogan said on Sunday that 20 existing churches had been repaired since his Islamic-rooted party came to power in 2002.

But the Mor Ephrem “is the first newly built church to open its doors since the founding of the Turkish Republic,” Assyrian community leader Sait Susin told AFP by telephone.

“We are very happy.”

Erdogan drew international indignation for converting Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia —once the world’s largest cathedral —from a museum into a mosque in 2020.

The United Nations cultural body UNESCO expressed “grave concern” at the time.

Erdogan brushed the criticism aside and did exactly the same thing to Istanbul’s Byzantine-era Chora Church later that same year.

Greece called that conversion “yet another provocation against religious persons everywhere”.

Erdogan came under particularly strong attacks at home for unveiling a new mosque in 2021 on Taksim Square — an Istanbul gathering point built around a monument celebrating Ataturk’s foundation of the secular Turkish state.

The new Istanbul church can accommodate 750 worshippers.

Erdogan wavers in his speeches between robustly defending pious Muslims and embracing Turkey’s numerous communities.

He told supporters on the eve of the first round of May’s presidential election that he had written a “love letter” to Turkey.

“We have penned a love letter for every individual of our nation, without any distinction of origin or religion,” he told the crowd.

He ended that day by leading Muslim prayers at the Hagia Sophia mosque.

Erdogan edged out his secular rival in a runoff election two weeks later.
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The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has brought colorful displays to the New Mexico sky in an international event that attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators every year.

The event started Saturday with a drone light show before sunrise followed by a mass ascension of hot air balloons. Over nine days, local residents and visitors will be treated to a cavalcade of colorful and special-shaped balloons.

The annual gathering has become a major economic driver for the state’s biggest city. The Rio Grande and nearby mountains provide spectacular backdrops to the fiesta that began with a few pilots launching 13 balloons from an open lot near a shopping center on what was the edge of Albuquerque in 1972.

The fiesta has morphed into one of the most photographed events in the world, now based at Balloon Fiesta Park. Balloon designs have featured cartoon animals, Star Wars characters and even the polar bear found on Klondike bars.

“But they’re still all about the basics,” said fiesta director Sam Parks, who flies a globe-style balloon modeled after one flown by the fiesta’s late founder Sid Cutter. “You add heat to a big bag of air and you go up.”

Nearly 830,000 people from around the world attended last year’s event. Scheduled nighttime events include fireworks and balloon glows, in which hot air balloons are inflated and lit up from the ground.

The launch window opens Saturday evening for what is billed as one of the biggest events in aviation: the Gordon Bennett competition. The winner of the gas balloon race is the one who flies the farthest distance.

Some 550 balloon pilots are registered to fly this year, seeking to take advantage of a phenomenon known as the “Albuquerque box,” when the wind blows in opposite directions at different elevations, allowing skillful pilots to bring a balloon back to a spot near the point of takeoff.

Visitors to the event also can pay to go aloft for views of the Sandia Mountains to the west and New Mexico’s capital, Santa Fe, farther north.

“It has become part of the culture,” Parks said. “The thread, if you will, of those here.”

Elizabeth Wright-Smith, who is flying the Smokey Bear balloon this week, said she reunites with friends from all over the country at the fiesta that she would not see otherwise. As of early Saturday afternoon, she had already run into 30 people she had met from various balloon races, safety seminars and other events across the country.

“It’s a big reunion,” she said.

Her favorite part of the fiesta is watching and interacting with the thousands of spectators who flock to Balloon Fiesta Park, which grow smaller as she ascends in her balloon. The sky was clear Saturday – a contrast from last year, when off-and-on rain left parts of the fiesta soggy.

“Pictures don’t do it justice, videos don’t do it justice,” Wright-Smith said. “You’ve got to be standing there watching them to really get it.”
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If stones could talk, sing and tell stories, Yogi Trivedi believes the marble and limestone that adorn the spires, pillars and archways of the stunning Hindu temple in central New Jersey would compose a paean to the divine.

The tales these stones tell are those of seva (selfless service) and bhakti (devotion), which form the core of the Swaminarayan sect, a branch of Hinduism, said Trivedi, a scholar of Hinduism at Columbia University.

It took a combined total of about 4.7 million hours of work by artisans and volunteers to hand-carve about 600,000 cubic meters of stone. The four varieties of marble from Italy and limestone from Bulgaria traveled first to India and then nearly 13,000 kilometers across the world to New Jersey.

They were then fitted together like a giant jigsaw to create what is now touted as the largest Hindu temple outside India to be built in the modern era, standing on a 126-acre tract. It will open to the public Monday.

The largest temple complex in the world is the Ankgor Wat, originally constructed in the 12th century in Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia, and dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu by King Suryavarman II. It is now described as a Hindu-Buddhist temple and is one of 1,199 UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The Robbinsville temple is one of many built by the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha or BAPS, a worldwide religious and civic organization within the Swaminarayan sect.

“Service and devotion are the two basic elements that form the subtle foundation of how a temple so majestic gets built here in central New Jersey,” said Trivedi, who studies the Swaminarayan faith tradition and follows it.

This temple will be the third Akshardham or “abode of the divine” the organization has built after two others in New Delhi and Gujarat, where BAPS is headquartered. The former is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world. The sect, which will celebrate its 50th year in North America next year, oversees more than 1,200 temples and 3,850 centers around the world.

The New Jersey Akshardham, which has been in the works for about 12 years, came under scrutiny and criticism after a 2021 civil lawsuit alleging forced labor, meager wages and grim working conditions.

Twelve of the 19 plaintiffs have now retracted their allegations and the lawsuit is on hold pending an investigation “with which BAPS continues to cooperate fully,” Trivedi said. 

The complaint alleges that those exploited were Dalits or members of the former untouchable caste in India. Caste is an ancient system of social hierarchy based on one’s birth that is tied to concepts of purity and social status.

The case continues to raise questions among activists fighting caste discrimination and those advocating for workers’ rights, about the blurred lines between uncompensated work and the concept of selfless service, which followers of the faith say constitutes their core belief.

Trivedi said these allegations weighed heavily on community members because their faith has always taught them “to see the divine in all and love and serve them as manifestations of the divine.” He said Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the sect’s fifth spiritual successor, who envisioned such a temple campus in the United States, was a progressive guru who cared deeply about social equality.

“Caste and class do not divide us,” Trivedi said.

The temple project brought forth volunteerism and service, which like the sculptor’s chisel, chip away people’s egos and prime them to learn, he said.

“In that learning, one becomes a better person within and that is the end goal of seva,” Trivedi said. “It’s not just to give to the community or build these (ornate structures), but to better oneself.”

He said the temple would not have been possible without the service of thousands of volunteers many of whom took time off school and work to serve in different capacities. This might be the first Hindu temple where women were involved in the actual temple construction under the artisans’ supervision, he added.

This week, families from across the country have been streaming into the temple campus to get a sneak peek. Devotees bowed to each other and to monks in saffron robes. As the sun set, two men in white robes performed a ceremony in front of the 49-foot-tall statue of the Bhagwan Nilkanth Varni, who later became known as Bhagwan Swaminarayan, the founder of the sect who ushered in a moral and spiritual renaissance in western India.

Avani Patel was visiting from Atlanta with her husband and their two children, ages 11 and 15. She knelt inside the temple and marveled at the ornate ceiling, her hands folded in prayer.

“It’s jaw dropping, mind blowing,” she said.

Patel said she and her husband, Pritesh, were among the volunteers who gave their time to create the complex, and she is proud to be a part of an organization that would build such a resource to pass on these values to posterity.

Trivedi said he does not view the temple “just as a Hindu place of worship.”

“It’s not even just Indian or Indian American,” he said, adding that the temple stands for universal values that can be found in every religious text and in the hearts and minds of great thinkers and leaders of every era.

“What we’ve tried to do is express these universal values in a way that relate to all visitors.” 
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Human rights campaigners across the world welcomed the awarding of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s rights campaigner who is jailed in Tehran. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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When the megaphone called out for the daily Islamic prayers, the nonbeliever grabbed his prayer beads and ambled through the streets to join others at the mosque in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city. Formerly a Muslim, he now identifies as an atheist but remains closeted, performing religious obligations only as a cover.

“To survive as an atheist, you cannot act like one,” said the man, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity over fears for his safety. He said he narrowly escaped being killed by a mob in 2015 after some people found out he had forsaken Islam.

“If I ever come out in northern Nigeria to say I am an atheist, it will be an automatic death sentence,” said the man, a business owner in his 30s.

In parts of the world, the religiously unaffiliated are on the rise, and can safely and publicly be a “none” — someone who identifies as an atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. In countries like Nigeria, the situation is starkly different.

Nonbelievers in Nigeria said they perennially have been treated as second-class citizens in the deeply religious country whose 210 million population is almost evenly divided between Christians dominant in the south and Muslims who are the majority in the north. While the south is relatively safe for nonbelievers, some say threats and attacks have worsened in the north since the leader of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, was arrested and later jailed for blasphemy.

The Associated Press spoke to seven nonbelievers to document their experiences. Most spoke anonymously and in secret locations over concerns for their safety.

“Bala’s imprisonment rolled our movement underground,” Leo Igwe, a founder of the humanist association, said of the group’s leader, who in 2022 was jailed for 24 years. A court convicted him on an 18-count charge of blaspheming Islam and breach of public peace through his posts on Facebook.

Since Bala was prosecuted by the Kano state government, the humanist association — which has several hundred members — has gone underground, struggling with unprecedented threats to members who no longer hold meetings, Leo said.

Nigeria’s constitution provides for freedom of religion and expression, but activists say threats to religious freedom are common, especially in the north.

Almost half of the countries in Africa, including Nigeria, have statutes outlawing blasphemy. In most secular courts in Nigeria, the stiffest penalty for a blasphemy charge is two years in prison, while it carries a death penalty in the country’s Islamic courts, active in the majority Muslim north.

There are no records of any such executions in recent years. The most recent instance of a death sentence, issued in December against an Islamic cleric, Abduljabbar Nasiru Kabara, has not been carried out.

The Shariah law that operates in Islamic courts defines blasphemous acts as those committed by anyone who “intentionally abuses, insults, derogates, humiliates or seeks to incite contempt of the holy Prophet Muhammad.”

But what exactly constitutes actions that insult Islam is often open to interpretation by accusers, Igwe said. As a result, some alleged offenders have been attacked and killed before any trial.

At least three people have been killed for alleged blasphemy in northern Nigeria in the past year. The latest victim, killed in June, was a Muslim stoned to death after being accused of making comments that blasphemed Islam.

Authorities in Nigeria have failed to act to prevent such attacks, and prosecutions have been rare, said Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International in Nigeria.

“The alarming uptick in blasphemy killings and accusations underscores the urgency with which the authorities must wake up to Nigeria’s international legal obligations to respect and protect human rights,” Sanusi said.

Threats against the nonreligious in Nigeria are common on social media. On Facebook, a group named Anti-Atheist, users frequently posted messages that trolled or threatened atheists.

The atheist in Kano, in a dimly lit room, spoke with a mix of grit and fear about his experiences as a nonbeliever in a nation where about 98% of the population are Christians or Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center. A Facebook post from Bala in 2015, critiquing some Islamic teachings, influenced the man’s shift to atheism.

Once a Muslim, Bala was seen as an influential member of the humanist community; most of the nonbelievers who spoke to the AP credited him as a source of inspiration.

Life as a nonbeliever in Nigeria is also difficult for women, who already are severely underrepresented in government and other key sectors.

“Your achievements are reduced to nothing if you are irreligious,” said Abosuahi Nimatu, who dropped out of university in Katsina state in 2020 to escape being killed after her peers learned she was no longer a Muslim.

Nimatu was so close to Bala that his prolonged detention depressed her for a year, she said. She used her Facebook account to campaign for his release, prompting threats that reached her cellphone and email inbox. Her home address was shared among people threatening to attack her and her family.

Even at home, she is often reminded that no man would marry her.

“You are seen as a rebel and as a wayward person,” she said.

In 2020, Nigeria became the first secular democracy designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern” for engaging in or tolerating “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.” It later was dropped from that list of countries, prompting criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which says Nigeria should be re-added. It is a different reality for the openly faithless in southern Nigeria; they even hold public meetings occasionally. The two atheists who spoke to AP in the commercial hub of Lagos said they had never been attacked or threatened.

Busayo Cole, a former Christian, said his family is indifferent about his religious status. Beyond his family, the worst consequences he faces are occasional snide remarks.

“People are more liberal about things like that down here,” said Cole.

At the Kuje prison in Abuja, Bala continues to serve his jail term, receiving visitors from time to time including his wife Amina Ahmed, also a humanist. She went to see him most recently with their 3-year-old son.

He is in good spirits, Ahmed said of her husband. But it has been difficult for her.

“I am trying to be strong (but) my strength sometimes fails me,” she said.
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Two children scribbled petitions to St. Gabriele dell’Addolorata in the sanctuary where the young saint is venerated in this central Italian mountain village. Andrea, 6, asked for blessings for his family and pets, while Sofia, 9, offered thanksgiving for winning a dance competition.

Their parents bring them here often, and consider themselves better Catholics than many — but they rarely if ever go to Mass and don’t receive Communion because they are not married, thus shunning two sacraments the Catholic Church considers foundational.

“I practice where I want,” said the mother, Carmela Forino. “One has to believe in something, right? You do what you feel in your heart. You can’t require me to go to Mass on Sundays.”

That’s the paradox in this country long considered the cradle of the Catholic faith. Elsewhere in deeply secular Western Europe, the “nones” — those rejecting organized religion — are growing fast.

In Italy, however, most retain a nominal affiliation, steeped in tradition but with little adherence to doctrine or practice. According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, 78% of Italians profess themselves to be Catholic — but only 19% attend services at least once a week while 31% never do, per data by the Italian statistics agency, ISTAT.

The COVID-19 pandemic pruned even more tepid Catholics, accelerating a loss in faith that started at least a generation ago, said Franco Garelli, a University of Turin sociology professor.

“‘I don’t have time, I don’t feel like it’ — there isn’t a real reason. That’s what’s scary,” said the Rev. Giovanni Mandozzi, parish priest in the sanctuary’s village, Isola. “I tell them, ‘I do Mass in under 40 minutes, you can leave your pasta sauce on the stove, and it won’t even stick to the bottom of the pot.'”

On an early summer Saturday evening, he celebrated Mass with fewer than two dozen elderly parishioners in a former butcher shop, because Isola’s church was damaged by earthquakes that have devastated the region of Abruzzo since 2009.

Nearby, several close friends in their 20s were enjoying drinks and appetizers outside a bar.

They described growing up attending Mass and catechism, only to stop after receiving the sacrament of confirmation — or “getting rid of it,” as one put it — in their early teens.

“It would have become just a routine,” said Agostino Tatulli, 24, a college and music conservatory student who sometimes still goes to church with his mother. “I’d say I’m spiritual. I don’t know if God exists.”

From his childhood serving as an altar boy, he misses “the sense of community that formed on Sunday mornings.” Tatulli still finds some of that in his gigs with a marching band for the popular feasts of patron saints — whose celebrations are crucial to fellow band member Federico Ferri.

“I’m a Catholic believer in the saints, not in the church,” Ferri added. He goes only occasionally to Mass, but often to the sanctuary.

Thousands of teens continue to flock each spring to San Gabriele sanctuary for the “blessing of the pens” with which high school seniors will take final exams — a tradition that felt lovely but “more superstitious than religious” to former pilgrim Michela Vignola.

“Now I don’t even think about it,” she said, referring to the faith she abandoned in her teens. “It’s taken for granted that you’re a believer, but you don’t participate.”

A hairdresser, Vignola coifs a lot of bridal parties, most still headed to church — the choice of about 60% of Italians getting married for the first time, making the sacrament just a bit less popular than a church funeral, favored by 70% of Italians, according to Garelli’s research.

In a nearby village, fifth-generation funeral home director Antonio Ruggieri has added wake rooms for followers of non-Christian religions and is building a “neutral” one with no religious symbols. But almost all his funerals are in a church.

“It’s a sort of redemption, even if you barely believe in it,” he said.

For many priests, that attitude means that a social point of no return might have been reached. How to respond is a major challenge for clergy already struggling with a significant drop in vocations that leaves many with barely the time to celebrate Masses in multiple villages under their care.

Those who participate actively do so now out of a deliberate choice and not because the church, and its social and cultural programs for youth, are the only game in town as they used to be.

Such believers should be focused on as if they were the last of the species on Noah’s Ark, joked the Rev. Bernardino Giordano, the vicar general of the pontifical delegation to Loreto, an even more popular sanctuary less than 160 kilometers away.

In a previous assignment in northern Italy, he dealt with the other extreme — the few who asked his diocese to be “sbattezzati,” or de-baptized, which really meant expunged from the parish baptism record since a sacrament like baptism can’t be undone.

But the majority remain in a grey area — drawn not by sacraments but by the church’s social justice work.

“It’s very reductionist to have as the only measure those who practice (the faith). The Holy Spirit is at work everywhere, it doesn’t belong only to Catholics,” said Archbishop Erio Castellucci, the vice president of the Italian bishops’ conference.

That might appeal to Federica Nobile, 33, who defines herself as “Catholic but not too much.” Raised in a very observant family, she felt she needed to exorcise “the absurd fear of hell” she grew up with.

“I tried to get above the concept of good vs. evil. Looking for nuances allows me to live a lot better,” said the branding strategist and fiction author.

In the provincial capital of Teramo, when Marco Palareti asked the middle-school students in his optional religion class to rank values, family and freedom came first — and faith dead last.

“Kids’ attitude has changed, because in earlier times almost all of them had a life in the parish, while today many don’t go or go only for the sacraments” of First Communion and confirmation, added Palareti, who has taught religion for 36 years.

It’s an attitude that Pietro di Bartolomeo remembers well. When he was a teen bullied because of his family’s strong faith, he “saw God as a loser.” Now a 45-year-old father of five, he runs a Bible group for teens in Teramo.

He believes the Church needs to evangelize more — or it’s doomed to irrelevance.

“The old ladies sooner or later will go to the Creator, and that’s where the cycle stops,” he said.
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The U.S. State Department is marking the 60th anniversary of its Office of Art in Embassies, a government partnership with art communities to promote democratic values. VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam shows us two of its traveling exhibitions that were on display in Washington.
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It’s been more than 20 years since “Spy Kids” made its way to movie theaters around the world. Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has rebooted the franchise to attract a new generation. VOA’s Veronica Villafañe spoke with the director and has more in this report.
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Imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for fighting the oppression of women in Iran.

“She fights for women against systematic discrimination and oppression,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.

Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests.

Mohammadi has a long history of imprisonment, harsh sentences and international calls for reviews of her case.

Before being jailed, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. Mohammadi has been close to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who founded the center.

Ebadi left Iran after the disputed re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 that touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities. In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.

In 2022, Mohammadi was tried in five minutes and sentenced to eight years in prison and 70 lashes.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.
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For years, Chinese officials have referred to the Tiananmen massacre as “political turmoil” and have attempted to make the violence of June 4, 1989, disappear.

Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred people to more than 10,000, though there has never been an official tally released. Thousands more were injured by troops who charged the student-led pro-democracy demonstration that began massing in Beijing’s vast open space in mid-April.

Against that backdrop, Tiananmen: A New Musical weaves a love story between two students in a production that opened Wednesday at the Phoenix Theatre Company in Arizona. Its world premiere will be Friday night.  

Wu’er Kaixi, who was one of the protest leaders and who now lives in Taiwan where he is a pro-democracy activist, served as a creative consultant.  

It is the latest in a subset of musicals that tackle serious issues. Cabaret addresses homophobia, antisemitism and the rise of Nazi Germany. Dear Evan Hansen grapples with suicide and bullying.  

It took three years to produce Tiananmen. Beijing’s growing willingness to track down its critics and exert pressure on them left many who auditioned wary of accepting roles that jeopardize family or business interests in China.  

The show’s musical director, theater veteran Darren Lee, told VOA Mandarin that before accepting the job, he had a career first: calling his parents to see if there were relatives still in China who would be endangered.

His family’s “most studious aunt” with the best “memory and connection to where we’ve all come from” greenlit Lee’s participation. The show’s original Chinese American director left the show because of “potential for retribution against his family in China if he were involved in telling this story,” Lee told Phoenix magazine.  

Lee said one of the core messages of the Tiananmen play is to explore the impact of this “long arm of fear” on people.  

“I’m an American-born Chinese person. I may share DNA with people in China, but I don’t have direct relatives that would be pressured in any way. So, I don’t have that same sense of — I guess it’s fear,” he said.

Producer Jason Rose said others involved in the show opted out due to concerns about family or business interests in China. Others used stage names or were credited as “Anonymous.”

Rose told VOA Mandarin he respected those decisions, but the show kept moving ahead despite possible pressure from Beijing.

“That’s what drew me to this show,” he said. “It is provocative. It is important. It is a celebration of bravery by these artists. … That is American art at its best, and to allow another country to dictate what’s going to be on the American stage — I’m sorry, that’s where I’ll hold up my hand and say, ‘Let’s go try and do this.’”

And while Kaixi hopes audiences will feel the students’ courage and the atmosphere of hope that permeated Tiananmen Square, he wants people to realize that the rulers of today’s China are no different from those who “decided to shoot and kill people” in 1989.

That view is reflected in a scene described by Rose in an opinion piece Sept. 15 in the Arizona Capitol Times. China’s leader in 1989, Deng Xiaoping, walking through the carnage left by the government’s attack, delivers a monologue: “People will forget what happened here. People will forget what we did here. Westerners will. China will. Because you will want smartphones. Because Beijing will want skyscrapers. Twenty-thousand dying will bring 20 years of stability. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And at the edge of memory, who defines the truth? Me.”

VOA Mandarin sought comment from the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco but did not receive a response.

Ellie Wang, who stars opposite Kennedy Kanagawa in Tiananmen, told Playbill, “This production is not just a celebration of art and storytelling but a powerful reminder of the importance of courage, resilience, and the universal desire for freedom.” 

Wen Baoling, a Hong Konger who lives in San Francisco, traveled to Phoenix to attend a preview of the show, which has a book by Scott Elmegreen, with music and lyrics by Drew Fornarola.

“I really wanted to support this team of very brave people who made this show about the Tiananmen massacre,” she said. “The Chinese regime tries to put a lot of pressure on people, even outside of China. So, we can’t really let the censorship — this complete erasure of history — we can’t let the Chinese regime extend that censorship outside of China and into the U.S.”

Audience member Jerry Vineyard told VOA Mandarin he had followed the Tiananmen protests when they began. He said the musical “brought up a lot of memories for me … because I remember I was in high school, I was 17, when all this happened. And I felt a lot of hope when I saw that started to happen. And then it just seemed like it was all dashed and crushed. And then … they mentioned in the play, the [Berlin] Wall came down shortly after. So, [Tiananmen] kind of got brushed away in history.”

Kaixi said the students’ pro-democracy movement of 1989 remains “unfinished business.”

“I hope everyone will remember this history, respect this history, and eulogize this history. This generation of young people, with their dedication and their bravery, can achieve the results we wanted,” he said.
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A photo of Dick Butkus sneering behind his facemask filled the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 1970 NFL preview, topped by the headline, “The Most Feared Man in the Game.” Opponents who wound up on the business end of his bone-rattling hits could testify that wasn’t an exaggeration. 

Butkus, a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears whose speed and ferocity set the standards for the position in the modern era, died Thursday, the team announced. He was 80. 

According to a statement released by the team, Butkus’ family confirmed that he died in his sleep at his home in Malibu, California. 

Butkus was a first-team All-Pro five times and made the Pro Bowl in eight of his nine seasons before a knee injury forced him to retire at 31. He was the quintessential Monster of the Midway and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. He is still considered one of the greatest defensive players in league history. 

“Dick Butkus was a fierce and passionate competitor who helped define the linebacker position as one of the NFL’s all-time greats. Dick’s intuition, toughness and athleticism made him the model linebacker whose name will forever be linked to the position and the Chicago Bears,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “We also remember Dick as a longtime advocate for former players, and players at all levels of the game.” 

A moment of silence honoring Butkus was held before the Bears played  the Washington Commanders on Thursday night. 

Trading on his image as the toughest guy in the room, Butkus enjoyed a long second career as a sports broadcaster, an actor in movies and TV series, and a sought-after pitchman for products ranging from antifreeze to beer. Whether the script called for comedy or drama, Butkus usually resorted to playing himself, often with his gruff exterior masking a softer side. 

“I wouldn’t ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately,” Butkus replied tongue-in-cheek when asked about his on-field reputation. “Unless it was, you know, important … like a league game or something.” 

Butkus was the rare pro athlete who played his entire career close to home. He was a star linebacker, fullback and kicker at Chicago Vocational High who went on to play at the University of Illinois. Born on December 9, 1942, as the youngest of eight children, he grew up on the city’s South Side as a fan of the Chicago Cardinals, the Bears’ crosstown rivals. 

But after being drafted in the first round in 1965 by both the Bears and Denver Broncos (at the time, a member of the now-defunct American Football League), Butkus chose to remain in Chicago and play for NFL founder and coach George Halas. The Bears also added future Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers to the roster that year with another first-round pick. 

“He was Chicago’s son,” Bears chairman George McCaskey, Halas’ grandson, said in a statement. “He exuded what our great city is about and, not coincidentally, what George Halas looked for in a player: toughness, smarts, instincts, passion and leadership. He refused to accept anything less than the best from himself, or from his teammates.” 

Butkus inherited the middle linebacker job from Bill George, a Hall of Famer credited with popularizing the position in the NFL. In 1954, George abandoned his three-point stance in the middle of the defensive line and started each play several paces removed, a vantage point that allowed him to watch plays unfold and then race to the ball. 

Butkus, however, brought speed, agility and a scorched-earth attitude to the job that his predecessors only imagined. He intercepted five passes, recovered six fumbles and was unofficially credited with forcing six more in his rookie year, topping it off with the first of eight straight Pro Bowl appearances. But his reputation as a disruptor extended well past the ability to take away the football. 

Butkus would hit runners high, wrap them up and drive them to the ground like a rag doll. Playboy magazine once described him as “the meanest, angriest, toughest, dirtiest” player in the NFL and an “animal, a savage, subhuman.” Descriptions like that never sat well with Butkus. But they were also hard to argue. 

Several opponents claimed Butkus poked them in the face or bit them in pileups, and he acknowledged that during warmups, “I would manufacture things to make me mad.” When the Detroit Lions unveiled an I-formation against the Bears at old Tigers Stadium, Butkus knocked every member of the “I” — the center, quarterback, fullback and halfback — out of the game. 

And he didn’t always stop there. Several times Butkus crashed into ball carriers well past the sidelines. More than once he pursued them onto running tracks surrounding the field and even into the stands. 

“Just to hit people wasn’t good enough,” teammate Ed O’Bradovich said. “He loved to crush people.” 

Despite those efforts, the Bears lost plenty more games during his tenure than they won, going 48-74-4. Dealing with tendon problems that began in high school, Butkus suffered a serious injury to his right knee during the 1970 season and had preventive surgery before the next one. He considered a second operation after being sidelined nine games into the 1973 season. 

When a surgeon asked him “how a man in your shape can play football, or why you would even want to,” Butkus announced his retirement in May 1974. 

Soon after, Butkus sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending he was provided inadequate medical care and owed the four years of salary remaining on his contract. The lawsuit was settled for $600,000, but Butkus and Halas didn’t speak for five years. 

Butkus, like Sayers, never reached the postseason. The Bears won the 1963 championship and by the time they made the playoffs again in 1977, Butkus and Sayers were long gone. 

After leaving football, Butkus became an instant celebrity. He appeared in “The Longest Yard” in 1974 and a dozen feature films over the next 15 years, as well as the sitcoms “My Two Dads” and “Hang Time.” He also returned to the Bears as a radio analyst in 1985, and replaced Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder on CBS’s “The NFL Today” pregame show in 1988. 

Through the Butkus Foundation, he helped establish a program at a Southern California hospital to encourage early screenings to detect heart disease. He promoted a campaign to encourage high school athletes to train and eat well and avoid performance-enhancing drugs. 

The foundation oversees the Butkus Award, established in 1985 to honor college football’s best linebacker. It was expanded in 2008 to include pros and high school players. 

Butkus is survived by his wife, Helen, and children Ricky, Matt and Nikki. Nephew Luke Butkus has coached in college and the NFL, including time with the Bears.
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