Most Recent Posts

Eighteen months have elapsed since Parvez Henry Gill first began tackling one of the more unusual and sensitive assignments that anyone, anywhere, is ever likely to receive.

Now he is close to completing the task: the construction of a 140-foot tall Christian cross in the middle of Karachi, the business capital of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Wrapped in bamboo scaffolding, the cross juts into the sky above this turbulent port city, where Sunni Islamist militants frequently target religious minorities — usually Shia Muslims, but sometimes Christians too.

Gill says the order to embark upon this ambitious project came from on high — from God, in fact, who encouraged him to build the cross as a way of raising the spirits of Pakistan's downtrodden Christian minority.

"The idea came from God in a dream," explained Gill, 58, a life-long devout Christian, as he stood proudly beside his cross, during a typically steamy June afternoon on the edge of the Arabian Sea. "I promised God I will build a cross soon," he said.

He was as good as his word.

i

The cross is being built at the entrance to the main Christian cemetery in Karachi. Phil Reeves/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Phil Reeves/NPR

The cross is being built at the entrance to the main Christian cemetery in Karachi.

Phil Reeves/NPR

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

More Than 100 Charged In Mob Killing Of Christian Couple In Pakistan

The Two-Way

Suicide Bombers Target Sunday Services At 2 Pakistani Churches

Built In A Cemetery

Gill started building his cross in December 2013, planting it just inside the gate of Karachi's largest Christian cemetery, where many hundreds lie beneath white marble gravestones, including English colonialists from the former British Empire.

The cross dominates the immediate neighborhood, dwarfing the scruffy homes and alleys around the edge of the cemetery and the huge billboards emblazoned with burgers and mobile phones along the highway running past the cemetery gates.

It is the same height as a high-rise apartment block and is the highest Christian cross in Asia, according to Gill.

This addition to Karachi's skyline is built from concrete, steel and iron, and stands on 20-foot deep foundations.

The Two-Way

Death Toll In Pakistan Church Attack Reaches 85

Gill laughs at the suggestion that this makes his cross bullet-proof. It is not meant "as a challenge to anyone," he says. It is simply a "symbol of peace and hope for Christians who are worried and hopeless."

Christians in Pakistan have reason to worry. They account for just a tiny percentage of the 190 million population and tend to be on the bottom rung of the economic scale, performing jobs like street sweeping and trash collection.

Attacks On Christians

They often face discrimination and, at times, outright persecution. This includes being accused falsely of blasphemy — a crime that can carry the death penalty — by rivals who wish to acquire their property or settle a feud.

One of the worst recent atrocities took place last November, when a mob forced a young Christian couple into a brick kiln and burned them alive.

Occasionally Islamist extremists bomb Christian churches and congregations. In 2013, they killed more than 80 people at a church in the northwestern city of Peshawar. In March, the militants struck again, by dispatching suicide bombers to the eastern city of Lahore, where they attacked two churches, killing 15 people.

Gill is happy to talk about why he's building his cross, but he imparts little personal information.

He says he's a businessman, who, with his family, is bankrolling the construction of the cross. He declines to reveal much more than that, apparently because of security concerns. There have been "so many threats," he remarks.

Such is the sensitivity and fear that surround the issue of religion in Pakistan that initially Gill decided not to tell his Muslim laborers what they were building. They only realized it was a giant Christian cross when it began to look like one. More than 20 of them promptly downed their tools and walked off the job.

No such concerns seem to trouble a knot of Muslim men, who are whiling away the day in a nearby alley, smoking and gossiping. For many months, they've been watching the cross steadily rising higher and higher, yet they insist they have no grievances with their Christian neighbors.

"It's their religion. It's in their graveyard. We have no problem with it," says Salman Shareef, an off-duty policeman, while others nod in agreement.

The cross hasn't turned out quite as he anticipated.

"I wasn't expecting it to be so tall. We thought it would be, like, 10- or 12-feet high," says Shareef.

However, evidence of Karachi's underlying communal tensions is easily found nearby. The cemetery wall bears one of the Islamist extremists' favorite slogans: "The punishment for blasphemy is death!" it says, in big black letters.

Within the graveyard, a woman's tomb from the British colonial era stands amid a sea of trash, tossed at it from the homes next door. A few yards away, a gravestone is covered with graffiti.

Gill waves away questions about whether he finds all this alarming. He simply states that he trusts in God: "Everything comes from God. God, he will save us."

There's only one moment when, just for a second or two, there's a flicker of anxiety in his eyes.

"Pray for me," he says suddenly, "I request to all. Just pray for me."

When the finishing touches on the cross are finally complete, Gill wants to hold a grand opening ceremony. He says he plans to invite Pope Francis, Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Hillary Clinton.

Let's not forget — he's a dreamer.

Karachi

Pakistan

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, (R-Wis.) says approving a massive trade package sought by President Obama will allow the U.S. to "write the rules" of the global economy. Parts of the package are now in limbo in the House.

Ryan spoke with NPR's Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep about the trade deal and about Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast-track, which would allow the president to negotiate the trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and then have Congress pass it with an up-or-down vote.

On what the trade package does for the U.S.:

"What we're requiring in these negotiations, as we direct in our trade promotion authority legislation, is that these other countries level the playing field — they treat us like we treat them, they open their markets reciprocally to ours to our exports, and they raise their standards to our standards. Play by our rules with respect to things like intellectual property protection, rule of law, those kinds of things that are very important to make sure that we set the standards for the global economy.

"So if it goes like people like myself hope it goes, then America along with our allies are writing the rules of this global economy at the beginning of this 21st century. If we chose not to engage, if we say America shouldn't bother negotiating trade agreements ... then we're simply saying, 'We forfeit the leadership role in the world to write the rules' and we let other countries such as China write the rules instead of us."

On arguments that deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will cost American jobs:

"Since ... 2007, there have been 100 trade agreements struck around the world without America. And that means other countries are already doing this, getting better access, getting better market access, and we're not, and that means we lose jobs."

On arguments from some Democrats that the trade deal will allow other nations to effectively lower U.S. wages and standards for financial rules, labor regulations, and the environment:

"There really isn't any justice in that claim, it's really kind of a straw man or what I'd call a red herring argument, because we make it extremely clear in our trade promotion authority that only Congress can change laws. You can't enter into an agreement that Congress doesn't approve that changes our laws.

"We make it very clear that the goal of this is to have other countries raise their standards to our levels and not degrade their standards. That's one of the criticisms from agreements back in the 20th century. So we want modern agreements that raise high standards to get other countries to play by our rules, and we do not allow other countries through any mechanism to require or force changes in U.S. laws."

On whether the treaty would mean foreign trading partners can challenge U.S. policies and regulations that they think adversely affect them:

"No. They can get monetary damage penalties, they can't challenge or change regulations at any level of our government."

On criticism that the treaty is being written in secret:

"It's one of the reasons why we're trying to pass trade promotion authority, so that we can guarantee that the public gets to see any trade agreement that is reached. We do not have trade promotion authority in place right now, and ... as a result of that, the kind of transparency that occurs is whatever the administration wants.

"What we are demanding and insisting on in our trade promotion authority is not only that members of Congress have full access to anything that's classified for the moment, but once an agreement is actually reached between countries, that agreement must be made public ... for 60 days for the public to see before a president can even sign an agreement, and when he signs it he simply sends it to Congress and then Congress spends a minimum of 30 days ... considering the agreement.

"The reasons some things are classified right now is it's in negotiations. You don't want to go into negotiations at any level, whether it's transactions or government-to-government with all your cards face up."

trans pacific partnership

Paul Ryan

Republicans are often seen as the party of business. So it's a little ironic that some of the most vocal opposition to the Export-Import Bank comes from conservative Republicans, such as Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.

"If we're ever going to get rid of all the corporate connectedness, all the corporate welfare, you've got to start with the most egregious one and the most obvious one and that's the Export-Import Bank," he says.

The Ex-Im Bank, as it's called, does several things. It was created during the Depression to help U.S. companies that wanted to sell more products overseas. It provides insurance to these companies to make sure they get paid when they sell products overseas.

Today, it also underwrites many billions of dollars in loans to U.S. and foreign companies.

But some members of Congress see the Ex-Im Bank as a bastion of corporate welfare, and they want to see it expire later this month.

It's All Politics

Rubio Takes Up Koch Brothers Charge On Export-Import Bank

Asia

New Asian Development Bank Seen As Sign Of China's Growing Influence

Business

Congress' Latest Death Match Involves A Bank You've Never Heard Of

Richard Beranek, president of Miner Elastomer Products Corp., which makes manufacturing parts, says that without the Ex-Im Bank, the Illinois company wouldn't be able to export as much as it does.

"Would it put me out of business? It would not. Would it slow my business down? I think it would," he says.

But John Murphy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that in many cases, U.S. companies have to have the backing of a big credit agency such as the Ex-Im Bank or they can't get foreign contracts.

"For instance, foreign infrastructure projects. If you want to bid most of the time you need to have Ex-Im support," Murphy says. "If it's a nuclear power plant project abroad, Ex-Im support is required and without it you can't even bid."

But the biggest thing the Ex-Im Bank does is guarantee loans to foreign companies so they can buy U.S.-made products.

For instance, foreign airlines that want to buy Boeing jets often do so with loans underwritten by the Ex-Im Bank. Murphy says a lot of countries now offer similar loan guarantees to help their businesses export more.

"So if the United States and our exporters don't have something similar, that's one knock against us," he says.

But to a lot of free market conservatives, what the Ex-Im Bank does amounts to crony capitalism, and they want Congress to let the bank's charter expire June 30.

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University says the Ex-Im Bank distorts the economy. For example, she says loan guarantees for foreign airlines may be great for Boeing, but they're bad for U.S. airlines.

"Domestic airlines can't have access to subsidies to buy airplanes, but they have to compete with foreign companies like [Emirates and] Air India," she says.

And those airlines are getting a subsidy, thanks to the Ex-Im Bank.

De Rugy says supporters of the bank are vastly exaggerating its importance. She says some companies reap benefits from it, but she says most U.S. companies will do just fine without it.

"All of the companies that export, a vast majority do it without any help from the government and yet there are those selected few who got cheaper financing," she says.

Critics acknowledge that the Ex-Im Bank has a lot of support in Washington, and that it may well survive if Congress ever gets to vote on it.

But if Republicans who control Congress succeed in keeping it from a vote, its charter will expire at the end of the month.

That means it would be unable to guarantee any more loans, and its role in the economy would diminish over time.

Ex-Im Bank

Export-Import Bank

international trade

If the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal isn't revived in the next few days, labor unions will have helped defeat one of President Obama's main foreign policy goals. But what will defeating the TPP, an agreement that covers 12 nations along the Pacific Rim, do for labor?

Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, has had a front-row seat to the trade negotiations on Capitol Hill.

She opposes many of the provisions in the new trade deal, but she can't tell you exactly which.

"We are sworn to secrecy, so we can't talk about it — not to our colleagues, not to our members, not to the press, and so that's frustrating," she says. "If I talked to you specifically about what I think the shortcomings of the labor chapter are, I could lose my security clearance. I don't know if I'd go to jail, but ..."

So she's left talking in generalities.

"These deals make it easier for multinational corporations to move jobs overseas," Lee says.

She, as well as other union leaders, point first and foremost, to the North American Free Trade Agreement that took effect 21 years ago.

Roland Zullo, a University of Michigan labor and employment policy researcher, says that for organized labor, NAFTA's wounds still linger.

"Labor has enough of a institutional memory to know what happened with NAFTA," he says. "There was a theory behind NAFTA; there was a theory that by integrating Canada, U.S. and Mexico, there would be a sort of overall net economic benefit.

But that didn't happen for U.S. workers in sectors like manufacturing. Michigan auto workers, for example, lost more than 100,000 jobs in the years that followed NAFTA'S passage.

But it's not a clear case of cause and effect. This is the period when Japanese automakers were setting up shop in the U.S. and taking market share away from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Other industries, and consumers, did benefit from NAFTA.

Matt Slaughter, associate dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, says he understands labor's concerns about a new trade deal. But, he adds, labor faces a paradox in opposing the TPP.

Related Stories

U.S. House Looks To Buy Time For Obama's Trade Agenda

It's All Politics

Obama Says China Could Join Already Huge Asia Trade Deal

The Two-Way

Dealing Blow To Obama, Efforts To Pass Trade Plan Fail In The House

It's All Politics

Clinton Walks Delicate Line On Trade, Economy In First Press Conference

"A lot of the academic research and policy work shows companies and their workers that are connected to the dynamism in the global economy tend to pay higher wages and create better jobs than do the purely domestic companies," he says.

He says labor should stop trying to kill the new trade pact, and instead push for a more robust 21st century social safety net for dislocated workers.

But that idea was torpedoed last week by House Democrats, who, ironically, support the idea. It was a political maneuver to scuttle the entire bill.

Slaughter also questions what kind of victory labor would gain by torpedoing the TPP. After all, the U.S. already has free-trade agreements with a handful of countries in the TPP talks.

"Even for countries in the TPP negotiations with whom we don't have a free-trade agreement already, we are already relatively open to those countries for bringing in imports of almost all of their goods and services," he says.

Tim Waters, the national political director for the United Steelworkers, strongly disagrees with talk like this.

"For us to just say, 'Oh well, it's inevitable, we shouldn't try to stop it, we shouldn't try to stand up, we should just try to get in there and cut some kind of deal that made it less sickening,' doesn't make any sense," he says.

Waters adds that unions aren't anti-trade; they want fair trade. He says trade deals need to put the concerns of American workers first.

And, he says, this new agreement, yet again, doesn't do that.

labor unions

trans-pacific partnership

trade agreement