Blackflag:
"Tangata Whenua" bro, you should look it up.
In fact, maybe NZ would be an appropriate country for you to research for this thread, since this is not the first time you've demonstrated that you're actually completely misinformed about what life is like here.
And not just little stuff but actual big things like our ethnic diversity, rugby, culture, language and even the colour of our skin.
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As a keen Flag guy, I've always been attracted to the Gambia. It's one of a very small group of countries that have water represented by a colour on their flag and the only one I can think of where the water is a river.
It was always fascinating to me how, in a part of the world where water is so important, one group of people got to build their entire country around probably one of the single most important natural resources on that side of the continent.
On the map it always looks like Senegal lost a bet or something... "I'll see your $20 and raise you our only major river!". I bet someone was fired over that one...
Anyway - I did a quick google on the local news in the Gambia, and it wasn't hard to find some. Apparently their president has only very recently rewritten the laws against homosexuality, making the sentences MUCH stricter, up to a life sentence.
To make matters worse, apparently the law was signed into effect but nobody actually told the people. That didn't stop the police from arresting a bunch of them and then torturing a confession out of them. You can read about it here:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/11/21/3595606/gambia-aggravated-homosexuality/
- but it's actually pretty big news. The Google machine shows that people from all over the world are talking about it. Guess it didn't make it to NZ yet.
In other news, the government shut down a couple of Christian Missionary schools because they weren't teaching Islam and the Government is concerned that visitor numbers are down, probably due to Ebola concerns, although any Gay Christians might have separate reasons...
I make it a point to try and find a positive about these countries as well, so here is a story about how they're putting on a special three day training course for 20 leading Sports Journalists. It's hoped that the short course will massively improve their ability to report on sports.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201411211741.html
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