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Teacher Jailed for Naming Teddy Bear
A British teacher in Sudan was sentenced to 15 days in jail after her seven-year-old students named a teddy bear Muhammad, the name of an Islamic prophet. Gillian Gibbons was working at a school in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
Ms. Gibbons used a teddy bear as the class mascot and asked her class to name it. The class chose Muhammad. Each student was allowed to take the teddy bear home for a night. They then wrote a diary of what they did with the toy.
Ms. Gibbons was arrested when a school secretary complained that the teddy bear shared the same name as Muhammad, the prophet of the Muslim religion, Islam. In Sudan it is against the law to insult Islam.
She was charged with several crimes and faced very severe penalties -- even being whipped. The Sudanese judge sentenced Ms. Gibbons to 15 days behind bars. But after the British government protested, Sudan's president pardoned the jailed teacher.
Sudan has tense relations with Britain recently because of the genocide in the Darfur region. The government of Sudan is supporting militias who are forcing people in Darfur to leave. Many of the refugees fled to nearby countries like Ethiopia and Kenya. Ms. Gibbons decided to leave the African nation and return to Great Britain after her release.
I'm Michelle and that's what happened in the world this week.
Can you locate the countries in my story in this week's Pinpoint?
Photo: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters
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