News and Views
LGBT Activists in Turkey Launch Ground-Breaking Publication
Speaking in his apartment in a suburb of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, Solin and his colleague Koya are so scared of being identified that they will not allow even an obscured photograph of themselves to be published. Nor do they want their real names to be known. “People here see homosexuality as a poison - a disease,” says Solin, the ash of his cigarette making a quick, quiet hiss as he taps it into a jar of water.
Egypt renews crackdown on female mutilation
There are giggles and shouts as little children play boisterously in the dusty street by the Hadad family home in the village of Abu Nashaba.
Just inside the front door, however, a mother dressed in black is sitting on the floor weeping silently. It is less than a month since the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Nermeen.
The girl died in a nearby health clinic and was buried without a permit from the local authorities.
Jordan marriage law challenged
Rights activists call for scrapping a law allowing early marriage for girls
'Carla Bruni is a prostitute', says Iranian newspaper
An Iranian newspaper has called Carla Bruni, France's first lady, a "prostitute" after she attacked Iran's plan to stone a woman to death.
ليبيا: خطوة إيجابية للمرأة على طريق حقوق المواطنة
(بيروت) - قالت هيومن رايتس ووتش اليوم إن قانون المواطنة الليبي الجديد الذي يمنح النساء المتزوجات إلى أزواج أجانب الحق في حصول أطفالهن على الجنسية، هو خطوة هامة للأمام على مسار حقوق المرأة. وقالت هيومن رايتس ووتش إن القانون ما زال يضم بعض الأحكام المتعارضة التي يمكن تفسيرها بشكل يُبقي على التمييز.
Libya: Step Ahead for Women on Nationality Rights
(Beirut) - Libya's new nationality law granting women married to foreign spouses the right to pass their own nationality to their children is a significant move forward for
Bangladesh - High Court Rules that Burqa Cannot Be Forced
Dhaka, Aug 22 (bdnews24.com)—The High Court has ruled that no women can be forced to wear burqa at work and educational institutions.
The court also ordered the government to ensure that the cultural activities and sports in the educational institutions are not restricted.
Crime (Sex) and Punishment (Stoning)
It may be the oldest form of execution in the world, and it is certainly among the most barbaric.
Shariah in Aceh: Eroding Indonesia’s Secular Freedoms
A woman is caned and shamed in Aceh’s Pidie Jaya district for breaking Shariah bylaws. It is unclear who was actually behind the implementation of Shariah and resistance to the controversial code is growing. (Antara Photo/Rahmad)
PAKISTAN: Rapes of Christian girls reflects tactic
FAROOQABAD, Pakistan, August 16 (CDN) — The vulnerability of Christian girls to sexual assault in Pakistani society emerged again last month as a Muslim landowner allegedly targeted a 16-year-old and a gang of madrassa (Islamic school) students allegedly abused a 12-year-old in Punjab Province.
IRAN: Prosecutor urges tighter checks for women's Islamic dress code
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's prosecutor called on Sunday for tighter checks on women who fail to observe Islamic dress code in public, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Under Iran's Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.
"Unfortunately the law ... which considers violation of the Islamic dress code as a punishable crime, has not been implemented in the country in the past 15 years," said general prosecutor Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei.
"Under the law, violators of public chastity should be punished by being sentenced to up to two months in jail or 74 lashes."
SOMALIA: UN Independent Expert on Somalia calls for protection of civilians & accountability for human rights perpetrators
GENEVA (10 August 2010) – The UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, Shamsul Bari, today urged the international community to provide due attention to the protection of civilians in Somalia and ensure accountability for perpetrators of gross human rights and International Humanitarian law violations.
“I am deeply disturbed by the continuing endless reports of civilian casualties- many of them women and children- caused by ongoing fighting in South-Central region and in Mogadishu,” said Mr. Bari, who has just completed his fifth country visits to Kenya, Somalia and Uganda (26 July-6 August). “One Mogadishu hospital alone reported that it had treated 1,400 war-wounded persons in the first six months of the year.”
PAKISTAN: Women's Trauma of Floods & Conflict Displacement
Pakistan’s most severe monsoon floods in 80 years have more than four million people in north-western and central Pakistan, including 1.6 million in Punjab. Many people already displaced by conflict in the region have been forced to flee again. The floods now threaten Balochistan and Sindh, where more than 500,000 people have been evacuated to safer areas. The flooding has caused food prices to , while 39 per cent of houses have been destroyed or .
A Statement of Concern Regarding the Televised ‘Confession’ by Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women and the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) International Solidarity Network deplore the staging of a ‘public confession’ on Iranian television by Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, who is awaiting execution in Iran by stoning for adultery.
The ‘confession’, done in an interview format, was broadcast on Wednesday 11th August on the '20:30' television program by Seda va Sima, the government broadcasting station. The ‘confession’, showed Sakineh implicating herself in the murder of her husband. However, as we have noted, Sakineh speaks Azeri (a Turkic language) but the interviewer narrated and spoke in Farsi drowning out Sakineh’s voice in her own language.
AFGHANISTAN: Stop stoning and other forms of cruel punishments by the Taliban
The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women and the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) International Solidarity Network condemn the recent incidents of violent punishments by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
On Sunday 15 August, a couple in their twenties were publicly executed by stoning by the Taliban in a village controlled by their forces in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan.The couple had eloped to Pakistan, although they were reportedly engaged to other people, but later returned to their village of Mullah Qulli in the Archi district of Kunduz. Some reports indicate that their families had agreed to marry them, while others conclude that a jirga had ruled they would be pardoned if the accused male paid compensation. However, the Taliban arrested and stoned to death the two young people in a bazaar of Dasht-e Archi district on the accusation of committing an act of adultery, as confirmed by Mohammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz.
Egypt play seeks to smash social taboos
CAIRO — He wants to have phone sex, she wants to leave her house without a headscarf: a Cairo play seeks to confront Egypt's social taboos by laying bare the sexual frustrations and harassments that beset daily life.
Egypt’s spinsters turn to suicide
CAIRO // A university professor committed suicide last month in 6th October City on the outskirts of Cairo because she reached 40 without being married, local media reported.
Pakistani couple face death by stoning threat after conviction for adultery
A couple have been sentenced to be stoned to death for alleged adultery by a tribal court in north-west , with the woman's life now considered in grave danger.
Female Afghan Governor Fears Taliban Deal
On the eve of an international conference in Afghanistan, the country’s only female governor that Afghan women should not have to sacrifice their rights as part of any peace agreement with the Taliban.
Violence against women in Egypt on the rise
CAIRO: Israa looks at the table in front of her, pictures strewn across that show the bruises and bumps she incurred after her husband punched and threw her around the house after the two had a disagreement over when to send their three-year-old daughter to Kindergarten. It is yet another incident of violence against women, a trend that appears to be growing in the Arab world’s largest country.