Migration Category: news-10001-15000-global

A girls’ school in Kabul, Afghanistan was the target of a gas attack yesterday. The attack sickened 59 students and 14 teachers, reports CNN. Ruqia, a fifteen year old student at the school, said, “I smelled something very, very foul as I was sitting in my classroom. I saw my classmates falling down, my vision got blurred and I heard everyone screaming before I became unconscious,” according to Agence France Presse. Doctors report that all of the victims should recover.

“This is not an accident. Similar incidents have happened in girls’ schools before. We think there are groups who do not tolerate development and progress – their aim is to prevent girls from going to school,” Afghan education ministry spokesman Asef Nang told Agence France Presse. He also said that this is the ninth such gas attack on a girls’ school.

The Taliban are suspected to be behind the gas attacks, but the government has not confirmed or identified the perpetrator in the latest attack, according to Reuters.

In May 2010, there were two suspected gas attacks on girls schools in the northern Kunduz province and in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. Similarly, in April 2010, at least 88 schoolgirls and teachers became ill after suspected poison gas attacks at schools in Kunduz Province. In May 2009, more than 150 students were also hospitalized in similar attacks.

In Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, violence against schools that educate girls has been a key part of campaigns against the education of women. In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, more than 130 primarily all girl schools have been destroyed, probably by the Taliban. In total, hundreds of schools have been destroyed in Pakistan’s northwest region over the past several years. During the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which lasted until 2001, Afghan girls were forbidden to attend school. To date, more than 1,000 girls’ or co-educational schools have been bombed or burned in Afghanistan.

Rwandan and Congolese rebels reportedly gang-raped between 150 and 200 women and young boys during a raid of eastern villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this month, humanitarian aids in the region say.

Rebels allegedly entered the town of Ruvungi on July 30 and proceeded to pillage the town and systematically rape its occupants for several days. “Most women were raped by two to six men at a time, in front of their children and their families,” Will F. Cragin, coordinator for the International Medical Corps’ program in the Ruvungi region, told the New York Times. During the attack, rebels blocked a road that connects the town to UN peacekeeping troops who are stationed 18 miles away, which prevented villagers from seeking help, Bloomberg reports.

While international and local health workers have treated 179 women with rape related trauma since the attack, the number of victims could be much higher as many terrified villagers remain in hiding.

Earlier this month the United Nations condemned mass rape as a weapon of war. Margot Wallstrom, the UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told reporters that using rape as a tool of war is no more acceptable nor inevitable than committing mass murder.

At least 8,300 rapes were reported in the Congo last year, according to the Associated Press. It is believed that many more rapes go unreported. While insurgents are thought to be responsible for most of the attacks, soldiers in the national army have also been implicated in sexual abuse, according to United Press International.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton visited eastern Congo in 2009 to denounce rape as a weapon of war. Clinton said, “I will be pressing very hard for not just assistance to help those who are being abused and mistreated, in particular the women who are turned into weapons of war through the rape they experience, but also looking for ways to try to end this conflict.” War has ravaged eastern Congo since 1998.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that he will not sacrifice women’s rights in any peace deal with the Taliban.

In an interview, President Karzai discussed plans to negotiate peace with members of the Taliban who are willing to break ties with terrorist groups like al-Qaida, according to the Associated Press. Karzai reportedly said that Afghan women will have “solid and meaningful” representation at these negotiations, so that the political, economic and social gains that have been made for women in recent years will not only be protected, but will also be expanded.

Fawzia Koofi, the former Deputy Speaker of Afghanistan’s parliament, recently told Time Magazine that “Women’s rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged in May that the United States will not abandon Afghan women and girls in it’s Afghanistan strategy.

In February 2010, Dr. Sima Samar, who leads Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission and Rachel Reid of Human Rights Watch, among others, testified before two subcommittees of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and warned that Afghan women must be included in the reconciliation and reintegration process. Samar stated that “reconciliation and reintegration cannot be successful without women’s rights and human rights being guaranteed and women being included in all aspects of the rebuilding of Afghanistan. The process must be transparent in order to gain the public support of the Afghan people.” Reid reported that women in Afghanistan “are concerned about the potential consequences of deals with insurgents for their basic rights – even those who are barely able to exercise these rights today.”

Bangladesh’s High Court ruled late last week that individuals can not be forced to wear religious attire, including the burqa, in workplaces, schools, or colleges.

This ruling follows a recent report that Rani Bhabani Women’s College in northern Bangladesh has required that all women wear burqas, according to the Canadian Press. The school has also barred female students from participating in school sports and cultural activities.

Lawyer Mahbub Shafique petitioned the High Court about the incident. Judges A.H.M. Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Sheikh Mohammad Zakir Hossain have ordered the government to take action against the school and have asked the school’s principle to attend a hearing later this week, according to the Indian Express.

In April, Bangladesh’s court ruled that women could not be forced to wear burqas, according to BBC News. Last week’s recent ruling applies to religious attire worn by both men and women, including veils and skull caps.

Indonesia launched its first women-only train carriage on the Jakarta public transportation system today. The goal of the women-only carriages is to minimize sexual harassment of women on trains. Several more carriages will enter into service soon.

The carriages, with bright pink seats, have only been introduced on the express Jakarta-Bogor line, but more will be introduced if the experiment proves successful, according to the BBC.

“We want to improve our service and protect female passengers so they feel more safe,” rail official Makmur Syaheran said, according to Agence France Presse. The single-sex carriages are optional and women can still use other carriages if they choose.

“Even if men and women are separated in public transportation, as long as men do not respect women as humans and women still feel inferior to men, making them afraid to shout out or report harassment, the separation will be useless,” a criminology professor at the University of Indonesia, Purnianti, told the Jakarta Post.

India introduced similar women-only commuter trains to combat sexual harassment in 2009.

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that registered same-sex partners should receive the same inheritance rights as married couples. According to the Associated Press, the court decided yesterday in favor of two plaintiffs who had lost their partners and were forced to pay an inheritance tax similar to those paid by distant relatives.

“The Constitutional Court ruled that there was not a significant enough difference between married spouses and registered life partners to justify discrimination against the latter,” court spokeswoman Judith Blohm told Deutsche Welle. The court has given the German government until 2011 to compensate those penalized under the unconstitutional inheritance law, according to Reuters.

The threshold for tax free inheritance was smaller for same-sex partners than married couples, according to Deutsche Welle, and same-sex partners had to pay between 17 and 50 percent taxes on the taxable inheritance. Married spouses must pay between 7 and 30 percent on the taxable inheritance.

Germany legalized “registered partnerships” for same-sex couples in 2001, according to Agence France Presse, but partners in these unions do not receive many of the benefits received by married couples. The German government introduced a draft bill in June that would give same-sex couples the same inheritance rights as married couples. The court has set a deadline of December 31st for the parliament to produce new legislation to rectify the inheritance tax disparities between registered partnerships and married couples. It is expected that the German parliament will also rectify the income tax disadvantages of same-sex partners, including retroactive compensation, according to Deutsche Welle.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled 9 to 2 today to uphold a Mexico City law that allows same-sex couples to adopt. Mexico City is now the first Latin American capital to legalize both same-sex marriage, which the Mexican Supreme Court upheld earlier this month, and same-sex couples’ adoption rights, according to Reuters.

The Mexican federal Attorney General’s office brought the case to court with the backing of the conservative National Action Party and the Catholic Church. The Attorney General argued that same-sex adoption would destroy traditional family values and the well-being of the adopted child. The Cardinal of Guadalajara, Juan Sandoval, said, “I don’t know if any of you would like it if you were adopted by a pair of lesbians or a pair of faggots (maricones). I think not,” according to the Latin American Dispatch.

Similar to the court’s 8 to 2 ruling reaffirming the same-sex marriage law, the court asserted that while the Mexican constitution guarantees protections for families, it does not define what a “family” is, according to the Associated Press. Justice Arturo Zaldivar also said, “Given that the interests of the child must come first, the proposed reform is constitutional,” reports Reuters.

Though the law was only passed in Mexico City, all 31 Mexican states are expected to adhere to it.

The Taliban stoned a young couple to death this weekend in northern Afghanistan because the couple allegedly committed adultery. The woman, Sadiqa, was engaged to another man when she and a man named Qayum attempted to elope. Qayum already had a wife at the time. A local tribal council (jirga) had ruled that the crime would be forgiven if Qayum returned and paid a monetary penalty, but the Taliban arrested the couple as soon as they returned to their town, Mullah Quli, which is controlled by the Taliban, according to the Associated Press.

According to eyewitnesses, the Taliban announced the stoning over loudspeakers at a local mosque. One witness said, “We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive…Some Taliban then came and shot him three times. The Taliban warned villagers if anyone does anything un-Islamic, this will be their fate,” according to the BBC.

This incident is the most recent in a spate of executions the Taliban has claimed responsibility for. Last week, a pregnant widow suspected of adultery was publicly flogged 200 times before being executed in the Qades District in the Badghis Province of western Afghanistan. Earlier this month, ten non-profit healthcare workers were assassinated in Northern Afghanistan by the Taliban. Other recent incidents include a woman who worked at a non-profit who was murdered while leaving work in April, a couple who were shot outside of a mosque last year after being accused of eloping, and a Kandahar provincial council member and women’s rights activist who wasmurdered outside of her home last year. During the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001, public executions and amputations were commonplace.

A woman who claimed to be Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an imprisoned Iranian woman who faces execution for the crime of adultery, despite solid evidence that she is innocent, appeared yesterday on Iranian primetime television. The woman confessed to being an accomplice in her husband’s murder. The TV program pixilated the woman’s face and used a voice over because Ashtiani speaks Azeri Turkish instead of Farsi, according to the Associated Press. In addition to the confession, she condemned the western media for interfering in her personal life and criticized her lawyer, Mohammad Mostafei, for publicizing her case.

The International Committee Against Stoning believes the footage to be “toxic propaganda,” according to Reuters. Even if the woman was Ashtiani, Mostafei suspects that the she had been coerced into appearing on the program. “Her life is in the hands of the people who have power in Iran, and whatever they want, they can achieve. It is a normal thing for Iranian TV to say lies,” he said. Additionally, Ashtiani maintained her innocence a few days ago in an interview with the Guardian. Mostafei fears that officials will now “misuse her statements to justify her execution.”

Drewery Dyke, from Amnesty International’s Iran team, said “this makes a complete mockery of the judiciary system in Iran. Iran is inventing crimes…it is an unacceptable practice that flies in the face of justice.”

This case began in 2006, when Ashtiani was convicted of having extramarital relations with two men who killed her husband, according to Huliq. While she initially received a sentence of 99 lashes for adultery, during an appeal of her case, the court sentenced Ashtiani to death by stoning. Her case has caused international outrage due to the inconclusive evidence presented and the barbaric nature of execution by stoning. The stoning sentence was soon commuted as a result of international pressure, but Ashtiani could still be executed by hanging. As a result of the high profile nature of the case, Ashtiani’s lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei, is currently seeking political asylum in Oslo, Norway and faces a warrant for his arrest in Iran.

A pregnant widow was publicly flogged 200 times before being executed in the Qades district in the Badghis Province of western Afghanistan on Sunday. Agence France Presse reports that Taliban commander Mohammad Yousuf executed Bibi Sanubar by shooting her in the head and chest. According to the Daily Mail, Sanubar was accused of adultery after village elders reported her pregnancy to the Taliban.

Sanubar’s body was dumped in a government controlled area. Though the Taliban deny any involvement, CNN reports that her execution was confirmed by Hashim Habibi, district governor of Qades. Mohammad Nasir Nazaari, who leads Badghis’ provincial council, also added that the district is controlled by the Taliban.

Sima Samar, who leads Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “This is a clear violation of human rights. Even if she really was accused of such an act, she should have been brought to court. We have courts and we could have dealt with her legally,” Samar says. “Not everyone is a judge. A commander cannot perform the role of a judge.”

The execution of Bibi Sanubar is one of many recent murders attributed to Taliban. Other recent incidents include a woman who worked at a non-profit who was murdered while leaving work in April, a couple who were shot outside of a mosque last year after being accused of eloping, and a Kandahar provincial council member and women’s rights activist who was murdered outside of her home last year. During the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001, public executions and amputations were commonplace.

Iranian human rights lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei, has sought asylum in Norway to flee a warrant for his arrest. The lawyer was defending Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who was convicted of adultery and originally sentenced to stoning in 2006, before he went missing at the end of July. At the time, it was unclear whether the authorities had him in custody or if he was in hiding. In the meantime, his wife and brother-in-law were arrested, reports The Media Line.

Jafar Dowlatabadi, Iran’s state prosecutor, said that Mostafaei fled because he faces financial charges. The prosecutor did not comment on media coverage which reports that a warrant was issued for the attorney’s arrest according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Mostafaei said that he feels his escape will channel more support to the Ashtiani case, which he was instrumental in publicizing worldwide. Thanks to the international attention, Ashtiani’s stoning sentence was commuted. However, she may still be executed by hanging, but currently her execution is suspended. According to All Headline News, Mostafaei said, “I do not think she will be hurt… The Iranian authorities have already paid a huge price for the case (and) the international reputation of Iran has already been negatively affected because of the way it has been handled.”

“My greatest hope is that I can go back and continue my work in Iran. If the Iranian authorities will ensure my rights and safety, I’ll go back,” Mostafaei said, according to the Associated Press. “Right now, I’ve lost the ability to work on the behalf of my clients.” He also said that other lawyers are waiting to pick up Ashtiani’s case.

Ashtiani recently broke her silence surrounding the case and told the Guardian, “for all these years, they [the officials] have tried to put something in my mind, to convince me that I’m an adulterous woman, an irresponsible mother, a criminal but with the international support, once again I’m finding myself, my innocent self.”

Malaysia’s first two women Islamic court judges will have the same power as male judges, the Malaysian government has confirmed. “The female judges can hear all criminal or civil cases that fall under the Islamic court’s jurisdiction,” Sharia Judiciary Department official Mohamad Na’im told Agence France Presse, adding they would also rule on divorce cases.

Many women’s rights groups were concerned that the new female judges would become symbols of equality with little actual power. Following the appointment, a panel of 20 senior judges deliberated whether the Islamic courts’ guidelines would prohibit women from hearing certain cases, including divorce cases, according to The New York Times. “There’s always been this fallacy that women would not be able to articulate on religious issues,” Meera Samanther, president of the Women’s Aid Organization, told the New York Times.

In Malaysia’s two-tiered court system, secular courts deal with most criminal cases, while Shariah courts deal with family and moral disputes in the nation’s Islamic community. Malaysia women’s rights groups have reported mistreatment of women in the country’s Islamic courts. The Malaysian government has announced further steps that it is considering in order to reform the country’s legal system, including setting up a fund for women whose former husbands fail to pay alimony. Malaysian government officials have also recently announced that they are considering amending civil and Shariah law to ban underage marriages, according to Radio Australia.

Sixty-seven percent of Kenyan citizens voted to implement a new constitution late last week, which will decrease the powers of the presidency, expand the rights of citizens and advance the status of women. The referendum vote replaces colonial-era legislation and makes Kenya one of one of the most politically progressive nations in Africa.

The campaign for a new constitution began three years ago and was led by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, according to the Guardian. The new laws drastically altar the structure of modern Kenyan government, which has been in place since the nation gained independence in 1963. According to the Associated Press, a Supreme Court and Senate will be instituted and make it possible for a president to be impeached.

The new constitution has a focus on improving the status of women and includes affirmative action, guarantees women positions in government, and provides for improvements in healthcare, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Grace Maingi, the executive director of Kenya’s Federation of Women Lawyers said, “under the proposed Constitution, 47 special seats have been set aside for women in Parliament. When political parties are nominating 12 members to the August House, they will have to pay special attention to gender parity – an obvious departure from what has been the norm,” according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Joachim Osur, a reproductive health expert said, “We expect better deployment of health workers in all parts of the country, better nutrition and provision of health services. We expect more women to deliver in hospitals and a sharp improvement of family planning services.”

Nijonjo Mue, head of the Kenya chapter of the International Centre for Transitional Justice said, “If accompanied by strong follow-up action, the new constitution will improve Kenya’s prospects for democracy, justice and respect for human rights. But this is just one step in the long journey towards Kenya’s rebirth. It will take vigilance and the participation of all the Kenyan people to help make these promised changes meaningful,” according to the Guardian.