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Category: Gender-based Violence
Pakistani Girl Burned Alive for Helping Friend Elope
More than a dozen adult men have been arrested in rural Pakistan for drugging a 16-year-old girl and then setting her on fire for helping a friend elope.
The men drugged her before they burned her alive.
More than a dozen members of an “honor council” near the Pakistani towns of Makol and Dunga Gali, outside of Abbottabad, have been arrested for immolating a 16-year-old girl, according to a local police chief.
Her supposed crime: helping a friend elope, which the men allegedly said had done irreparable harm to their village’s reputation.
The group of men, described as a jirga or local tribal council by police, detained the girl, her mother, and her brother, according to police chief Saeed Wazir. The latter two allegedly consented to the punishment: burning the girl, named in some reports as Ambreen or Haleema, in the van used by the couple to elope.
“The jirga members… decided to punish the girl in a novel way so no one in future can dare to marry without consent of their parents and give a bad name to the village,” Wazirtold NBC. “They tied her hands with the seats and then poured [gasoline] on her and the vehicle and set it on fire.”
…
The term jirga, Khan told The Daily Beast, can just mean “a mediator, and that can be even one person” in that region. It doesn’t have to be a formal body, as suggested in many news reports.
Editor of Bangladesh LGBT magazine killed
The editor of Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine has been killed in the latest of a series of horrific murders of bloggers and activists.
Xulhaz Mannan was one of two people hacked to death in an attack in the capital, Dhaka, police said, by a gang posing as couriers in order to gain access to his apartment in the Kalabagan district.
Mohammad Iqbal, the officer in charge of the local police station, confirmed that about six people had entered the apartment building and hacked Mannan and his friend to death in a first-floor flat. Two other people were seriously injured.
“A person came with a box identifying himself as courier service personnel. Xulhaz took him upstairs to his flat,” Iqbal said.
Mannan, 35, was the editor of Roopbaan, the country’s only magazine for the LGBT community and also worked at the US development agency USAid. The magazine had been launched in 2014 to promote greater acceptance of LGBT communities in Bangladesh.
Indians decry Hindu leader’s temple rape comment
Hindu religious leader Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati has ignited an outcry in India after saying that entry of women in Shani temple in Maharashtra state will lead to more crimes such as rapes.
Commenting on the recent entry of women in a temple in western Maharashtra state, Shankaracharya, 94, said on Sunday that “women should not feel triumphant about visiting the sanctum sanctorum of Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra.
“They should stop all the drum beating about what they have done. Worshipping Shani will bring ill luck to them and give rise to crimes against them like rape,” he was quoted as saying by the Indian Express newspaper on Sunday.
Women’s groups and activists decried the comment, describing the statement as patriarchal and against the dignity of women.
“Society is not going to tolerate this. Women will struggle against such mindset,” Jagmati Sangwan, General Secretary of All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), told Al Jazeera by phone on Monday.
Last week, Maharashtra High Court struck down a 400-year-old ban on entry of women in Shani Shingnapur temple on the ground that women cannot be discriminated on basis of their gender.
Iraq: Women Suffer Under ISIS
The extremist armed group Islamic State should urgently release Yezidi women and girls they abducted in 2014, Human Rights Watch said today, following new research with recent escapees who were raped and traded between members before they fled. Islamic State (also known as ISIS) also routinely imposes abusive restrictions on other Iraqi women and girls and severely limits their freedom of movement and access to health care and education in areas under its control.
In January and February 2016, Human Rights Watch interviewed 21 Sunni Muslim Arab women from the Hawija area of Iraq and 15 women and girls from the Yezidi minority ethnic group, all of whom had fled ISIS-controlled areas, most in late 2015. Several of the Yezidis,abducted by ISIS in mid-2014, had spent more than a year in captivity. They described being forcibly converted to Islam, kept in sexual slavery, bought and sold in slave markets, and passed among as many as four ISIS members. Human Rights Watch first documented systematic rape of Yezidi women and girls in early 2015.
“The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yezidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Meanwhile, ISIS’s restrictions on Sunni women cut them off from normal life and services almost entirely.”
The Sunni women Human Rights Watch interviewed had fled areas under ISIS control since June 2014 in western Kirkuk governorate and had arrived in areas controlled by forces of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). All of the Sunni women and girls reported severe restrictions on their clothing and freedom of movement in ISIS-controlled areas. They said they were only allowed to leave their houses dressed in full face veil (niqab) and accompanied by a close male relative. These rules, enforced by beating or fines on male family members or both, isolated women from family, friends, and public life.
A Year Later, Still No Justice for Farkhunda
On March 19, 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada was murdered by a mob of angry Afghan men because a local religious cleric had falsely accused her of burning the Quran. The crowd threw stones at her, drove over her body, and set her on fire. On the day she died, Farkhunda had no protection from the state or those around her. The struggle to achieve justice for her has become a sign of the struggle to protect the rights of women throughout Afghanistan.
Like many Afghan activists, I have spent the last year attending protests and writing about and working with local organizations to advocate for justice for Farkhunda. When we began speaking out along with thousands of Afghansaround the world, we hoped that Farkhunda’s murderers would be brought to justice and that her case would set a precedent for the legal system to protect the safety and rights of Afghan women. But a year later, the lack of justice has had significant implications for women’s rights in Afghanistan, where the majority of perpetrators of violence against women never face legal repercussions. The government’s failure to maintain justice has emboldened criminals and left Afghan women more vulnerable to violence.
A year ago, following public demonstrations, the government moved fast to arrest those involved. President Ashraf Ghani promised a full investigation of the case and the Ministry of Interior announced that 50 suspects had been arrested. A trial of 49 of the arrested followed. No explanation was offered as to the fate of the other suspect. This swift action gave people hope. For the first time, it seemed the law was finally protecting Afghan women. This was especially important because videos showed police officers assisting the angry murderers or standing by idly as they tortured Farkhunda. Holding those police officers accountable would be a powerful sign that women can count on the state for their safety and security.
These hopes quickly disappeared during the initial trial when the public saw that many of the killers were met with benevolence by the court. Only 12 of the 49 men charged were convicted. While it was expected that at least the cleric who instigated the violence against Farkhunda would receive the death penalty,he did not. Of the 19 police officers arrested for participating in the violence or for not intervening to protect Farkhunda, eight of them were not penalized. The remaining 11 were punished with restrictions on their ability to travel while on the job. Even more infuriating to the public was that some of the men who were filmed participating in the violent attack, and later boasted about their involvement on social media, did not even face arrest. The Ministry of Interior argued that some of those involved could not be found and the degree of their involvement could not be proven.
Nigeria: A Year On, No Word on 300 Abducted Children
The Nigerian government should take urgent steps to secure the release of about 400 women and children, including at least 300 elementary school students, abducted by Boko Haram from the town of Damasak in Borno State a year ago. It is unclear whether the Nigerian government has made any serious effort to secure their release.
Tunisia: Men Prosecuted for Homosexuality
Tunisia’s law criminalizing consensual same-sex conduct among adults is discriminatory and invites abuse by the police of gay men and men perceived to be homosexual.
Tunisia prosecuted at least seven men for consensual same-sex conduct in two prominent cases over the last six months. All of the men were convicted under article 230 of the penal code, which criminalizes “sodomy” with up to three years in prison. Human Rights Watch interviewed five men who had been sentenced. All of them said that police had subjected them to grave human rights abuses, including beatings, forced anal examinations, and routine humiliating treatment.
“The Tunisian government has no business intruding on people’s private sexual behavior and brutalizing and humiliating them under the pretext of enforcing a discriminatory law,” said Amna Guellali, Tunisia director. “Tunisia should remove such archaic laws from its books, and the police who mistreated these men should be held accountable.”
The government should take steps to repeal article 230 of the penal code and issue a directive ordering an immediate end to anal examinations as part of police investigative procedures to determine a person’s sexual behavior, Human Rights Watch said. It should also investigate reports of ill-treatment, including by establishing a confidential complaint mechanism for all cases of abuse by police officers.
Police arrested “Marwen,” a 22-year-old student whose name has been changed for his protection, in Sousse, 120 kilometers from Tunis, in September 2015. The first instance tribunal in Sousse sentenced him to one year in prison for sodomy, in part on the basis of a medical report from a seriously flawed anal examination.
Top Pakistani religious body rules women’s protection law ‘un-Islamic’
A powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam on Thursday declared a new law that criminalizes violence against women to be “un-Islamic.”
The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last week, gives unprecedented legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of women’s shelters.
But since its passage in the Punjab assembly, many conservative clerics and religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Muslim holy book, the Koran, as well as Pakistan’s constitution.
“The whole law is wrong,” Muhammad Khan Sherani, the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology said at a news conference, citing verses from the Koran to point out that the law was “un-Islamic.”
The 54-year-old council is known for its controversial decisions. In the past it has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, and it supported a law that requires women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard.
The council’s decision this January to block a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off girls as young as eight or nine has angered human rights activists.
Historic meeting of gender and sexual rights activists from across Africa
Human rights defenders from nearly twenty countries across Africa have gathered in Johannesburg ahead of this week’s Africa Regional Seminar on “Finding Practical Solutions to Address Violence and Discrimination against Persons Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression”.
This unique meeting is one of the largest gatherings of African activists working on issues relating to sexualorientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE). It aims to generate learning among civil society organisations on the lived realities of sexual and gender minorities in different parts of the continent, and to use this knowledge to identify key advocacy priorities in ending violence and discrimination based on SOGIE in Africa.
“As human rights defenders working on gender and sexuality, it’s very important that we work together,” noted Fadzai Muparutsa of the Coalition of African Lesbians. “Before we engage with governments and other state actors, we need to have time and space to consider our diverse lived experiences. We need to understand better how different forms of oppression interact and intersect, particularly in women’s lives,” she added.
Sexual and gender minorities continue to be targets of violence, discrimination and abuse. This violence is often state-sanctioned, in many cases being carried out by police and other state agencies. Discriminatory beliefs are often endorsed by religious and traditional leaders, and given further currency through sensationalist media coverage. Such practices further stigmatise vulnerable communities, and result in people being denied access to medical, legal and other essential services because of their real or presumed sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.