Category: Religious minorities

‘Virginity Testing’ to End for Yezidi Rape Survivors

“Luna,” was captured by ISIS fighters when they swept through northern Iraq in August 2014.

She was sold four times and raped by all her “owners.” She was one of hundreds of Yezidi women and girls who had similar experiences.

Some of them eventually escaped and were reunited with their community, who took refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. But that wasn’t the end of their ordeal.

Survivors my colleague and I interviewed,  described  organized rape, sexual slavery, and forced marriage by ISIS. They were in dire need of health care, counselling and other services to help them begin to recover from their ordeal.

Kurdistan officials took their needs seriously, but subjected some unmarried women and girls to “virginity tests” –an abusive and inaccurate procedure– as part of a forensic, post-rape examination.  Judge Ayman Bamerny, who heads a committee gathering evidence of ISIS crimes, told us these tests were seen as evidence of rape by Iraqi courts.

 

By Rothna Begum

Read the full article from Human Rights Watch

Equality advocates cannot welcome NLD victory in Myanmar

Celebrations are under way in Myanmar as Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) are emerging victorious in a national election that is being described as a “dawn of a new era”.

Yet the political leaders, including the so-called icon of Burmese democracy, have colluded in the disenfranchisement of the Rohingya minority, by failing to condemn the wave of persecution and discrimination culminating in the deletion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from the voting register.

“This election can’t be described as either free or fair, because racial discrimination – the prohibition of which is a peremptory norm of international law – was at its heart. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya were deprived of the vote. What kind of democratic society can be built on the exclusion of an entire ethno-religious minority? Not one that the Equal Rights Trust could ever welcome,” said the Trust’s executive director Dimitrina Petrova.

She continued, “Suu Kyi has been urged, at least since 2012, to condemn anti-Rohingya discrimination. But it is clear by now that she has chosen populist power over human rights.”

 

Article originally published on MalaysiaKini

Ban ‘triple talaq’, says Muslim women’s group

The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) on Friday called for a ban on the “triple talaq” divorce system, saying it was un-Islamic and outlawed in several Muslim countries.

“The Quran gives rights to Muslim women during marriage and does not recognise triple talaq,” the group said in a resolution passed at its ninth annual convention here.

“Yet, this evil practice prevails in India. It should be banned like several Muslim countries (have done),” it added.

At the same time, the gathering rejected the idea of an Uniform Civil Code and called upon the government to initiate urgent measures towards reforms in Muslim personal law.

A BMMA statement quoted co-founder Noorjehan Safia Niaz as saying how India urgently needed a codified Muslim personal law based on the Quranic principles of justice and equality.

Zakia Soman, another co-founder, spoke about how an Uniform Civil Code was not the answer to Muslim womens’ quest for justice.

This can happen only by reform in Muslim personal law where matters such as age of marriage, divorce and polygamy can be regulated, she said.

 

Read the full article on the Online India website

OURs - News piece

Burma: Four “Race and Religion Protection Laws” Adopted

Four laws known collectively as the Race and Religion Protection Laws, which were submitted to the Parliament of Burma (Myanmar) in December 2014, were adopted this spring by the Parliament and recently signed by Thein Sein, Burma’s President.

(Myanmar: Parliament Must Reject Discriminatory ‘Race and Religion’ Laws, Amnesty International website (Mar. 3, 2015).)

The Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha, which is led by Buddhist monks, supported the adoption of the four laws.” (Id.; Hnin Yadana Zaw, Myanmar’s President Signs Off on Law Seen as Targeting Muslims, REUTERS (Aug. 31, 2015).) By contrast, in the view of Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, the laws “set out the potential for discrimination on religious grounds and pose the possibility for serious communal tension … . Now that these laws are on the books, the concern is how they are implemented and enforced.” (Hnin Yadana Zaw, supra; for an analysis of the four draft laws, see, for example, Myanmar: Parliament Must Reject Discriminatory ‘Race and Religion’ Laws, supra.)

Monogamy Law

Thein Sein signed into law on August 31 monogamy legislation that was adopted by the country’s Parliament on August 21. (Hnin Yadana Zaw, Myanmar’s President Signs Off on Law Seen as Targeting Muslims, REUTERS (Aug. 31, 2015).) The legislation makes it a criminal offense to have more than one spouse or to live with an unmarried partner who is not a spouse. An estimated five percent of Burma’s population is Muslim, and some members of this group reportedly practice polygamy, but the government has denied that the new law targeted Muslims. (Id.)

According to a draft, unofficial English text of the legislation, the Monogamy Law as proposed concerned “all those who are living in Myanmar, Myanmar citizens who live outside of Myanmar, and foreigners who marry Myanmar citizens while living in Myanmar.” (Monogamy Bill (2014), art. 2, ONLINE BURMA/MYANMAR LIBRARY.) The draft states that after the law enters into force, “any marriage between a man and a woman in accordance with any law or any religion or any custom shall be legitimate only if monogamous.” (Id. art. 5.)

One of the provisions in Chapter 3 of the draft law, on “Prohibition on Extramarital Affairs,” prescribes that “any man or woman who is already married with one spouse or more than one spouse in accordance with a law or a religion or a custom, shall not enter, while the original union is still legally recognized, into another marriage with another person or conduct an illegal extramarital affair.” (Id. art. 9.) The same prohibition applies to “any man or woman who is already married in accordance with a law or a religion or a custom.” (Id. art. 10.) Anyone who, while still part of a legally recognized original union, enters into another marriage in contravention of article 9 or 10, will “be deemed to commit the act of polygamy or conjugal infidelity under section 494 of the Penal Code.” (Id. art. 16.)

 

By Hameema Rahman and Wendy Zeldin

Read the full article on the website of the Library of Congress