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Karzai signs bill, a massive blow against  women’s rights

The Independent   |  Jerome Starkey in Kabul   |   March 31, 2009 08:54 AM

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Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which “legalises” rape, women’s groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.

In a massive blow for women’s rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman’s right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

“It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century,” fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. “It is totally against women’s rights. This law makes women more vulnerable.”

The law regulates personal matters like marriage, divorce, inheritance and sexual relations among Afghanistan’s minority Shia community. “It’s about votes,” Ms Karokhail added. “Karzai is in a hurry to appease the Shia because the elections are on the way.”

The provisions are reminiscent of the hardline Taliban regime, which banned women from leaving their homes without a male relative. But in a sign of Afghanistan’s faltering steps towards gender equality, politicians who opposed it have been threatened.

“There are moderate views among the Shia, but unfortunately our MPs, the people who draft the laws, rely on extremists,” Ms Karokhail said.

The bill lay dormant for more than a year, but in February it was rushed through parliament as President Karzai sought allies in a constitutional row over the upcoming election. Senator Humeira Namati claimed it wasn’t even read out in the Upper House, let alone debated, before it was passed to the Supreme Court. “They accused me of being an unbeliever,” she said.

Details of the law emerged after Mr Karzai was endorsed by Afghanistan’s Supreme Court to stay in power until elections scheduled in August. Some MPs claimed President Karzai was under pressure from Iran, which maintains a close relationship with Afghanistan’s Shias. The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband’s sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least “once every four nights” when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.

A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: “Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband”.

Most of Afghanistan’s Shias are ethnic Hazaras, descended from Genghis Khan’s Mongol army which swept through the entire region around 700 years ago. They are Afghanistan’s third largest ethnic group, and potential kingmakers, because their leaders will likely back a mainstream candidate.

Even the law’s sponsors admit Mr Karzai rushed it through to win their votes. Ustad Mohammad Akbari, a prominent Shia political leader, said: “It’s electioneering. Most of the Hazara people are unhappy with Mr Karzai.”

A British Embassy spokesman said diplomats had raised concerns “at a senior level”.

The McGlynn, “Our men and women are dying for this ?! My God!”

Alleged Torture To Be Examined     

By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service

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LONDON, March 26 — The British government has asked police to investigate whether British intelligence officers colluded in the alleged torture of a British resident who was held in U.S. custody for seven years.

Attorney General Patricia Scotland on Thursday referred the case of Binyam Mohamed, 30, to Scotland Yard, asking police to investigate “as expeditiously as possible given the seriousness and sensitivity of the issues involved.”

British analysts said it was rare, if not unprecedented, for police to investigate the intelligence agency with which police work closely every day.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian native who moved to Britain as a teenager, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and turned over to U.S. authorities a few months later. Mohamed said he was then held in Morocco and Afghanistan and subjected to torture by American authorities and others acting on U.S. instructions. He was moved to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2004.

After his release without charge last month, Mohamed alleged that an agent from MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, supplied questions and documents to Pakistani officials who tortured him in 2002.

U.S. and British officials have denied Mohamed’s allegations. British officials referred his case to the attorney general last fall under growing political pressure to prove repeated government assertions that Britain had not participated in “extraordinary rendition” or torture.

In a statement issued by his lawyers Thursday, Mohamed, who is in seclusion in Britain, said he did not want the blame to fall solely on the MI5 agent, known as Witness B in court documents.

“I am very pleased that an investigation is taking place,” Mohamed said. “I feel very strongly that we shouldn’t scapegoat the little people. We certainly shouldn’t blame ‘Witness B’ — he was only following orders.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in Brazil, praised British intelligence services for doing “an amazing and courageous job” of fighting terrorism but said he supported the investigation.

“I have always made clear that when serious allegations are made they have got to be investigated,” Brown said. “I have also been clear that this government does not tolerate or endorse torture.”

The McGlynn, “To the Obama Administration, listen up and do your duty!”

Thousands Of Angolans Evicted From Catholic Church’s Land

The Huffington Post, March 24, 2009
MICHELLE FAUL | March 23, 2009 05:01 PM EST | AP
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LUANDA, Angola – Even as Pope Benedict XVI said Monday his heart cannot be at peace while people are homeless, critics used his Africa pilgrimage to highlight the plight of thousands whom the Angolan government has violently evicted from land owned by the Catholic church.

Amnesty International appealed to Benedict during his visit to the southern Africa country to press the Angolan government for full compensation for the families who have been forced from church land since 2004.

More than 2,000 families have been evicted since Angolan authorities began returning land to the church that had been seized by the former Marxist state, according to Muluka Miti, a researcher for Amnesty International. The London-based human rights group said people were detained and arrested arbitrarily, and subjected to torture in some cases.

Mateus Damiao and his eight family members were evicted from their land in 2007 on the outskirts of southern Luanda in Wenji Maka, where a new Catholic church is planned. In an interview Monday, he described repeated attacks by police since 1998, sometimes with bulldozers, sometimes forcing people at gunpoint to leave.

“I hope that the pope’s message will be heard by our leaders and by the pope’s priests and bishops so that no more people are left homeless as I was,” said Damiao, who has received no compensation since authorities forced him from his land.

“It’s very sad. I have lost a way of life. They destroyed our community, they destroyed our homes. Some people have been made beggars. Some people have been maimed.”

On Monday, the pope urged Angola’s leaders to make “the fundamental aspirations of the most needy people” their main concern.

“Our hearts cannot be at peace as long as there are brothers that suffer the lack of food, work, a house, and other fundamental goods,” the pontiff said in his airport departure speech.
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When asked about Amnesty’s appeal, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi referred the question to Angolan Bishop Monsignor Jose Manuel Imbamba. The prelate denied anyone had been evicted or houses destroyed.

“We help the poor, we don’t send them away,” Imbamba said Saturday at a news conference.

It was impossible to get any response, including numbers of those evicted, from the Angolan government. Jacinto Sampaio, a senior official at the government press center, claimed he did not know the name of the government spokesman and that it would not be possible to get immediate comment anyhow.

“We have to have the questions in writing and it can take one week, one month, or you can never get a response,” he said, in an indication of the difficulties this one-time Marxist government puts in the way of the media.

The government of Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled for 30 years through elections marred by fraud and corruption, has had rocky relations with the Catholic church.

Angola’s government banned freedom of religion after 1975, when Portugal hastily gave its colonies independence and civil war broke out, reminding people that the Catholic Church had been an ally of colonizers who sent tens of thousands of Angolans into slavery in Brazil and the U.S.

After a rapprochement with the church, dos Santos in 1998 gave back lands seized by the state that had become occupied by ordinary Angolans. Damiao said not long after police began attacking his community. Human rights groups say the government started evicting people from Catholic church land in 2004, two years after the country’s long civil war ended.

In addition to the church land evictions, human rights groups also accuse the Angolan government of forcing out thousands of others as it has pressed ahead with expensive glass high-rises downtown in the seaside capital of Luanda and rebuilt provincial towns bombed-out during the civil war.

Miti said that Amnesty has documented a total of 10,000 families evicted since 2001, including the more than 2,000 families removed from Wenji Maki. Many of those evicted have been resettled in satellite towns far from the city center where they lived, without electricity or running water. It is unclear how many were not given homes.

Authorities “demolished homes and just left people there with nowhere to live. The people rebuilt some shelters but the authorities just came back and demolished them again,” said Luiz Araujo with SOS Habitat, an Angolan non-governmental organization.

Araujo said he left Luanda about a year ago because he was concerned for his own safety after being arrested several times.

While the Angolan government says it has an urban development plan for Luanda, SOS Habitat has been denied access to the documents, Araujo said in a telephone interview from Brussels. SOS Habitat is providing legal counsel for those kicked out, but courts have not scheduled hearings.

Damiao said he and his family have received nothing in compensation since being forced from the land where they grew manioc, potatoes, and cashew nuts. “No house, no money, no land,” he said.

“I am a Catholic. I cannot blame my church but I am very angry with the ambassadors of Christ, the priest and the bishop who forced us from our homes,” he said.

Israel’s Hawkish, Nationalist, Religious Government Being Formed

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JERUSALEM — Incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought a nationalist religious party into what is shaping up to be a narrow, hawkish coalition, taking a major step Monday toward securing the parliament majority he needs to form the government.

As Netanyahu wrapped up the deal with the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, he also launched formal talks with the centrist Labor Party in hopes of moderating his emerging government.

Adding Labor could provide stability and international credibility, but many Labor lawmakers oppose joining forces with Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has been trying to put together a coalition since last month’s parliamentary election. His Likud Party captured 27 seats, forcing him to bring in partners to control a majority in the 120-seat parliament. He has until April 3 to put together a government.

With Shas on board, a total of 53 of legislators have agreed to enter the government’s fold. Netanyahu, who hopes to build a broad coalition, is still negotiating with four other parties.

Last week, Netanyahu initialed his first coalition agreement with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu.

The deal tentatively gave the foreign minister’s job to party leader Avigdor Lieberman, who has drawn accusations of racism for a plan that could require Arab citizens of Israel to sign loyalty oaths or lose their citizenship. Lieberman has also said there is no hope for peace with the Palestinians. Lieberman also favors redrawing Israel’s borders to exclude Arab citizens.

Shas’ presence would help cement the coalition’s tilt the right. The party, which represents Jews of Middle Eastern descent, opposes giving up any part of Jerusalem as part of a future peace deal and doesn’t even want the matter discussed in future peace talks.

But Palestinians demand sovereignty over Arab parts of Jerusalem, where around 270,000 Palestinians live, and a peace treaty would be impossible without this demand being met. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and immediately annexed it.

Shas will join the government in exchange for four Cabinet ministries and added social services allowances that are important to the party’s lower-income constituency.

The ministries include the all-important Housing Ministry, which is involved in West Bank settlement construction, and the Interior Ministry, which decides questions of Israeli citizenship.

Shas’ spiritual leader is an octogenarian rabbi, Ovadiah Yosef, known as much for his sunglasses, turban and gold-embroidered robes as his sometimes outrageous statements. Hurricane Katrina, Yosef once claimed, was divine punishment for godlessness in New Orleans and U.S. support for Israel’s 2005 pullout from the Gaza Strip.

Although Netanyahu takes a tough stand against territorial concessions to the Palestinians and Syria, he has been wooing moderate parties as well to give his government more stability and make it more palatable to the international community.

A narrow government could hold him hostage to unrealistic demands. That is a lesson he learned during his first tenure as prime minister a decade ago, when his coalition fell apart over concessions he made to the Palestinians under U.S. pressure.

A hawkish government could also put him at loggerheads with the U.S., which is eager to promote an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that would entail the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu says the Palestinians are not ready for independence.

Because of that position, his most sought-after potential partner has spurned his overtures. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima Party, says she will only serve in a government committed to seeking a final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu appears to be making more headway with Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor Party. After initially insisting he would go into the opposition, Barak planned to ask his party on Tuesday to team up with Netanyahu.

Under a coalition agreement, Barak would be expected to retain his job and several other veteran party officials would be expected to receive other Cabinet jobs.

But Barak, who authorized Labor negotiators to meet with the Likud on Monday, could face a mutiny when he puts a coalition agreement to a party vote on Tuesday. A significant bloc of party rebels objects to joining a Netanyahu-led government.

Former first lady Jehan Sadat talks to Gamal Nkrumah about the poignant influences on her politics and the release of her latest bombshell on the 30th anniversary of the monumental signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty

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A light flickering on and off in Jehan Sadat’s sunlit sitting room is bugging one of her numerous cats, Jerry, I think the chubby ginger cat is called. He soon bores of the insubstantial and turns to me. Purring softly, as I stroke him, he eyes my notepad with curious suspicion. “I love my cats,” her brilliant emerald eyes sparkle with delight. She clicks her thumb and index finger, hunting for the right expression and apologises when he flies off at a tangent. “Cats are full of character. Small wonder the ancient Egyptians deified them.”

And, the conversation smoothly shifts towards the spiritual. “To include faith as a principle for peace in the Middle East seems at best counterintuitive. How can religion, which seems the source of so much misery in the region, do anything other than prove a divisive, countervailing influence to efforts towards peace? For me, the answer is simple: God, whether according to the Muslim, Christian, or Jewish tradition, enjoins us to treat others as we would ourselves be treated, to be compassionate, to be forgiving, to love our fellow human beings. God does not need to lead us to confrontations or brutality in his name. These actions represent the formulations and frailties of humankind.” We chatter, touching further on the subject of personal faith, deep religious conviction as opposed to superficial ritualistic religious lore — and above all God.

For Jehan Sadat religion is no abstraction: it is practical, functional and yet she confesses that she is instinctively drawn to the mystical. “I believe that events in our lives happen for a purpose, and yet sometimes marvel at the circumstances that have brought me, in some ways, full circle — face-to-face with a part of my life that I find most painful,” she smiles faintly without a trace of remorse.

“When my husband was slain by Islamic extremists, I never imagined that I would one day be living in America, speaking out in an effort to counter the idea that extremists speak for Islam. It would not have occurred to me in 1981 that the example set by my husband’s murderers could one day be seen as representative of my faith.” For her, there is no compulsion in religion, as Islam so explicitly makes clear.

“For me, being a good Muslim does not mean abjuring criticism or silencing dissent within our own communities.” Her dramatic rise from a cloistered childhood in the then leafy island suburb of Manial to the distinction of first lady is something of a fairytale.

Jehan is no shrinking violet. She has faced down many moments of despair with dignity and poise. She recalls forbidding moments that altered the course of her life, especially the assassination of her beloved Anwar. “Our nation seemed poised at the very edge of fiery conflagration, with fanatics on both sides fanning the flames.”…………………………………………………………….