February 9th, 2010
Rowan Callick, 4/2/10
Fighting has claimed 16 lives over the past week at villages near both ends of a planned 600km pipeline down which will flow Papua New Guinea’s great new economic hope, its $16.5 billion gas project. As a result, project leader Exxon/Mobil has suspended road building work by Queensland-based Curtain Brothers for the liquefaction plant near Port Moresby. A second, $8bn project was announced recently by InterOil, which is based in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, and is largely operated from Cairns. The first of the latest killings came in an early morning raid by villagers from Erave district in Southern Highlands, against an enemy clan that lives in an area without road access. The attackers used high-powered guns to kill 11 people.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Mining, PNG, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
Suleiman Al-Diyabi; 4/2/10
It is not uncommon to see children searching garbage bins for plastic and metal cans, which they collect for organized gangs looking for materials to sell. A citizen, who chose to remain anonymous, said one day he was coming home just before Asr prayer when he saw two kids aged around eight or nine racing toward a garbage bin. “I was surprised when I saw them jumping in. I went there to see what was happening and I found them searching intensely through the garbage,” he said. “I asked them what they were doing and they told me that they were collecting metal and plastic cans and putting them in plastic bags. I found out later on that some foreigners in a truck would arrive and take the bags from them. “This is the work of organized gangs who are exploiting children and giving our society a bad image,” he said.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Children, Saudi Arabia, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Health & Children, Human Rights, Workers | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
4/2/10
The Dead Sea in Jordan is shrinking at an alarming rate – a development that has led to the creation of some 3,000 sinkholes along the sea’s coasts. The sea has shrunk by a third since the 1960s when its major water source – the River Jordan – was diverted for upstream projects in Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. But for many people, the projects have backfired and the farmers who work near the sea say the once verdant and fertile land has become increasingly barren. Al Jazeera’s Nisreen el Shamayleh reports from the village of Ghor Al Haditha.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Environment, Human Rights, Israel
Posted in Environment, Human Rights, Israel & Palestine | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
4/2/10
A Dutch court has agreed to hear a case against a far-right politician accused of inciting racial hatred and discrimination against Muslims. The court overruled objections by Geert Wilders that it did not have jurisdiction to hear his case, in which he cited parliamentary privilege. “Parliamentary immunity does not extend to what a public representative says or writes outside of parliamentary gatherings,” Jan Moors, judge at the Amsterdam court, said on Wednesday. The 46-year-old politician faces five counts of religious insult and anti-Muslim incitement for describing Islam as a fascist religion and calling for the banning of the Quran, which he has likened to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Holland; Religion
Posted in Human Rights, Racism, Religion | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
4/2/10
Having lived for several years in a veiled society, I feel the most important questions have not been asked (Letters, February 3).Why do women wear the veil? Where in the Koran does it say women must cover themselves from head to toe? If it doesn’t stipulate that, why do they continue to do so? My experience of living in the Gulf was that if they did not, they would be ostracised from their families, community and culture. As the honour of the Muslim family was based on the virginity or sexual purity of its female members, to do otherwise would bring everlasting shame. The veil took from the woman the ability to be recognised, or to have a specific identity, and left her as a faceless, nameless, cloaked black figure. And in covering the woman’s face and form, men were exonerated from accepting responsibility for their carnal desires.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Australia, France, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
Paolo Totaro; 4/2/10
The British government has caved in to pressure from the Pope and churches by abandoning controversial reforms that would have forced religious groups to abide by anti-discrimination laws. The amendments drawn up by Labour would have effectively removed the right of churches and religious schools not to employ homosexuals. They drew unprecedented public criticism of another nation’s legislature by the Pope, who described them as a violation of ”natural justice”. But the proximity of a national election, which is due in May, and strong opposition to the changes, particularly in the House of Lords, has drained the beleaguered government’s resolve. The Minister for Equality, Harriet Harman, has battled for years to make churches and religious groups, including faith schools, abide by anti-discrimination legislation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Christianity, Homosexuality, Human Rights, UK
Posted in Christianity, Homosexuality, Human Rights | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
Jason Koutsoukis; 4/2/10; (3 Items)
A senior Israeli military official during last year’s war in Gaza has said that an independent commission of inquiry should investigate allegations that Israeli troops committed war crimes. Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, who was in charge of the Israel Defence Forces’ international law division and is now a law lecturer at Tel Aviv University, said the United Nations report on the war by Justice Richard Goldstone had severely damaged Israel’s international standing. The offensive left 1400 Palestinians dead. ”We are now in a situation in which we need to give [Israel's] friends, who don’t want to see lawsuits filed against us in their own courts, the tools to do away with such claims, along with other charges against us,” Colonel Sharvit-Baruch said.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Europe, Human Rights, Israel, Jerusalem, Settlers, UN
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
Rowan Callick, 4/2/10
Fighting has claimed 16 lives over the past week at villages near both ends of a planned 600km pipeline down which will flow Papua New Guinea’s great new economic hope, its $16.5 billion gas project. As a result, project leader Exxon/Mobil has suspended road building work by Queensland-based Curtain Brothers for the liquefaction plant near Port Moresby. A second, $8bn project was announced recently by InterOil, which is based in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, and is largely operated from Cairns. The first of the latest killings came in an early morning raid by villagers from Erave district in Southern Highlands, against an enemy clan that lives in an area without road access. The attackers used high-powered guns to kill 11 people.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Mining, PNG, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
Paige Taylor & Paul Maley; 4/2/10; (2 Items)
Congestion eased slightly on Christmas Island yesterday when visas were granted to 89 asylum-seekers and they were flown to the mainland on a charter flight. But the exodus still leaves 1697 asylum-seekers on the Indian Ocean outpost, including 147 children. About 200 remain in tents at the detention centre as the Department of Immigration works towards its goal of increasing capacity to 2300. There are 16 Indonesian crew also in detention on the island, including a teenage boy. Those who received protection visas yesterday included 65 Afghans, eight Sri Lankans and a Pakistani.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Migrants & Refugees
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
Speaking as a Christian, Steph Weakley (Letters, February 2) argues that it is wrong to interfere with women’s rights to cover their faces because one of the most basic freedoms in a wonderful country like ours is to dress as your beliefs and customs dictate. I have a friend, a committed naturist, who sincerely wants to be true to her beliefs and practices by attending her local church dressed as she was when God gave her the gift of her first breath. She is even prepared to wear a fascinator out of respect for the church’s belief that women (though not men) should cover their heads in the presence of the Lord. Will Steph and her fellow Christians welcome her? Glen Coulton. Marmong Point
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Australia, Fashion, Religion, Women
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
Paola Totaro; 3/2/10
Tony Blair not only misled the public about his decision to take Britain to war in Iraq but deliberately ordered that Cabinet critics be cut out of intelligence and military briefings in the lead-up, the Chilcot inquiry has been told. Clare Short, a former International Development minister and vehement critic of the Iraq war, has delivered a scathing description of the “presidential” style of Tony Blair’s leadership and described a Cabinet of yes men that were regarded as “his mates” while critics who were sidelined and “leaned on”. She said she believes the “machinery of government in Britain is now unsafe” and that from September 2002, she was deliberately cut out of briefings as Mr Blair had put a “block on communications” .
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
Paola Totro; 3/2/10
Pope Benedict has attacked Britain’s reform of human rights and equality legislation, saying religious employers should be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals. In an unprecedented move, the Pope commented directly on the laws of a Protestant state, claiming the proposed new human rights legislation threatens religious freedoms and violates ”natural law”. In a speech made during a visit to Rome by England and Wales’ 35 Catholic bishops, Pope Benedict urged Catholics in Britain to fight against the legislation with ”missionary zeal”.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Christianity, Homosexuality, UK, USA military
Posted in Christianity, Homosexuality, Human Rights, USA | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
Paige Taylor, 3/2/10
A big drop in assaults, police call-outs and emergency hospital admissions in Halls Creek has made Western Australia’s government more determined to support alcohol restrictions in the remote town once described as the Gaza Strip of the Kimberley. And the Barnett government is preparing for the possibility of restrictions being rolled out in other Kimberley towns if the Director of Liquor Licensing, Barry Sargeant, deems it appropriate. The first study of the effect of a ban on full-strength takeaway alcohol in Halls Creek is an endorsement of Mr Sargeant’s decision last May to make only light beer available as takeaways. The interim report to be released by the state government today finds police attended 53 per cent fewer incidents in June, July and August last year compared with the same period in 2008.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Trade
Posted in Aboriginal, Aid / Trade, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
Lex Hall 3/2/10; (2 Items)
NAVY personnel involved in the interception of asylum-seekers in northern Australian waters are being ordered to avoid mention of Indonesia for fear it could spark a disaster like the explosion aboard the SIEV 36 last April . Leading Seaman Matthew Pierce told an inquest into the deaths of five Afghans aboard the SIEV 36 that boatpeople could become volatile if they thought they were being taken to Indonesia rather than Australia. “We don’t say anything about sending them to Indonesia because it aggravates them,” Leading Seaman Pierce told the inquest in Darwin yesterday.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Migrants & Refugees
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
2/2/10
While I hesitate to argue against the admirable Sally Neighbour (”Hidden danger in tampering with the veil”, World Commentary, 1/1), her interpretation of the symbolic and actual unveiling of Iranian women by Shah Reza Pahlavi is not correct. Reza Pahlavi never lost his Islamic faith nor sought to destroy Islam. His struggle was against the power of the conservative, venal, corrupt mullahs and the saiids — the many thousands who claimed descent from the Prophet and lived off the people. Resisting modernisation of any kind — trade with Europe, railways, secular education, printing—they held the country in medieval backwardness. The veil was the symbol, the anderoun (harem) the actuality of women’s subjugation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Europe, Religion, Womens rights Australia
Posted in Gender & Marriage, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
Abraham Rabiinovich; 2/2/10; See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/israeli-officers-reprimanded-over-gaza-shelling-incident/story-e6frg6so-1225825655802
Israel has reprimanded a brigadier-general and a colonel for authorising the use of phosphorous shells against standing orders in an incident during the incursion into the Gaza Strip a year ago. The disciplinary action was included in a 46-page report to the UN responding to allegations of war crimes made by a UN commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone last September. The report to the UN said that several phosphorous shells, used to provide smoke screens, were fired to shield Israeli troops from Hamas fighters. Shrapnel fell into a UN compound between the two forces, said the report, causing burns to a UN employee and two civilians sheltering there. The report noted that use of phosphorous shells is permitted under international conventions but that standing orders in the Israel Defence Forces forbids their use in populated areas. The report also acknowledged several “operational and intelligence errors” that inadvertently caused civilian casualties. It vigorously denied any calculated effort, as suggested in the Goldstone report, to cause civilian casualties in order to punish Gaza for the eight-year-long rocketing by Hamas of Israeli communities.
Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism, UN, USA
Posted in Environment, Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
