Archive for the ‘Asia’ Category
Friday, December 26th, 2008
Hassna’a Mokhtar; 26/12/08
A group of sociologists and a lawyer are currently studying the issue of non-Saudi women who marry Saudis and apply for divorce after obtaining Saudi citizenship. Wail Joharji, 36, a lawyer and legal consultant, believes foreign women divorce their Saudi husbands as soon as they get citizenship for many reasons, which include their eligibility to claim social security, the right to take substantial business loans from the Centennial Fund or the Saudi Credit and Saving Bank, and the opportunity to marry non-Saudis who wish to have a Saudi sponsor to run businesses in the Kingdom. “Divorce harms women and children. We have to maintain a smooth and just mechanism for marriage and divorce, leaving no loopholes for anyone to abuse the system. There is a percentage of foreign women, especially those born and raised in the Kingdom, who marry Saudis with the intention of only claiming Saudi nationality,” said Joharji. He added that the study is in the interest of Saudi society in general and those children who are affected by such divorces in particular.
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Tags: Marriage, Saudi Arabia
Posted in Asia, Gender & Marriage, Human Rights, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, December 26th, 2008
26/12/08
The UN General Assembly has condemned the ongoing human rights violations in Myanmar, and called on the government in Naypyidaw to stop conducting politically motivated arrests. The resolution released on Wednesday was sponsored by the US, Australia, South Korea, Israel and many other European countries, and was approved by a vote of 80 to 25, with 45 abstentions. It also called on the country’s military government to free all detainees and political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the prominent opposition leader and head of the National League for Democracy (NLD).
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Tags: Asia, Burma, UN
Posted in Asia, Burma, United Nations | No Comments »
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
25/12/08
Christmas for some of the 23 million Christians in India is bittersweet this year. As Al Jazeera’s Kamal Kumar reports from Kandhamal district in the eastern state of Orissa, thousands of them are living in camps, months after deadly attacks forced them to leave their homes. The violence erupted in August, following the murder of a prominent Hindu priest in Kandhamal. The murder was initially blamed on Maoist insurgents, but Hindu groups blamed Christians for the killing. A wave of violence against the Christian community in Kandhmal followed. Fifty-nine people, including two pastors, were killed and churches were attacked. More than 50,000 people were left homeless. Following the government’s intervention, several camps have been set up in Kandhamal to protect the district’s Christians from further intimidation. Around 15,000 people currently live in the camps, where free food and basic health facilities and are provided.
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Tags: Christianity, Human Rights, India
Posted in Christianity, Human Rights, India | No Comments »
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
25/12/08
Nine convicted murderers, including one woman, were hanged in a mass execution at a Tehran prison on Wednesday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Ten convicts were taken to the gallows in Tehran’s Evin prison on Wednesday morning, Fars reported, but one was returned to his cell because the family of the victim were not present at the prison. Under sharia, a victim’s relatives may pardon the murderer in return for financial compensation. “Eight men and one woman were hanged after their death sentences were upheld by the Supreme Court,” Fars said. “One convicted man’s hanging was delayed.”
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Tags: Capital Punishment, Iran
Posted in Asia, Capital Punishment | No Comments »
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
25/12/08; http://www.theage.com.au/world/jakarta-urged-to-probe-land-dispute-shootings-20081224-74ur.html
Human rights group Amnesty International has urged Indonesia to probe a crackdown on protesting villagers that killed two children and destroyed hundreds of houses on Sumatra island. The two children died and nearly 400 people were left homeless last week after police and other officials fired bullets and teargas to evict residents of Suluk Bongkal village in Riau province, Amnesty said in a statement. “Hundreds of people are now living in the forest, their homes destroyed, and two families are grieving the loss of their children,” campaigner Josef Benedict said. One two-year-old girl died after falling down a well in the confrontation, while a two-month-old baby died from burns, the statement said. Two other people were injured by gunshots. As the villagers fled into the forest, two helicopters then dropped what was thought to be a fire accelerant, burning about 300 homes before bulldozers went in and flattened the area, it said. The villagers have been engaged in a land dispute with a pulpwood supply company since the forestry ministry awarded the company rights to develop the area in 1996. Riau police spokesman Amin Rahimsyah confirmed the incident had occurred but refused to respond to Amnesty’s specific allegations, saying a probe was underway. “It’s true that the incident happened but we haven’t got the final results of our investigation,” he said.
Tags: Deaths, Environment, Indonesia, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Environment, Human Rights, Indonesia | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
24/12/08; http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=13018
The head of Saudi Arabia’s religious police has denied banning women from working in lingerie shops, as complaints from female customers about male-only sales staff rise, newspapers said on Tuesday. Sheikh Ibrahim Al Gaith of the powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stressed that he does not oppose women sales personnel in lingerie stores per se. But he said shops with female clerks had to be in malls restricted to women only, so the saleswomen did not come into contact with men. “We don’t reject the work of the women in lingerie stores if they are not next to men’s stores,” Gaith said, adding that this was government policy. Saudi women have long complained that they feel uncomfortable having to buy lingerie from men and would prefer female sales assistants.
Tags: Saudi Arabia, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Womens Rights, Workers | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Thomas Erdbrink; 23/12/08; http://www.theage.com.au/world/iran-closes-rights-office-20081222-73kz.html
Iranian authorities have closed the office of the country’s main human rights organisation, led by Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Dozens of plain-clothes detectives and local police entered the office of the Centre for Defenders of Human Rights in Tehran and shut it down hours before a ceremony was to take place commemorating the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights. According to members of the organisation, the police had been informed beforehand of the meeting. “The general human rights activities of this non-governmental organisation are the reason for this illegal reaction,” centre officials said. They speculated that the closure was in part a response to a United Nations resolution issued last Thursday that expressed “deep concern” about the human rights situation in Iran. Iran has been protesting for months against the resolution. An Interior Ministry commission, which gives permits for political organisations, said the centre was carrying out illegal activities such as publishing statements and writing to international organisations, the semi-official press agency Mehr news reported.
Tags: Human Rights, Iran
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, United Nations | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Andrew Darby; 23/12/08
An anti-whaling group says it has proof the Japanese whaling fleet has been operating in the historic heart of Australian Antarctica, Commonwealth Bay. The Sea Shepherd group’s leader, Paul Watson, said a helicopter found the factory ship Nisshin Maru in the bay shortly before he first engaged the fleet at the weekend. Commonwealth Bay, due south of Tasmania, was the stopping-off point for early Australian expeditions by Douglas Mawson, which led the country to claim 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent, and declare a whale sanctuary off its shores. A volunteer Australian expedition arrived there on Sunday to continue conservation work on the oldest Australian site in Antarctica, the National Heritage-listed Mawson’s Huts.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific Region | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Sujeet Kumar; 22/12/08; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24834777-12335,00.html
Police are investigating reports that villagers in a tribal area of central India beat 50 women with sticks and cut off their hair after accusing them of witchcraft, The villagers acted on the advice of a local spiritual man who said the assault would protect them from evil spirits, in a forest in a poor district of Chhattisgarh state, 400km from the capital Raipur, police said. Dozens of women are killed every year on suspicion of being witches or witch doctors in India, where superstition is widespread, especially in rural areas that lack an effective schooling system. While there are few killings in Chhattisgarh, more than 100 women are tortured, paraded naked or harassed in the state every year, officials say. “Police have begun a probe and interrogated dozens of villagers who hosted a nine-day purification ceremony where they forcibly cut the hair of about 50 women branding them witches and also beat them up publicly,” Radheshyam Nayak, a senior state police officer, said. The state passed a Witchcraft (Prevention) Act in 2005 to counter a rise in witchhunts, handing out jail terms of up to five years for offenders, though many cases are still reported.Chhattisgarh’s Chief Minister Raman Singh called the latest assault “inhuman, unfortunate and shameful” and asked the state’s police chief to investigate the case.
Tags: Culture, Human Rights, India, Womens Rights
Posted in Human Rights, India, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
22/12/08
A court in Onaizah in the northeastern Qassim province has rejected a divorce petition filed by the mother of a an eight-year-old girl whose father married her to a 58-year-old man, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty. In a verdict issued on Saturday, presiding judge Sheikh Habib Al-Habib dismissed the case because the woman does not have the right to file such a plea on behalf of her daughter and ordered that the petition should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty, Al-Riyadh newspaper reported yesterday quoting Abdullah Al-Jutaili, the lawyer representing the girl’s divorced mother. The woman filed the case with the Onaizah court in August just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom. The father had agreed to marry his daughter to the 58-year-old for an advance dowry of SR30,000, as he was apparently facing financial problems, according to relatives who did not wish to be named.
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Tags: Children, Human Rights, Marriage, Saudi Arabia
Posted in Asia, Gender & Marriage, Health & Children, Human Rights, Womens Rights | No Comments »
