Archive for the ‘Womens Rights’ Category
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
17/12/08; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24813881-26103,00.html
A man has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a nurse in a remote Torres Strait community.
Dennis William Kris, 23, pleaded guilty in Cairns Magistrates Court to three charges including sexual assault over the February incident. The court was told Kris broke into the nurses’ quarters at Mabuiag Island and sexually assaulted a 27-year-old nurse. The incident caused a public outcry and resulted in statewide industrial action from Queensland nurses. Queensland Health was later issued with a breach notice by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland after a report into the state’s remote communities found security for health workers was severely lacking. Kris was originally charged with rape but police dropped the charge on Wednesday, offering no evidence of the offence. He was bailed to appear in Cairns District Court for sentencing next year, after spending the past 10 months in custody.
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Sex Trade
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
John Garnaut, 17/12/08
A woman accused of running a prostitution and immigration racket between Hong Kong and Melbourne has been allegedly caught boasting of her ability to bribe Australian consulate officials. Hong Kong prosecutors revealed the startling claim in the opening address of a criminal trial on Monday. Prosecutors said the accused, Yeung Sum-ching, had claimed she could expedite visa applications by bribing staff in the Australian consulate. Ms Yeung had made the mistake of making the claim to an undercover Hong Kong policewoman, the prosecutors said. The court made no attempt to verify Ms Yeung’s claim. “Yeung’s boasts that she could bribe Australian consular officials were allegedly made in conversations with the undercover policewoman before her arrest and were not supported by any other evidence presented at the opening of her trial on Monday,” said a journalist with the German Press Agency in Hong Kong. Regardless, Australia’s Department of Immigration is not taking any chances.
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Tags: Australia, China, Sex Trade
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
15/12/08
A doctor who was allegedly held captive by her family in Bangladesh is due to return to Britain after being freed.Lawyers for Humayra Abedin, from east London, had said the trainee family doctor’s family had planned to force her into a marriage. Anne-Marie Hutchinson, Abedin’s lawyer, said on Monday the 33-year-old had boarded a flight from Dhaka the previous night. “She’s fine, but obviously exhausted and was anxious to leave before people changed their mind,” Hutchinson said. Abedin had moved to Britain six years ago to study and was due to start work at a surgery in east London before she returned to Bangladesh after hearing her mother had fallen ill.
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Tags: Bangladesh, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Gender & Marriage, Human Rights, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Stephen Lunn; 16/12/08
A new generation of Australian women is refusing to follow the career-first, babies-later philosophy of their older sisters or friends, and choosing to start families earlier. Their fresh approach has seen a spike in the proportion of Australians aged under five years and an improved fertility rate that the nation’s top demographer believes will be sustained for at least the next 10 years. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures published yesterday show 1.4 million people were under the age of five on June 30 this year, a 2.8 per cent increase from the previous year. The population as a whole rose by just 1.7 per cent.
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Tags: Australia, Children
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
Tsafi Saar; 15/12/08
When Rachel Adler was 19, her grandmother died and, having no son, she wanted to say Kaddish for her. “I was told I could not, but I could pay a male stranger a huge amount of money, which I didn’t have, and that radicalized me,” says the famous feminist theologian. “It made no sense. Why would God rather hear from a stranger who was being paid than the mourner herself?” That was one of the first steps along Adler’s pioneering path, that of a theologian dealing with seminal Jewish texts from a feminist point of view. Her book, “Feminism Yehudi” is due to be published in Hebrew, as part of the series Yahadut Kan Ve’achshav, published by Yedioth Ahronoth, Sifrei Hemed, and translated by Ruth Blum. It was first published 10 years ago as “Engendering Judaism” and is considered revolutionary. Adler, 65, presents a subversive and sophisticated reading of Jewish texts. She goes beyond the original feminist reading, which focused on denouncing patriarchalism, and proposes new and surprising perspectives from which to understand them.
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Tags: Israel, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Israel & Palestine, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
Sushi Das; 15/12/08
Most Victorians say they hold a mainly positive view of Muslims, but Muslim women are reporting a pattern of sustained racism towards them, a study has found. Seven years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Muslim women in Victoria continue to report racial abuse and discrimination “in an environment characterised by incivility and inhospitality”, the report by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria found. African Muslim women and Muslims who wear hijabs experience more racism than other Muslim women, says the report. And while verbal abuse is the most common form of racism, the report also documents incidents of physical assault.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Muslim, Women
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
15/12/08; (2 Items)
Abused wives are being chased away from police stations, Police Commissioner Gari Baki told a huge crowd in Mount Hagen on Friday. Mr Baki said at the end of the year Commissioner’s Parade that abused wives were being told at police stations to return home and sort out the problem with their husbands. The commissioner said this was happening even after the necessary law changes, such as making wife/husband beating a criminal act. Even after much publicity not much was happening at the police station level.
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Tags: Domestic Violence, PNG, Womens Rights
Posted in Gender & Marriage, Health & Children, Human Rights, PNG / West Papua, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
Joan Chittister; 15/12/08;
Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois is under threat of excommunication for giving a homily at the unauthorized priestly ordination of a woman sponsored by the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests. The question, especially for those who know this priest to be a justice-loving, selfless prophet of peace, is how Fr. Roy’s “case” will be handled by the Vatican. No doubt about it: The situation is an important one - both for him and for the church who will judge him. It is important for Fr. Bourgeois because it involves the possible fracturing of the commitment of a lifetime. A man who has given his life for the Gospel, been one of the church’s most public witnesses for human rights, stood for the best in the human condition and modeled the highest standards of the priesthood should certainly not end his life a victim of the conscience that has stirred the conscience of a nation. But the way this situation is handled is at least as important to the church as it ever will be to Roy Bourgeois.
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Tags: Christianity, Women Priests, Womens RightsAdd new tag
Posted in Christianity, Human Rights, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
14/12/08
Police arrested a gang of four men for trafficking of absconding girls and attempting to sell them for prostitution purposes. On November 22, Dubai Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), received a tip-off that a gang of four Bangladeshi men were holding a girl from the same nationality and were offering to sell her for Dh4,000. A source from the CID got in touch with the gang and offered to buy the girl. They agreed to meet near one of the hotels around the Naif area.
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Tags: Asia, Sex Trade
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
Mariam M. Al Serkal; 9/12/08
The stereotype that engineering is a male profession is no longer valid in Emirati culture as it is one that encourages the women of today to succeed in whatever task is set before them. Moza Abdul Rahim Al Ali, an Emirati, has an eye for detail and whether she is driving along the busy roads of Dubai or at home, her mind is constantly focused on building structures and designs. “My father has always encouraged me to pursue my passion in engineering. He put it in his mind that I can be successful, and that I can do this job. He was always asking me about my studies and how I was doing in class,” says Moza, an architectural engineer at Dubai Municipality. “There is a difference between learning the theories at university and actually applying them on the job, and I had to learn how to deal with consultants and contractors.”
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Tags: Dubai, Womens Rights
Posted in Human Rights, Womens Rights | No Comments »
