Mission & Justice

Rana Husseini; 30/10/08

The Criminal Court on Wednesday sentenced a 40-year-old man to death after convicting him of raping a minor in an Amman neighbourhood. The defendant stood motionless and did not utter a word as presiding Judge Mohammad Ibrahim read out the verdict in court. The defendant was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl nine times over a one-month period in January of this year. The court said the defendant, a refrigerator repairman, saw the girl when he went to work on her grandmother’s fridge, according to court papers. The defendant asked the victim to come home with him so he could “introduce her to his mother, because she knew some men who were interested in getting married”.

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Dalya Dajani; 29/10/08

Anti-vagrancy authorities on Tuesday said they had detained around 1,400 street peddlers and beggars so far this year. Khaled Rawashdeh, head of the Anti-Vagrancy Department, said the total was on par with last year’s figures, which stood at 1,350. The department is continuing to clamp down on these activities, with violators facing stiff penalties, he told The Jordan Times yesterday. “The numbers are not much different from last year’s figures and we still face a problem in trying to contain these activities and presenting alternatives to those who refuse work,” Rawashdeh said, noting that the department had detained 60 street peddlers and beggars last month. “We can’t force them to work, but some, clearly trying to avoid the penalties, accepted jobs,” he added.

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28/10/08

When Jordan signed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, three major reservations were entered by Jordan concerning the right of women to pass on their nationality to their offspring, their right to housing and their right to travel. Now women activists are calling, and they are absolutely right, on these reservations, which go against the letter and spirit of the convention, to be repealed. When this international human rights treaty demands the end of all forms of discrimination against women, it defies logic to maintain three major prejudiced rules that affect some of their most important rights. It mystifies most modern rationalisation why traditional forms of discrimination against women persist.

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Khetam Malkawi; 26/10/08

Women activists on Saturday said they would continue to urge the government to lift its reservations on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The call was made during a conference yesterday on “Equality without Reservations”, which is part of a campaign launched in Morocco early this year. The Kingdom signed the convention in July 1992, which was ratified and published in the Official Gazette in August 2007 with three reservations related to the citizenship, housing and women’s mobility clauses in the Personal Status Law. The focus will be on the citizenship clause in a move to urge the government to grant nationality to children of Jordanian women married to foreigners, according to Arab Women’s Organisation (AWO) of Jordan Projects Manager Laila Hamarneh. During the one-day conference, AWO revealed the results of a new study on the citizenship clause conducted by the organisation, which shows that according to the 2004 national census, around 12,000 out of 1.7 million married women are wed to non-Jordanians, with 5.5 children per woman.

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Rana Husseini; 15/10/08

Criminal Prosecutor Tareq Shqeirat on Tuesday charged a 61-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his teenage daughter in the Balqa Governorate for reasons related to family honour, official sources said. The victim received eight bullet wounds, mostly to her head, with the rest penetrating her chest, heart and legs by shots allegedly fired by her father, according to coroners who rushed to the scene. The suspect then immediately headed to the nearest police station and handed on-duty officers an unlicensed gun which he claimed to have used to kill his daughter, one official source told The Jordan Times on Tuesday. The suspect claimed family honour as the motive behind the killing of his 17-year-old daughter, the source added. The source said initial questioning of the suspect by authorities indicated that he reportedly killed his daughter after the victim confessed that she engaged in consensual sexual activities with a man.

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Khetam Malkawi; 15/10/08

A leading tuberculosis (TB) expert on Tuesday urged Jordan to establish a specialised centre to diagnose TB cases in the country and combat more deadly strains of the disease. Anna Cataldis, ambassador for the WHO’s Global Stop Tuberculosis Partnership, yesterday said that although the disease is currently under control through the Ministry of Health’s efforts, the Kingdom should be prepared for any potential epidemic. “TB is transmitted to Jordan from neighbouring countries including Iraq and Israel where the disease prevalence is higher,” she said in a press conference yesterday, adding that travellers from Iraq should undergo the required tests before being allowed to enter the Kingdom. “A new strain of TB was recently discovered in many cases in Iraq and no medicine is available to treat it as to date. Those infected might die within two months,” she explained.

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Dalya Dajani; 14/10/08

It has been almost two hours since Ahmad, 10, got down on his hands and knees to scrub the newly fitted tiles. Visibly tired, the boy sat upright in his dusty pale blue jeans and massaged his knees for a few seconds, looked at his father who was painting the wall beside him, and got back to work. The youngest of his brothers, Ahmad did not spend his summer vacation like many of his peers. Instead, he joined his father at an Amman construction site to assist in the strenuous tasks of tile-fitting, scrubbing and painting. Ahmad is not alone. Official figures on working children in the Kingdom reveal several challenges facing thousands of young boys and girls forced to enter the workforce. The latest official survey on child labour released by the Department of Statistics (DoS) earlier this year revealed there are around 32,676 working children in the Kingdom between the ages 5 and 17. Around 8 per cent of them work in the construction sector, 36 per cent work in auto repair work, and 27 per cent in agriculture and fishing.

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12/10/08

Hundreds of Jordanian Islamist and left-wing activists on Saturday staged a sit-in at the country’s wholesale food market to protest against exotic Israeli fruits and vegetables being sold. The protesters, holding anti-Israeli banners, urged merchants to suspend imports from Israel of a variety of exotic fruits from mangoes, pineapple, avocado, to kiwi along with carrots and tomatoes sold in groceries and supermarket. The organizers of the protest, the powerful Professional Associations who represent over 170,000 doctors, nurses and engineers, have been long-time bastions of dissent and opposition to the kingdom’s pro-Western policies.

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Rana Husseini; 9/10/08

The criminal prosecutor on Wednesday charged a 25-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his father in the Jordan Valley a day earlier, official sources said. The suspect, a farmer, turned himself in to the police and reportedly confessed to murdering his father at dawn on Tuesday to prevent him from killing his sister, one official source told The Jordan Times. “The victim, who was released recently from prison as part of an amnesty before the Eid holiday, had been jailed for almost seven years for killing two of his daughters in so-called honour crimes,” the source told The Jordan Times. The suspect also told interrogators that he “killed his 65-year-old father because both his teenage sisters who were murdered were innocent of any wrongdoing”.

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Khetam Malkawi; 9/10/08

When Rawdha Sarhan first suspected that she might have breast cancer, she was afraid of seeing a doctor and being diagnosed with the disease. The 62-year-old breast cancer survivor, however, overcame her fears and immediately consulted a doctor. “Being diagnosed with breast cancer was difficult and I needed a lot of patience to live with the situation and undergo the required treatment,” Sarhan told The Jordan Times. But The early detection helped her survive cancer, and she went on to advise women of all ages to have regular check-ups to avoid succumbing to the disease. Their experience with breast cancer led Sarhan and other survivors to establish “Sanad”, a support group for breast cancer patients at the King Hussein Cancer Centre (KHCC).

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