Posts Tagged ‘Malaysia’
Monday, July 19th, 2010
19/7/10
Malaysian police have smashed a child-trafficking racket and rescued eight children and babies, an official said yesterday. Police detained 16 suspects, including four Indonesian women, in a sting operation after an Indonesian woman was nabbed last Monday when she tried to sell a 23-day-old baby girl for 10,000 ringgit ($3590). In the latest operation on Friday, police rescued a four-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl and detained two Indonesian sisters, said to be the caretakers of the children. Police said they were yet to determine who was behind the group or whether the eight rescued children involved any foreigners. The eight children, including three infants, are aged between 23 days and 12 years.
(more…)
Tags: Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Malaysia
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
Liz Gooch; 10/4/10; (2 Items)
Through most of their 17-year marriage, she and her husband observed rituals that she considered integral to their Hindu faith. Each morning they would pray before a shrine and on Fridays they would fast. During festivals they wore traditional outfits to attend their local temple. Those were traditions that M. Indira Gandhi, a teacher in the town of Ipoh, Malaysia, assumed they would pass on to their three children. But nearly a year ago she was stunned to discover her husband had converted to Islam. Her surprise turned to anger when she found out that, without consulting her, he had also converted their children. He then won custody of them through an Islamic court. “If he wants to convert, OK,” Ms Gandhi said. “But these are children that were born from both of us.”
(more…)
Tags: Children, Human Rights, Malaysia, Pakistan, Religion
Posted in Asia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, March 26th, 2010
26/3/10
The Malaysian government must act urgently to combat widespread abuse of migrant workers and reform labour laws to give them better protection, Amnesty International has said. In a report released by the human rights group on Wednesday, it said many of the foreigners working in Malaysia are forced to work long hours in harsh conditions and are subject to verbal, physical and sexual abuse. Conditions in many cases amounted to little short of “bonded labour”, Amnesty said. “This report documents the widespread nature of exploitation in Malaysia… in every sector of employment,” Michael Bochenek, Amnesty’s director of policy, told reporters at a press conference in Malaysia marking the release of the report.
(more…)
Tags: AI, Malaysia, Migrants, Workers
Posted in Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant, Workers | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
10/3/10
Conservationist warned today that Malaysians’ voracious appetite for turtle eggs could drive the marine creatures to extinction on its shores. Turtle eggs are sold openly in markets in parts of Malaysia. Turtles once arrived in their thousands to lay eggs on Malaysian beaches, but are now increasingly rare due to poaching and coastal development. Environmental group WWF released a report saying that hundreds of thousands of turtle eggs are eaten in Malaysia every year, despite campaigns to get them off the menu. “One of the contributing factors to the leatherback turtles’ disappearance from our shores is egg consumption. “We wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to our green and hawksbill turtles,” said WWF-Malaysia executive director Dionysius S.K. Sharma.
(more…)
Tags: Environment, Malaysia, Pacific
Posted in Asia, Environment | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Paige Taylor; 3/3/10
It is not the influx of asylum-seekers on Christmas Island that Andrew Gooley has grown to resent. Rather, it’s the cashed-up immigration workers who squeeze themselves on to the tiny Australian territory and push up costs. Mr Gooley, his wife and two children will be kicked out of their rented apartment on April 13 because the new owner plans to let the property to immigration workers and service providers. After a boatload of asylum-seekers was detected close to Christmas Island on Sunday, Mr Gooley let fly at his local member, Labor MP Warren Snowdon. The national park gardener, who earns about $60,000 a year rehabilitating mined rainforests, said the only available unit was a flat for $550 a week, $250 a week more than he currently pays.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Malaysia, Migrants & Refugees, Sexuality
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Refugee & Migrant | No Comments »
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Virginia Haussegger; 1/3/10
If my women friends lived in Malaysia, and we happened to be Muslim, we’d – with a few exceptions – be badly battered and bruised. Our bodies would be red raw from constant thrashing. I wonder if we’d wear those lashing marks with pride. Or would the pain and humiliation of official caning eventually break our spirit, and reduce us to a pitiful submission? The humiliation certainly got to 32-year-old Kartika Shukarno. Last year when the former model and mother of two was sentenced to a flogging for the crime of drinking a beer in a nightclub, she asked them to get on with it. As the judge in the Syariah High Court read out her sentence – six strokes of the rotan and a three-year jail term or hefty fine – he explained that the caning would make the accused ”repent and serves as a lesson to Muslims”. Kartika bowed her head, kept calm, and after withdrawing her appeal said, ”I will accept this earthly punishment, let Allah decide my punishment in the hereafter”.
(more…)
Tags: Malaysia, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
19/2/10
Human rights groups have condemned the caning of three Muslim women for having extramarital sex, the first time the punishment has been carried out in Malaysia. The women were caned on February 9 after being convicted in an Islamic sharia court of sex outside of marriage. Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein announced the punishment on Wednesday. Amnesty International yesterday urged an end to caning. “The Malaysian government needs to abolish this cruel and degrading punishment,” said deputy Asia-Pacific director Donna Guest. Sisters in Islam, a local group of Muslim women activists, said the punishment constituted discrimination against Muslim women, since civil law — which applies to non-Muslims – bans the caning of women.
(more…)
Tags: Malaysia, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Gender & Marriage, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Richard Lloyd Parry; 22/1/10
It seemed to come out of nowhere, it ran its course within a fortnight and the damage inflicted was mild compared with religious conflicts in other parts of the world. But this month’s attacks on churches in Malaysia, which petered out last week leaving one gutted by fire and nine others vandalised, is a sinister development, a portent of great changes afoot in what used to be one of Southeast Asia’s most stable and peaceful democracies. The attacks were provoked by a simmering and, to many outsiders, absurd controversy about the use of the word Allah. Below that, they suggest deep and long-running tensions in a country that has successfully bottled them up for 40 years. The row over whether Christians should have the right to use the word Allah to refer to their god in Malaysian-language bibles and liturgy is just the latest in a series of manifestations of a rising current of conservative Islam.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Malaysia, Religion
Posted in Asia, Christianity, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Saturday, January 9th, 2010
9/1/10
Four Christian churches in Malaysia have been attacked amid tensions over the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims in the country. Attackers threw a molotov cocktail which failed to ignite at a church in the state of Selangor on Friday afternoon, media reports said. The incident comes hours after a petrol bomb was thrown at a church in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, as well as attackers trying to set another two ablaze in a nearby suburb. Police also recieved reports of cars displaying Christian symbols having their windscreens smashed in the suburb of Bangsar.
(more…)
Tags: Human Rights, Malaysia, Religion
Posted in Asia, Christianity, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
2/1/10
A Malaysian court has overturned a government ban on non-Muslim publications using the word “Allah”. Ruling on a lawsuit filed by a Malaysian Roman Catholic church publication, the Kuala Lumpur High Court said on Thursday that the home ministry’s ban on the use of the word “Allah” was “illegal, null and void”. Judge Lau Bee Lan said the term was not exclusive to Islam, adding that all Malaysians had the right to use the word under the constitution which guarantees freedom of expression and religion. The Herald had filed for a judicial review after it was temporarily ordered to stop publishing in 2007 for using the word “Allah”.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Malaysia, Religion
Posted in Asia, Christianity, Religion | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Sally Neighbour; 24/11/09; (3 Items)
Asylum-seekers are arriving in Australia by air in numbers that dwarf boat arrivals, after paying people-smugglers up to $US40,000, for a package that includes airfares, false passports and forged Australian visas. The racket has been revealed by a Sri Lankan refugee who was granted a protection visa after arriving in Australia in April on false travel documents supplied by a professional people-smuggler in Malaysia. Figures from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship show the number of asylum-seekers who arrive by plane dwarfs the numbers who arrive by boat. A DIAC spokesman said that, in 2008-09, 206 people were granted protection visas after arriving in Australia by boat, while 2172 received protection after arriving by plane.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Malaysia, Migrants & Refugees, Sri Lanka
Posted in Asia, Australia, Refugee & Migrant, Sri Lanka | No Comments »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Paige Taylor; 16/11/09;(2 Items)
The Rudd government chartered a 100-seat jet to Sri Lanka at the weekend to forcibly remove six asylum-seekers who staged a dramatic eight-hour protest inside the Christmas Islands immigration detention centre last month. The six Sinhalese fishermen became the first asylum-seekers to be isolated inside the centre’s controversial “red block”, built by the Howard government, with small metal cells to detain violent or unstable detainees. They were among 50 Sri Lankans who had been trying to reach New Zealand when their boat hit a reef in Torres Strait on March 28. So far, only 12 have been found to be refugees and granted visas. Another 29 have gone home voluntarily on commercial flights from Perth, one is in detention in Perth in preparation for returning voluntarily on a commercial flight and the remaining two are in detention on Christmas Island while their claims are resolved.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Malaysia, Migrants & Refugees, Sri Lanka
Posted in Asia, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Refugee & Migrant, Sri Lanka | No Comments »
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Tim Vollmer; 17/10/09
Under the cover of darkness, the Abdula family grabbed their four young children, including a newborn baby, and set off on an arduous four-month trek halfway across the globe in a desperate bid for freedom. Despite paying $US12,000 to smugglers who provided the fake identities, safe houses, boats and know-how to evade military checkpoints, the family were detained four times, each time requiring a daring escape or bribes to gain the assistance of corrupt Indonesian police. Armed with their life savings, Kurdish couple Dilshad and Adiba Abdula fled from Saddam Hussein’s violent Iraqi regime, which had been targeting its Kurd population since the late-1960s, on December 2, 2000, fearing for their lives at the hands of the secret police.”It was not safe in Kirkuk [historically regarded as the Kurdish capital] … in the middle of the night Saddam’s police break down the door,” Dilshad explains.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Migrants & Refugees
Posted in Aid / Trade, Asia, Australia, Human Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
30/9/09
A Malaysian Islamic court has upheld the caning sentence for a Muslim woman convicted of drinking beer at a hotel, local media reports have said. If the punishment is carried out, Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a 32-year-old mother of two, will become the first Muslim woman to be caned in the country. She had originally been due to be caned late last month, but at the last minute the sentence was put on hold during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.At the time the government asked the Sharia High Court Appeals Panel in Kuantan, the capital of the eastern state of Pahang, to review the verdict.
(more…)
Tags: Drugs, Malaysia, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Drugs, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
Kuala Lumpur; 26/8/09
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has urged a Muslim model who faces being caned for drinking beer to appeal against the sentence and not be so willing to accept her fate. Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, won a reprieve when religious officials who took her into custody ahead of the caning abruptly released her on Monday and delayed the punishment until after the fasting month of Ramadan. She was sentenced by a religious court last month to six strokes. If the punishment is carried out, she would be the first woman to face caning under Islamic law in Malaysia, a moderate Muslim-majority country.
(more…)
Tags: Drugs, Malaysia, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Drugs, Human Rights, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
25/8/09
Malaysian authorities yesterday abruptly postponed the caning of a model for drinking beer until after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, but insisted the punishment would not be scrapped despite criticism it was too harsh. Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a Muslim and 32-year-old mother of two, had been in a van en route to a women’s prison for the caning when Islamic officials who took her into custody drove her back home and released her. Mohamad Sahfri Abdul Aziz, a state legislator in charge of religious affairs, later said the Attorney-General’s office had advised that the caning should be delayed for compassionate reasons until after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began on Saturday. “The sentence is not being cancelled,” he said. Shukarno was officially released from custody, but she refused to get out of the van. “I am speechless but I’m not getting out of the vehicle; I want to know what my status is. I want a black-and-white statement from them,” she said.
(more…)
Tags: Drugs, Malaysia, Womens Rights
Posted in Asia, Drugs, Human Rights, Womens Rights | 1 Comment »
