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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

[ALOCHONA] In India the granaries are full but the poor are hungry



In India the granaries are full but the poor are hungry

Bureaucracy and corruption in India's distribution system mean that subsidised stocks of grain have been left to rot instead of reaching families suffering from malnutrition

India food prices 
A wholesale shop displays cereals and pulses in gunny bags at the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Yard in Bangalore, India. Photograph: Manjunath Kiran/EPA

India's grain warehouses are bursting at the seams and sacks of rice and wheat lie rotting in the open for lack of storage space. These government-managed stocks are for offsetting a fall in agricultural production in the event of drought or floods, but are also meant for sale to the poorest segment of the population at subsidised prices.

But because the public distribution system (PDS) is undermined by bureaucracy and corruption, 60m tonnes of grain is lying in warehouses or under plastic sheeting, and, according to the Hindustan Times, 11m tonnes of it has been destroyed by the monsoons.

A committee of experts appointed by the supreme court has claimed that this is nothing short of "genocide", and last month the court ordered the free distribution of the grain to the poor rather than have it eaten by rats.

Since the 1970s green revolution, agricultural production has continued to rise, but not to benefit the hungry. Half of India's children aged under five suffer from malnutrition, and the rate remained stable between 1999 and 2006 despite the economic growth in those years. India is the world's 11th largest economic power but still has more people in poverty than sub-Saharan Africa, even though it has not suffered from civil wars and political crises. TV images of a nation of empty stomachs and overflowing granaries have generated considerable anger.

In his column in the Mint, the economist Himanshu asked: "Why did the government not offload the stocks last year when most of the country was suffering from drought, and the food price inflation was close to 20%? And what was the need to procure more grain when stocks were rotting in its godowns?"

The problems of stock management and warehousing are exacerbated by the inefficiency and corruption of the PDS . According to a 2008 report by the National Advisory Council, some government "fair price" shops only open two or three days a month, and very few Indians can afford to buy their entire 25-30 kg monthly ration in one go, on wages that barely allow them to survive from day-to-day.

The report stated that many of the most vulnerable people were not benefiting from the government food programme or were not getting enough out of it. Indeed, the rich benefit more from it than the poor. Forged ration cards can be bought from corrupt officials. A 2005 audit by the National Advisory Council found that only 42% of the subsidised grain was reaching those who were suffering from malnutrition. Families living below the poverty line often hand over their ration cards to moneylenders as collateral for loans when they have to pay for a child's wedding – or to pay back other debts.

The yellow "BPL" ration cards distributed to families below the poverty line are the most sought after, since they allow holders to re-sell the rice they obtain at the subsidised price of just 5-6 cents a kilo.

With corruption and management costs taking up between 40% and 70% of the PDS's annual budget, how can the system be changed? After introducing the right to information, and the right to education, the Indian government is preparing a new law that will guarantee every citizen the right to food.

In 1971 Indira Gandhi was elected on her slogan "eradicate poverty". Now 38 years later, her daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi, won the election to head the Congress party on a similar promise, that of "shared growth". For in the intervening years India has grown richer but still has 651 million poor people, according to the Asian Development Bank.

The Right to Food movement is currently campaigning for a universal distribution system, rather than a targeted one, because the "poverty accounting" criteria in India are very controversial and the lists are frequently manipulated – and therefore unreliable.

According to a poll carried out in 2005 and 2006, only 56% of BPL households were actually registered as such by the government. And any household can be thrown into poverty from one day to the next by natural disaster, or the death or illness of a family member.

"A universal public distribution system would be a life-saver for the hungry, while for the others it would be a form of financial support and social security," explained Jean Drèze, an economist and member of the Right to Food movement. But he estimates the cost of the reform to be more than $21.8 billion. Is the country prepared to devote 1.5% of its GDP for the fight against hunger? The answer will lie in the government's Right to Food Act, which should be revealed before the end of the year.
 


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[ALOCHONA] The "Kings of Devon" - a Bangali American movie... [1 Attachment]

<*>[Attachment(s) from Kumar Islam included below]

The first Bangali-American film of its kind, "Kings of Devon", is premiering in
Big Cinemas Theaters in Chicago, IL; San Jose, CA; Edison, NJ and the Fun Plex
theater in Houston, TX. The film is releasing on September 17th at 8:30pm (See
us.bigcinemas.com for local weekend showtimes). Please come out and support -
it's a great film and all proceeds go to a school for underprivileged children
in Bangladesh!

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/sadhanapictures

Synopsis:
In 1982, Devon Avenue in Chicago was an area ruled by Bengalies. Arif Choudhury
comes to work for BD-Chicago on the request of his uncle but gets caught in the
middle of the organization's bitter rivalry Apon Desh. Accused of murder and on
the run from authorities, Arif befriends Johnny-who pledges to help Arif and get
revenge on Sikander Saab. Did Arif commit murder or is he being framed? Will
they get revenge on Sikander Saab? Who will climb the mountain and become the
King of Devon…?

Sadhana Pictures:
Sadhana Pictures is an organization that brings high quality, entertaining
cinema to our growing international audience. Our first feature film production,
Kings of Devon, is a not-for-profit venture seeking to raise funds for the

Shishu Bikash Kendra school in order to provide free food and education to
underprivileged children from the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

Sadhana Pictures is raising funds to initiate the Shishu Bikash Kendra
self-sustainability project. This one time fundraising effort is being held in
order to invest $14,000 in a Fixed Deposit, from which the school will be able
to finance its year to year operations based on the interest earned on the
deposit. Thereby, the school will no longer be reliant on the donations of
generous people. Further, Sadhana Pictures is forming a New Generation
Leadership Program in association with Shishu Bikash Kendra in order to get
Bangladeshi youth involved in volunteer opportunities and developing their
leadership skills to create a better tomorrow for Bangladesh.
 
Channel I (Bangladesh) is the official media partner of Kings of Devon and
Sadhana Pictures. Major sponsors include Signature by Runa Laila, Edward Leonard
of AXAAdvisors and Bella Lounge.

For more information, please see our website at
www.sadhanapictures.com
http://www.facebook.com/KingsOfDevon

Theater Information:
us.bigcinemas.com
Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 - Niles,IL
9180 West Golf Road, Niles, Illinios, IL-60714
(847) 299-2402

Big Cinemas New Jersey:
1655 Oak tree Road,, Edison, New Jersey, NJ-08820
(732) 548-2300

Big Cinemas Towne 3 - San Jose, CA
1433 The Alameda,, San Jose, California, CA-95126
(408) 293-5034

The New Fun Plex - Houston, TX: 
13700 Beechnut St
Houston, TX 77083
281-530-7777
http://www.funplex.org/
 
 
The following are some articles about the movie:
1)  Washington Bangla Radio:
 http://www.washingtonbanglaradio.com/content/81004310-kings-devon-2010-bangla-movie-bengalis-lay-claim-their-power-devon


2)  Technorati:
http://technorati.com/entertainment/film/article/kings-of-devonmaiden-venture-of-a1/


3)  The Bollywood Ticket: 
http://www.thebollywoodticket.com/news10/chicagofilmcompanytoreleasekingsofdevon829.html


Rahsaan Islam, my nephew – a second generation Bangali-American and founder of 
Sadhana Pictures, is the produce, director, script writer and the insperation
behind the movie that was filmed entirely in Chicago. Please spread the word and
support.
 
Best Regards,
 
____________
Kumar Islam
Chicago, IL.


<*>Attachment(s) from Kumar Islam:


<*> 1 of 1 File(s) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/attachments/folder/731326432/item/list
<*> kingsofdevonposter1.jpg

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[ALOCHONA] Wholesale pardon under question



Wholesale pardon under question
 

Sohag holding a table fan and Formajul with a TV antenna come out of Rajshahi Jail yesterday. They are among death row inmates of Jubo Dal leader Gama killing case pardoned by the president. They brought along the antenna and table fan when they went to jail.
 
The law ministry had recommended President Zillur Rahman to grant clemency to the 20 death row inmates convicted in the Gama killing case. Fourteen of the 20 convicts were released from Dhaka and Rajshahi central jails early yesterday. Six were not released as they have other charges against them, said jail officials.

The ministry made the recommendation after scrutinising the court's verdict, evidence and documents. It also considered the convicts' age and financial condition of their families, Law Minister Shafique Ahmed told The Daily Star."We have only given our opinion to the president that he can grant mercy if he desired," he said.
 
http://amardeshonline.com/pages/details/2010/09/08/43236 

Home Secretary Abdus Sobhan Sikder said according to Article-49 of the constitution, the president has absolute power to grant mercy to any convict.The article said, "The president shall have power to grant pardons, reprieves and respites and to remit, suspend or commute and sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority."

This presidential clemency, however, generated mixed reaction among eminent jurists and rights activists.Some of them demanded disclosure of the grounds under which the 20 were granted clemency since the matter was sensitive and unusual.

Some of them had also expressed astonishment at the fact that 21 people were condemned for the killing of just one person, Jubo Dal leader Sabbir Ahmed Gama in 2004. Gama was the nephew of former BNP deputy minister Ruhul Quddus Talukdar Dulu.

The president granted mercy to 20 convicts out of the 21 in the case. The home secretary said the president did not grant mercy to one since he is still running from the law.

When asked whether they found the 20 people innocent, the law minister said it was not a question of innocence or guilt it was a question of mercy, which the president can grant as per his constitutional power.

"The law ministry has not made the opinion on any political consideration. We have only placed our opinion to the president that he has absolute constitutional power to give clemency to convicts. The president could have refused to grant the mercy if he had wished," Shafique said.

Ruhul Quddus Talukdar Dulu, however, told The Daily Star that the clemency was given considering political affiliation of the convicts. Shafique said the law ministry made the recommendations to the president as per requirements of the Ministry of Home Affairs.Replying to a question, he said there are many precedents of presidents granting death row inmates mercy.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said the president has the right to do so. The attorney general, however, refused to comment further saying he does not have the related documents.

Renowned criminal law expert Anisul Huq said, "The president has absolute and exclusive constitutional power and discretion to grant mercy to any convict and he can do it." He, however, could not recall whether any president had ever granted 20 convicts mercy at one go.

Eminent jurist Shahdeen Malik said, "Apparently both the verdict and the presidential clemency seemed very unusual."
"This has inevitably led the perception of misuse or abuse of the presidential power to pardon," he said, adding, "This does not augur well for our state or its future."

Former caretaker government adviser and leading human rights activist Sultana Kamal said, "As both the court and the president are the highest places of our expectations, we want and expect true and impartial judgments from them."
 
"As citizens, we expect an explanation from the government about the grounds on which those 20 people were granted presidential clemency," she said.Home Secretary Abdus Sobhan Sikder ruled out the need for any explanation from the government.

Pardoned convicts Naldanga Awami League unit former secretary SM Firoz, his brother school teacher Fazlul Huq Shah, Anisur Rahman Ansar, Sentu, Faisal, Faruq, Rahidul, Shahjahan Ali, Badal Miah and Abdul Jalil were freed from Dhaka Central Jail while Muhammad Bablu, Zahirul Shah, Formajul Islam and Sohag were released from Rajshahi Central Jail early yesterday.

The six who were pardoned but not released are Sajjad Hossain, Abul Hossain, Ataur Rahman alias Mobarak, Ashraf alias Rana, Foyjul Haque and Fakar Uddin alias Potu Master.

A Speedy Trial Tribunal in 2006 awarded the 21, most of them Awami League adherents, capital punishment for gunning down Gama in Natore.Of them 20 were granted presidential pardon Thursday and one condemned, Akhbar Ali, still remains absconding.However, Asaduzzaman, son of released Anisur Rahman Ansar, claimed that the then deputy minister Dulu had influenced the trial process.

He said 13 members of his family were accused of murder even though they had left Natore a year before the incident. He said they had to leave Natore following oppression by local BNP men after the 2001 election. Dulu, however, refuted the allegations.

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=154123
 
 


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[ALOCHONA] Worth a read: The season for remembering by Syed Badrul Ahsan



Counterpoint

The season for remembering

Syed Badrul Ahsan

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Daily Star

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=154040

 

The decade-long rule of Mohammad Ayub Khan in Pakistan went a long way in giving bureaucrats a place in the power structure they did not deserve. The objective was a sidelining of the political classes. And what better way than a bonding between Pakistan's military and its bureaucracy, both deriving pleasure from being remnants of the system the British colonial power left behind in 1947?

 

In a third world country, especially one where democracy is a tenuous and tentative affair, a meeting of minds on the part of the military and the civil administration successfully keeps society beholden to the combine. Into the combine sometimes come elements from other areas of society. The result is an insistent drilling of falsehood into the minds of the people. In the end, it all turns toxic when an entire nation, tired and angry and exasperated, takes to the streets to run the combine out of town. Think here of Pakistan and then of Bangladesh, of their military-bureaucratic complexes . . . and much else besides.

 

Ayub Khan had Altaf Gauhar to assist him in manipulating the affairs of state. And then there were all the others. Manzur Qadir was a good lawyer who saw nothing wrong in cosying up to the military regime. Yes, of course, Z.A. Bhutto remains a classic example of how illegal governments are propped up by their civilian cohorts. But Bhutto was not the only one at fault. Mohammad Shoaib remained happy being Ayub's finance minister.

 

In S.M. Zafar, the dictator found a law minister happy to defend everything that was lawless about the regime's workings. And do not forget Altaf Hussain, the Bengali editor of Dawn who cheerfully turned his back on journalism to be the self-styled field marshal's minister for industries. Khwaja Shahabuddin, obsessed with Pakistani "ideology" decreed a ban on the "Hindu" Rabindranath Tagore.

 

Observe now the re-branding of the Ayub story in Bangladesh. In a country where no one honestly expected bandit regimes to take over, dictators have arisen to give us some bad times. It was not just politicians who helped General Ziaur Rahman in prolonging his hold on power. There were others, men who clearly were successors of the generation that in the 1960s was in thrall to Ayub Khan in Pakistan. Some even belonged to that generation.

 

Shafiul Azam, once close to Monem Khan, was brought back into the scene by Zia. Ayub's former minister Kazi Anwarul Haq too came back, this time as a minister in a purely Bengali military dispensation. Add to the list of Zia enthusiasts the respected academic Abul Fazl. It is heart-breaking when such men do not see the evil in unconstitutional regimes.

 

Abul Fazl was not the only scholar to link up with Zia. There was Professor Shamsul Haq, a former vice chancellor of Dhaka University who took upon himself the job of foreign minister in the military regime.

 

Ziaur Rahman poached Professor Yusuf Ali, he who read out the Proclamation of Independence at Mujibnagar in April 1971, from the Awami League. Ali never explained why he had turned his back on Bangladesh's secular legacy, in much the same way that Justice Munir could never explain to Pakistanis what good he saw in being with Ayub Khan.

 

In the non-freedom fighter Awami Leaguer Zahiruddin, Zia spotted Bangladesh's first ambassador to Pakistan. Off went the man to Islamabad.

 

Yahya Khan was not far behind Ayub Khan in coming by civilian support for his regime. A.R. Cornelius, a former chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, was a strong underpinning of his regime. In the times of Hussein Muhammad Ershad in Bangladesh, there was Justice Ahsanuddin Chowdhury.

 

If Pakistan's second military ruler had G.W. Chowdhury, Shah Azizur Rahman, Mahmud Ali, Nurul Amin, Raja Tridiv Roy, N.M. Uquaili and Roedad Khan for company, Ershad celebrated himself in a court that included the likes of A.S.M. Abdur Rab, A.R. Yusuf and Sardar Amjad Hossain and others.

 

There is always the past to remember. There is forever a necessity to learn from the mistakes of men. Shah Azizur Rahman, Mahmud Ali and Syed Sajjad Hussain made the mistake of defending the Yahya Khan junta abroad even as Pakistan's soldiers murdered Bengalis in occupied Bangladesh. And then Mohiuddin Ahmed and Abdul Malek Ukil, men once close to Bangabandhu, did not see the contradiction in themselves as they offered a defence of Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed in Moscow and London in post-August 1975.

 

The properly Pakistani diplomat Iqbal Athar repudiated his country to embrace the Bangladesh cause in 1971. Tragically, quite a number of Bengali diplomats in the service of Pakistan would have nothing to do with a "secessionist" Bangladesh, until the Bhutto government would turn them out.

 

And yet there have been the brave men, the uncompromising souls. Justice S.M. Murshed and Justice M.R. Kayani gave Ayub Khan short shrift. Justice Abdur Rahman Chowdhury, Justice Syed Mohammad Hussain and Justice K.M. Sobhan refused to be intimidated by H.M. Ershad.

 

It is the season for remembering.

 

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk




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[ALOCHONA] Honor/Izzat: The crimewave that shames the world By Robert Fisk

The crimewave that shames the world
By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/the-crimewave-that-shames-the-world-2072201.html

It's one of the last great taboos: the murder of at least 20,000 women a year in the name of 'honour'. Nor is the problem confined to the Middle East: the contagion is spreading rapidly

It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders – of the women beheaded, burned to death, stoned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the "honour" of their families – are as barbaric as they are shameful. Many women's groups in the Middle East and South-west Asia suspect the victims are at least four times the United Nations' latest world figure of around 5,000 deaths a year. Most of the victims are young, many are teenagers, slaughtered under a vile tradition that goes back hundreds of years but which now spans half the globe.

A 10-month investigation by The Independent in Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank has unearthed terrifying details of murder most foul. Men are also killed for "honour" and, despite its identification by journalists as a largely Muslim practice, Christian and Hindu communities have stooped to the same crimes. Indeed, the "honour" (or ird) of families, communities and tribes transcends religion and human mercy. But voluntary women's groups, human rights organisations, Amnesty International and news archives suggest that the slaughter of the innocent for "dishonouring" their families is increasing by the year.

Iraqi Kurds, Palestinians in Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey appear to be the worst offenders but media freedoms in these countries may over-compensate for the secrecy which surrounds "honour" killings in Egypt – which untruthfully claims there are none – and other Middle East nations in the Gulf and the Levant. But honour crimes long ago spread to Britain, Belgium, Russia and Canada and many other nations. Security authorities and courts across much of the Middle East have connived in reducing or abrogating prison sentences for the family murder of women, often classifying them as suicides to prevent prosecutions.

It is difficult to remain unemotional at the vast and detailed catalogue of these crimes. How should one react to a man – this has happened in both Jordan and Egypt – who rapes his own daughter and then, when she becomes pregnant, kills her to save the "honour" of his family? Or the Turkish father and grandfather of a 16-year-old girl, Medine Mehmi, in the province of Adiyaman, who was buried alive beneath a chicken coop in February for "befriending boys"? Her body was found 40 days later, in a sitting position and with her hands tied.

Or Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, 13, who in Somalia in 2008, in front of a thousand people, was dragged to a hole in the ground – all the while screaming, "I'm not going – don't kill me" – then buried up to her neck and stoned by 50 men for adultery? After 10 minutes, she was dug up, found to be still alive and put back in the hole for further stoning. Her crime? She had been raped by three men and, fatally, her family decided to report the facts to the Al-Shabab militia that runs Kismayo. Or the Al-Shabab Islamic "judge" in the same country who announced the 2009 stoning to death of a woman – the second of its kind the same year – for having an affair? Her boyfriend received a mere 100 lashes.

Or the young woman found in a drainage ditch near Daharki in Pakistan, "honour" killed by her family as she gave birth to her second child, her nose, ears and lips chopped off before being axed to death, her first infant lying dead among her clothes, her newborn's torso still in her womb, its head already emerging from her body? She was badly decomposed; the local police were asked to bury her. Women carried the three to a grave, but a Muslim cleric refused to say prayers for her because it was "irreligious" to participate in the namaz-e-janaza prayers for "a cursed woman and her illegitimate children".

So terrible are the details of these "honour" killings, and so many are the women who have been slaughtered, that the story of each one might turn horror into banality. But lest these acts – and the names of the victims, when we are able to discover them – be forgotten, here are the sufferings of a mere handful of women over the past decade, selected at random, country by country, crime after crime.

Last March, Munawar Gul shot and killed his 20-year-old sister, Saanga, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, along with the man he suspected was having "illicit relations" with her, Aslam Khan.

In August of 2008, five women were buried alive for "honour crimes" in Baluchistan by armed tribesmen; three of them – Hameeda, Raheema and Fauzia – were teenagers who, after being beaten and shot, were thrown still alive into a ditch where they were covered with stones and earth. When the two older women, aged 45 and 38, protested, they suffered the same fate. The three younger women had tried to choose their own husbands. In the Pakistani parliament, the MP Israrullah Zehri referred to the murders as part of a "centuries-old tradition" which he would "continue to defend".

In December 2003, a 23-year-old woman in Multan, identified only as Afsheen, was murdered by her father because, after an unhappy arranged marriage, she ran off with a man called Hassan who was from a rival, feuding tribe. Her family was educated – they included civil servants, engineers and lawyers. "I gave her sleeping pills in a cup of tea and then strangled her with a dapatta [a long scarf, part of a woman's traditional dress]," her father confessed. He told the police: "Honour is the only thing a man has. I can still hear her screams, she was my favourite daughter. I want to destroy my hands and end my life." The family had found Afsheen with Hassan in Rawalpindi and promised she would not be harmed if she returned home. They were lying.

Zakir Hussain Shah slit the throat of his daughter Sabiha, 18, at Bara Kau in June 2002 because she had "dishonoured" her family. But under Pakistan's notorious qisas law, heirs have powers to pardon a murderer. In this case, Sabiha's mother and brother "pardoned" the father and he was freed. When a man killed his four sisters in Mardan in the same year, because they wanted a share of his inheritance, his mother "pardoned" him under the same law. In Sarghoda around the same time, a man opened fire on female members of his family, killing two of his daughters. Yet again, his wife – and several other daughters wounded by him – "pardoned" the murderer because they were his heirs.

Outrageously, rape is also used as a punishment for "honour" crimes. In Meerwala village in the Punjab in 2002, a tribal "jury" claimed that an 11-year-old boy from the Gujar tribe, Abdul Shakoor, had been walking unchaperoned with a 30-year-old woman from the Mastoi tribe, which "dishonoured" the Mastois. The tribal elders decided that to "return" honour to the group, the boy's 18-year-old sister, Mukhtaran Bibi, should be gang-raped. Her father, warned that all the female members of his family would be raped if he did not bring Mukhtar to them, dutifully brought his daughter to this unholy "jury". Four men, including one of the "jury", immediately dragged the girl to a hut and raped her while up to a hundred men laughed and cheered outside. She was then forced to walk naked through the village to her home. It took a week before the police even registered the crime – as a "complaint".

Acid attacks also play their part in "honour" crime punishments. The Independent itself gave wide coverage in 2001 to a Karachi man called Bilal Khar who poured acid over his wife Fakhra Yunus's face after she left him and returned to her mother's home in the red-light area of the city. The acid fused her lips, burned off her hair, melted her breasts and an ear, and turned her face into "a look of melted rubber". That same year, a 20-year-old woman called Hafiza was shot twice by her brother, Asadullah, in front of a dozen policemen outside a Quetta courthouse because she had refused to follow the tradition of marrying her dead husband's elder brother. She had then married another man, Fayyaz Moon, but police arrested the girl and brought her back to her family in Quetta on the pretext that the couple could formally marry there. But she was forced to make a claim that Fayaz had kidnapped and raped her. It was when she went to court to announce that her statement was made under pressure – and that she still regarded Fayaz as her husband – that Asadullah murdered her. He handed his pistol to a police constable who had witnessed the killing.

One of the most terrible murders in 1999 was that of a mentally retarded 16-year-old, Lal Jamilla Mandokhel, who was reportedly raped by a junior civil servant in Parachinar in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Her uncle filed a complaint with the police but handed Lal over to her tribe, whose elders decided she should be killed to preserve tribal "honour". She was shot dead in front of them. Arbab Khatoon was raped by three men in the Jacobabad district. She filed a complaint with the police. Seven hours later, she was murdered by relatives who claimed she had "dishonoured" them by reporting the crime.

Over 10 years ago, Pakistan's Human Rights Commission was recording "honour" killings at the rate of a thousand a year. But if Pakistan seems to have the worst track record of "honour" crimes – and we must remember that many countries falsely claim to have none – Turkey might run a close second. According to police figures between 2000 and 2006, a reported 480 women – 20 per cent of them between the ages of 19 and 25 – were killed in "honour" crimes and feuds. Other Turkish statistics, drawn up more than five years ago by women's groups, suggest that at least 200 girls and women are murdered every year for "honour". These figures are now regarded as a vast underestimate. Many took place in Kurdish areas of the country; an opinion poll found that 37 per cent of Diyabakir's citizens approved of killing a woman for an extramarital affair. Medine Mehmi, the girl who was buried alive, lived in the Kurdish town of Kahta.

In 2006, authorities in the Kurdish area of South-east Anatolia were recording that a woman tried to commit suicide every few weeks on the orders of her family. Others were stoned to death, shot, buried alive or strangled. A 17-year-old woman called Derya who fell in love with a boy at her school received a text message from her uncle on her mobile phone. It read: "You have blackened our name. Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first." Derya's aunt had been killed by her grandfather for an identical reason. Her brothers also sent text messages, sometimes 15 a day. Derya tried to carry out her family's wishes. She jumped into the Tigris river, tried to hang herself and slashed her wrists – all to no avail. Then she ran away to a women's shelter.

It took 13 years before Murat Kara, 40, admitted in 2007 that he had fired seven bullets into his younger sister after his widowed mother and uncles told him to kill her for eloping with her boyfriend. Before he murdered his sister in the Kurdish city of Dyabakir, neighbours had refused to talk to Murat Kara and the imam said he was disobeying the word of God if he did not kill his sister. So he became a murderer. Honour restored.

In his book Women In The Grip Of Tribal Customs, a Turkish journalist, Mehmet Farac, records the "honour" killing of five girls in the late 1990s in the province of Sanliurfa. Two of them – one was only 12 – had their throats slit in public squares, two others had tractors driven over them, the fifth was shot dead by her younger brother. One of the women who had her throat cut was called Sevda Gok. Her brothers held her arms down as her adolescent cousin cut her throat.

But the "honour" killing of women is not a uniquely Kurdish crime, even if it is committed in rural areas of the country. In 2001, Sait Kina stabbed his 13-year-old daughter to death for talking to boys in the street. He attacked her in the bathroom with an axe and a kitchen knife. When the police discovered her corpse, they found the girl's head had been so mutilated that the family had tied it together with a scarf. Sait Kina told the police: "I have fulfilled my duty."

In the same year, an Istanbul court reduced a sentence against three brothers from life imprisonment to between four and 12 years after they threw their sister to her death from a bridge after accusing her of being a prostitute. The court concluded that her behaviour had "provoked" the murder. For centuries, virginity tests have been considered a normal part of rural tradition before a woman's marriage. In 1998, when five young women attempted suicide before these tests, the Turkish family affairs minister defended mandated medical examinations for girls in foster homes.

British Kurdish Iraqi campaigner Aso Kamal, of the Doaa Network Against Violence, believes that between 1991 and 2007, 12,500 women were murdered for reasons of "honour" in the three Kurdish provinces of Iraq alone – 350 of them in the first seven months of 2007, for which there were only five convictions. Many women are ordered by their families to commit suicide by burning themselves with cooking oil. In Sulimaniya hospital in 2007, surgeons were treating many women for critical burns which could never have been caused by cooking "accidents" as the women claimed. One patient, Sirwa Hassan, was dying of 86 per cent burns. She was a Kurdish mother of three from a village near the Iranian border. In 2008, a medical officer in Sulimaniya told the AFP news agency that in May alone, 14 young women had been murdered for "honour" crimes in 10 days. In 2000, Kurdish authorities in Sulimaniya had decreed that "the killing or abuse of women under the pretext of cleansing 'shame' is not considered to be a mitigating excuse". The courts, they said, could not apply an old 1969 law "to reduce the penalty of the perpetrator". The new law, of course, made no difference.

But again, in Iraq, it is not only Kurds who believe in "honour" killings. In Tikrit, a young woman in the local prison sent a letter to her brother in 2008, telling him that she had become pregnant after being raped by a prison guard. The brother was permitted to visit the prison, walked into the cell where his now visibly pregnant sister was held, and shot her dead to spare his family "dishonour". The mortuary in Baghdad took DNA samples from the woman's foetus and also from guards at the Tikrit prison. The rapist was a police lieutenant-colonel. The reason for the woman's imprisonment was unclear. One report said the colonel's family had "paid off" the woman's relatives to escape punishment.

In Basra in 2008, police were reporting that 15 women a month were being murdered for breaching "Islamic dress codes". One 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was beaten to death by her father two years ago because she had become infatuated with a British soldier. Another, Shawbo Ali Rauf, 19, was taken by her family to a picnic in Dokan and shot seven times because they had found an unfamiliar number on her mobile phone.

In Nineveh, Du'a Khalil Aswad was 17 when she was stoned to death by a mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a man outside her tribe.

In Jordan, women's organisations say that per capita, the Christian minority in this country of just over five million people are involved in more "honour" killings than Muslims – often because Christian women want to marry Muslim men. But the Christian community is loath to discuss its crimes and the majority of known cases of murder are committed by Muslims. Their stories are wearily and sickeningly familiar. Here is Sirhan in 1999, boasting of the efficiency with which he killed his young sister, Suzanne. Three days after the 16-year-old had told police she had been raped, Sirhan shot her in the head four times. "She committed a mistake, even if it was against her will," he said. "Anyway, it's better to have one person die than to have the whole family die of shame." Since then, a deeply distressing pageant of "honour" crimes has been revealed to the Jordanian public, condemned by the royal family and slowly countered with ever tougher criminal penalties by the courts.

Yet in 2001, we find a 22-year-old Jordanian man strangling his 17-year-old married sister – the 12th murder of its kind in seven months – because he suspected her of having an affair. Her husband lived in Saudi Arabia. In 2002, Souad Mahmoud strangled his own sister for the same reason. She had been forced to marry her lover – but when the family found out she had been pregnant before her wedding, they decided to execute her.

In 2005, three Jordanians stabbed their 22-year-old married sister to death for taking a lover. After witnessing the man enter her home, the brothers stormed into the house and killed her. They did not harm her lover.

By March 2008, the Jordanian courts were still treating "honour" killings leniently. That month, the Jordanian Criminal Court sentenced two men for killing close female relatives "in a fit of fury" to a mere six months and three months in prison. In the first case, a husband had found a man in his home with his wife and suspected she was having an affair. In the second, a man shot dead his 29-year-old married sister for leaving home without her husband's consent and "talking to other men on her mobile phone". In 2009, a Jordanian man confessed to stabbing his pregnant sister to death because she had moved back to her family after an argument with her husband; the brother believed she was "seeing other men".

And so it goes on. Three men in Amman stabbing their 40-year-old divorced sister 15 times last year for taking a lover; a Jordanian man charged with stabbing to death his daughter, 22, with a sword because she was pregnant outside wedlock. Many of the Jordanian families were originally Palestinian. Nine months ago, a Palestinian stabbed his married sister to death because of her "bad behaviour". But last month, the Amman criminal court sentenced another sister-killer to 10 years in prison, rejecting his claim of an "honour" killing – but only because there were no witnesses to his claim that she had committed adultery.

In "Palestine" itself, Human Rights Watch has long blamed the Palestinian police and justice system for the near-total failure to protect women in Gaza and the West Bank from "honour" killings. Take, for example, the 17-year-old girl who was strangled by her older brother in 2005 for becoming pregnant – by her own father.

He was present during her murder. She had earlier reported her father to the police. They neither arrested nor interrogated him. In the same year, masked Hamas gunmen shot dead a 20-year-old, Yusra Azzami, for "immoral behaviour" as she spent a day out with her fiancée. Azzami was a Hamas member, her husband-to-be a member of Fatah. Hamas tried to apologise and called the dead woman a "martyr" – to the outrage of her family. Yet only last year, long after Hamas won the Palestinian elections and took over the Gaza Strip, a Gaza man was detained for bludgeoning his daughter to death with an iron chain because he discovered she owned a mobile phone on which he feared she was talking to a man outside the family. He was later released.

Even in liberal Lebanon, there are occasional "honour" killings, the most notorious that of a 31-year-old woman, Mona Kaham, whose father entered her bedroom and cut her throat after learning she had been made pregnant by her cousin. He walked to the police station in Roueiss in the southern suburbs of Beirut with the knife still in his hand. "My conscience is clear," he told the police. "I have killed to clean my honour." Unsurprisingly, a public opinion poll showed that 90.7 per cent of the Lebanese public opposed "honour" crimes. Of the few who approved of them, several believed that it helped to limit interreligious marriage.

Syria reflects the pattern of Lebanon. While civil rights groups are demanding a stiffening of the laws against women-killers, government legislation only raised the term of imprisonment for men who kill female relatives for extramarital sex to two years. Among the most recent cases was that of Lubna, a 17-year-old living in Homs, murdered by her family because she fled to her sister's house after refusing to marry a man they had chosen for her. They also believed – wrongly – that she was no longer a virgin.

Tribal feuds often provoke "honour" killings in Iran and Afghanistan. In Iran, for example, a governor's official in the ethnic Arab province of Khuzestan stated in 2003 that 45 young women under the age of 20 had been murdered in "honour" killings in just two months, none of which brought convictions. All were slaughtered because of the girl's refusal to agree to an arranged marriage, failing to abide by Islamic dress code or suspected of having contacts with men outside the family.

Through the dark veil of Afghanistan's village punishments, we glimpse just occasionally the terror of teenage executions. When Siddiqa, who was only 19, and her 25-year-old fiancé Khayyam were brought before a Taliban-approved religious court in Kunduz province this month, their last words were: "We love each other, no matter what happens." In the bazaar at Mulla Quli, a crowd – including members of both families – stoned to death first Siddiqa, then Khayyam.

A week earlier, a woman identified as Bibi Sanubar, a pregnant widow, was lashed a hundred times and then shot in the head by a Taliban commander. In April of last year, Taliban gunmen executed by firing squad a man and a girl in Nimruz for eloping when the young woman was already engaged to someone else. History may never disclose how many hundreds of women – and men – have suffered a similar fates at the hands of deeply traditional village families or the Taliban.

But the contagion of "honour" crimes has spread across the globe, including acid attacks on women in Bangladesh for refusing marriages. In one of the most terrible Hindu "honour" killings in India this year, an engaged couple, Yogesh Kumar and Asha Saini, were murdered by the 19-year-old bride-to-be's family because her fiancée was of lower caste. They were apparently tied up and electrocuted to death.

A similar fate awaited 18-year-old Vishal Sharma, a Hindu Brahmin, who wanted to marry Sonu Singh, a 17- year-old Jat – an "inferior" caste which is usually Muslim. The couple were hanged and their bodies burned in Uttar Pradesh. Three years earlier, a New Delhi court had sentenced to death five men for killing another couple who were of the same sub-caste, which in the eyes of the local "caste council" made them brother and sister.

In Chechnya, Russia's chosen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been positively encouraging men to kill for "honour". When seven murdered women were found in Grozny, shot in the head and chest, Kadyrov announced – without any proof, but with obvious approval – that they had been killed for living "an immoral life". Commenting on a report that a Chechen girl had called the police to complain of her abusive father, he suggested the man should be able to murder his daughter. "... if he doesn't kill her, what kind of man is he? He brings shame on himself!"

And so to the "West", as we like to call it, where immigrant families have sometimes brought amid their baggage the cruel traditions of their home villages: an Azeri immigrant charged in St Petersburg for hiring hitmen to kill his daughter because she "flouted national tradition" by wearing a miniskirt; near the Belgian city of Charleroi, Sadia Sheikh shot dead by her brother, Moussafa, because she refused to marry a Pakistani man chosen by her family; in the suburbs of Toronto, Kamikar Kaur Dhillon slashes his Punjabi daughter-in-law, Amandeep, across the throat because she wants to leave her arranged marriage, perhaps for another man. He told Canadian police that her separation would "disgrace the family name".

And, of course, we should perhaps end this catalogue of crime in Britain, where only in the past few years have we ourselves woken to the reality of "honour" crimes; of Surjit Athwal, a Punjabi Sikh woman murdered on the orders of her London-based mother-in-law for trying to escape a violent marriage; of 15-year-old Tulay Goren, a Turkish Kurd from north London, tortured and murdered by her Shia Muslim father because she wished to marry a Sunni Muslim man; of Heshu Yones, 16, stabbed to death by her father in 2005 for going out with a Christian boy; of Caneze Riaz, burned alive by her husband in Accrington, along with their four children – the youngest 10 years old – because of their "Western ways". Mohamed Riaz was a Muslim Pakistani from the North-West Frontier Province. He died of burns two days after the murders.

Scotland Yard long ago admitted it would have to review over a hundred deaths, some going back more than a decade, which now appear to have been "honour" killings.

These are just a few of the murders, a few names, a small selection of horror stories across the world to prove the pervasive, spreading infection of what must be recognised as a mass crime, a tradition of family savagery that brooks no merciful intervention, no state law, rarely any remorse.

Surjit Athwal
Murdered in 1998 by her in-laws on a trip to the Indian Punjab for daring to seek a divorce from an unhappy marriage

Du'a Khalil Aswad
Aged 17, she was stoned to death in Nineveh, Iraq, by a mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a man outside her tribe

Rand Abdel-Qader
The Iraqi 17-year-old was stabbed to death by her father two years ago after falling in love with a British soldier in Basra

Fakhra Khar
In 2001 in Karachi, her husband poured acid on her face, after she left him and returned to her mother's home in the red-light district of the city

Mukhtaran Bibi
The 18-year-old was gang-raped by four men in a hut in the Punjab in 2002, while up to 100 men laughed and cheered outside

Heshu Yones
The 16-year-old was stabbed to death by her Muslim father Abdullah, in west London in 2002, because he disapproved of her Christian boyfriend

Tasleem Solangi
The Pakistani village girl, 17, was falsely accused of immorality and had dogs set on her as a punishment before she was shot dead by in-laws

Shawbo Ali Rauf
Aged 19, she was taken by her family to a picnic in Dokan, Iraq, and shot seven times after they had found an unfamiliar number on her phone

Tulay Goren
The 15-year-old Kurdish girl was killed in north London by her father because the family objected to her choice of husband

Banaz Mahmod Babakir Agha
The 20-year-old's father and uncle murdered her in 2007, after she fell in love with a man her family did not want her to marry

Ayesha Baloch
Accused of having sexual relations with another man before she married, her husband slit her lip and nostril with a knife in Pakistan in 2006

The honour killing files:
One woman's nightmare, and a crime against humanity
By Robert Fisk in Amman
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/one-womans-nightmare-and-a-crime-against-humanity-2072200.html

Forced to marry her own rapist, Hanan now lives in terror of losing her son – and of being murdered by her family. Her case-history introduces a four-day series investigating a global scandal that destroys many thousands of lives every year

Call her Hanan. She sits in front of me, a red scarf tied round her long intelligent face, her wide, bright eyes sparkling as she tells her story, her two-year-old son Omar restless on the chair beside her. To save the "honour" of her family – and to avoid being killed by her youngest brother – she has married her own rapist. To save the "honour" of her family – to stay alive – she is now divorcing her rapist. Omar, drinking orange juice, jumping on his plastic chair, is the rapist's son.

Hanan is the victim of a vast, corrupt system of "honour" crimes that plagues the Middle East, and takes the lives of at least 5,000 women – perhaps four times that number – a year, a vicious patriarchal system of extra-judicial killings in which a chance conversation between an unmarried woman and a stranger, a mere rumour of extra-marital relations – let alone sexual relations – leads to death by throat-cutting, strangulation, beheading or shooting. These executions – usually by members of the women's own family – are almost always committed in secret. They are always brutal. They are a scourge on society. Policemen and judges often connive with the murderers.

Hanan is a Palestinian Sunni Muslim, raped in her own home in Jordan by another Palestinian, but "honour" crimes are neither a uniquely Muslim phenomenon nor a religious tradition. Christians practice the "honour killing" of women. So do Hindus. From south-east Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan to Pakistan and India, in Egypt and Gaza and the West Bank – across an area far wider than the old Ottoman empire – women are shamefully murdered to "cleanse" their families amid the squalor of mountain villages, refugee camps and city slums. "Honour" crimes are the greatest taboo of the region which, through emigration, has spread to Europe and the Americas.

Hanan has been lucky – so far. She tells her story with courage, sitting beside the women who run a shelter in Amman for Jordan's potential "honour" victims. But 31-year-old Hanan is also frightened. Exactly a week after we met, a Jordanian man confessed to killing his 16-year-old niece to save his family's "honour" after she was sexually assaulted – Hanan's own tragedy – by a 17-year-old who took her virginity. The uncle fired 30 machine-gun rounds at his niece at Deir Alla, close to Amman, "to cleanse the family honour", although other members of his family had already married the girl off to a cousin in the hope of concealing the rape.

"My father is blind and I was living with him in a very small house, looking after him when he wasn't selling feather dusters," Hanan says. "The rest of my family – my mother, three brothers and two sisters – live elsewhere. All I did was look after my father. Then one afternoon when my father was at work, I went to take a nap. But I woke up to find a man on top of me. He was a thief who had got in through the roof and I couldn't get him off me. I could do nothing. I screamed and screamed but no one heard me and he raped me. He was a rough-looking man , with the scar of a knife wound on his cheek and tattoos on his arms. I think he was drunk because he smelled of alcohol. He was like a demon.

"I tried to commit suicide the same afternoon, so I wouldn't have to tell my father what had happened. I swallowed a whole pack of pills. Nothing happened – but I slept for two whole days. I wanted to tell my father, but I didn't tell him for another 10 days. When I did, he was very upset and he was crying. He got sick and at one point they were going to take him to hospital. Then he said to me: 'No one knows and no one needs to know, so we can keep it between us. But after a month and a half, I had symptoms like I was pregnant – still, I didn't tell my father this for another two months. I was too shy. But my period didn't come for three months. My father then told me to go to a doctor to have a check-up. He was sad and crying all the time." By the standards of other poor Palestinian families, Hanan's father was a remarkably kind man. Still Hanan's mother and brothers and sisters knew nothing of her plight.

"I discovered I was pregnant when I went to the doctor. Both my father and I were very fearful. Both of us were scared of my brothers and how they would react. I was most scared of the youngest, who is 24, a typical Jordanian guy, easily angered. So we left our place and moved elsewhere in Amman without telling the rest of the family. I tried to do an abortion by drinking anything I could find. I got many medications, but they didn't work. We tried to find someone who would do the abortion but we didn't know anyone. Days were going by – and it was obvious I was pregnant. All the time, of course, the family were trying to find us."

Hanan tried to travel to Egypt with the help a friend of her father's, a Lebanese man who was also blind and who suggested sending the young woman to Lebanon but there was fighting in Beirut. They wanted to obtain a passport for Hanan but the Lebanese man became ill and by then Hanan was six months pregnant. A doctor eventually came to her home and told her of the shelter run by the Jordanian Women's Union. She was immediately brought to the house where other women in fear of their families are cared for by volunteers and lawyers, a special section of the building cordoned off with a locked iron gate for those most in danger.

"I thought I would have the baby and then give it away," Hanan says. "The women helped me even though I wanted to give it away. But deep inside me, I wanted the baby. I couldn't say that to my father because we didn't know the identity of the man who raped me. But I knew this man was from the same neighbourhood and there was a neighbour of ours whose son knew the rapist's name.

"While I was in the shelter, the women tried to convince me to keep the baby. My mind was in conflict with itself. But when I delivered my baby, it was a different day to anything else in my life." Here Hanan's eyes lit up, independence amid adversity. "You know, you can say you don't want a baby, but you do. I was crying and scared that someone was going to say they would take the baby. And I was scared to say I wanted to keep my little boy."

Under Jordanian law, a women's shelter must inform the police if a child is born without the presence of the mother's family. When the cops arrived, they were polite but put a policeman on guard outside her door and grilled Hanan until six in the morning. "They made me feel like I was guilty," she says. Hanan told them all she knew about the rapist and about her father, who then told the police of the neighbour's son. When they showed the boy a set of photographs of criminals, he immediately identified the man who had raped Hanan. She recognised him too. The man, who had a long crime record, was already in prison for attempted murder. The police took Omar away to register his birth in a social services office but he was returned to Hanan who then moved to a government home. Yet her problems were far from over.

"The lawyers at the shelter knew of the danger to me and asked if I wanted to get engaged to this man – then I could get married and later divorce him – and tell my family that my 'honour' was intact. I could say I got married, had a child and then legally divorced my husband. The lawyers went to my rapist to arrange our marriage. He was still in prison and denied he had done anything to me. Then he agreed he had taken me – but said it was consensual! But eventually he confessed and signed a paper saying that I could do whatever I wanted with my baby. He also agreed to marry me.

"So a day came when my father and I went to court and we saw the rapist passing us with some policemen. But when we got married, on 20 October 2008, we didn't see each other. At this point I could keep Omar. I stayed in the shelter for a month after we were married. Everything was legal. So I went back to my father's place and we had a normal life. I kept visiting the Women's Union; they were trying to get a birth certificate for the baby and this took a year. The rapist – yes, the man I married – is now out of prison." Hanan has just told her mother and sisters of her ordeal. Her brothers still know nothing.

"I have told them I work in an orphanage, looking after children," Hanan says. "When I go to see the family, I take Omar with me and say he is a boy from the orphanage. They believe he is an orphan who is attached to me, but my brothers keep asking questions. Why is the boy with me all the time? Where is his family? They see him every two weeks or so and keep asking. Later, when I am divorced, I will tell my brothers the whole story. I think they will accept it. I will tell them that the union helped me and that everything is now legal. My mother and my sisters accept it, although they are sad. It was my father's idea that we should tell my brothers after I'm divorced."

Hanan smiles, more in hope than from conviction, I suspect. The women who helped her are also heroines, but they too are still concerned for her. "Without the Women's Union, if these people hadn't helped me, I would be dead – dead financially, dead psychologically and dead physically", Hanan says. "But God didn't want life to be unfair to me. Now the story has ended, thank God."

Hanan plans to tell her brothers – once she is divorced – that her former husband is in prison for raping her, that legal justice has been done, that she was married to him, that she divorced him, that "honour" has been preserved. But the brothers will know, of course, that she was raped before her marriage. Will this satisfy family "honour"? Hanan has fought her first battle – she decided to keep Omar – and now faces a much more serious one. Not that Omar would understand. The two-year-old struggles down from his plastic chair and demands chocolates. But given his mother's painful struggle, what world has he been born into?

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[ALOCHONA] Worth a read - Cordoba Centre - A Dissent by C.M. Naim

Cordoba Centre - A Dissent
C.M. Naim
Outlook
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?266998


Of the several obscenities spread worldwide through the Internet after 9/11 the worst was a claim that all Jews were absent from their offices in the twin towers on that horrific day. "All 4,000 Jews" had stayed away, the rumour alleged, because the "real" planners of the attacks—who else but the CIA and the Mossad—had warned them. The heartless lie was repeated for weeks in the so-called Muslim world—in public speeches, newspaper columns, TV talk shows, and Internet posts. Then, as it became undeniable that actually any number of Jews had died that day—their names and stories became too public to ignore—the Muslim fanatics modified the lie; now it became, "All 4000 Israelis." That obscenity has not disappeared; it caters to such deep psychic needs of some Muslims that it never will in entirety.

Equally obscene and psychically anchored is what we have heard in recent weeks from Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, the Fox Channel foul-mouths, and many more of their ilk. Their rants against the proposed Islamic community centre in lower Manhattan never make any mention of the thirty or so Muslims whose ashes will remain eternally inseparable from the ashes of the Jews and Christians—not to mention the Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists—who died in the 9/11 holocaust. These people are filled with such hatred that they would rather have another massage parlour within two blocks of "Ground Zero" than a place where, arguably, men and women named Shabbir Ahmad, Mohammad Salman Hamdani, Sarah Khan, and Nasima Hameed Simjee could have prayed had their lives been spared. It does not matter to these "patriots" that the WTC victims belonged to any number of nations, or that the largest ethnic group among American Muslims was of African-Americans, whose ancestry in this land goes as far back as the whitest of the flag-wavers. Their real target is not the community centre but the first non-white President of the United States, whose first and second names happen to be Arabic, and thus automatically "Muslim." Little do they know that their crooked thinking replicates the equally distorted habit among Muslim ignoramuses who believe that anything Arabic is automatically also "Islamic."

One cannot reason with racists and fanatics, no matter what religion they belong to.

The only people one might possibly reason with are the proponents of the community centre, but I'm not too sure about it either. They have proposed building a "Cordoba Center," because they consider the Cordoba of old to have been a site of peaceful interfaith creativity. But Cordoba in essence was a site of Arab imperial glory, no different from the Calcutta or Delhi of the British. Somehow I can't imagine a Muslim community centre, celebrating interfaith amity, being named after Calcutta, where Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and Sikhs lived equally peaceable and creative lives.

One can only make appeals in the end; I prefer to appeal to the leaders of the Cordoba Initiative:

Please, the point has been made. Mayor Bloomberg, President Obama and countless more Americans of other faiths than Islam have made it absolutely clear that Muslims have the right to build a mosque wherever they wish so long as it meets the same requirements that would be imposed on any church or synagogue. Now show some good sense, please. Do something truly peaceable: build your "Cordoba Institute" some place else. A good choice would be the dominantly African-American parts of Manhattan, but "Cordoba" would not make much sense there either. Your centre, as proposed, will be only partly a mosque, most of the space will be given to other activities that are not likely to benefit people below a certain economic level. It will be a glamorous show place for Islam, no doubt, but hardly reflective of the way most Muslims have lived for decades in the city and many areas around it. High powered conferences and interfaith dialogs will not silence your detractors, nor will they put an end to such incidents as the recent stabbing of Muslim cabdriver in Manhattan and the attacks on a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN. You have not raised any money yet, otherwise I would urge you to use your projected $100 million to open a low-cost clinic in the most deprived neighbourhood of Manhattan. Name it "9/11 Memorial Clinic," and invite Muslim and non-Muslim doctors and medical people to volunteer some time and services there. Healing desperate men, women, and children of all faiths will give expression to real Islamic piety and create more goodwill and mutual understanding than any Islamic "Y" in lower Manhattan, no matter how earnestly conceived.


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Re: [ALOCHONA] A Free and Fair War Crimes Tribunal?



As long this government do "Due diligence" and follow "Duo process", we should support this initiative. However people should be given a chance to properly
defend themselves. This should be according to international standard. We don't want to see innocent people persecuted for political purpose neither we want to see criminals roam free without any accountability. Those who committed treason with their own people, they should not be spared. However if we keep walking this road, it is bad news for "Professional politicians". ;-)


-----Original Message-----
From: Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com>
Sent: Sat, Aug 28, 2010 2:14 pm
Subject: [ALOCHONA] A Free and Fair War Crimes Tribunal?

 
A Free and Fair War Crimes Tribunal?
 
Paris-based attorney Katherine Iliopoulos has a new article out at Crimes of War Project. She writes:
 
A war crimes tribunal set up in Bangladesh to try those responsible for atrocities during the country's 1971 liberation war with Pakistan is facing increased scrutiny by the international community. While the International Crimes Tribunal has been widely welcomed in Bangladesh as a response to the longstanding need to address the issue of impunity for alleged war crimes and other crimes under international law, serious concerns have been raised, particularly regarding its statute, which contains several provisions that are incompatible with international law and international fair trial standards. In July, Rules of Procedure were adopted, which are also highly problematic in terms of international human rights law.
 
 
 
 


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