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Friday, February 4, 2011

[ALOCHONA] PM's remarks on crossfire, wealth report contradict AL manifesto



PM's remarks on crossfire, wealth report contradict AL manifesto
 
 
 
 
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Thursday's statements on making public wealth statements of ministers, lawmakers and herself, and stopping extrajudicial killings contradict her party's election manifesto.
 
Awami League in its manifesto placed before the nation ahead of the December 29, 2008 parliamentary elections, said, "Wealth statements and sources of income of the prime minister, members of the cabinet, parliament members and of their family members will be made public every year." However, addressing a press conference at her official residence Gono Bhaban Thursday, Awami League President Hasina questioned the necessity of divulging such information.
 
The party manifesto titled "charter for change" drew huge public support and was appreciated by different professional groups, ultimately ensuring the party's landslide victory.
 
Hasina apparently tried to sidestep when a reporter asked why the wealth statements of her ministers and lawmakers and herself have not been made public. She told journalists, many of them editors, that she along with her cabinet members and lawmakers submits wealth statements and pays taxes to the National Board of Revenue every year and she has the documents.
 
Besides, they had submitted their wealth statements to the Election Commission prior to the December 2008 election, she said. Hasina and her party leaders submitted their wealth statements to the Election Commission prior to the election as candidates, not as prime minister, minister or lawmaker.
 
Making public their wealth statements is in the manifesto (chapter establishment of good governance) as top five priority issues.
 
The Awami League council approved the party's election manifesto and declaration paper on July 24, 2009 where the line "Extrajudicial killing will be stopped" is present. Interestingly, the English version of the manifesto, put on the party website, does not have that line.
 
On extrajudicial killing, the premier said a practice that was initiated during the BNP-Jamaat alliance rule cannot be stopped overnight.  Hasina told the press conference that her government does not support such killings. But she did not mention anything about what measures the government has taken to stop these killings and honour the electoral pledge of the party. She said her government investigates every such unlawful killings and that she was against such killings since the very beginning.
 


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[ALOCHONA] Poverty and Famines by Amartya Sen,



Poverty and Famines : An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation

Amartya Sen, , Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
 
Poverty and Famines
Print publication date: 1983
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-828463-5
doi:10.1093/0198284632.001.0001
 
The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The traditional analysis of famines concentrates on food supply. This is shown to be fundamentally defective—it is theoretically unsound, empirically inept, and dangerously misleading for policy. The author develops an alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach', which concentrates on ownership and exchange.
 
Aside from developing the underlying theory, the approach is used in a number of case studies of recent famines, including the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, the Ethiopian famines of 1973 and 1974, the Bangladesh famine of 1974, and the famines in the countries of the African Sahel in the 1970s.
 
The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupational groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analysing starvation.
 
The book contains some technical economic analysis, but the text of the book has been kept as informal as possible, so that the text is accessible to the non-technical reader, and the main lines of reasoning and their applications to the case studies are easily followed. Technicalities and mathematical reasoning are confined to the four appendices, which (1) present a formal analysis of the notion of exchange entitlement, (2) provide illustrative models of exchange entitlement, (3) examine the problem of poverty measurement, and (4) analyse the pattern of famine mortality based on the Bengal famine of 1943.
 
 
Review and analysis:


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[ALOCHONA] 7 common mistakes in Salah



7 common mistakes in Salah

Mistake 1: Reciting Surat al-Fatiha fast without pausing after each verse.

The Prophet (SAW) used to pause after each verse of this surah. (Abu Dawood)
Mistake 2: Sticking the arms to the sides of the body, in rukoo' or sujood, and sticking the belly to the thighs in sujood.
The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said: "Let not one of you support himself on his forearms (in sujood) like the dog. Let him rest on his palms and keep his elbows away from his body." (Sahih Muslim) . The Messenger of Allah (SAW) used to keep his arms away from his body during rukoo' and sujood that the whiteness of his armpits could be seen (Sahih Muslim).

Mistake 3: Gazing upward during prayer.

This may cause loss of concentration. We are commanded to lower our gaze, and look at the point at which the head rests during sujood. The Prophet (SAW) warned: "Let those who raise their gaze up during prayer stop doing so, or else their sights would not return to them. i.e. lose their eyesight]." (Muslim)

Mistake 4 : Resting only the tip of the head on the floor during sujood.

The Prophet (SAW) said: "I am commanded to prostrate on seven bones the forehead and the nose, the two hands [palms], the two knees, and the two feet." (Sahih Muslim) Applying the above command necessitates resting the forehead and the nose on the ground during sujood.

Mistake 5 : Hasty performance of prayer which does not allow repose and calmness in rukoo' or sujood.

The Messenger of Allah (SAW) saw a man who did not complete his rukoo' [bowing], and made a very short sujood [prostration ] ; he (SAW) said: "If this man dies while praying in this manner, he would die upholding a religion other than the religion of Muhammad." Abu Hurairah (RA) said:

"My beloved friend, Muhammad (SAW) forbade me to perform postures of prayer copying the picking of a rooster; (signifying fast performance of prayer), moving eyes around like a fox and the sitting like monkeys ( i.e. to sit on thighs)." (Imam Ahmad & at-Tayalisi) The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said: " The worst thief is the one who steals from his own prayer." People asked, 'Messenger of Allah! How could one steal from his own prayer?' He (SAW) said: "By not completing its rukoo' and sujood." (At Tabarani & al-Hakim).

To complete rukoo' is to stay in that posture long enough to recite 'Subhana rabbiyal Adtheem' three times, SLOWLY, and 'Subhana rabbiyal-a'ala' three times, SLOWLY, in sujood. He (SAW) also announced: "He who does not complete his rukoo' and sujood, his prayer is void." (Abu Dawood & others)

Mistake 6 : Counting tasbeeh with the left hand

The Prophet (SAW) used to count tasbeeh on the fingers of his right hand after salah. Ibn Qudamah (RA) said: " The Messenger of Allah (SAW) used his right hand for tasbeeh." (Abu Dawood). The above hadeeth indicates clearly that the Prophet (SAW) used only one hand for counting tasbeeh. No Muslim with sound mind would imagine that the Prophet (SAW) used his left hand for counting tasbeeh. Aa'ishah (RA) said that the Prophet (SAW) used his left hand only for Istinjaa', or cleaning himself after responding to the call of nature. He never used it for tasbeeh. Yasirah (RA) reported: The Prophet (SAW) commanded women to count tasbeeh on their fingers.

The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said: "They (the fingers) will be made to speak, and will be questioned (on the Day of Resurrection. )" (At-Tirmidhi) . The above Hadeeth indicates that it is preferable to count tasbeeh on the fingers of the right hand than to do so on masbahah (rosary).

Mistake 7 : Crossing in front of a praying person.

The Messenger of Allah (SAW) warned: "Were the one who crosses in front of a praying person to know the consequences of doing so, he would have waited for *forty better than to cross in front of him." (Sahih Bukhari and Muslim). *The forty in the tradition may be days months or even years. Allah knows best.
Common Errors in Prayer That MUST Be Avoided – Please inform your near and dear ones to take care of the above.

Remember Muslim Ummah in your supplications

The Messenger of Allah, Muhammad (sallallahu alaihi wa-allehe wa-sallam) said
"Pass on knowledge from me even if it is only one verse"



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[ALOCHONA] usa



America's housing market


Falling prices and rising foreclosures cause a policy quagmire

America's housing market



WHEN the federal government took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two teetering mortgage-finance agencies, in September 2008 it was meant to be temporary. Yet their surreal existence as shareholder-owned prisoners of the state looks likely to drag on for years.

Nobody is happy with the status quo. The federal government routinely guarantees 85% or more of newly issued residential mortgages, primarily through Fannie, Freddie, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). But withdrawing that support is impossible while the housing market is so fragile. The Treasury is scheduled to release a proposal for overhauling America's housing-finance system as early as next week. But rather than resolve the status of Fannie and Freddie, it is likely to lay out several options, none of which is likely to become law any time soon.




http://www.economist.com/node/18070210





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[ALOCHONA] Meeting Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

Meeting Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

By Abbas Faiz –" South Asia researcher for Amnesty International

It was a welcome opportunity to meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
during her official visit to the UK. Three of us, Lord Eric Avebury of
the UK House of Lords, Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch and I met the
Prime Minister on 30 January at her hotel suite in London.Bangladesh
Foreign Minister, Dr Dipu Moni and the Bangladesh High Commissioner to
the UK, Dr Sayeedur Rahman Khan were also present at the meeting.

We began with a discussion on the war crimes trials, restrictions on
human rights groups visiting Chittagong Hill Tracts, and the continued
delay in implementing the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord (CHT) that was
signed in 1997 during Sheikh Hasina’s previous tenure as Prime
Minister.

The Prime Minister said she was committed to implementing the CHT
Accord and had set up a committee to advise her on how to implement
it.

The Foreign Minister said the government was aware of the concerns the
International Bar Association had raised about the law under which war
crimes will be tried. She said the government had sought the opinion
of legal experts on those concerns and that the amended law
incorporates their advice. She said the process is to heal wounds, and
the government is looking at all issues in relation to the trials, and
the rule of law would be followed.

The law denies, among other things, the right to challenge the
jurisdiction of the Tribunal and the right to the possibility of bail
but it was not clear if the government would move to amend the law.

I told the Prime Minister that Amnesty International welcomes the
government's move to make the National Human Rights Commission
permanent and asked for her assurances that it would remain
independent and well resourced. Also, the government's move to try
Bangladesh Rifle mutineers in civilian courts, as against courts
martial, was welcome.

I expressed concern that the government's move to address some of the
human rights concerns appear to favour only members of her own party,
the Awami League. There is a long, unwelcome legacy in Bangladesh for
governments to go soft on the criminal activities of members of their
own party and harsh on the opposition. I asked why the only known
cases of the government pardoning death penalty convicts were 20
convicts, 19 of whom were members of the governing Awami League. I
also expressed concern about the activities of the Bangladesh Chattra
League (BCL), the student wing of the Awami League, and the serious
allegations of human rights abuses by this grouping, which have gone
unpunished.

The Foreign Minister said the deaths sentences had been politically
motivated and for that reason the prisoners have been pardoned. I was
dismayed as I had hoped to hear a commitment to pardoning more death
penalty convicts and the exercise of utmost impartiality in choosing
who to pardon.

The Prime Minister said she had taken action against the BCL members.
Some have been arrested for committing crimes and some have been
expelled from the Awami League.

I explained that torture continues to be widespread and asked the
Prime Minister if her government would consider implementing the 2003
Supreme Court ruling that provides guidelines for torture free
investigation of suspects. This question remained unanswered.

I referred to statements the Prime Minister had made before and after
the 2008 elections that extrajudicial executions would end. Yet, they
continue and nothing seems to be done to stop them.

The Prime Minister said extrajudicial executions have been happening
since 2004 and she has been very vocal on the issue from that time.
She said they could not stop overnight. She said all incidents are
investigated, and if any officer is found to have committed a crime
immediately we take action against it.

I agree that extrajudicial executions cannot stop overnight, but work
to stop them can begin straight away. While the Prime Minister's
comments generate the hope that the government might be prepared to
address the issue, the Home Minister's comments last week that
extrajudicial executions were not happening undermines that hope.
-----------------------------
Abbas Faiz –" South Asia researcher for Amnesty International
E Mail : afaiz@amnesty.org
http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=347520


------------------------------------

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[ALOCHONA] Re: Naming Dhaka as" Mujib Nagar"

Really!

I thought Mismillah, Quran, prophet are part of a religion. The religion
of Islam.

Op! May be I am little bit old to understand it. If the mission is to
redicule someone, there are many other ways.

So carry on. Carry on with your "very logical extrapolations."

Shafiq Ahmad


--- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, "Emanur Rahman" <emanur@...> wrote:
>
> I don't think this is bringing in religion. Rather its a very a
logical extrapolation of the way that many regard Bangabandhu. It
demonstrates how ridiculous and perhaps dangerous this concept is. It
has allowed many to sanitise, rationalise, obscure and generally brush
under the carpet responsibility for the malaise that is our country
today. It allows us to settle for less.
>
> Yes, the majority of Bangladeshis are Muslim.
>
> Ergo the majority of Bangladeshis should be offended by this worship
and the immorality and corruption it breeds and feeds.
>
> Joy Bangla...?
>
> Emanur Rahman | m. +447734567561 | e. emanur@...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: shafiq013@...
> Sender: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:54:22
> To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> Reply-To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [ALOCHONA] Re: Naming Dhaka as" Mujib Nagar"
>
>
> Mr. Eman
>
> You frustration is understood. May be you are sour for some personal
> reasons. However, may I request you, very humbly, don't drag in
> religion in your discussion, at the least in this way. Not only it
shows
> your disrespect to religion of Islam but also indicates you have
nothing
> much to say. Even if you are not a Muslim (though your name suggests
you
> are), please show your respect to the religion of the majority in
> Bangladesh. You may hate Awami League or Sheikh Mujib for some (may
be)
> valid reasons. You have every right to express your viewpoint but it
is
> really a shame to bring-in religion in this way.
>
> Shafiq Ahmad
>
> --- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, "Emanur Rahman" emanur@ wrote:
> >
> > I agree although the Buriganga with its effluence and waste may be
the
> most appropriate choice.
> >
> > I also propose that "Bismillah..." be removed from the constitution
> and replaced with "bismilbangabandu.....".
> >
> > To seal the deal, all references to the Prophet should be removed
from
> a new and official BAL version of the Quran as neither he nor the
> Almighty had any contribution to the glorious independence war, you
know
> the Bangabandhu v Pakistan war where one man single handedly defeated
an
> entire army.
> >
> > Joy Bangla!
> >
> > Emanur Rahman | m. +447734567561 | e. emanur@
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sajjad Hossain shossain456@
> > Sender: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> > Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 18:29:17
> > To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> > Reply-To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [ALOCHONA] Naming Dhaka as" Mujib Nagar"
> >
> > In order to pay our indebtedness to Father of the Nation,
Bangabondhu
> Sheikh
> > Mujibur Rahman I propose to change the name of Dhaka to "Mujib
Nagar"
> > and "Bay of Bengal" to "Bay of Bangabondhu".
> >
> > Any comments from the Alochoks?
> >
> > SH
> > Toronto
> >
>

------------------------------------

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RE: [ALOCHONA] Pakistan's Road to Disintegration



   I was struck by the answer to the last question:

<<< It is genuine, because it goes back to the identity of Pakistan. They can't figure out how to reconcile their strategic necessity of accommodation with India. Of course, India takes a hard line on a lot of issues, not just Kashmir. India has allowed China to acquire Pakistan as a strategic asset. It is now a trilateral game between the Chinese and Indians with the Pakistanis on the Chinese side. >>>

         Hey Turkman,
                    
                         Did you not post a news item that reported massive Chinese troop movement across the mountains in the Northern Pakistan?  Can you update us on that front?

                -- Farida Majid


From: bdmailer@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 14:02:42 +0600
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Pakistan's Road to Disintegration

 

Pakistan's Road to Disintegration

Interviewee:
Stephen P. Cohen, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Interviewer:
Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
January 6, 2011
photo of Stephen P. Cohen
In the first few days of this year, Pakistan's coalition government was thrust into crisis after losing a coalition partner, and then a top politician--Punjab Governor Salman Taseer--was assassinated. A leading expert on the country, Stephen P. Cohen, says these incidents are symptoms of the profound problems tugging the country apart. "The fundamentals of the state are either failing or questionable, and this applies to both the idea of Pakistan, the ideology of the state, the purpose of the state, and also to the coherence of the state itself," Cohen says. "I wouldn't predict a comprehensive failure soon, but clearly that's the direction in which Pakistan is moving." On a recent trip, he was struck by the growing sense of insecurity in Pakistan, even within the military, and the growing importance of China.
What's the situation in Pakistan these days, given a key partner's withdrawal from the coalition government, and the assassination of a leading member of the ruling coalition, who opposed the blasphemy law which has support among the country's Muslim population?
These are symptoms of a deeper problem in Pakistan. There is not going to be any good news from Pakistan for some time, if ever, because the fundamentals of the state are either failing or questionable. This applies to both the idea of Pakistan, the ideology of the state, the purpose of the state, and also to the coherence of the state itself. Pakistan has lost a lot of its "stateness," that is the qualities that make a modern government function effectively. So there's failure in Pakistan on all counts. I wouldn't predict a comprehensive failure soon but clearly that's the direction in which Pakistan is moving.
Given Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons and its strategic location between Afghanistan and India, for the United States this is a looming crisis, isn't it.
Crisis Guide: Pakistan
 
 
 
 
 
 
All U.S. policies toward Pakistan are bad, and some are perhaps worse than others. We don't know whether leveling with Pakistan is going to improve things or make it worse. Ideally, we would own a time machine in which we could roll back history and reverse a lot of decisions we made in the past. Hopefully, we won't make any more fundamentally wrong decisions in the future, but that may not prevent Pakistan from going further down the road to disintegration. Someone in the State Department was quoted in a WikiLeaks document [as saying] that if it weren't for nuclear weapons, Pakistan would be the Congo. I would compare it to Nigeria without oil. It wouldn't be a serious state. But the nuclear weapons and the country's organized terrorist machinery do make it quite serious.
If it is anybody's problem in the future, it is going to be China's problem. I just spent several weeks in Pakistan. One thing I discovered was the country insecurity in a way I had never seen it, even in military cantonments. The other was that China's influence in Pakistan was much greater and deeper than I had imagined it to be. In a sense that's India's problem, but in the long run, it will be China's problem.
Describe China's influence.
China is Pakistan's major military supplier. Of course, they supplied military technology and probably put Pakistanis in touch with the North Koreans for missile technology. The Chinese have one concern in Pakistan and that is the training of Chinese militants and extremists inside of Pakistan. The Chinese have no problem with the Tiananmen Square-type of crowd control. When the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) was blown up in Islamabad in 2007, it came after some ten Chinese were kidnapped and the Chinese complained publicly. The Pakistanis had ignored our protests about the Mosque for many years. But they moved quickly when the Chinese protested, killing many women and children in the process. That was one of the turning points in President Pervez Musharraf's career, because that turned many militants against him. Before that time, he had either ignored or supported them, but after Lal Masjid, they became his enemy.
How important are the militants or terrorists? Can they control the state?
Militants--whether you call them anti-American, anti-liberal, or anti-secular--seem to have a veto over politics in Pakistan, but they can't govern the state. The parties control the elections but they can prevent others from governing, and they may prevent the military from governing as well.
Some people have been hoping for a military coup, but you don't think that will happen?
We have to do what we can do and prepare for the failure of Pakistan, which could happen in four or five or six years.
I don't think the military wants to be in that position now. I don't think the military chief Ashfaq Kayani has such a game plan. He is as smart and calculating as President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq [military president from 1977 until his assassination in 1988] was. He is quite different from Musharraf--not an Islamist himself, but he has certainly supported them in the past. I know the Pakistan military cannot govern Pakistan. They've tried it three times in the past and each time failed. This time they would have to deal with more active militants. The liberal forces are in retreat, and I don't see the army supporting the liberal forces in Pakistan.
Talk about the anti-American feeling. How did it develop into such a strong national sentiment?
Historically, the Pakistani elite have created a narrative of U.S.-Pakistan relations which always shows the United States letting Pakistan down. A turning point was the Iranian revolution of 1979, [which] showed a lot of Pakistanis that standing up to the Americans, embarrassing the Americans, humiliating the Americans felt good. Whether they were Sunnis or Shiites in Pakistan, it felt good. It all goes back to everyone in Pakistan concerned about American policy toward Israel and the Middle East. They seem to care more about Israel and Palestine than they do about themselves. The irony of Pakistan is that their major foreign policy obsessions are ones that they can't do anything about, including Israel and Palestine. When the U.S. and NATO forces moved into Iraq and Afghanistan, that was seen as a direct threat to Pakistan. They feared that the Islamist states were being knocked off one after another, beginning with Iraq, and going on to Afghanistan, and winding up with Pakistan. Most of that is imagined, but many Pakistanis believe it is true.
We've had a breakup of the coalition government, which happens all the time around the world, but why was so much gloom and doom expressed in Pakistan?
It's the incapacity of the Pakistani state to educate its own people in a modern fashion; it's the failure of the Pakistani economy to grow at all. If this was an American analogy, you would say Pakistan is a house under water. Except for its territory, which is strategically important, there is not much in Pakistan that is of benefit to anyone. They failed to take advantage of globalization. They use terrorism as an aspect of globalization, which is the negative side of globalization. Go down the list of factors, they are almost all negative. There is not one that is positive. They need outsiders for economic help. The conflict with India drains most of their budget. They can't resolve foreign policy differences with India. They have quarrels with us over Afghanistan, although they are probably right that we don't understand the Afghanis either. The question in my mind is whether these are irreversible so that Pakistan can become a normal state.
Militants--whether you call them anti-American, anti-liberal, or anti-secular--seem to have a veto over politics in Pakistan, but they can't govern the state.
What do you think?
Hope is not a policy, but despair is not a policy either. We have to do what we can do and prepare for the failure of Pakistan, which could happen in four or five or six years.
Talk about the terrorists.
There has been an accommodation with the government. Terrorist attacks are down. There seems to be an agreement by the security forces to accommodate the terrorist groups. I don't see the government regaining its position in the frontiers. The Pakistani Taliban is a designated enemy, but the army cannot move against them. The army is worried about its integrity itself.
Discuss Taseer's assassination.
He was like Sherry Rehman, a close associate of Benazir Bhutto.  Rehman had introduced a private member's bill to repeal the blasphemy law, and [Taseer] backed her, and that apparently led to his guard killing him. The blasphemy law makes the medieval Catholic Church look liberal. Anyone who stands up and criticizes the law has his life in danger. Rehman is prominently mentioned in press coverage. I don't think she will back down. She is a lady of strong principles, like Benazir.
Is the fear of India genuine?
It is genuine, because it goes back to the identity of Pakistan. They can't figure out how to reconcile their strategic necessity of accommodation with India. Of course, India takes a hard line on a lot of issues, not just Kashmir. India has allowed China to acquire Pakistan as a strategic asset. It is now a trilateral game between the Chinese and Indians with the Pakistanis on the Chinese side.
http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/pakistans-road-disintegration/p23744



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[ALOCHONA] Affidavit of Lawrence Lifschultz on the murder of Taher by Zia.



                I had come in contact with many foreign correspondents during the war of liberation throughout 1971, some of whom became friends. Larry Lifschulltz was one of them. He had stopped by in London to pay me a visit in 1976 after he was deported from Bangladesh. He was pained to see the forces of anti-liberation war in unlawful power in Bangladesh just as I was.

                                 -- Farida Majid


Affidavit of Lawrence Lifschultz on the murder of Taher by Zia.

Posted by: "Shamim Huq" ShamimMHuq@Yahoo.com   shamimmhuq

Thu Feb 3, 2011 10:38 pm (PST)



Affidavit of Lawrence Lifschultz

Filed Before

Justice A. H. M. Shamsuddin & Justice Sheikh Md. Zakir Hossain
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh
High Court Division
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Ref: Writ Petition 7236 of 2010

Regarding the Trial & Execution Colonel Abu Taher in July 1976
31 January 2011

1. My name is Lawrence Lifschultz. I am an American citizen and a writer by profession. I am resident of Stony Creek, Connecticut in the United States.

2. On January 21, 2011 I was contacted by email by M. K. Rahman, the Additional Attorney General of Bangladesh and informed that the Supreme Court had made a request that I appear before it by January 26, 2011 in order to share with the Court "necessary information as to the so-called trial and conviction of Colonel Abu Taher by a Special Military Tribunal in 1976."

3. This is a request I've been hoping to receive for more than 30 years. I would consider it one of the great honours of my life to stand in Justice Shamsuddin's and Justice Hossain's court room in Dhaka. In my view a tragic crime was committed in Dhaka during June and July 1976. I was one of the few witnesses to what happened in this case. On June 28, 1976 I stood in front of Dhaka Central Jail. It was the day the "so-called trial" of Abu Taher and his colleagues began in secret hidden, behind the walls of a prison. When I arrived that morning, the security around the prison appeared if the Army was preparing for a war. Machine gun nests were set up all along the prison walls with their guns pointing outwards. What were these guns defending? Secrecy? Who were they prepared to shoot? Why was a trial taking place in a prison instead of in a Court?

4. As one of the only independent witnesses at the prison that day, I believe it is my responsibility to describe what I saw and why I believe these events transpired as they did. In a letter to Justices Shamsuddin and Hossain I explained it was impossible for me to travel to Dhaka at this moment. My son was recently in a serious accident. He was badly injured. He is in the process of recovery and has passed a critical point in a three-month process of recuperation. We have just completed a two-month milestone. My presence is required for at least another month. Furthermore, another issue has made it impossible for me to travel to Dhaka until the end of February. Thus, not wishing to delay the proceeding of the Supreme Court in this matter I am submitting an affidavit.

5. In 1976 I was South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong). I had been based in New Delhi. Two years earlier I lived in Dhaka where I was the Bangladesh Correspondent of the Review. Thus, I knew many of the political and military figures of the period and was knowledgeable of the turmoil and conflict then roiling Bangladesh society.

6. In June of 1976 I arrived in Dhaka from Kathmandu. Abu Taher had been arrested following the November 7th Uprising. As South Asia Correspondent of the Review, I reported on the tragic events of August 1975 when Sheikh Mujib was murdered. I also returned to Dhaka following the insurrection and Sepoy Mutiny of November 7th. This is not the place to review these events. I have written elsewhere in detail about these matters.

7. In my view the critical issue which faces the Supreme Court is whether Abu Taher's constitutional and human rights were violated, in the most fundamental manner, by a military regime that had no democratic or constitutional legitimacy. On what legal basis was "Special Military Tribunal No. 1" constituted? Where those facing trial before this Tribunal given adequate time to prepare their defense? Or, in fact were they denied access to legal representation until only a few days before the proceedings began? What standing did this Tribunal have constitutionally or morally to pass a death sentence? Would it be accurate to describe the Tribunal headed by Colonel
Yusuf Haider as simply a Kangaroo Court which implemented a sentence pre-determined? These are the questions that need to be addressed and answered. Furthermore, these need to be answered within the framework of rights defined and guaranteed by to all the citizens of Bangladesh by the country's Constitution.

8. There is an important piece of evidence that I wish to place before the Court which I believe may assist in answering these questions. When I arrived in Dhaka in early June 1976, I contacted General Mhd. Manzur. I indicated that I was in Bangladesh. At the time Manzur was Chief of General Staff. I had previously met General Manzur in New Delhi in the summer of 1974 when he was Bangladesh's military attaché in India. At the time I was curious to speak with him about his experience in the Liberation War and his escape as a junior officer from Pakistan following the Pakistan Army's violent crackdown in Dhaka on March 25, 1971.

9. Manzur together with Abu Taher and Mohammed Ziauddin had bravely crossed the border into Indian administered Kashmir in order to join the Liberation War. Within weeks all three would become sector commanders. Taher, who I had already met in Dhaka, suggested that summer of 1974 that I meet Manzur in New Delhi on my way back to the United States. I was in the process of moving to New Delhi to become the Review's South Asia Correspondent. The day I met Manzur the two of us spent most of a long afternoon talking about history.

10. Thus, two years later in June 1976, when I called and told him I was in Dhaka he was pleased to hear I was in town. However, I was soon to discover he had a great deal on his mind. He told me that he would send someone to meet me in order to make arrangements for us to get together. He insisted that we meet late at night at his Headquarters in the Cantonment. I arrived about nine in the evening. I stayed for nearly three hours.

11. During the evening General Manzur focused most of all on speaking to me about Taher who by then had been in prison for more than six months. He told me Taher had been kept mostly in solitary confinement. He asked me about my
travel plans. I told him I was expected in the United States by the end of June. He said I shouldn't leave. He feared that Zia would go through with plans to put Taher on trial. Manzur and other officers who participated in the Liberation War were trying to dissuade Zia but in early June Manzur was uncertain he could stop the trial from proceeding. He spoke of anti-Liberation forces having a growing influence in the Army. He again emphasised to me that I should stay in Dhaka. He said if there was a trial someone should report on it in the international press. I could see he was worried. I changed my travel plans and stayed.

12. I didn't see General Manzur again that June. Tension was mounting in Dhaka. I attempted to interview General Zia. His staff asked me to write out a list of questions. They covered many issues such as the Farakka Barrage which at the time was emerging as a crisis between India and Bangladesh. But, the list also included several questions concerning the November 7th Uprising and Abu Taher's arrest. I asked Zia, among other matters, to confirm that Taher and forces under his command had saved Zia's life that evening. If that were the case, why had he arrested Taher and freed those who had, in fact, detained him. I was not granted an interview by Zia. This was not surprising. The General had other plans and they did not include being asked troubling questions.

13. I was arrested and deported in the midst of Taher's trial. On the 30th anniversary of Taher's execution I spoke at a memorial gathering at Dhaka University in which I described how an effort was made to impose complete and total censorship of the trial. (See "The Trial of Colonel Abu Taher" by Lawrence Lifschultz, The Daily Star, July 24, 1976. See also "The Taher I Knew" by Lawrence Lifschultz, The Daily Star, July 23, 1976. Both articles are attached as exhibits to this affidavit.)

14. The reason I have brought up my meeting in early June 1976 with General Maznur is because of what happened later. The night I met Manzur at the Cantonment he clearly feared that zia would go ahead with Taher's trial but he did not say that he feared this would end with Taher's execution. I don't think at that stage such a thing was quite imaginable. However, several months after the trial Manzur sent me a message through an intermediary. I was then living in Cambridge, England. Manzur's emissary told me that Manzur wanted me to know that he had tried to stop the trial but clearly had been powerless to do so even though he ranked third in the Army's High Command. His opposition to Taher's trial had made him a marked man inside the Army among those who wanted Taher dead. Although many of us had suspected it, Manzur's representative told me that General Manzur also wanted me to know one thing above all else: Manzur knew with absolute certainty that Zia had personally taken the decision before the "so-called trial" even began that Taher would be handed. Subsequently, this fact was also confirmed to me by two high ranking military officers who were close to Zia at that time.

15. What are the implications of such a fact within the framework of the judicial review taking place today by the Supreme Court? Can what happened in Dhaka Central Jail in July 1976 even be termed a trial? If the death sentence was determined prior to the Tribunal convening, then was the Tribunal in reality simply a deadly mechanism used by extra-judicial forces to stage an execution. If this be so, then Special Tribunal No. 1 which sat only once, and was never convened again, should be named for what it truly was. In reality it was an illegal entity established to commit murder and to imprison men and women who were denied their constitutional rights. Hopefully, the Bangladesh Supreme Court will today, in an atmosphere largely free of the fear, threat and coercion that so pervaded the past, find its way to overturning a verdict of a Tribunal which in every respect was a negation of the principles underlying Bangladesh's Constitution and the rights guaranteed to its citizens by law.

16. I believe independent of the fact that the verdict was pre-determined before the Tribunal convened there are ample grounds to overturn Taher's so-called conviction and to vacate the verdict. Taher's execution ought to be called not only a miscarriage of just but "a crime committed by the state." Such a crime ought to be remedied by an institution of the state that has power and capability to look back historically on crimes of the past. This has been done by several societies in modern times including Germany, Argentina, Chile and South Africa, to name only a few. One institution that has that capability is Bangladesh's Supreme Court.

17. Those on trial were denied access to adequate legal representation. Their fundamental rights under the Bangladesh constitution were violated. The trial was in secret before an illegal entity which had no foundation in law. The trial was held in a prison, not a Court of Law. The press was shackled so public anger at the injustice being carried out in camera would be contained. Journalists were threatened and deported. Imagine the public response, if Taher's closing speech before the Tribunal had been published the day after he spoke?

18. Here, being tried in secret, was a Sector Commander of the Liberation War who lost his left leg in a battle for his country's independence and who was awarded the highest military distinction, Bir Uttam, for courage, shown by those who fought and survived the 1971 war. By what form of fiction could any Court maintain that Taher's trial was lawful?

19. Five years ago, when I spoke at the Teacher-Student Centre at Dhaka University, I made the following observation:

"Thirty years have now passed. We are all aware of what happened. Today marks the 30th anniversary of Taher's execution. It is time in my view for a public act by the state and judicial authorities to publicly declare that Abu Taher was wrongfully tried and wrongfully executed. The verdict of July 17, 1976 should be vacated and a public acknowledgment should be made that Taher's civil and legal rights were grossly violated by the government which put him on trial ... Appropriate mechanisms to accomplish this task need to be found. Justice requires that the verdict be formally overturned and that there be an official acknowledgment that that entire so-called 'trial of Abu Taher' was a violation of proper legal procedure and represented a violation of the fundamental rights of the accused to due process ... My own view is that some future government [or Court] will act in a moral and ethical way on this issue. We must not rest until the verdict in the Taher case has been overturned. It is, my friends, a matter of justice."

("The Trial of Abu Taher", Keynote Address by Lawrence Lifschultz, Dhaka
University, The Daily Star, July 24, 1976. See also "Colonel Taher, Lifschultz & Our Collective Guilt" by Syed Badrul Ahsan, The Daily Star, July 26, 1976.)

20. Justice Shamsuddin and Justice Hossain, you have before you a great moral and legal challenge. Whatever you decide in this case will have historic significance. The Taher case in my view has important international implications. The petitioners in this case have been on a long journey. It is a journey that for so many men and women is painfully elusive. To find justice at the end of such a long road for an event that has shaken one's life happens so rarely in human experience. I know each of the petitioners in this case. They deserve our profound respect and the respect of the world. There is only one way to provide that respect to them. It is to provide them a sense that finally at the end of a journey of more than three decades, justice has been done. This is your task.

21. I submit this affidavit to the Bangladesh Supreme Court by electronic mail through the office of MK Rahman, the Additional Attorney General, who contacted me on behalf of the Supreme Court. Simultaneously, there follows by courier a notarized and authenticated copy of this affidavit and its attachments which will be forwarded to the Bangladesh Supreme Court by Shabbir Chowdhury, Consul General of Bangladesh in New York City through the office of the Foreign Secretary in Dhaka. It is with great regret that I cannot be present before the court in Dhaka to deliver my affidavit in person. It would have been a great honour which I would have treasured for the rest of my life.

Lawrence Lifschultz
P.O. Box 3056
Stony Creek, CT
USA 06405


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[ALOCHONA] Asif Zardari got married to Tanveer Zamani



Asif Zardari got married to Tanveer Zamani in Dubai
 
Posted by Umair on February 2, 2011 in Dose of News · 15 Comments
 
 
Asif Zardari got married to Tanveer Zamani according to Muslim Shiyat Bylaws in Dubai last week. The ceremony has not been held. However the marriage religious vows, paper work and prenuptials have been confirmed. Nine black goats, 6 cows and 1 camel was sacrificed at this sacred occasion. This happened 3 years after the assassination of Slain Bhutto.
 
She is a Mediterranean descent American resident, and she lives in Gramercy Park, Manhattan, New York. Zamani is a practicing physician and known to be a Bhutto party loyalist. She earned PhD degree in International Politics from UK. She owns estates in London, Dubai, Islamabad and Manhattan. Zamani is a known Democrat and supported  Obama's 2008 election campaign. She actively participated in Obama's Health Care reform bill to make it a law. Recently, she has been prohibited to attend the public political meetings due to her security issues. Pres. Zardari in a meeting with Obama on 1/14/11 in DC, requested his help in acquiring security for Zamani.
 
Zardari is the widower of Benazir Bhutto, who twice served as Prime Minister of Pakistan. When his wife was assassinated in December 2007, he became the Chairman of the PPP. It has been claimed that Zardari is among the four richest men in Pakistan.  In the 1988 elections, Bhutto became Prime Minister, and Zardari became a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan. Zardari's opponents began using the nickname, "Mr 10%", in reference to the charges of corruption against him. This nickname referred to kickbacks he was alleged to have received during his wife's premiership. He served in Jail from 1990 -1993 and 1997-2004.
 
It has been noticed that with the advent of Zamani in his life for the last 8 months, he has been changed a lot. A lot has been blogged about them on the web. He seemed to find refuge in trusting her loyalty to him more than the party. The couple might have faced many domestic, social and political issues before they decided to turn this long distance, under cover- relationship  into a life time partnership. It is welcomed as a wise decision since it is according to their religious perquisites and he needs a loyal partner in his life who could support him spiritually, physically and financially at his worse times. To choose a life partner might be a difficult decision for him before meeting Zamani, but she made it an easy shot to play since she seems not someone who would marry him for his assets and power. Pres. Zardari made a good deal to marry an American citizen, since next time he would not go to a prison , he will be pulled out by her to Manhattan. It is presumed that the couple will be officially announced at the end of his political Presidency term. Obviously, not until after the next elections.

Will the party or Zardari loose a lot of popularity he cashed after the death of his ex- wife? Or Zamani will give him a new fame, name, and a life with the happiness that he never found in the last one. His children Bakhtawar , Bilawal and Aseefa  must understand the needs of their father who after taking care of their mother's party has already proven his Loyalty to Bhuttos. Now, its their turn to let him move on with Zamani and spend in Manhattan a life he deserves.
 
Many media analyst are still trying to find an evidence before they jump into this leak. They wonder what is behind this marriage;  Love, political move or Wealth. The event was supposed to be an undisclosed sentinel secret, but it is released through a fashion designer company by a UAE news agency
The fact is none of the parties have denied this leaked news yet.
 
 

 

http://thecurrentaffairs.com/asif-zardari-got-married-to-tanveer-zamani-in-dubai-photos-video.html




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Re: [ALOCHONA] Sexual Prey in the Saudi jungle



This is a serious issue for us Bangladeshis as well. Many of our women goes to gulf countries and facing this sort of savage behavior in the name of Islam. Our oversees employment ministry should ensure our women can work in a safe environment.

At one point of the article a verse from the Qur'an was quoted to "Justify" rape!!


The Islamic 'Holy' book Quran teaches the permissibility of Muslim men having sex with their 'right hand possessions' which is maids or slaves:

Quran 004.024  Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess

This problem of maid rape is an ongoing problem in Arabia due to this pernicious teaching of Islam.


Let me be very clear about it. There is NOTHING in Islam that promote raping slaves ( Male or female). Specially in 21st century people should NOT be allowed to force women into sexual relationship by abusing teaching of Islam. Let us look into the quoted verse.

Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess: Thus hath Allah ordained (Prohibitions) against you: Except for these, all others are lawful, provided ye seek (them in marriage) with gifts from your property,- desiring chastity, not lust, seeing that ye derive benefit from them, give them their dowers (at least) as prescribed; but if, after a dower is prescribed, agree Mutually (to vary it), there is no blame on you, and Allah is All-knowing, All-wise.
[ Source: Al Qur'an 4:24]

Here we see the verse "Right hand possess" has been "translated" as slaves or captives. Some people may disagree with the "Translation" about slaves or captives or taking this as permission to rape.  Gulf's horny men are abusing this verse by ignoring clear instruction of Allah in the Qur'an. The main problem is obviously men from gulf region. Then a minor problem is our lack of knowledge of the noble Qur'an and authentic teaching of Islam. The article also mentioned that,

Slavery was abolished by royal decree in 1962,

Since slavery was abolished in KSA, there is NO reason to treat anyone as "Salves". I would argue one can bring molestation and rape charges against those corrupt people who abused the name of God to justify their EVIL intention. Qur'an is also clear about such people.

Know they not that Allah knoweth what they conceal and what they reveal? And there are among them illiterates, who know not the Book, but (see therein their own) desires, and they do nothing but conjecture. Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands, and then say:"This is from Allah," to traffic with it for miserable price!- Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they make thereby. And they say: "The Fire shall not touch us but for a few numbered days:" Say: "Have ye taken a promise from Allah, for He never breaks His promise? or is it that ye say of Allah what ye do not know?"Nay, those who seek gain in evil, and are girt round by their sins,- they are companions of the Fire: Therein shall they abide (For ever).


[Source: Al Qur'an 2:77-81]


Because the Qur'an also said in clear terms...

And let those who find not the financial means for marriage keep themselves chaste, until Allâh enriches them of His Bounty. And such of your slaves as seek a writing (of emancipation), give them such writing, if you know that they are good and trustworthy. And give them something yourselves out of the wealth of Allâh which He has bestowed upon you. And force not your maids to prostitution, if they desire chastity, in order that you may make a gain in the (perishable) goods of this worldly life. But if anyone compels them (to prostitution), then after such compulsion, Allâh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful (to those women, i.e. He will forgive them because they have been forced to do this evil action unwillingly).

[ Source: Al Qur'an 24:33]



If anyone studies the noble Qur'an carefully, he/she will discover that, Islam actually encouraged Muslims not to support slavery system. It is some of us who abuse the noble teaching for our own evil gain. Surely Allah will judge them in due time. One cannot claim nobility based on their geographical location, race or culture either. The noble Qur'an says....

It is not Al-Birr (piety, righteousness, and each and every act of obedience to Allâh, etc.) that you turn your faces towards east and (or) west (in prayers); but Al-Birr is (the quality of) the one who believes in Allâh, the Last Day, the Angels, the Book, the Prophets and gives his wealth, in spite of love for it, to the kinsfolk, to the orphans, and to Al-Masâkin (the poor), and to the wayfarer, and to those who ask, and to set slaves free, performs As-Salât (Iqâmat-as-Salât), and gives the Zakât, and who fulfill their covenant when they make it, and who are As-Sâbirin (the patient ones, etc.) in extreme poverty and ailment (disease) and at the time of fighting (during the battles). Such are the people of the truth and they are Al­Muttaqûn (pious).



 Allah will not call you to account for what is futile in your oaths, but He will call you to account for your deliberate oaths: for expiation, feed ten indigent persons, on a scale of the average for the food of your families; or clothe them; or give a slave his freedom. If that is beyond your means, fast for three days. That is the expiation for the oaths ye have sworn. But keep to your oaths. Thus doth Allah make clear to you His signs, that ye may be grateful.





I have to thank the member for bringing up this important and relevant issues in front of us. At the same time I would remind all of us [ Including myself] to spend some time to learn what Islam teaches us. If we end up learning Islam from those who abhors everything Islamic, we are going to end up with wrong understanding of Islam. According to my understanding we should protest such UN-Islamic behavior from Saudi Abaria. Allah commanded us to stand up for fairness and justice [ Source: Al Qur'an 5:8] and it is duty of all of us to speak the truth and protect these helpless sisters of ours [ Regardless of their faith background!].

May peace be unto all of you.





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Subject: [ALOCHONA] Sexual Prey in the Saudi jungle

 


http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=17008

Sexual Prey in the Saudi jungle

Walden Bello
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date : 25-01-2011

He was an officer in the Saudi Royal Navy assigned to the strategic Saudi base of Jubail in the Persian Gulf. She was a single mom from Mindanao (in southern Philippines) who saw, like so many others, employment in Saudi Arabia as a route out of poverty. When he picked her up at the Dammam International Airport in June, little did she know she was entering, not a brighter chapter of her life but a chamber of horrors from which she would be liberated only after six long months.
The tale of woe recounted by Lorena (not her real name) was one of several stories of rape and sexual abuse that were shared by domestic workers with members of a fact-finding team of the Committee on Overseas Workers' Affairs (COWA) of the Philippine House of Representatives. The high incidence of rape and sexual abuse visited on the women we met in Philippine government-run shelters for runaway or rescued domestic workers in Jeddah, Riyadh, and Al Khobar most likely reflects a broader trend among Filipina domestics. "Rape is common," said Fatimah (also an alias) who had been gang-raped in April 2009 by six Saudi teenagers. "The only difference is we escaped to tell our story while they're still imprisoned in their households."
Rape: the ever-present spectre
The working conditions of many domestics, which include 18- to 22-hour days and violent beatings, cannot be described except as virtual slavery. Slavery was abolished by royal decree in 1962, but customs are hard to overcome. Domestic workers continue to be treated as slaves in royal and aristocratic households, and this behaviour is reproduced by those lower in the social hierarchy. Apparently among the items of the "job description" of a domestic slave in Saudi is being forced to minister to the sexual needs of the master of the household. This is the relationship that so many other women unwittingly step into when they are placed in Saudi homes by their recruitment agencies.
Rape does not, however, take place only in the household. With strict segregation of young Saudi men from young Saudi women, Filipino domestic workers, who usually go about with their face and head uncovered, stand a good chance of becoming sexual prey if they make the mistake of being seen in public alone - though the company of a friend did not prevent Fatimah from being snatched by her teenage captors. And the threat comes not only from marauding Saudi youth but also from foreign migrant workers, single and married, who are deprived by the rigid sexual segregation imposed by the ever-present Religious Police from normal social intercourse with women during their time in Saudi.
Lorena's tale
Lorena is in her mid-twenties, lithe, and pretty - qualities that marked her as prime sexual prey in the Saudi jungle. And indeed, her ordeal began when they arrived at her employer's residence from the airport. "He forced a kiss on me," she recalled. Fear seized her and she pushed him away.
He was not deterred. "One week after I arrived," she recounted, "he raped me for the first time. He did it while his wife was away. He did it after he commanded me to massage him and I refused, saying that was not what I was hired for. Then in July he raped me two more times. I just had to bear it ("Tiniis ko na lang") because I was so scared to run away. I didn't know anyone."
While waiting for her employer and his wife in a shopping mall one day, Lorena came across some Filipino nurses, whom she begged for help. Upon hearing her story, they gave her a SIM card and pitched in to buy her a load.
But the domestic torture continued. She would be slapped for speaking Arabic since her employer's wife said she was hired to speak English. She was given just one piece of bread to eat at mealtime and she had to supplement this with scraps from the family's plates. She was loaned to the wife's mother's household to clean the place, and her reward for this was her being raped by the wife's brother; kinship apparently confers the right to rape the servants of relatives. Also during that month, October, she was raped—for the fourth time—by her employer.
She not only had to contend with sexual aggression but with sheer cruelty. Once, while cleaning, she fell and cut herself. With blood gushing from the wound, she pleaded with the employer's wife to bring her to the hospital. She refused, and when Lorena asked her to allow her to call her mother in the Philippines, she again said no, telling her this was too expensive. The employer arrived at that point, but instead of bringing her to the hospital, he said, "You might as well die." Lorena had to stanch the wound with her own clothes and treat herself with pills she had brought with her from the Philippines.
Rape amidst rescue
Wildly desperate by now, Lorena finally managed to get in touch with personnel of the Philippine Overseas Labour Office (POLO) in Al Khobar. Arrangements were made to rescue her on December 30. That morning, the rescue team from POLO and the local police arrived at the residence. Lorena flagged them frantically from a second story window and told them she wanted to jump, but the team advised her not to because she could break her leg. That was a costly decision, since the employer raped her again - for the fifth time - even with the police right outside the residence. When she dragged herself to her employer's wife and begged her to keep her husband away from her, she beat her instead, calling her a liar. "I was screaming and screaming, and the police could hear me, but they did not do anything."
When the employer realised that he was about to be arrested, he begged Lorena not to tell the police anything because he would lose his job and offered to pay for her ticket home. "I said I would not tell on him and say that he was a good man, just so that he would just let me go ('para lang makatakas ako')," Lorena said. When she was finally rescued moments later, Lorena recounted her ordeal to the POLO team and police, and the employer was arrested.
Released from captivity, Lorena was determined to obtain justice. However, arduous bureaucratic procedures delayed a medical examination to obtain traces of semen right after her rescue. When it was finally conducted, she was given an emergency contraceptive pill - an indication, said the POLO officer who led the rescue, that seminal traces had been found in and on her. Also, the examination revealed contusions all over her body and bite marks on her lips.
The criminal investigation is still ongoing and the employer, who has been identified as Lt. Commander Majid Al-Juma-in, is still in jail at the Dammam Police Station. Lorena is worried that the evidence might be tampered with. "These people are influential," she said. "They have a lot of money. I am only a maid. They said they could put me in prison." Her fear is palpable. Her greatest wish is to be repatriated but she knows she must stay till he is convicted and sentenced to death.
Saudi society: a sexual pressure cooker
Lorena's story shows, according to one embassy official, that rape and cruelty is not confined to the lower class Saudi households. "This is an officer in the Saudi Navy, somebody that comes from the educated class."
The reasons why rape and sexual abuse are endemic provoked an animated discussion among those who heard her. The strict sexual segregation, one member of the House team speculated, must create tremendous pent-up sexual pressure, so when the opportunity for sexual satisfaction appears, it explodes. Another said that the sexual abuse of domestics was an extension of the strict subordination to males and institutionalised repression of Saudi women. Whatever the causes, Saudi society is suffused with latent sexual violence, much more so than most other societies.
Decision point for Aquino admin
Other societies have begun to take drastic steps to protect their citizens in Saudi Arabia. After a much-publicised case in which an Indonesia domestic worker suffered internal bleeding and broken bones from a ferocious beating by her employer, who pressed a hot iron on her head and slashed her with scissors, two labour-exporting Indonesian states, West Nusa Tenggara and West Java, banned the recruitment of domestics for employment in Saudi Arabia last December. Earlier, in October, the Sri Lankan ministry of labour backtracked from an agreement arrived at between the Saudi National Recruitment Agency and the Sri Lankan labour federation, asserting that the terms of the agreement was unfavourable to the Sri Lankan domestics and the Sri Lankan economy. This led the Saudis to indefinitely freeze recruitment from Sri Lanka.
These moves by other governments have led to greater demand for Filipino domestic workers. While the informal policy of the Philippine government has been to slow down the recruitment of domestics to Saudi, legal and illegal recruiters, many of them tied to Saudi interests, have been trying to step it up. The Aquino administration may soon reach a critical decision point on the issue of Saudi recruitment since the amended Act on Overseas Workers (Republic Act 10022) requires the department of foreign affairs to certify that a country is taking steps to protect labor rights if workers are to be deployed there. With its hideous record and its resistance to expanding coverage of its labour code to domestic workers, there is no way Saudi Arabia can be certified.
Tattered lives
For members of the recent House mission to Saudi, who were shocked to speechlessness, by the torrent of tales of cruelty, domestic repression, and rape, there is a consensus that every effort must be made to prevent Filipinas from going to Saudi to prevent recurrence of tragedies such as those visited on Lorena and Fatimah. For the many who have already been raped and degraded sexually, however, a move to prevent the deployment of more women to Saudi Arabia comes too late. Lorena may well secure the conviction of Lt. Commander Majid, but that will not restore her to her former self. As Fatimah put it in a handwritten note she passed on to the team, although her tormentors had been sentenced to seven years imprisonment and 2,500 lashes each, "there's no equivalent amount for what they've done. They destroyed my life, my future."
(Walden Bello of Akbayan Partylist is chairman of the Committee on Overseas Workers' Affairs (COWA) of the Philippine House of Representatives. He recently led a fact-finding mission to Saudi Arabia accompanied by Reps. Carmen Zamora-Apsay, Emmeline Aglipay, and Crescente Paez.)
 
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The Islamic 'Holy' book Quran teaches the permissibility of Muslim men having sex with their 'right hand possessions' which is maids or slaves:

Quran 004.024  Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess

This problem of maid rape is an ongoing problem in Arabia due to this pernicious teaching of Islam.

Indonesias previous president Wahid had this to say on the topic:

Indonesian Observer
March 2, 2000

Wahid urges talks on Indonesian women working in Saudi Arabia

JAKARTA (IO) — President Abdurrahman Wahid says Indonesia must hold talks
with Saudi Arabia on the treatment of Indonesian women employed as maids in
the oil-rich country.

"We must hold a discussion so that we can resolve the existing problems and
both sides can understand each other. Indonesia no longer believes in
slavery," he told members of the Mobile Brigade Police in Depok, West Java,
yesterday.

He expressed concern that many Saudis may treat their Indonesian servants as
slaves and sexually harass them.

Many Indonesian women who have worked abroad come home with horror stories of
being raped and badly treated by their foreign bosses.

But according to Wahid, the Indonesian media often makes inaccurate reports
on what goes on in Saudi Arabia.

"The media's descriptions created a public perception that our women workers
were raped. The situation is not like that. The Saudi people still believe in
the old Islamic teaching, which is belief in slavery. So a woman who works
for them is considered a slave," he said.

For some men in Saudi Arabia, sexual relations with a housemaid are not
considered as rape, because they believe that such a practice is permitted by
their beliefs, he added.

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We can see that it Islam itself that encourages this evil behavior due to its inhumane  teachings and legacy.
 
Kisan.




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