Aug. 22
PAKISTAN:
Amnesty Urges Protection of Pakistani Girl Accused of Blasphemy
Amnesty International is urging the Pakistani government to ensure the safety
of a Christian girl accused of violating the country's blasphemy laws after she
allegedly desecrated a religious text.
Police arrested Ramsha Masih last week after angry neighbors surrounded her
house in Islamabad and accused her of burning pages inscribed with verses from
the Koran. Some said she was burning papers from the garbage for cooking.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has ordered a probe into the girl's case.
She is reported to be mentally handicapped and as young as 12.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International issued a statement calling on the Pakistani
government to urgently reform its blasphemy laws, which carry the death
penalty.
The London-based human rights group welcomed President Zardari's "swift
response," but said such actions will "count for little" unless the blasphemy
laws are reformed. Amnesty urged Pakistani officials to ensure the laws cannot
be used to maliciously settle disputes or enable private citizens to take
matters into their own hands.
Amnesty also urged Pakistani authorities to ensure that the girl and her family
are protected against intimidation and attacks.
Last year, Pakistan's Minister of Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian
member of the federal Cabinet, was gunned down in Islamabad. And Punjab
province's governor, Salman Taseer, was killed by one of his bodyguards for
opposing the controversial blasphemy laws.
Christians are the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Pakistan, making up
about 5 % of the population.
(source: Voice of America News)
UGANDA:
Criticism of government leads to harassment of NGOs
In the face of rising public criticism over a range of controversial political
manoeuvres, the Ugandan government has become increasingly hostile to the work
of non-governmental organisations, particularly those advocating for the rights
of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, according to a new
report from Human Rights Watch.
The report, released on Aug. 21, said that intimidation and obstructionist
tactics have, over the last year, been used against NGOs working across a range
of issues.
The report, "Curtailing Criticism: Intimidation and Obstruction of Civil
Society in Uganda", draws on interviews with 41 NGO officials, government
representatives and donors in Kampala. HRW found that some civil society groups
have started self-censoring in order to protect their staff, reflecting wider
concerns that criticism of the government can be increasingly dangerous.
"The attacks on freedom of expression appear to coincide with increasing
criticism of the ruling party's governance," Maria Burnett, a senior researcher
for HRW's Africa division and the author of the report, told IPS.
"At various times since President Yoweri Museveni took office in 1986, there
has been some tolerance for critical or divergent voices. But since the
February 2011 elections, government actors have been tightening the controls on
both access to information and people's abilities to express themselves, to
obstruct the public's understanding of the causes of the economic and political
turmoil," Burnett said.
Museveni, who has been in power for 27 years, is expected to run for another
term of office in 2016.
"Since his re-election in 2011, political tensions have been running high and
public criticism of government has escalated. To better control this
environment, the ruling party's high-ranking government officials are
increasingly scrutinising NGOs and the impact they might have on public
perceptions of governance and management of public funds," HRW said in a
statement on Aug. 21.
The report's release comes on the heels of several clashes between the
government and local and international NGOs. Officials threatened in May to
kick Oxfam International out of the country if the British charity did not
retract and apologise for allegations it made the previous September that more
than 20,000 Ugandans were the victims of land grabs by a British multinational.
And in June the government ordered the Advocates Coalition for Development and
Environment - a local think tank - to stop all political activities.
At the time, State Minister for Internal Affairs James Baba told Uganda's Daily
Monitor that his ministry, which has oversight of the country's NGO Board - the
government-run institution that currently oversees the non-profit sector in
Uganda - was "working within its mandate."
These moves come in the wake of increasing civil society analysis, research and
criticism on a range of issues. This includes charges - raised by opposition
politicians in parliament last year - of corruption in the fledgling oil
sector, high inflation, and poor delivery of education and health services.
Efforts to highlight these issues, including a widely covered Walk to Work
campaign organised by Activists for Change, have drawn international attention
and - in the case of Walk to Work - violent crackdowns by police.
HRW reported that some of the civil society workers they interviewed said they
had received anonymous phone calls encouraging them to stop researching certain
issues. Others suspected their phones were tapped or their homes were under
surveillance.
Though the number of high-profile incidents has increased in 2012, the
government has had a history of obstructing NGO activity in the past -
especially groups working around the LGBT and commercial sex worker (CSW)
communities.
In 2009, Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA), a pan-African women's advocacy
organisation, attempted to hold a leadership training workshop in Uganda for
CSWs. Although AMwA organisers said they informed government officials that
they were planning the workshop and sent them a proposed agenda, the meeting
was shut down the day before it was supposed to happen. The organisers had to
shift the workshop to Nairobi.
The workshop was "not about promoting sex work," Vivian Ngonzi, AMwA's
executive assistant, told IPS. "These were very learned women. They were
discussing self-help, learning about their rights--I don't know what's illegal
about that."
The government has continued to close down workshops, specifically those
focused on members of the LGBT community. HRW's report highlights the
"aggressively homophobic agenda" of Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity
Simon Lokodo who ordered the closing this year of 2 workshops that included
LGBT activists.
In February, he closed down a 5-day meeting in Entebbe, Central Uganda, after
participants, who included LGBT activists, were told that it was an illegal
gathering. After the incident, 4 of the attendees filed a case against him in
the constitutional court, charging him with denying them their constitutional
right to assemble.
Declaring the fight against homosexuality a "national priority," Lokodo also
told HRW that groups like Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) were "on a mission to
destroy this country."
Lokodo's efforts have been made at the same time that a proposed
Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda seeks to criminalise homosexual activities
and introduce the death penalty in some cases.
The bill - originally introduced in 2009 by member of parliament David Bahati,
who claims that homosexuality has been imported from the West - listed the
death penalty as punishment under an offence called aggravated homosexuality.
This, according to the 2009 draft of the bill, was defined as "repeat
offenders" of homosexuality, or when one of the participants in a homosexual
relationship is under 18, or has a disability, or is HIV-positive.
The bill was allowed to lapse during last year's parliament, and was
reintroduced by Bahati in February, this time without the death penalty clause.
Pepe Onziema, the advocacy and policy officer at SMUG and one of the plaintiffs
in the case, told IPS that the situation is getting "harder and harder" for
LGBT-focused NGOs.
Onziema said, in the case of LGBT activists, the government is focusing on "a
particular group of organisations to intimidate the rest of society" -
something HRW also concluded.
"After the threats of closing down NGOs--things are getting worse," Onziema
said.
Local media organisations reported that Lokodo planned to ban 38 organisations
that were sympathetic to the LGBT cause, though no action has yet been taken.
HRW's report found, even among groups not working on LGBT issues, that there is
growing concern that any precedent established in closing those groups could
later be applied to them.
HRW has called on the Ugandan government to reverse course "to change and
improve its terms of engagement with all NGOs." It noted that NGOs were forced
to scale back their work, especially on controversial topics such as LGBT
rights, in order to continue operating.
"1 LGBT organisation had a small project to distribute brochures which carried
the message that LGBT people are like everyone else and that God loves them.
Because of the government's obstructions to the work of LGBT groups, the
organisers of this project felt that their volunteers would be unsafe and have
stopped this work. In order to continue operating and providing services to
their community, they have since limited the scope of their work," the report
says.
Specifically, HRW is calling for autonomy for the NGO Board. The organisation
is also urging the government to investigate instances of unlawful
interference, harassment or intimidation of NGOs, like the workshop closures.
(source: Inter Press Service)
*********************
Uganda aid to continue despite controversial anti-gay bill
Denmark will continue to send support to Uganda despite their anti-gay
sentiments, but sexual minority groups to get bigger share
Every year, Denmark sends 300 million kroner in support to Uganda, the 3rd
largest annual donation the east-African country receives.
But since 2009, the Ugandan parliament has been leading a crusade against gays
and lesbians in the country, and the debate over Danish support hit fever pitch
in March when the Ugandan parliament began discussing whether homosexuality
should be punishable by death.
The development minister, Christian Friis Bach (Radikale), has been criticised
by for his leniency in the matter but said that the best course of action was
maintaining a presence in Uganda. He contended that cancelling the support
would only make matters worse for sexual minorities in the country.
Bach met with the foreign minister, Villy Sovndal (Socialistisk Folkeparti),
and Ugandan sexual minority rights advocate Frank Mugisha on Tuesday, and they
have decided that while development aid should continue to flow to Uganda, it
could be restructured to focus more on the gay rights issue. The plan could
especially hinge on the use of non-government organisations (NGOs) operating in
Uganda.
Bach's prospective move is backed by human rights organisation Amnesty Denmark
which has campaigned for better rights for gay and lesbians in Uganda.
"The homosexual organisations in Uganda work under very difficult conditions,"
Amnesty's campaign coordinator, Helle Jacobsen, told Politiken newspaper. "That
is why it is essential for us that Denmark funnels a part of their aid to these
organisations directly, as well as applying political pressure on the
government in Kampala."
The political pressure Jacobsen referred to is in connection to the Ugandan
parliament's imminent vote on the notorious bill, reintroduced in February
2012, which would allow homosexuality to be punishable by the death penalty.
But Bach maintained that even if this were to happen, development aid should
still be sent to the country, which is set to receive 1.3 billion kroner over
the next 5 years.
"If we cease our projects, such as for better education and clean drinking
water, people in Uganda will feel that they are being punished and will vent
their anger at the homosexual community," Bach told Politiken newspaper.
Aside from Uganda, there are many other countries in Africa that prosecute
homosexuality, including Sudan, Mauritania, Tanzania, Sierra Leone and parts of
Nigeria and Somalia.
(source: The Copenhagen Post)
TAIWAN:
Girl kills uncle for shutting down internet
A Taiwan teenager allegedly stabbed her uncle to death on Wednesday because he
shut down her internet to stop her from staying online late into the night.
The 19-year-old, identified only by her surname Lin, was taken into custody on
Wednesday in Miaoli County in the north-west of the island after she allegedly
stabbed her uncle in the stomach with a 29-centimetre knife, according to the
semi-official Central News Agency.
Based on their initial investigation, the police said the teen was connecting
to the internet around 2am when her uncle shut the power down. An argument
ensued, and the teen pulled out the knife.
The 37-year-old uncle, whose name was not released, died of his wounds in a
local hospital.
Lin's grandmother, who also lived in the home, said the uncle had a bad temper,
and would shut down the power of the house occasionally while Lin was surfing
the web because he was annoyed that she stayed up so late.
A representative from Miaoli's prosecutors office declined to comment on the
case, but said a murder conviction in Taiwan carries a penalty ranging from 10
years in prison to a death sentence.
(source: IOL News)
IRAN:
Donors Should Reassess Anti-Drug Funding
United Nations agencies and international donors should immediately freeze
financial and other assistance to Iran's drug control programs, Human Rights
Watch and Harm Reduction International (HRI) said today. The funding
contributes to abusive prosecutions of drug suspects, the groups said.
Iran's judicial and legal system systematically violates the human rights of
accused drug offenders, in particular their right to a fair trial, resulting in
numerous death sentences in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch
and HRI said. The donors should audit the human rights impacts of their
projects and not resume any assistance until satisfied that Iran has ended the
persistent violation of the rights of drug suspects in its criminal justice
system, including abolishing the death penalty for drug offenders.
"Donors are effectively supporting prosecutions in a judicial and legal system
that they themselves regard as unjust," said Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy
director of the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.
"Draconian laws, secret trials, no appeals, and death sentences for possession
of small amounts of drugs should warn off any donor that wants to do the right
thing."
UN agencies and international donors have in the past decade provided millions
of dollars of financial and technical assistance to support drug control
efforts in Iran or to programs in neighboring countries that affect enforcement
capacity in Iran, according to information collected by HRI. The stated purpose
of these drug enforcement programs is to reduce crime and human suffering by
reducing the supply and demand of illicit drugs.
"In reality, Iran's drug enforcement programs increase its capacity to arrest
alleged drug offenders," said Schleifer. "They make it easier to prosecute
alleged offenders based on unfair trials, and even apply the death sentence
under the draconian drug laws of Iran's revolutionary courts."
The problem is made worse by laws, policies, and practices regulating drug
offenses. Iran's anti-narcotics law imposes mandatory death sentences for
possession and trafficking of small amounts of illicit drugs, tries alleged
drug offenders behind closed doors in revolutionary courts where they are
regularly denied their due process rights, and severely restricts their right
to appeal even in cases where the punishment is death.
The number of people executed by Iranian authorities for drug-related offenses
has risen sharply over the last few years. In 2011, Iran executed at least 600
people, 2nd only to China. 81 % of these executions were for drug-related
crimes, including for personal use. According to Amnesty International, in
2009, of the 389 executions recorded, 166 - almost 43 % - were drug-related. In
2010 about 68 % of all executions recorded by the organization - 172 of the 253
known executions - were for drug-related offenses.
The UN secretary-general and the UN special rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in Iran bothexpressed concern in 2011 about the high number of
executions for drug-related offenses. In October 2011, the UN Human Rights
Committee recommendedthat the Iranian authorities consider abolishing the death
penalty or at least revising the penal code to restrict the death penalty to
only the "most serious crimes."
UN human rights mechanisms - including the UN special rapporteur on
extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, and the UN Human Rights
Committee - also have concluded that the death penalty for drug offenses fails
to meet the condition of "most serious crime." The UN high commissioner for
human rights and the director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have
likewise expressed grave concerns about imposing the death penalty for drug
offenses.
In 2012, UNODC released guidelines on the promotion and protection of human
rights in countries where it funds law enforcement and anti-trafficking
measures. The guidelines acknowledge that if "a country actively continues to
apply the death penalty for drug offences, UNODC places itself in a very
vulnerable position vis-a-vis its responsibility to respect human rights if it
maintains support to law enforcement units, prosecutors or courts within the
criminal justice system." They also explicitly acknowledge that training of law
enforcement forces who are responsible for the arrest of drug traffickers who
are ultimately sentenced to death "may be considered sufficiently proximate" to
implicate international responsibility.
The guidelines provide that in cases where executions for drug-related offenses
continue unabated despite requests for guarantees and high-level political
intervention, UNODC "may have no choice but to employ a temporary freeze or
withdrawal of support."
Iran's anti-narcotics law imposes a mandatory death sentence for manufacturing,
trafficking, possession, or trade of 5 kilograms of opium and other specified
drugs, and 30 grams of heroin, morphine, or specified synthetic and non-medical
psychotropic drugs, such as methamphetamines.
Although domestic and international law say that all death sentences should be
subject to appeal, Iran has apparently limited appeals in these cases. On
October 11, 2010, Prosecutor General Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei announced that
in an effort to speed up the prosecution of drug offenses, certain trafficking
cases would be referred to his office. After this announcement, rights groups
received information that some of those convicted under the drug law have not
been permitted to lodge appeals.
Foreign nationals, especially refugees and unlawful migrants from Afghanistan,
are at particular risk of being deprived of their right to a fair trial and
ultimately executed, Human Rights Watch and HRI said. Scores of those executed
for drug-related crimes in recent years, many of them at the Vakilabad prison
in the northeastern city of Mashhad, are believed to have been Afghan nationals
who were convicted without access to lawyers or consular officials. Exact
numbers are not available, but in 2010 Iranian officials acknowledged that at
least 4,000 Afghans were in Iranian prisons, the vast majority on drug charges.
Since then authorities have executed several other foreign nationals without
informing the proper consular officials.
"In spite of widespread reports of these human rights abuses, UNODC and donor
countries have continued to give millions of dollars to the governments of
Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the name of combating drug trafficking,"
said Schleifer. According to a new report released by HRI, a significant
portion of this funding has gone to Afghan-Iranian drug border control
programs.
For example, Austria, Canada, the European Union, and Germany provided more
than US$4 million to secure the Iran-Afghanistan border from 2004 through 2009,
including construction of 25 border posts aimed at "enhance[ing] the capacity
of the Afghan Border Police to reduce the flow of drugs." The funding included
training, capacity-building, and equipment such as drug test kits, night vision
goggles, and vehicles. During the lifetime of the project, Iranian authorities
arrested 16 Afghan children who were later sentenced to death in Iran on drug
trafficking charges, clear evidence of the human rights environment all but
ignored by large scale international drug enforcement assistance.
From 2007 to 2011, Belgium, France, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom
provided $3.4 million through UNODC to establish border liaison offices as well
as for body scanners and sniffer dogs to be used at checkpoints, major
airports, and the Iran-Afghanistan border. According to UNODC, in 2010, drug
detecting dog units helped seize more than 33 tons of drugs, and the number of
such seizures rose significantly in 2011, along with associated arrests and
prosecutions. The installation of body scanners at airports led to a 12-fold
increase in drug seizures. In 2010 and 2011, Iranian authorities executed more
than 1,000 drug offenders, more than triple the number in the prior 2-year
period, according to HRI.
Both Human Rights Watch and HRI have previously raised serious concernsthat the
assistance may play a part, direct or indirect, in Iran's human rights
violations. Many donor countries that have abolished use of the death penalty
regularly criticize Iran for high execution rates. The United Kingdom, along
with all EU member states, opposes the death penalty. But in 2009 the UK
Foreign and Commonwealth Office acknowledged that it spent approximately
3,025,000 [US$4,761,955] on counter-narcotics assistance in and with Iran
between 2000 and 2009.
UNODC has consistently praised the Iranian government's efforts at combatting
drug trafficking. In July 2011 its executive director, Yuri Fedotov, said that
Iran had "one of the world's strongest counter-narcotics responses" and that
its good practices "deserve the acknowledgement of the international
community." Yet Fedetov has said nothing about the hundreds of prisoners that
Iran has hanged following fundamentally flawed trials. The silence is
especially puzzling because UNODC opposes the death penalty for drug-related
offenses, and publicly has acknowledged the importance of promoting and
protecting human rights in combatting drugs.
Despite the repressive measures adopted by Iran, according to UNODC???s 2012
World Drug Report, Iran has one of the "highest prevalence rates for opium and
heroin use" in the world, with more than 1.2 million drug-dependent users.
UNODC's figures also show that drug addiction and HIV rates have soared in
recent years, with injecting drug users accounting for almost 70 % of the
country's 22,000 detected HIV cases. The report also mentioned that in recent
years illicit manufacturing of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamines, has
sharply increased in Iran.
In December 2010, the European Parliament concluded there was a need to ensure
that drug enforcement funding does not facilitate human rights abuses. It
specifically referred to application of the death penalty for drug crimes as an
example of a human rights violation, and said that, "The abolition of the death
penalty for drug-related offenses should be made a precondition for financial
assistance, capacity-building and other support for drug enforcement."
"Donors should freeze funding to drug law enforcement programs in Iran until it
suspends the death penalty and adopts fair trial standards," said Damon
Barrett, deputy director of HRI. "The donors should adopt clear policy
guidelines for human rights standards in funding all drug control programs and
audit the programs to make sure the standards are followed. Governments often
talk about their 'shared responsibility' in fighting the drug trade. It's time
for shared responsibility for the human rights consequences of that fight."
Recommendations for action by international donors and Iran follow.
UNODC and International Donors Should:
--Freeze funding of drug enforcement programs to Iran or other governments
engaged in bilateral border patrol arrangements that may lead to arrests of
alleged drug offenders by Iranian authorities until Iran takes steps to assure
that its drug enforcement practices meet international standards;
--Implement guidelines issued by UNODC that are rooted in international human
rights standards - including the abolition of the death penalty for drug
crimes, prosecution of drug cases in ordinary criminal courts, and guarantees
that those accused of drug crimes will receive fair trials - for financial,
technical and other assistance provided for drug enforcement, demand reduction,
or related projects such as HIV-focused programming in Iran;
--Audit all funding and program activities for drug control to ensure that no
funding contributes directly or indirectly to increased arrests of drug
offenders in a highly problematic legal and judicial system;
--Implement a transparent system of human rights impact assessments initially
and throughout the lifetime of projects. UNODC's plans for a "human rights
planning tool" should be transparent and replicated at the government level on
multilateral and bilateral funding decisions for drug enforcement;
and Resume funding to the Iranian government or other governments engaged in
bilateral border patrol arrangements that may lead to arrests of alleged drug
offenders by Iranian authorities only if the concerned governments have taken
significant steps with a demonstrable impact on ending related rights abuses.
Iran Should:
-- Declare an immediate moratorium on all executions with a view to the
abolition of the death penalty in line with UN General Assembly Resolution
62/149 and 63/168 on "moratorium on the use of the death penalty" and commute
all death sentences, including for drug offenses;
--Abolish provisions within Iran's penal code that allow for the death penalty
for drug offenses;
--Prosecute drug-related cases in open and fair public trials in ordinary
criminal courts, that meet international standards, including ensuring that
defendants have proper access to a lawyer and the right to an appeal; and
--Publicize statistics on the death penalty and facts around the administration
of justice in death penalty cases.
(source: Payvand News)
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