MENA: 2009 Report on Human Rights in the Arab Region

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Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform
2009 Report on Human Rights in the Arab Region
Press Release
Today the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies released its second annual report on the state of human rights in the Arab world for the year 2009. The report, entitled Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform, concludes that the human rights situation in the Arab region has deteriorated throughout the region over the last year.
The report reviews the most significant developments in human rights during 2009 in 12 Arab countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. It also devotes separate chapters to the Arab League and an analysis of the performance of Arab governments in UN human rights institutions. Another chapter addresses the stance of Arab governments concerning women's rights, the limited progress made to advance gender equality, and how Arab governments use the issue of women's rights to burnish their image before the international community while simultaneously evading democratic and human rights reform measures required to ensure dignity and equality for all of their citizens. .
The report observes the grave and ongoing Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, particularly the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through the ongoing blockade and the brutal invasion of Gaza at the beginning of 2009 which resulted in the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians, 83 percent of them civilians not taking part in hostilities. The report notes that the plight of the Palestinian people has been exacerbated by the Fatah-Hamas conflict, which has turned universal rights and liberties into favors granted on the basis of political affiliation. Both parties have committed grave abuses against their opponents, including arbitrary detention, lethal torture, and extrajudicial killings.
The deterioration in Yemeni affairs may presage the collapse of what remains of the central state structure due to policies that give priority to the monopolization of power and wealth, corruption that runs rampant, and a regime that continues to deal with opponents using solely military and security means. As such, Yemen is now the site of a war in the northern region of Saada, a bloody crackdown in the south, and social and political unrest throughout the country. Moreover, independent press and human rights defenders who expose abuses in both the north and south are targets of increasingly harsh repression.
In its blatant contempt for justice, the Sudanese regime is the exemplar for impunity and the lack of accountability. President Bashir has refused to appear before the International Criminal Court in connection with war crimes in Darfur. Instead, his regime is hunting down anyone in the country who openly rejects impunity for war crimes, imprisoning and torturing them and shutting down rights organizations. Meanwhile the government's policy of collective punishment against the population of Darfur continues, as well as its evasion of responsibilities under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the north and south, making secession a more likely scenario, which may once again drag the country into a bloody civil war.
In Lebanon, the threat of civil war that loomed last year has receded, but the country still suffers from an entrenched two-tier power structure in which Hizbullah's superior military capabilities give the opposition an effective veto. As a result, the state's constitutional institutions have been paralyzed.
In this context it took several months for the clear winner in the parliamentary elections to form a government. Now, even after the formation of a government, the unequal military balance of power between the government and the opposition will prevent serious measures to guarantee all parties accountable before the law, and greatly undermine the possibility of delivering justice for the many crimes and abuses experienced by the Lebanese people over the last several years.
Although Iraq is still the largest arena of violence and civilian deaths, it witnessed a relative improvement in some areas, though these gains remain fragile. The death toll has dropped and threats against journalists are less frequent. In addition, some of the major warring factions have indicated they are prepared to renounce violence and engage in the political process.
In Egypt, as the state of emergency approaches the end of its third decade, the broad immunity given to the security apparatus has resulted in the killing of dozens of undocumented migrants, the use of lethal force in the pursuit of criminal suspects, and routine torture. Other signs of deterioration were visible in 2009: the emergency law was applied broadly to repress freedom of expression, including detaining or abducting bloggers. Moreover, the Egyptian police state is increasingly acquiring certain theocratic features, which have reduced some religious freedoms, and have lead to an unprecedented expansion of sectarian violence within the country.
In Tunisia, the authoritarian police state continued its unrestrained attacks on political activists, journalists, human rights defenders, trade unionists, and others involved in social protest. At the same time, the political stage was prepared for the reelection of President Ben Ali through the introduction of constitutional amendments that disqualified any serious contenders.
In Algeria, the emergency law, the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, and the application of counterterrorism measures entrenched policies of impunity, grave police abuses, and the undermining of accountability and freedom of expression. Constitutional amendments paved the way for the installment of President Bouteflika as president for life amid elections that were contested on many levels, despite the lack of real political competition.
Morocco, unfortunately, has seen a tangible erosion of the human rights gains achieved by Moroccans over the last decade. A fact most clearly seen in the failure if the government to adopt a set of institutional reforms within the security and judicial sectors intended to prevent impunity for crimes. Morocco's relatively improved status was also undermined by the intolerance shown for freedom of expression, particularly for expression touching on the king or the royal family, or instances of institutional corruption. Protests against the status of the Moroccan-administered Western Sahara region were also repressed and several Sahrawi activists were referred to a military tribunal for the first time in 14 years.
As Syria entered its 47th year of emergency law, it continued to be distinguished by its readiness to destroy all manner of political opposition, even the most limited manifestations of independent expression. The Kurdish minority was kept in check by institutionalized discrimination, and human rights defenders were targets for successive attacks. Muhannad al-Hassani, the president of the Sawasiyah human rights organization, was arrested and tried, and his attorney, Haitham al-Maleh, the former chair of the Syrian Human Rights Association, was referred to a military tribunal. The offices of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression were shut down, and Syrian prisons still hold dozens of prisoners of conscience and democracy advocates.
In Bahrain, the systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority was accompanied by more repression of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Human rights defenders increasingly became targets for arrest, trial, and smear campaigns. Some human rights defenders were even subjected by government agents to threats and intimidation while in Europe.
In Saudi Arabia, the report notes that the Monarch's speeches urging religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue abroad have not been applied inside the Kingdom, where the religious police continue to clamp down on personal freedom. Indeed, repression of religious freedoms is endemic, and the Shiite minority continues to face systematic discrimination. Counterterrorism policies were used to justify long-term arbitrary detention, and political activists advocating reform were tortured. These policies also undermined judicial standards, as witnessed by the prosecution of hundreds of people in semi-secret trials over the last year.
In tandem with these grave abuses and the widespread lack of accountability for such crimes within Arab countries, the report notes that various Arab governments and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been working in concert within UN institutions to undermine international mechanisms and standards for the protection of human rights. On this level, Arab governments have sought to undercut provisions that bring governments to account or seriously assess and monitor human rights. This is most clearly illustrated by the broad attack on independent UN human rights experts and NGOs working within the UN, as well as attempts to legalize international restrictions on freedom of expression through the pretext of prohibiting "defamation of religions."
In the same vein, the Arab League and its summit forums offered ongoing support for the Bashir regime in Sudan despite charges of war crimes, and members of the organization used the principle of national sovereignty as a pretext to remain silent about or even collaborate on grave violations in several Arab states. Little hope should be invested in the Arab League as a protector of human rights regionally. Indeed, the Arab Commission on Human Rights, created by the Arab Charter on Human Rights (a weak document compared to other regional charters), is partially composed of government officials, and the secretariat of the Arab League has begun to take measures to weaken the Commission, including obstructing the inclusion of NGOs in its work, intentionally undermining its ability to engage in independent action, even within the stifling constraints laid out by the charter.

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Full report in Arabic:
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UAE: UAE is determined to continue in the path of women revivalism

2009-06-04 20:52:33
WAM Geneva, Jun 04th, 2009 (WAM): The United Arab Emirates reiterated today before the world community, its determination to continue the march in the path of women revivalism.

Addressing the annual full-day discussion of the Human Rights Council on women's human rights today, the permanent representative of the UAE at the United Nations Office in Geneva Obeid Salem Al Za'abi said that since the formation of the UAE under the presidency of late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the leadership of the country was fully aware of the fact the woman is an equal partner in the process of national development.

The leadership of the country, inspired by its faith in gender equality, adopted a strategy of empowering women in cultural, social and economic fields, Al Za'abi said.

In an intervention made during the discussion, Al Za'abi portrayed how UAE worked to achieve the gender equality in rights and duties through guaranteeing women their right to ownership, employment, social security, economic and financial management, education, healthcare, earning, as well as many other rights.

In our country, the strong presence of women in the leadership roles and positions of decision making is not a new trend, but is a continuation of the march led by Her Highness Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak though her ardent work for the renaissance of the women, said Al Za'abi.

He briefly shed light on various institutions in the UAE established with an objective of empowering women to play the equal role in the nation building. Al Za'abi drew a few examples such as the General Women's Union (GWU), which was founded by HH Sheikh Fatima and the Family Development Foundation (FDF).

Women in UAE holds four seats in the federal cabinet and fills nine seats in a total of 40 seats in the Federal National Council, the country's supreme legislative body. This in addition to a large number of key posts women hold in various ministries and local governments. More over, women represent 59 percent of the total work force in the UAE and enjoy equal opportunity in the economic life, Al Za'abi pointed out.

He also asserted the country's commitment to continue this march under the leadership of President HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The Human Rights Council's discussion on women's human rights was entitled equality before the law: concrete steps to further women's equality. The discussion focused on non-discrimination in the law, with a view to identifying concrete steps to further women's equality. The first part addressed institutional perspectives on equality before the law and the second part presented a wider perspective from academia and civil society.

Opening the discussion, Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said international human rights treaties prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and included guarantees to ensure that women and men enjoyed their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights on a basis of equality.

Despite this perception, global and national realities indicated that there was a wide gulf between international legal obligations and their implementation. Not only did inequality in the legal, civil, economic, political and social arenas violate international obligations, but it also compounded discrimination against women.

When race, religion, ethnicity, poverty, disability, social status, and other forms of discrimination were factored in, then the picture was one of even greater disparity. Moreover, inequality created a climate where violence against women and girls was considered acceptable.

Speaking in the first part of the discussion were Chile, India, Nigeria, Paraguay for MERCOSUR, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Norway, Czech Republic for the European Union, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Switzerland, Philippines for ASEAN, Slovenia, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Russian Federation, Lithuania, Iceland, Turkey, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Serbia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Algeria, China, Indonesia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina and South Africa.

Also speaking were the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain and the National Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, national human rights institutions. Non-governmental organizations speaking were the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Equality Now, Amnesty International and Women's International Democratic Federation.

The following non-governmental organizations also took the floor: Center for Women's Global Leadership, Worldwide Organization for Women, International Federation of Human Rights and Interfaith International.

International human rights treaties prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and included guarantees to ensure that women and men enjoyed their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights on a basis of equality.

WAM/AB

Saudi Arabia: Saudi judge says it's OK for men to beat wives

The Associated Press
By ABDULLAH SHIHRI – May 11, 2009

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — A Saudi judge told a conference on domestic violence that a man has the right to slap a wife who spends money wastefully and said women were as much to blame as men for increased spousal abuse, a Saudi newspaper reported.

The remarks do not carry the weight of law, as they were made out of court. But such public pronouncements by Saudi judges — who are also Islamic clerics — are often widely respected.

A rights activist decried the remarks and said she and other campaigners viewed them as the latest setback in women's efforts to gain the right to vote, drive, freely participate in politics and be protected from violence. Activists have become more vocal in recent years in their criticism of cases involving women's rights, including what many see as the religious police's harsh enforcement of the segregation of sexes.

"If a person gives 1,200 Saudi riyals ($320) to his wife and she spends 900 riyals ($240) to purchase an abaya (head-to-toe robe) from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment," Judge Hamad Al-Razine was quoted as saying by the English-language Arab News newspaper on Sunday.

The comments at a recent conference were given as part of an explanation for an increase in domestic violence in the country. The judge said women were equally responsible for the increase, the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The paper did not say exactly when the conference was held. The judge could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Women in the audience loudly protested the judge's remarks, the newspaper said.

Saudi Arabia bars women from voting, except for chamber of commerce elections in two cities in recent years, and no woman can sit in the kingdom's Cabinet. Women also cannot drive or travel without permission from a male guardian.

Sohaila Zenelabideen Hammad, spokeswoman of the Saudi National Center for Human Rights, told the Associated Press on Monday that the judge's remarks are reason for concern for being "too extreme."

"It is not acceptable, it is even forbidden in Islam to beat a woman on her face. ... No matter what the woman does, the man has no right whatsoever and under any circumstances to beat his wife on the face," said Hammad, who was not at the conference.

"Regrettably, there is a common understanding in the Arab and Islamic world that man is the master who looks down on the woman and has the right to do whatever he wants to her. This is wrong," Hammad said.

She said she was to attend a meeting later Monday with members of UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children, to discuss the issue.

Associated Press Writer Omar Sinan contributed to this report from Cairo.

Mauritania: Religious Leaders call for Ending Corporal Punishment in Mauritania

UNICEF
By Christian Skoog and Brahim Ould Isselmou

ATAR, Mauritania, 6 May 2009 – In the first hour after his arrival at a mahadra (Koranic school) in Atar, Ahmed was beaten several times. Over the next four months, he suffered daily.

His ‘Cheikh’, or teacher, used many different tools to punish Ahmed and his friends. Some of the boys who are considered troublemakers were tied up to the trunks of trees and left outside for hours, suffering from the heat and hunger.

“I pray to Allah that I no longer have to wear my torn shirt to cover the scars on my back,” said Ahmed.

Turning to the Imams’ Network

In this country, as in many others, corporal punishment is widespread in mahadras and secular primary schools, and within families. It is considered a suitable and effective educational method.

UNICEF Mauritania analyzed this widespread phenomenon in order to find the best way to address it. Given the pre-eminent position of religious leaders in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a partnership with the Imams’ and Religious Leaders’ Network for Child Rights was deemed an appropriate entry point.

This approach is also in line with the recommendations of the UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children, which urges close collaboration with community and religious leaders.

No basis in the Koran

For its part, the Imams’ Network carried out a study to assess whether corporal punishment is allowed in Islam. The evidence was overwhelming: The study found that violence has no place in the Koran.

UNICEF Representative in Mauritania Christian Skoog, local authorities and the President of the Imams’ and Religious Leaders’ Network for Child Rights, Hademine Ould Saleck, attend a workshop on ending corporal punishment.
The results of the study will now form the basis of a fatwa (religious edict) barring physical and verbal violence against children in the educational system, including in the home.

“The evidence that corporal punishment is forbidden by Islam is clear and abiding for all of us,” declared Imams’ Network President Hademine Ould Saleck. “Let us stop arguing. We don’t have a choice, and we must apply Sharia [Islamic law], which fully protects children”.

‘A powerful tool’

A regional workshop to validate the study was held 20-21 April in Atar. Among the participants were 30 Imams from the Adrar and Inchiri regions, as well as UNICEF Representative in Mauritania Christian Skoog.

“We have to use this fatwa prohibiting corporal punishment as a powerful tool to disseminate and put an end to violence in mahadras, schools and religious events,” said Mr. Skoog.

This child-rights initiative coincides with the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the scaling up of the country programme in Mauritania. In fact, the regional workshop kicked off a series of commemorative events.

Yemen: Yemen escapes Worst of the Worst list of not free countries

Yemen Times
By: Nadia Al-Sakkaf and Freedom House

May 6 — Maintaining the same position as last year in the Freedom House annual survey on the state of global political rights and civil liberties, Yemen has escaped the list of 42 countries designated as “not free.”

Each year 193 countries are judged based on events from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. As last year Yemen is described as “partially free” with a rating of five for both political rights and civil liberties rates, and an average combined rating of five based on a 1 to 7 scale, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free.

“We are publishing this report to assist policymakers, human rights organizations, democracy advocates, and others who are working to advance freedom around the world. We also hope that the report will be useful to the work of the United Nations Human Rights Council,” announced the team behind the report.

Of the 51 “not free” territories and countries, 17 countries and four territories were selected as Worst of the Worst due to systematic and pervasive human rights violations. With an average combined political rights and civil liberties ratings of 6.5 or 7, these countries comprise 10 percent of the world’s nations and 24 percent of the world’s population. Six of those 17 countries are Arab: Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

None of the Arab countries were categorized as free, while only seven countries including Yemen were defined as partially free: Djibouti, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain, Morocco and Kuwait. The remaining 13 countries in addition to the Palestinian territories were defined as not free.

According to the report, at the beginning of 2009, of the 193 countries in the world, 89 countries -46 percent- are free and can be said to respect a broad array of basic human rights and political freedoms. An additional 62 countries -32 percent- are partly free, with some abridgments of basic rights and weak enforcement of the rule of law.

In all, some 3 billion people -46 percent of the world’s population-live in free states in which a broad array of political rights are protected.

“The fundamental violations of rights presented in this report are all the more alarming because they stand in sharp contrast to the significant expansion of human liberty over the last three decades. In that period, dozens of states have shed tyranny and embraced democratic rule and respect for basic civil liberties,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director at Freedom House.

The survey rates each country and territory on a seven-point scale for both political rights and civil liberties, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free, and then assigns each country and territory a broad category status of free (for countries whose ratings average 1.0 to 2.5), partly free (3.0 to 5.0), or not free (5.5 to 7.0).

The ratings process is based on a checklist of 10 political rights and 15 civil liberties questions. The political rights check list includes questions about the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, functioning of the government and other discretionary political rights questions. The civil liberties checklist includes questions about freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights.

“The Freedom in the World ratings are not merely assessments of the conduct of governments, but are intended to reflect the reality of daily life,” reads the report. “Freedom can be affected by state actions as well as by non-state actors. Thus, terrorist movements or armed groups use violent methods which can dramatically restrict essential freedoms within a society. Conversely, the existence of non-state activists or journalists who act courageously and independently despite state restrictions can positively impact the ability of the population to exercise its freedoms.”

Consequently, Freedom House and UN Watch strongly urge United Nations members to block seven countries from obtaining seats on the Human Rights Council, including China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia rated among the world’s most repressive regimes.

The non government organizations released a report in New York this week that indicates that nearly two-thirds of the 20 countries running for seats in next week’s election either have poor or questionable human rights records.

The study found seven countries not qualified: Azerbaijan, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The governments of three of those countries—China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia—rank among the world’s most repressive regimes, suppressing nearly all fundamental political rights and civil liberties, according to Freedom House’s Worst of the Worst report. An additional six countries have questionable or mixed human rights records: Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Senegal.

The report raised further concern that a majority of the candidates may gain seats on the influential council despite their records, because of a lack of competition from democratic states. However, each candidate must first secure an absolute majority of the General Assembly, or 97 votes, to win a seat.

“General Assembly members who care about human rights must not resign themselves to approving these noncompetitive slates,” said Paula Schriefer, Freedom House advocacy director. “We urge member states to restore credibility to the council by rejecting those nations that do not uphold basic standards for human rights.”

On May 12, the UN General Assembly is expected to elect 18 new countries to the Human Rights Council, more than a third of its total membership. Each regional group is apportioned a specific number of seats. However, in three of the five regional groups—Asia, Latin America and the Western European and Others group—the number of countries running does not exceed the number of open seats.

The General Assembly is instructed to elect council members based on their ability to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and their ability to “fully cooperate” with the council.

As a result, UN Watch and Freedom House evaluated each of the 20 candidates based on its record of human rights protection at home and its record of human rights promotion at the UN.

The evaluation included the countries’ rankings in Freedom House and UN Watch analyses, as well as reports from Reporters San Frontières, The Economist Democracy Index and the Democracy Coalition Project.

Morocco: Child Marriage in Morocco Criticized

Magharebia
By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 05/05/09


[Getty Images] Extreme poverty leads families to marry off their underage daughters, experts in Morocco say.

Moroccan associations and human rights organisations want the practice of child marriage to stop. Campaigners from various associations recently criticised the way the Moudawana (Family Code), which was intended to limit child marriages, has been applied.

The legal minimum age for marriage in Morocco is 18 years, although family judges are empowered to allow exceptions. This loophole has enabled thousands of families to marry off their daughters prematurely.

According to figures from the justice ministry, over 31,000 under-age girls were married in 2008, compared with 29,847 in 2007.

Fouzia Assouli, chair of the Democratic League of Women's Rights, stressed that reform of the family code must take place now to restrict and clearly define the judges' powers regarding child marriage.

"Five years after the new family code was passed, Moroccans have certainly grasped the great importance of women's rights, but we're still lagging behind society's expectations," she said.

Samira Boufaracha, who belongs to the association Together for Women's Development, stated that the basis upon which exemptions are granted by judges is often unclear. "Almost every request is granted, which just encourages families to continue this practice, even though when the Moudawana first came in, we thought things would change."

The Moroccan Women's Democratic Association's legal chair Saïda Amrani Idrissi said that the law gives judges tremendous room for manoeuvre.

The justice minister says that judges are not automatically granting permission for child marriages, citing the 7% of requests that are rejected.

"The fact that some requests are rejected proves that approval is not a foregone conclusion. Requests are granted according to the particular social situation of the girls concerned," stated Justice Minister Abdelwahed Radi.

Jamal Badaoui, a sociologist, explained to Magharebia that it is proving difficult to change Moroccan attitudes overnight, particularly in rural areas. "Mindsets are much harder to change than laws. Parents living in the midst of poverty and illiteracy continue to believe that girls must be married off as soon as possible. They can't imagine a future outside marriage."

He added that things would not change unless there are targeted public awareness campaigns to explain the harm caused by early marriage and to stress the importance of learning in girls' lives, both in urban and country areas. "An improvement in families' economic circumstances will also help to limit the phenomenon. In fact, there is a series of causes on which the authorities and civil society must take action to change the situation."

Lebanon: Lebanon’s politicians urged to focus on human rights in election campaigns

Communiqué from Amnesty International/US - Lebanon’s electorate goes to the polls in a national election on 7 June. Amnesty International has written an open letter to political leaders calling on them to put human rights at the centre of their election campaign.

In the letter published on Thursday, Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, urges political leaders in the country to firmly entrench the protection and promotion of human rights in both the law and in practice. The letter identifies five key steps:

* Reform the justice system to ensure it is independent and to guarantee fair trials;

* End all arbitrary detention and torture and other ill-treatment;

* End impunity for grave human rights violations and establish mechanisms to ensure justice, truth and reparation for victims of past gross abuses of human rights;

* End all discrimination and violence and other abuses against women and members of marginalised groups;

* Enact legislation to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.

Irene Khan also urged campaigning parties to display respect for freedom of expression, assembly and other rights essential to the conduct of political life during their campaigns.

Political divisions in Lebanon have hindered the full realization of human rights in the country. The June elections represent a new opportunity to build upon the period following the Doha Agreement of last May, the formation of the national unity government and the subsequent election of Michel Suleiman as President.

There have been some positive human rights developments in the country in recent months. In December 2008, Lebanon ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. In addition, a draft law to abolish the death penalty is now under active consideration.

The Lebanese authorities have also clearly recognized that concrete action is needed to improve the conditions of thousands of migrant domestic workers and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who live in the country.

The establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in February and the current parliament’s development of a national Human Rights Action Plan are two other potentially positive developments, which if built upon could help lead to a far-reaching programme of human rights reform.

23 April 2009

Iran: Iranian Nobel laureate to defend U.S. journalist

(CNN) -- An Iranian human-rights activist and Nobel laureate has joined the legal team of an Iranian-American journalist convicted of spying and jailed in Iran.

Shirin Ebadi, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, took up the case of Roxana Saberi at the request of Saberi's family, her father, Reza Saberi, told CNN Wednesday. Ebadi heads the Center for Defenders of Human Rights in Iran.

Saberi, 31, was sentenced Saturday to eight years in prison after a one-day trial that was closed to the public. President Obama, as well as other U.S. and international officials sharply denounced the decision.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has offered to travel to Iran to help seek Saberi's release.

"If our voices are heard in Iran today, I would be anxious to travel with a delegation to Iran, if we are permitted, and make an appeal for her freedom," said the longtime civil rights activist, according to his Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Jackson, 67, spoke Tuesday at a peace conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

"Whenever we've brought people out of captivity, whether in Syria, Cuba, Iraq or Yugoslavia, or Liberia, it's always opened a diplomatic door to reduce tensions," he said.

Saberi's attorneys said they will appeal her conviction. Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi ordered the head of Tehran's Justice Department to make sure the appeals process is quick and fair.

Jackson has offered in the past to help release American hostages, most recently in 2005. At that time, he said he was willing to use his role as a religious leader to help secure the release of Roy Hallums, who was kidnapped along with five others in Baghdad in November 2004.

Hallums was freed in September 2005 when U.S. troops raided the farmhouse where he being held outside Baghdad.

In 1984, Jackson secured the release of a Navy pilot held in Syria. In 1991, he helped secure the release of 500 "international guests" held in Iraq. And in 1999, he persuaded Yugoslavia to release three U.S. soldiers held there during the Kosovo conflict.

Obama has called for Saberi's release, saying he is "gravely concerned with her safety and well-being." Watch how U.S.-Iranian relations are complicated »

"We are working to make sure that she is properly treated, and to get more information about the disposition of her case," Obama said Sunday.

"She is an American citizen, and I have complete confidence that she was not engaging in any sort of espionage."

Iranian officials initially said Saberi was held for buying a bottle of wine. The Foreign Ministry later said she was detained for reporting without proper credentials.

Saberi, who comes from North Dakota, has been living in Iran since 2003, said the Committee to Protect Journalists, a journalists' advocacy group.

She has freelanced for National Public Radio and other news organizations, and was writing a book about Iranian culture.

Iranian authorities revoked her press credentials in 2006, but Saberi continued to file short news items without permission, the journalists' group said.

Saberi was detained in January, although no formal charges were disclosed. On April 9, word emerged that Saberi had been charged with espionage.


"Without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, she was carrying out espionage activities," Hassan Haddad, a deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Students News Agency.

Authorities also said Saberi had confessed. Her father said he thinks she was coerced into making damaging statements.

Middle East: Muslim countries want own rights commision

CAIRO (AlArabiya.net)

A bloc of Islamic states accused of undermining human rights standards set by the United Nations have taken matters into their own hands and set out to establish their own independent human rights commission Sunday.

The Organization of Islamic Conference, a 57-nation bloc of Muslim nations and the largest organization after the U.N., met yesterday at its headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to establish an independent OIC human rights commission.

Eklemeddin İhsanoğlu, the OIC Secretary-General, stressed in a statement Monday that "human rights and man’s dignity are an integral part of Islam and core components of Islamic culture and heritage.”

Refining Cairo hr declaration

Member states also discussed "refining" the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), which gave an overview of the Islamic perspective on human rights and stated that all human rights are subject to sharia, or Islamic law.

The OIC has over the past decades sponsored the "defamation of religion" resolution at the U.N. General Assembly, the latest of which was a resolution condemning the Danish cartoons of the Prophet.

It will seek assistance from other international bodies such as the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and the Geneva Institute for Human Rights in setting up the new commission. İhsanoğlu said in his speech that such a commission would drive OIC member states to reform intellectually and politically.

"An OIC human rights commission would promote tolerance, and fundamental freedoms, good governance, the rule of law, accountability, openness, dialogue with other religions and civilizations, the rejection of extremism and fanaticism, and the strengthening of the sense of pride in the Islamic identity," he said.

Sharia vs. human rights

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Muslim countries including Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt and Tunisia among many others of human rights violations against women and religious minorities despite many states being signatories to international human rights conventions.

Western human rights groups argue that some of the ways Islamic law is applied can lead to discrimination against women, religious minorities and converts to other faiths.

However, Islamic scholars and leaders have continued to refute western claims that sharia is incompatible with international norms of human rights and freedoms, arguing instead that the interpretation and application of Islamic law is what can lead to negative human rights outcomes.

Just as U.S. courts ruled that detainees in the “war on terror” could be held indefinitely without trial or permitted torture in contravention of internationa human rights norms, some sharia-based courts twist Islamic law to sanction cruel punishments.

Compatible with the west

In their defense of Islamic law experts refer to its protection of women’s property rights and the rights of the socially marginalized like orphans or the elderly. Steven A. Cook, an expert on Islamic law and the west, said that interpretations of what Islamic law means are so variable that in some western societies it can be incorporated into non-Islamic political systems easily.

Ihsanoglu in his speech also suggested the compatibility of the Islamic notion of human rights and international norms, saying that refurbishing the Cairo human rights declaration will be "in keeping with the current global human rights discourse," though he did not specify how this would be done.

Several OIC member states follow sharia law, which has been compared to the Western tradition of common law, for personal status and criminal issues. None of the 14 OIC states that are considered "electoral democracies" are Arab.

Iran: Iran Holds Closed Trial For American Journalist

Verdict Expected in One to Two Weeks

SLIDESHOW Previous Next
Reza Saberi, left, the father of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi who has been in jail for more than two months in Iran, listens to lawyer of Roxana, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, in his office in Tehran on Thursday April 9, 2009. American female journalist Roxana Saberi has been charged with spying, her lawyer said Wednesday, dashing hopes of a quick release, just days after her parents arrived in the country to press for her freedom. Roxana Saberi asserts her innocence of the charges. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian) (Hasan Sarbakhshian - AP)

In this undated photo released by the The Miss North Dakota Pageant, Roxana Saberi is shown, in North Dakota. Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation on Wednesday, charging her with spying for the United States. (AP Photo/The Miss North Dakota Pageant) (AP)

This undated photo provided Tuesday, March 3, 2009 by the National Press Photographers Association shows U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi. Saberi, who has been jailed for more than two months in Iran, has been charged with espionage, her lawyer said Wednesday, April 9, 2009, dashing hopes of a quick release days after her parents arrived in the country seeking her freedom. (AP Photo/NPPA) (AP)

In this undated photo released by Marilyn McGinley, Roxana Saberi is shown, in North Dakota. Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation on Wednesday, charging her with spying for the United States. (AP Photo/Marilyn McGinley) (AP)

Reza Saberi, the father of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi who has been in jail for more than two months in Iran, photographed in Tehran on Thursday April 9, 2009. American female journalist Roxana Saberi has been charged with spying, her lawyer said Wednesday, dashing hopes of a quick release, just days after her parents arrived in the country to press for her freedom. Roxana Saberi asserts her innocence of the charges. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian) (Hasan Sarbakhshian - AP)

Roxana Saberi, a U.S.-Iranian citizen, has been charged with spying. (AP)

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Who's Blogging» Links to this article
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 15, 2009; Page A08

An Iranian American journalist accused by Iran of spying for the United States has been tried behind closed doors, Iran's judiciary said yesterday, and a verdict is expected in one to two weeks.

Roxana Saberi "has been charged with spying for foreigners. The first session of the court was held yesterday, and her last defense was heard," judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told journalists, the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency reported.

"Her spying was for the United States, and I think the verdict will be passed within a couple of weeks," Jamshidi added, saying that it was up to the judge to decide whether future hearings would be open to the public.

The Obama administration says the charges against Saberi, 31, are baseless and has demanded her immediate release.

Saberi holds U.S. and Iranian citizenship, but Iranian law does not recognize her U.S. nationality. Jamshidi dismissed the U.S. call to free Saberi, saying that "giving an opinion on a case, by an individual or a government, without being informed about the facts in it, is utterly ridiculous."

Before Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance revoked Saberi's press credentials in 2006, without specifying the reason, she had worked in the country on a freelance basis for the BBC, U.S.-based National Public Radio and other news organizations.

She remained in Iran and, according to her parents, is writing a book.

Saberi was arrested in late January for allegedly buying alcohol, which is illegal in Iran. Last week, however, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation against her: spying for the United States.

"This accused has been coming and going to certain government circles under the cover of reporter and without a permit," Judge Sohrab Heydarifard told state television last Wednesday. "She has perpetrated actions to compile and gather information and documents and transferred them to American intelligence services."

Spying is a serious charge in Iran, where political leaders regularly accuse the United States and Britain of espionage and support for organizations known to have committed terrorist acts against Iranian civilians. The heaviest punishment for espionage is death. In a recent high-profile case, a well-connected former Iranian official working as a businessman selling telecommunications equipment was convicted of spying on the military for Israel and hanged in 2008.

Saberi's parents, Reza and Akiko Saberi, met with their daughter in prison yesterday, news agencies reported. They had traveled to Tehran from their home in Fargo, N.D., to follow the case.

"We met Roxana today for a few minutes, and she is doing well," Reza Saberi told Agence France-Presse. "We are waiting for the judge to make a decision. [The verdict] should come out in a week. There is always hope. But we don't know what will happen."

Bahrain: Bahrain's Shaikha Mai wants better laws, closer media cooperation

Gulfnews
By Habib Toumi, Bahrain Bureau Chief
Published: April 14, 2009, 15:03

Manama: Bahrain's culture and information minister has called for the codification of press freedom to help promote media standards and reinforce liberties.

"We will, persistently and inexorably, move towards the codification of the freedom of the press as part of the general and public freedoms that must be expanded and developed. All legal and administrative obstacles should be removed so that press freedom can be guarantees are built on robust foundations and exercised within an enlightened and advanced environment," said Shaikha Mai Bint Mohammad Al Khalifa.

"We strongly believe that the press plays a crucial role in the civil dialogue that reinforces freedoms and empowers people to comment on them and explain them," she told members of the International Federation of Journalists who were holding a forum in Bahrain.

According to Shaikha Mai, the media has a crucial role in helping the world confront formidable challenges that include creating employment opportunities, addressing problems related with population growth, wars, climate changes and the need protection of civilizations and heritages.

"In the face of such challenges, we need to stimulate solidarity within the media and develop general commitments to international rights and to civil and political pledges and covenants. We should transfer these international accords to our local legislation and review our laws and rules accordingly. We do need robust partnerships for the sake of the future of the press: ethically and professionally and in terms of knowledge and training," she said.

Genuine partnership with the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists which has around 600,000 members, could result in improving performances, enhancing practices, spreading the values related to diversified media and bolstering professional standards through training programmess and outstanding initiatives, said the minister who was given the media portfolio last September in a limited cabinet reshuffle.

Bahraini journalists have been pushing for the adoption of a new press law that would guarantee greater freedom and the abolition of jail sentences for reporters and editors.

The government last year presented a law draft, but the parliament has yet to decide on its merits.

Journalists are weary that conservative lawmakers in the lower house would oppose lifting prison jails under the claim that people working in the media should not be given any special privileges.

The Bahrain Journalists Association has been lobbying for the promulgation of a more tolerant press law.

Egypt: Egypt Wrestles With 'Female Genital Mutilation'

[Cairo, Egypt] In June 2007, 12-year-old Badour Shakour died as a result of a circumcision operation. The death sparked a battle within the country over the use of the controversial medical procedure.

Women’s and children’s rights groups were galvanized into action, pushing for more stringent penalties against those who carry out what is increasingly becoming known as female genital mutilation (FGM).

Shakour’s cause of death was an overdose of anesthetic, but her memory was the cause of an awakening that reached to the upper echelons of government.

In summer 2008, Egypt’s parliament passed a law that ostensibly bans the controversial procedure, not that it should have needed to legislate against FGM – it was already officially banned in the country during the mid-Nineties. But with doctors continuing to perform the procedure on girls as young as five, parliament felt it was necessary to intercede.
The new law stipulates a fine of 1,000–5,000 Egyptian pounds ($185–$900) and a prison term of anywhere between three months and two years if caught performing FGM.

A doctor could also lose his medical license. In the case of Shakour, the doctor who performed the procedure remains in prison after being convicted of manslaughter.

But despite the rising number of deaths and injuries that have resulted from FGM, including a young girl who was left struggling for her life in November after the procedure, many Egyptians are fighting against the ban.

A 2005 report by UNICEF contended that 97 percent of single Egyptian women between 15 and 49 have undergone some form of FGM, although other estimates put the number at 70 percent.

Member of Parliament Mohamed Al Omda, from a small opposition party, brought his three daughters to the floor of the People’s Assembly to protest the ban last year. One of his daughters carried a sign that read: “No to any attempt to forbid what is divinely allowed. No to any attempt to allow what is divinely forbidden.” Two of his three daughters are circumcised.

Many conservative Muslims in the country maintain that the practice is condoned in Islam. The country’s Muslim Brotherhood has come under fire over many of their members’ denunciations of the parliamentary bill. The powerful Islamic group and many Islamic scholars argue that the ban is akin to “imposing Western ideals” on Egyptian society, which they maintain is based in Shari’a (Islamic law).

"Religion does not prohibit or criminalize female circumcision," prominent Islamic scholar Mustafa Al Shaka said to the local press shortly after the bill was passed.

The Brotherhood told The Media Line that they were currently reviewing FGM in terms of its legitimacy within Islam and did not want to comment. Despite this assertion, last summer, their MPs – who won one-fifth of the People’s Assembly as independents – were the most ardent opponents of the bill.

Progressive Islamic scholar Gamal Al Banna – brother of late Brotherhood founder Hassan Al Banna – says there is simply no precedent in Islam for this kind of practice. He argues that it was imported into society as a means of forcing women into the background of everyday life.

“It didn’t exist in Islamic history and those who argue it is Islamic or part of the Shari’a are wrong,” the 87-year-old argued. “Religion does not subscribe to this kind of treatment that can cause death and other horrible results. It is un-Islamic.”

Al Azhar, the Sunni Islamic world’s leading religious authority, agrees with Al Banna. In 2007, the Council of Islamic Research issued a statement saying that FGM and cutting are “harmful, have no basis in core Islamic law and should not be practiced.”

But Egyptian society remains divided into opposing camps over the issue, says National Council for Motherhood and Childhood secretary-general Moushira Khattab. She believes that although the ban will remain permanent, it will take time to educate the population over the long-term effects of cutting a woman’s clitoris.

“Nobody is going to say no to something that has negative effects caused by the procedure and, in time, Egyptians will see this,” she begins. “So the punishments that are being handed out against those who conduct this practice are vitally necessary.”

UNICEF estimates that three million girls in Africa undergo FGM annually, including in Egypt. The practice is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989.

The practice remains common in Egypt, especially among the rural communities outside the capital Cairo and Alexandria. According to a 2005 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey, the majority of FGM procedures have been performed by trained medical personnel.

Human rights groups and doctors in the country argue that the involvement of medical workers in the procedure is a major reason the procedure continues.

“We have to work slowly and cannot expect everything to change with one law. Egyptians are stubborn and if they believe this is part of their religion, then it is very difficult to convince them otherwise, even if they are trained doctors,” said a female doctor at the country’s Doctor’s Syndicate, who asked not to be named, as the controversy continues inside its doors.

With children in danger, the doctor argues that Egyptians must move forward in order to limit these sorts of practices.

“We are struggling as a country, and until everyone is being educated, it is so difficult to achieve progress on anything, let alone FGM.”

Like so many controversial issues facing Egypt today, the seemingly endless battle between secularism and Islam continues to put opposing sides on the defensive. Al Banna believes that issues such as FGM will not be resolved within society until there is space for open debate on all things, including religion.

“We need to be able to debate religion freely, or else we will not be able to have people making their own decisions; instead they will follow their local sheikh as if he were the only source for reason,” he concludes.

SOURCE: The Media Line
AUTHOR: Joseph Mayton
DATE: 20/04/2009

Yemen: Giving a Voice To The Women Activists In Yemen

Rising Voices

The Republic of Yemen is an Arab country of more than 23 million people located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. It is the only republic on the Arabian Peninsula (not led by a hereditary monarch) and is one of the poorest countries of the region. Its capital is Sana'a and the language is Arabic. Yemen is so often ignored by the international media and people know little about the country. With an internet penetration of less than 2% we do not usually get alternative perspectives from the citizen journalists. This has so often led to stereotyping of Yemenis.

For example Yemenis enjoy some unique freedom as an expat blogger Jalilah informs:

The veiling of women is not law in Yemen as it is in Saudi Arabia. Many younger, educated women merely cover their heads, but not their faces, and some do not veil at all. Those who do, do so in deference to tradition, not to law. [..]

Yemeni Arabic is quite different from other Arabic dialects and the women additionally speak a dialect all their own. I later learned that this was to insure more privacy and to avoid being understood by the men!

Women constitute only 30 percent of the Yemeni workforce and approximately 70 percent of women in Yemen are illiterate. The gap between men and women is very wide in terms of political empowerment and economic participation but the literacy rate is not that different from men. Various social, religious and political factors are responsible for women's low status (source) and women rarely have the platforms to voice their opinions.

But the Yemeni women are fighting back. For example, Yemeni women activists are fighting against the fundamentalists to prove that Islam does not contradict the use of contraceptives an family planning. But these activities are not much visible to the world. It is the high time when they start to harness the power of internet to help spread their activism and widen their campaigns.

Ghaida'a Al Absi plans to change the situation with a Rising Voices micro grant. She writes in her blog:

Human rights are being violated in many countries of the world, particularly developing countries, but there are a lot of people do not tolerate it and is trying to promote what is happening in their countries and to the whole world […] But..Yemen has several cases of gross human rights violations are not known to the world, and because of the weakness of civil society institutions and their lack of knowledge of right-wing.

In the project proposal Ghaida'a mentioned that her goal is:

to prepare and conduct a training course in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. The project will focus on the Politicians women and the women workers in the field of Human Rights. In addition, the main objective of the project is to strengthen the capacity of those women to be able to express their own thoughts through the Internet. The training course will be conducted monthly for four days, two hours a day.

The targeted community is the activists women who work in politics or in the field of human rights. The trainings will give the targeted community the ability to use Internet in order to publish their point of views, documenting their activities and will give them the space to publish the issues they are fighting for.

Now let us learn more about Ghaida'a. She works at the SOUL Organization for Women and Children Development as WIT program assistant. The WIT (Women in Technology) program is about empowering Women in Technology. She is also doing some voluntary work in the organization like preparing training sessions in various topics for the Yemeni girls in WIT Forum.

She is also a volunteer in Yemeni Observatory for Human Rights, and the founder and coordinator of the Hand in hand Initiative, which is which is a forum of a group of youths engaged in raising awareness and rehabilitation of young people to make them able to change the future for the better, through education, information and capacity-building. In addition, she is a member of the MEPI Alumni.

We interviewed her recently in Germany at a conference on new media activism in the Middle East. In this interview she introduces herself and discusses the contents of the workshops, the challenges the project will face, and what she expects from the Rising Voices community.

The contents of the curriculum of this project will cover the use of Internet in publishing the issues concerning the activists and will be generated by three experts (including Ghaida'a) in new media. The guide will be in Arabic language, and will be arranged in handouts to be distributed to the targeted community.

The participants will be taught to create blogs to document their activities, voice their opinions and create a community of activists.

We are eager to follow the activities of the “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” project and wish its success.

Lebanon: Lebanese wives of foreigners demand equal rights

AFP
Apr 9, 2009

BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanese women married to foreigners demanded in Beirut on Thursday the right to pass on their nationality to their children, threatening to boycott June elections if they do not get their way.

"You will not have our votes, and next time there will be more of us across Lebanon," the women shouted at a demonstration organised by a branch of the League of Lebanese Women's Rights.

The organisers estimate there are 18,000 such women in the country affected by a law that bars them from passing citizenship to their children.

The measure is widely viewed as an attempt to prevent refugees in Lebanon from getting citizenship.

Thousands of Palestinians fled to Lebanon when Israel was created in 1948, and the country hosts 410,000 of them and their descendants, most of whom live in refugee camps and are denied many basic rights.

Bariha Haraji, a 39-year-old mother of two married to a Palestinian, says she suffers because of the law.

"My husband was born in Lebanon. My children were born in Lebanon. They are Lebanese. They have nothing to do with Palestine, and still they are denied Lebanese citizenship," Haraji told AFP.

Siham Jabbour, 43, says the "government is punishing me because I married a non-Lebanese."

Also a mother of two, whose husband is Georgian, she tells of the hours she spends in offices to renew her children's residency papers.

"I pay my taxes. I work to support my family, and no one gives a damn what we go through every day," she said.

Lebanon heads to the polls on June 7 for a parliamentary election that many say will define the country's future, at least for the next four years.

Iran: Saberi case exposes Iran’s rights failings

By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran

Published: April 6 2009 16:17 | Last updated: April 6 2009 16:17

Roxana Saberi, a US-Iranian, who has been held in in the notorious Evin prison for over two months, apparently on espionage charges, was visited on Monday by her parents for the first time since her arrest.

Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, her lawyer, said the couple, who arrived in Tehran at the weekend from Fargo, North Dakota, found their daughter to be “physically and psychologically in a good condition”.

The lawyer confirmed that he had now received the official indictment against her but refused to comment on the allegations. Earlier he told the FT that Ms Saberi had been told by her prosecutor that she was to be charged with espionage. He said he hoped his client would be released on bail soon.

Ms Saberi had threatened recently to go on hunger strike if she was not released, according to her lawyer. “She rules out the charges and is impatient to be freed,” he told the FT.

Ms Saberi was arrested by the Revolutionary Court, which deals with national security charges, although it is not clear whether her arrest was related to her journalism or the book she was writing. Ms Saberi has worked for the BBC, National Public Radio and Fox News for six years in defiance of a ban by the Iranian authorities on her journalistic activities since 2006.

Iran has a poor human rights record in social and political spheres including imprisonment and suppression of reform-minded political activists, students and journalists.

Tens of students from Amir-Kabir University were arrested earlier this year when they objected to a government decision to bury martyrs from Iran-Iraq war on their campus. Eight of them remain in jail.

Although imposition of the death sentence is rare against critics of the regime, from time to time there are suspicious deaths in jail.

A blogger, Omid-Reza Mirsayafi, who was charged with insulting Iran’s top leaders on his blog, died in Evin prison last month after spending 40 days there as part of a 30-month jail sentence. The authorities told the victim’s lawyer that he had committed suicide.

Iran also has one of the highest execution rates in the world for social crimes such as adultery.

Amnesty International says Iran is second only to China for the number of executions it carries out each year, and has the worst record on executing minors, ahead of Saudi Arabia. Last year eight minors were hanged in Iran and Human Rights Watch says there are at least 130 people under the age of 18 on death row.

“Most of these minors are normal teenagers who committed crimes over such issues as fighting over girls at a sensitive age,” says Mohammad Mostafaei, a lawyer representing 30 young defendants.

The victory of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s fundamentalist president, in 2005 led many of Iran’s human rights groups to freeze their efforts and assume a low profile out of disillusionment and the fear of persecution.

“Things have not become necessarily worse than before but the problem is that human rights are not a priority for this government,” says one activist.

Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, who heads Iran’s judiciary, is respected by many lawyers as an open-minded cleric and is viewed as one of the most sympathetic advocates of human rights within the regime.

He has intervened in some cases to limit the prison sentences of activists, stop the hanging of minors and the penalty of stoning to death. He has not always been successful, partly because he represents a minority among the senior clergy most of whom are radical and Sharia-obsessed.

The judiciary has now presented a new penal code with the goal of making it human rights-friendly. It is being studied by parliament and is expected to be approved by the summer.

However, some lawyers are already disappointed. “The new bill will not resolve Iran’s problem internationally even though it takes positive – but insufficient – steps,” Babak Farrahi, a lawyer, says.

Some improvements include reducing prison terms and going some way towards abolishing the penalty of stoning to death, by inserting a clause that it should not be practised if it undermines Islam in the eyes of the international community.

But execution remains the dominant penalty for murder committed by adults or minors, homosexuality, drugs smuggling, armed action against the Islamic regime and any major moves to disrupt the country’s political, economic and social order.

Lawyers are also dismayed by the addition of amendments that define apostasy for the first time as a crime carrying the death penalty and impose the punishment of blinding for anyone found guilty of complicity in a murder.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Qatar: Workshop on human rights begins

Source ::: The PENINSULA /BY MOHAMED SAEED


DOHA: A workshop that highlights the basic facts about the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council began yesterday at the Four Seasons Doha.

The three-day event has been organised by the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) and is being attended by more than 20 legal researchers representing ministries, the General Secretariat of the Cabinet, Qatar Foundation for Combating Human Trafficking and Qatar Foundation for Protecting Women and Child.

The key speakers in the workshop are Mohamed Jadallah, legal advisor at NHRC, Dr Ibrahim Badawi, legal advisor to the Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ahmad Fuad, legal expert at NHRC.

Jadallah explained that the Human Rights Council was an inter-governmental body within the UN system with members from 47 states responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe. The council was created by the UN General Assembly on March 15, 2006 with the main purpose of addressing incidents of human rights violations and making recommendations on them.

The UPR is a unique process which involves a review of the human rights record of all 192 UN member states once every four years. The UPR is a state-driven process, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which provides the opportunity for each state to declare what action it has taken to improve the human rights situation in its territory and to fulfill its human rights obligations. As one of the main features of the council, the UPR is designed to ensure equal treatment for every country when its human rights situation is assessed.

On September 21, 2007, the Human Rights Council adopted a calendar detailing the order in which the 192 UN member states will be considered during the first four-year cycle of the UPR (2008-2011).

Qatar’s human rights record is scheduled to be reviewed in 2010.

The workshop will shed light on the procedures followed in compiling a national human rights report, the agencies that participate in monitoring the rights record and the review process during the UPR. The reviews are based on information provided by the state under review, which can take the form of a ‘national report’, information contained in the reports of independent human rights groups and information from other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and national human rights institutions.

Iran: Iran charges detained US reporter with spying

AFP

TEHRAN - US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been in Iranian custody since January, has been charged with spying, Tehran’s deputy prosecutor Hassan Haddad said on Wednesday.

“Her case has been sent to the revolutionary court. She, without press credentials, was carrying out spying activities under the guise of being a reporter,” Haddad was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

“The evidence is mentioned in her case papers and she has accepted all the charges. She has been arrested under the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Saberi, who also holds both US and Iranian nationalities, was initially reportedly detained for buying alcohol which is prohibited in the Islamic republic.

In March, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said Saberi’s press identity card was revoked in 2006 and since then she had been working “illegally” in the country.

Haddad said on Wednesday that Saberi had entered Iran as an “Iranian citizen.”

“She has an Iranian citizenship, passport and an Iranian national identity card. She has entered Iran as an Iranian citizen and if she has another citizenship, we are unaware of it and it has no effect on how we will proceed with her case,” he said.

“There is no evidence that she has another citizenship and the investigation is still on.”

US-born Saberi has reported for US-based National Public Radio (NPR), the BBC and Fox News, and had been living in Iran for six years.

Her parents, Reza and Akiko Saberi, arrived in Tehran on Sunday to pursue her case. They had a 20-minute meeting with her in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on Monday.

Her father told NPR on Tuesday that he planned to stay in Iran until her case was resolved.

He said Roxana, 31, was surprised by their visit, and that she looked pale and weak but was in good spirits.

He said she also wanted to see her lawyer “to point out ... that apparently some of the statements were made under pressure, under threat, you know. So that they were not valid.”

Reza Saberi said he and his wife would try to visit their daughter once a week.

Last month the parents appealed to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for her release, saying she was in a “dangerous” state of mental health.

Washington has repeatedly called on Tehran to release the journalist.

Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality and has had no ties with the United States for three decades, has detained several Iranian-Americans, including academics, in recent years.

Yemen: Parliament ratifies amended Yemeni citizenship law

Written By: Abdul-Aziz Oudah
Article Date: Apr 4, 2009 - 7:03:58 AM

The parliament ratified in it session held on Tuesday a legal article on Yemeni citizenship, the original article item No. 3 of the law No. 6 issued in 1990 over Yemeni citizenship has now been amended to stipulates that any person born to a Yemeni father or mother has the right to hold Yemeni citizenship.

According to the law, any person born in Yemen to a woman has the right to carry Yemeni citizenship and the child’s relation to his/her father does not need to be proved. Indeed anyone born in Yemen to unknown parents is also considered Yemeni and has the right to acquire citizenship.

The law gives the right to any emigrant holding Yemeni citizenship upon departure and continuing to maintain citizenship, to gain the citizenship if he/she so requires even if he/she has a citizenship from another country.

Anyone that has citizenship via their mother and reaches the age of maturity is given the right to choose whether to maintain the Yemeni citizenship or to join that of his/her father.

The parliament’s session, headed by Speaker Yahya Arra’i ratified the law on the bases of the Constitutional and Law Committee’s report. The session was attended by a number of concerned government officials.

Saudi Arabia: Campaign against maid abuse

By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC Arab Affairs Analyst

A Saudi Arabian campaign against the abuse of domestic workers in the country has sparked controversy.

There are an estimated 1.5 million foreign domestic workers in Saudi. Many complain of abuse.

Critics say the ads misrepresent Saudi society. Rights activists say abuse is common, and acknowledging it is a first step towards solving the problem.

A report by Human Rights Watch earlier this year said some foreign workers are treated like slaves.

The adverts appeared on Saudi-owned satellite channels and newspapers.

A television advertisement, the first of its kind, shows a Saudi man shouting angrily at a foreign maid for failing to iron his clothes properly. We are obliged to treat servants well. Why ask them to do things that we can't bear ourselves? If we have mercy on them, then Allah will have mercy on us.

Another sequence shows the man in his car honking and yelling racist abuse at an Asian man.

The sketches end with him praying, asking God for help and mercy as a caption appears with the words "man la yarham, la yurham (He who shows no mercy, will receive no mercy [from God])".

This is the slogan of the Rahma (Mercy) campaign which has appeared on Saudi-owned satellite channels , MBC and Rotana, and some newspapers.

The print version of the campaign, which appeared in the London-based Al Hayat, showed a maid held inside a kennel with a dog collar around her neck, and a foreign chauffeur harnessed like a horse with a Saudi woman holding the reins.

'Misrepresentation'

But major Saudi newspapers have refused to publish the advertisement, apparently because for them, it was too shocking.
A campaign image showed a maid being fed from a dog bowl

Some writers and journalists have called for an end to the campaign because they believe it shows Saudi people as cruel and heartless.

Journalist Terad Al al-Asmari, told Islamonline, that the campaign overlooked abuse of domestic workers in other societies.

"It could lead to hatred between foreign labour and the Saudi citizen," he argued.

A Saudi academic, Dr Moutlaq al-Mouteery, criticised airing the campaign on satellite channels. Dr Mouterriy wrote saying that "discussing domestic problems on satellite channels turns them into a scandal [for Saudi Arabia]".

The director general of the Saudi advertising agency, behind the campaign, Qaswara al-Khateeb, defended the media drive.

"We sometimes forget that those who we deal with helpers are actually human beings," Mr Khateeb told the Saudi newspaper Arab News.

"We are obliged to treat them well. Why ask them to do things that we can't bear ourselves? If we have mercy on them, then Allah will have mercy on us."

Mr Khateeb told the BBC that the campaign was financed by a big Saudi corporation, but he refused to disclose which, adding that the backers did not want the message of the campaign to be associated with any particular group.

Saudi Arabia: HRC moots plan to promote ‘rights culture’

RIYADH: The governmental Human Rights Commission has put out a plan to promote the culture of human rights in the Kingdom. The announcement came as the world celebrated the 60th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this past week.

The HRC plan includes organizing a number of lectures and seminars, issuing awareness handouts and periodicals for both genders regarding the rights of women, children and workers, especially in the context of Shariah and international agreements.

In its statement, the HRC said it was committed to bringing to light the Kingdom’s efforts in maintaining human rights through abiding by international and bilateral treaties that it has signed. The HRC also outlined its achievements and praised Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s initiative to promote inter-faith dialogue, including a conference held recently at the United Nations in New York.

“This initiative is obvious evidence of the Kingdom’s belief in the importance of dialogue among cultures, religions and various civilizations as the main means to support peace and stability all over the world,” said the HRC in its statement, which included the rejection of “occupation policy, which violates nations’ sovereignty.”

In terms of actions taken inside the Kingdom, the HRC said it intervened in 1,013 cases in the second half of the 1429 AH (April to September 2008). About a fourth of these cases were resolved, the HRC said, while the rest have been either dismissed or are in pending litigation. This number included 131 labor disputes and 199 prisoners’ rights complaints, as well as social complaints (including medical complaints) and financial cases.

The HRC says that the number of complaints has risen 24 percent from the commission’s creation in 2006 to the end of 1428 AH (2007), led by cases from the country’s largest city and capital, Riyadh. The provinces of Makkah (which includes Jeddah and Taif cities), Asir and the Eastern Province — the locations of the Kingdom’s other large metro areas — were the origins of the highest number of resolved human rights complaints.

In September, the HRC said it received a total of about 10,000 cases in three years. HRC President Turki bin Khaled Al-Sudairi said that about half of these cases were referred to other agencies, dismissed for lack of evidence or were outside the jurisdiction of the HRC. He also said the HRC participated in the inspection of 12 domestic shelters (where women are placed when they flee abusive husbands or are involved in other domestic disputes that leave them estranged from their legal male guardians) along with officials from the ministries of Interior, Justice, Labor and Social Affairs.

In the defense of labor rights, the HRC intervened recently in the case of a group of Indian workers who were thrown out of their accommodation by their employer for complaining to the Indian Embassy about their working conditions.

“This is a serious violation of local labor laws for which we have to take immediate action since the victims do not have food and shelter for their daily upkeep,” an official from the commission who did not want to be named told Arab News in September. This case is still ongoing.

The HRC also opened a women’s branch to focus directly with issues pertaining to women and children, which will likely work closely with the new Family Court that the Kingdom is developing as part of its ongoing overhaul of the courts system.

“‘Dignity of women and childhood support’ is the motto of this new wing,” said Wafiqah Al-Dakhil, the newly appointed head of the women’s wing. She added that the aim is to create awareness about the laws pertaining to women and children through campaigns and define rights as established by Islam.

“Our activities would include organizing programs for raising awareness among children and their families on children’s rights; receiving children’s complaints; and providing legal intervention in guardianship, citizenship issues and child abuse cases,” she added. The commission’s website was inaugurated in March in order for the organization to utilize the Internet to collect complaints and other public feedback.

Al-Sudairi also suggested that the HRC would consider placing women on its board of directors.

“As the HRC is a member of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, we are taking urgent steps to finish our second annual report in a way that correctly reflects the organization and its sincerity, which stems from our strong belief in human rights that Islam is deeply concerned with,” Al-Sudairi said in September while announcing the preparation of the report issued last week.

-- Arab News