India's Biggest Nationwide Student Protest in a Quarter Century spread across University Campuses :

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]Youth held for 90-year-old blind woman’s rape[/h][h=1][/h][h=1][/h]

Deputy commissioner of police Sangramsinh Nishandar said Nadar has been booked for rape. (Representative image)







MUMBAI: Suspecting his friend of having stolen his wallet, a 27-year-old man allegedly raped the friend's 90-year-old grandmother in a drunken stupor at her home in a chawl in Chembur on Friday. The woman, who is visually challenged, has been admitted to a hospital, said the police, adding that her condition is stable.

The accused Prabhu Nadar gagged and trussed up the woman, who was asleep, before raping her repeatedly. He was arrested the same day. The woman stays with her grandson who is a labourer.

In her police complaint, she has said that the door to her house had been kept slightly ajar due to the sweltering heat. "I tried to fight him but he overpowered me. When I tried to scream, he gagged me and tied me up," states the complaint.

The survivor, who tried for at least four hours to wriggle free, managed to call out to her sons who live in adjacent houses. Senior inspector Bhagwat Sonawane of Tilak Nagar police station said she has sustained injuries and swelling on the private pa

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's leading rights group said Sunday it was shocked at the public humiliation of a woman councilor beaten and paraded naked through a village on the orders of a powerful landlord.

The News Sunday newspaper said the incident happened on Dec. 7 in a village near Sialkot, an industrial town north of Lahore.

It said in an ordeal that lasted several hours, the woman, the widowed mother of seven, was beaten, stripped and paraded naked through the village by the landlord and his sons after she refused to back his candidate in a local election.

Kamila Hyat, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the incident was not the first of its kind.

"At least four similar cases have been reported this year," she said, adding the incident was indicative of the low status of women in Muslim, male-dominated Pakistan.

"People think they have the license to humiliate women on some pretext or the other, to subject them to this kind of degradation," she said.

Hyat said more such incidents were inevitable unless the government took tough steps to ensure women's rights were upheld.

Earlier this year a woman was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional jury in a village in the Punjab province. A Pakistani court later sentenced six men to death for the rape, in a trial which highlighted the abuse of women in rural areas.

________________________________

After she refused to back someone's candidate in a local election? Are these people for real? Since when does being a landlord give one the right to dictate opinion to their tenents?

This article indicates that at least some Pakistanis would love the Taliban, or those who share their blind ignorance, to be in power:

 

[rustam e hind]

[h=1]Pakistan: Violations against Christians Soar[/h]by Mohshin Habib
July 15, 2013 at 4:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3853/pakistan-christians-violations


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• She is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.

Rimsha Masih, a young Pakistani Christian girl, who was arrested in August 2012 by Pakistan's police for alleged blasphemy, has escaped the country with the direct help of Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and AVAAZ, a civic organization. Local media and her parents said she was as young as 11 at the time of her arrest; medical reports classified her as an "uneducated" 14-year-old with a mental age younger than her years. Accused of burning pages of the holy book for Muslims, the Quran, Masih, under Pakistan's "blasphemy laws," faced the death penalty.
Masih fled with her family members to Canada, where Immigration Minister Jason Kenney instructed officials to process the family's applications for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds.
While Masih and her family are fortunate, no one knows what will happen to the rest of the Christians of Pakistan. Even though they make up only about two percent of the population -- or precisely because of it: there are so few, they may appear invitingly vulnerable -- they suffer beatings by their neighbors, murder by the police and imprisonment by the courts.
Last month, three Christian women, Arshad Bibi, Sajida Bibi and Sauriya Bibi (Bibi means a lady or girl) were brutally beaten and forced to parade naked by the armed henchmen of a landlord, who happens to connections in ruling party PML(N).
According to reports, the incident occurred on the night of June 3, as the male members of the family were at work. The armed men entered the house by jumping the boundary wall, then unlocked the gate from inside. The women, along with two elderly relatives, were asleep. The attackers looked for the men; when they could not find them, they began to beat the three women. They then took the young Christian women into the street, tore off their cloths and forced them to parade naked.
Aasia Bibi, another Pakistani Christian woman who was the Pakistani court, has now been imprisoned for four years under the country's blasphemy law. After having been given a death sentence, she is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. For this statement, she was brutally beaten by her Muslim co-workers and arrested by the police.
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Aasia Bibi's family members campaign for her release in Spain, December 13, 2012. (Source: HazteOir.org)
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Killing, oppression and humiliation are more and more frequently taking place in Pakistan. In addition to the well-known cases of Martha Bibi, Younis Masih, Rifaqaat Masih, Sawan Masih, Samuel Masih [Masih, meaning "messiah", is a very common name among Pakistan's Christians] and many others are also being subjected to killings, imprisonment with long sentences, beatings, and burnings. In just the past few months, for instance, Pakistani police killed three Christian boys for love affairs with Muslim girls. Afzal Masih 20 and Iftekhar Masih 20 were killed on Aprl 29, and Adnan Masih was tortured, then killed, by the police on June 10.
In August 2012, an 11-year-old Christian boy was found dead, with his lips and nose sliced off, his stomach removed and his legs mutilated. Police said he had also been subjected to sodomy.
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child reports that as many as 2,000 girls and women from various minority sects have, through rape, torture and kidnapping, been forcibly converted to Islam; and in 2011 alone, 161 people were charged with "blasphemy." According to reports, in 2009, eight Christians were burned to death in Pakistan's province of Punjab after rumors spread of a desecration of the Quran.
In April, 2013, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that the risk to Pakistan's minorities has reached a crisis level. The Commission said that the blasphemy laws, and others, are used to violate religious freedoms and foster a climate of impunity.
Blasphemy laws are, at present, the most significant tool for persecution against the Christian community. These laws, however have also often been used to settle personal disputes or just to make Pakistan into a Christian-free state. These trends sharply escalated when, in 1986, Pakistan's late military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, harshly amended the British-era blasphemy laws in Pakistan's penal code, with sections 295-C, 298-A, 298-B, and 298-C the most dire:

Section 295-C: "Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet…shall be punished with death or imprisoned for life…"
Section 298-A: "Uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings…."
Section 298-B: Misuse of epithets, descriptions, titles reserved for certain holy personages or places…"
Section 298-C: "A person who poses himself as a Muslim…. or in any manner whatsoever outrages the feelings of Muslims." [Emphasis added.]
​

No later government has since dared to re-amend them.
Since 1986, more than 1200 people have been charged under blasphemy laws. The Asian Human Rights Commission has cited the Islamabad-based institute Center for Research and Security Studies in a report which says that more than 1,000 people have been charged in Pakistan for committing offences against the blasphemy law. Since 1990, 52 people have been extra-judicially murdered for being implicated in blasphemy charges. Among them, 15 were Christians.
Nasir Khan, a Pakistani who resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has said that no evidence is required before the court; just the verbal statements of two or three persons are enough to punish a non-Muslim for blasphemy.
The Urdu newspapers Insaf and Khobrain both reported on 28 August 2000 that a Justice of the Lahore High Court, Nazir Akhtar, said that "Anyone accused under blasphemy charges should be killed on the spot by Muslims as their religious obligation and that there is no need for legal proceedings for a blasphemer." Justice Akhtar continued: "We shall slit every tongue that is guilty of insolence against the Holy Prophet."
The Christians of Pakistan are also being scapegoated during national and local elections. A provincial assembly candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11, 2013 election loss.
According to Younus Iqbal, the chairman of the Anjuman-e-Mazareen, a peasant movement fighting for land rights, what blares from the village mosque is: "Burn their homes to the ground…Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph colony."
On March 9, about 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians in the Joseph Colony and destroyed 175 houses after the rumor spread of a remark against Islam by a Christian. In 2009, eight Christians were burned alive after a blasphemy accusation. More instances of young Christian girls raped, abducted, kidnapped and murdered include:

• Nisha, a nine-year-old Christian girl, abducted by Muslims, gang raped, murdered by repeated blows to her head, and dumped into a canal (May, 2009).
• Gulfan, nine-year-old Christian girl, raped by a Muslim man. During her ordeal, the rapist told her not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls (December, 2010).
• Lubna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, kidnapped, gang raped, and murdered by a group of Muslims (October, 2010).
• Anna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, gang raped for eight months After she escaped, her Christian family was in hiding from both the rapist and the police (October, 2011).
• After a gang raping a 13-year-old Christian girl, Muslims came to her house and beat her pregnant aunt. The police then accused the girl of committing adultery with the three men (June, 2012).
• Amirah, a teenage Christian girl, murdered during an attempted rape (December, 2011).
• Mehek, a 14-year-old Christian girl, abducted at gunpoint in broad daylight from her parents' house. One of her abductors declared he would "purify her" by making her Muslim (August, 2011).
• Shazia, a 12-year-old Christian girl, raped and murdered by a rich Muslim lawyer, who was then acquitted (November, 2010).
• A powerful Muslim businessman kidnapped two Christian sisters, whom he forced to convert to Islam and then marry him (May, 2011).

Although Rimsha Masih and her family fled to Canada to escape death threats, they left behind hundreds of "Rimshas," captive in their own land and facing death, rape and abduction, just due to their religion.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]62-year-old Shiv Sena leader held for raping minor in Mumbai[/h][h=1][/h][h=1][/h]TNN | Sep 5, 2014, 11.41 PM IST

1​

Vasudev Nambiar (62), has been arrested for allegedly sexually exploiting a 15-year-old Mira Road girl over nine months.








MUMBAI: A Shiv Sena deputy district president, Vasudev Nambiar (62), has been arrested for allegedly sexually exploiting a 15-year-old Mira Road girl over nine months.

The girl, who was seven months pregnant, recently delivered a premature boy.

The Kashimira police said Nambiar has been sexually abusing the class IX student, who used to visit a temple run by him, since January.

When she got pregnant, he threatened her. Her parents found out about the abuse only when she got pregnant.

On Thursday, the survivor filed a police complaint and Nambiar was booked under IPC section 376 (rape) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/62-year-old-Shiv-Sena-leader-held-for-raping-minor-in-Mumbai/articleshow/41813017.cms?intenttarget=no&utm_source=TOI_AShow_OBWidget&utm_medium=Int_Ref&utm_campaign=TOI_ASho
w

Pakistan Woman Councilor Beaten, Paraded Naked

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's leading rights group said Sunday it was shocked at the public humiliation of a woman councilor beaten and paraded naked through a village on the orders of a powerful landlord.

The News Sunday newspaper said the incident happened on Dec. 7 in a village near Sialkot, an industrial town north of Lahore.

It said in an ordeal that lasted several hours, the woman, the widowed mother of seven, was beaten, stripped and paraded naked through the village by the landlord and his sons after she refused to back his candidate in a local election.

Kamila Hyat, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the incident was not the first of its kind.

"At least four similar cases have been reported this year," she said, adding the incident was indicative of the low status of women in Muslim, male-dominated Pakistan.

"People think they have the license to humiliate women on some pretext or the other, to subject them to this kind of degradation," she said.

Hyat said more such incidents were inevitable unless the government took tough steps to ensure women's rights were upheld.

Earlier this year a woman was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional jury in a village in the Punjab province. A Pakistani court later sentenced six men to death for the rape, in a trial which highlighted the abuse of women in rural areas.

________________________________

After she refused to back someone's candidate in a local election? Are these people for real? Since when does being a landlord give one the right to dictate opinion to their tenents?

This article indicates that at least some Pakistanis would love the Taliban, or those who share their blind ignorance, to be in power:

 

[rustam e hind]

After naked parade of Christian women, acid attack on female singer in Pakistan

Dailybhaskar.com | Jun 22, 2013, 18:39PM IST

Peshawar: Days after three Christian woman were paraded naked by a landlord in Islamabad, a budding Pakistani artist was attacked with acid in Nowshera, 148 kilometres (92 miles) northwest of Islamabad. The eighteen-year-old theatre artist Bushra was sleeping in her house when somebody scaled the house and threw acid on her.

"A man climbed the wall of our house in the early hours, threw acid on my sister and fled," Bushra's brother, Pervez Khan said.

A local police official, Sultan Khan also confirmed the incident.

The teen was immediately taken to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar where Dr Suhail Ahmad said she had suffered 33 per cent burn injuries, on her face and shoulder, but was in a stable condition.

Her brother Pervez Khan has lodged a complaint against a local TV drama producer, Shaukat Khan, over the incident saying that the producer was unhappy over Bushra's refusal to marry him.

Three Christian women were attacked and then paraded naked by the supporters of the Nawaz Sharif's ruling party in a village in Pakistan, on June 3.

The village elders pleaded with the attackers to spare the women and even kept their turbans on the feet of the attackers.

The attackers were goons hired by the powerful landlord of the area, Muhammad Munir, the son of Abdul Rasheed. He is said to be a supporter of the ruling party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, (PML-N).

The incident came to light in a press release by Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

On the night of June 3, armed men scaled the wall of the house of Sadiq Masih and started looking for Masih's son. When they could not find him they attacked the three women who were sleeping inside the house.

The attackers forced the women out of the home and tore-off their clothes. They then started shouting to attract the attention of the people, to let them see the extent of the clout yielded by the landlord.

The attackers left women after warning the people against complaining to the police.

Christians and other minority communities have come under repeated attack in Pakistan. In November 2005, Muslim church and schools were attacked in Faisalabad after Muslim preachers urged the people to take revenge after a Christian allegedly burnt Koran pages.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

Christian Violence India :Trainee nun gangraped in Odisha; two arrested: police


India | Press Trust of India | Updated: July 15, 2013 19:04 IST

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COMMENTS​

BERHAMPUR/PHULBANI, ODISHA: A 28-year-old trainee nun was allegedly gangraped by three youths after holding her forcibly for about a week in Odisha's Ganjam and Gajapati districts, police said on Monday.

The accused, including two cousins -- Jatindra Subhasunder and Jogendra Subhasunder -- were arrested, while the third person was still at large, Kandhamal district Additional Superintendent of Police, Gobind Chandra Mallick said.

The victim, who was being trained as a nun at the St Mary Convent in Chennai, received a call from a woman informing her that her mother was in serious condition, police said, quoting the FIR.

After she alighted from the train at the Berhampur railway station in Ganjam district on July 5, she was picked up by the two cousins who lived in her village.

The woman, who hailed from Minjapanka in Kandhamal district, had no reason to suspect them and accompanied them to their village under Bramhanigaon police station, police said.

But she was taken to unidentified places, including Gajapati district, where the two cousins along with a third man allegedly raped her for a week before dropping her back at the railway station in Berhampur on July 11, with a threat not to disclose the incident to anyone, they said.

The victim told her mother about her ordeal after reaching home last Saturday, Baliguda Sub-Divisional Police Officer K V Singh said.

Police have registered a case under section 355 (assault to dishonour person), 366 (kidnapping), 343 (wrongful confinement), 376 (rape), 501 (printing defamatory matter) and
120(B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

Mr Mallick said the two accused and the victim were medically examined at the MKCG Medical College Hospital in Berhampur. The woman caller was being traced.

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• She is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.

Rimsha Masih, a young Pakistani Christian girl, who was arrested in August 2012 by Pakistan's police for alleged blasphemy, has escaped the country with the direct help of Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and AVAAZ, a civic organization. Local media and her parents said she was as young as 11 at the time of her arrest; medical reports classified her as an "uneducated" 14-year-old with a mental age younger than her years. Accused of burning pages of the holy book for Muslims, the Quran, Masih, under Pakistan's "blasphemy laws," faced the death penalty.
Masih fled with her family members to Canada, where Immigration Minister Jason Kenney instructed officials to process the family's applications for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds.
While Masih and her family are fortunate, no one knows what will happen to the rest of the Christians of Pakistan. Even though they make up only about two percent of the population -- or precisely because of it: there are so few, they may appear invitingly vulnerable -- they suffer beatings by their neighbors, murder by the police and imprisonment by the courts.
Last month, three Christian women, Arshad Bibi, Sajida Bibi and Sauriya Bibi (Bibi means a lady or girl) were brutally beaten and forced to parade naked by the armed henchmen of a landlord, who happens to connections in ruling party PML(N).
According to reports, the incident occurred on the night of June 3, as the male members of the family were at work. The armed men entered the house by jumping the boundary wall, then unlocked the gate from inside. The women, along with two elderly relatives, were asleep. The attackers looked for the men; when they could not find them, they began to beat the three women. They then took the young Christian women into the street, tore off their cloths and forced them to parade naked.
Aasia Bibi, another Pakistani Christian woman who was the Pakistani court, has now been imprisoned for four years under the country's blasphemy law. After having been given a death sentence, she is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. For this statement, she was brutally beaten by her Muslim co-workers and arrested by the police.
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Aasia Bibi's family members campaign for her release in Spain, December 13, 2012. (Source: HazteOir.org)[/TD]
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Killing, oppression and humiliation are more and more frequently taking place in Pakistan. In addition to the well-known cases of Martha Bibi, Younis Masih, Rifaqaat Masih, Sawan Masih, Samuel Masih [Masih, meaning "messiah", is a very common name among Pakistan's Christians] and many others are also being subjected to killings, imprisonment with long sentences, beatings, and burnings. In just the past few months, for instance, Pakistani police killed three Christian boys for love affairs with Muslim girls. Afzal Masih 20 and Iftekhar Masih 20 were killed on Aprl 29, and Adnan Masih was tortured, then killed, by the police on June 10.
In August 2012, an 11-year-old Christian boy was found dead, with his lips and nose sliced off, his stomach removed and his legs mutilated. Police said he had also been subjected to sodomy.
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child reports that as many as 2,000 girls and women from various minority sects have, through rape, torture and kidnapping, been forcibly converted to Islam; and in 2011 alone, 161 people were charged with "blasphemy." According to reports, in 2009, eight Christians were burned to death in Pakistan's province of Punjab after rumors spread of a desecration of the Quran.
In April, 2013, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that the risk to Pakistan's minorities has reached a crisis level. The Commission said that the blasphemy laws, and others, are used to violate religious freedoms and foster a climate of impunity.
Blasphemy laws are, at present, the most significant tool for persecution against the Christian community. These laws, however have also often been used to settle personal disputes or just to make Pakistan into a Christian-free state. These trends sharply escalated when, in 1986, Pakistan's late military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, harshly amended the British-era blasphemy laws in Pakistan's penal code, with sections 295-C, 298-A, 298-B, and 298-C the most dire:

Section 295-C: "Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet…shall be punished with death or imprisoned for life…"
Section 298-A: "Uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings…."
Section 298-B: Misuse of epithets, descriptions, titles reserved for certain holy personages or places…"
Section 298-C: "A person who poses himself as a Muslim…. or in any manner whatsoever outrages the feelings of Muslims." [Emphasis added.]
​

No later government has since dared to re-amend them.
Since 1986, more than 1200 people have been charged under blasphemy laws. The Asian Human Rights Commission has cited the Islamabad-based institute Center for Research and Security Studies in a report which says that more than 1,000 people have been charged in Pakistan for committing offences against the blasphemy law. Since 1990, 52 people have been extra-judicially murdered for being implicated in blasphemy charges. Among them, 15 were Christians.
Nasir Khan, a Pakistani who resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has said that no evidence is required before the court; just the verbal statements of two or three persons are enough to punish a non-Muslim for blasphemy.
The Urdu newspapers Insaf and Khobrain both reported on 28 August 2000 that a Justice of the Lahore High Court, Nazir Akhtar, said that "Anyone accused under blasphemy charges should be killed on the spot by Muslims as their religious obligation and that there is no need for legal proceedings for a blasphemer." Justice Akhtar continued: "We shall slit every tongue that is guilty of insolence against the Holy Prophet."
The Christians of Pakistan are also being scapegoated during national and local elections. A provincial assembly candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11, 2013 election loss.
According to Younus Iqbal, the chairman of the Anjuman-e-Mazareen, a peasant movement fighting for land rights, what blares from the village mosque is: "Burn their homes to the ground…Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph colony."
On March 9, about 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians in the Joseph Colony and destroyed 175 houses after the rumor spread of a remark against Islam by a Christian. In 2009, eight Christians were burned alive after a blasphemy accusation. More instances of young Christian girls raped, abducted, kidnapped and murdered include:

• Nisha, a nine-year-old Christian girl, abducted by Muslims, gang raped, murdered by repeated blows to her head, and dumped into a canal (May, 2009).
• Gulfan, nine-year-old Christian girl, raped by a Muslim man. During her ordeal, the rapist told her not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls (December, 2010).
• Lubna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, kidnapped, gang raped, and murdered by a group of Muslims (October, 2010).
• Anna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, gang raped for eight months After she escaped, her Christian family was in hiding from both the rapist and the police (October, 2011).
• After a gang raping a 13-year-old Christian girl, Muslims came to her house and beat her pregnant aunt. The police then accused the girl of committing adultery with the three men (June, 2012).
• Amirah, a teenage Christian girl, murdered during an attempted rape (December, 2011).
• Mehek, a 14-year-old Christian girl, abducted at gunpoint in broad daylight from her parents' house. One of her abductors declared he would "purify her" by making her Muslim (August, 2011).
• Shazia, a 12-year-old Christian girl, raped and murdered by a rich Muslim lawyer, who was then acquitted (November, 2010).
• A powerful Muslim businessman kidnapped two Christian sisters, whom he forced to convert to Islam and then marry him (May, 2011).

Although Rimsha Masih and her family fled to Canada to escape death threats, they left behind hundreds of "Rimshas," captive in their own land and facing death, rape and abduction, just due to their religion.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]Christian india : Orissa: convictions, acquittals in gang rape of nun[/h]

March 14, 2014
Three men have been convicted and six have been acquitted in the 2008 gang rape of a nun in Kandhamal, a province of the state of Orissa, Agence France-Presse reported.
The nine defendants were members of a mob of about 50 men who raped the nun, Sister Meena Barwa, and paraded her semi-naked through the streets, along with a Catholic priest, Father Thomas Chellan; both were also beaten during the episode. Police made no effort to intervene during the incident, and authorities in Orissa pressed charges against only a few of those involved. The six acquittals were due to lack of evidence.
Mitu Patnaik (alias Santosh Patnaik), the accused leader of the mob, was sentenced to 11 years in prison; Gajendra Digal and Saroj Badhei received 26-month sentences. The rape victim, who went to New Delhi after her ordeal, told a news conference there that she was frightened to return to Kandhamal to testify, and appealed for federal intervention to assure a serious investigation. The trial was eventually moved out of the Kandhamal district.
Orissa, an eastern Indian state that has since been renamed Odisha, was the site of massive anti-Christian violence that left over 50 dead and 50,000 homeless.

Peshawar: Days after three Christian woman were paraded naked by a landlord in Islamabad, a budding Pakistani artist was attacked with acid in Nowshera, 148 kilometres (92 miles) northwest of Islamabad. The eighteen-year-old theatre artist Bushra was sleeping in her house when somebody scaled the house and threw acid on her.

"A man climbed the wall of our house in the early hours, threw acid on my sister and fled," Bushra's brother, Pervez Khan said.

A local police official, Sultan Khan also confirmed the incident.

The teen was immediately taken to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar where Dr Suhail Ahmad said she had suffered 33 per cent burn injuries, on her face and shoulder, but was in a stable condition.

Her brother Pervez Khan has lodged a complaint against a local TV drama producer, Shaukat Khan, over the incident saying that the producer was unhappy over Bushra's refusal to marry him.

Three Christian women were attacked and then paraded naked by the supporters of the Nawaz Sharif's ruling party in a village in Pakistan, on June 3.

The village elders pleaded with the attackers to spare the women and even kept their turbans on the feet of the attackers.

The attackers were goons hired by the powerful landlord of the area, Muhammad Munir, the son of Abdul Rasheed. He is said to be a supporter of the ruling party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, (PML-N).

The incident came to light in a press release by Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

On the night of June 3, armed men scaled the wall of the house of Sadiq Masih and started looking for Masih's son. When they could not find him they attacked the three women who were sleeping inside the house.

The attackers forced the women out of the home and tore-off their clothes. They then started shouting to attract the attention of the people, to let them see the extent of the clout yielded by the landlord.

The attackers left women after warning the people against complaining to the police.

Christians and other minority communities have come under repeated attack in Pakistan. In November 2005, Muslim church and schools were attacked in Faisalabad after Muslim preachers urged the people to take revenge after a Christian allegedly burnt Koran pages.

 

[rustam e hind]

Monsters Rule in Pakistan; Rape is Public Policy


06/03/2011 01:41 pm ET | Updated Aug 03, 2011

• 
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  Thor HalvorssenFounder, Human Rights Foundation

By Thor Halvorssen and Pedro Pizano
They raped her.
Fourteen men raped Mukhtar Mai. And this was not a criminal act; the village council authorized it. You see, rape is standard punishment in Pakistan for women and girls who have brought dishonor to their families or communities. But Mukhtar, a fragile and soft-spoken woman, refused to live by the cultural norm -- in Pakistan the victim remains silent or commits suicide. Mukhtar challenged tradition and waged a one-woman campaign against this most horrific of crimes that Pakistani men continue to carry out against their mothers, daughters, and sisters.
Mukhtar Mai was a 30-year old woman living in Meerwal, a remote village in Pakistan, when in June of 2002, her 12-year old brother Abdul Shakoor was allegedly seen walking with a girl from the higher-caste tribe, the Mastoi. The Mastoi took it as an offense and demanded that Muhktar be raped to avenge their honor. The Jirga or high court of Meerwal ordered the rape. Fourteen "volunteers" went to her house and while her family watched, they dragged her out and gang-raped her. She was then paraded naked in front of onlookers.
One month later, investigators found that Mukhtar's brother Abdul had never actually been walking with any girl, never mind one from the Mastoi. In fact, he had been kidnapped and raped by three men from the Mastoi, and they claimed he was walking with the girl to cover up their crime.
Violence of this sort is common practice in Pakistan, considered part of an ancient ethical code, commonly referred to as "honor revenge" and "honor killings." They are perpetrated at the very perception of dishonor, such as: engaging in homosexual acts, dressing in an unacceptable manner, or having an inappropriate non-sexual relationship (such as walking down the street with someone). The Jirga -- an all-men council -- analyze the situation and enforce the tradition, and its victims are almost always women and girls.
We had the opportunity to meet Mukhtar last year at the Oslo Freedom Forum. She spoke with a quiet but intense demeanor. "Usually a question that I'm asked is: why did I take a stand against the oppression and raise my voice for myself and for women's rights? To raise a voice against oppression is my basic or fundamental right. I have raised my voice for women's rights so what happened to me, may have happened, but it should not happen to any other woman."
Mukhtar Mai is a Pakistani victim of honor punishment who refused a life of silence and instead spoke out against her attackers and on behalf of women's rights. In her speech to the Oslo Freedom Forum she explains why she raised her voice - so that what happened to her would not happen to any other woman.
After almost 10 years of bitter legal proceedings, Mukhtar's case made its way to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. On April 21, 2011, the verdict was handed down. It acquitted five of the accused and convicted just one of them, upholding an earlier decision. Thirteen of the 14 men who gang raped her went free and the reaction of the assembled crowd (including the Pakistani media present at the court) was applause.
"April 21, 2011, will be remembered as a black day in Pakistan's history," a Pakistani human rights defender, wrote us in a recent email. "Not because this was the day when the Supreme Court acquitted the alleged rapists of a poor, marginalized woman. It will be marked as the day when, once again, Pakistan's colonial criminal justice system failed to protect the vulnerable, thereby rendering a heinous crime such as gang rape almost unpunishable."
There was one brave and dissenting opinion, though. In the words of Mukhtar, who wrote to us five days after the verdict, this means that there "is a ray of hope to ask the court for review, though I hold no optimism that justice will be dispensed in review, but I want no stone unturned in my struggle for justice and realization of women rights in Pakistan."
Mukhtar Mai is a simple woman from a small town and her resolve, given enough attention across the world, could inspire men and women who believe in dignity and human decency to dramatically expand Mukhtar's effort. One of them is already doing so in Pakistan.
Veena Malik, an entertainment personality famous for starring in a reality TV series in India, takes a stand against those men in Pakistan who believe women are objects. She confronts an Islamic Mullah on national Pakistani TV .
Veena Malik, has taken a stand, in a entirely different arena, against those who believe women are objects and should be treated like doormats. An entertainment personality famous for starring in a reality TV series in neighboring India, she engaged an Islamic Mullah, on national Pakistani TV during an interview where she was ambushed. She was accused of dishonor -- the old faithful ploy -- for her actions and style of dress. She was even told that her own son should be ashamed to see pictures of his mother. Like Mukhtar, she refused to remain silent and accused the Mullah of hypocrisy, told him that she did not regret her actions, and turned the accusations around on him using the Holy Koran. The footage of the interview is a triumph in that it succinctly captures the challenges faced by the women of Pakistan.
The men of Pakistan are not going to wake up one day and give women their inalienable rights and their dignity. Women there must be organized, assisted, but most of all, they must know that they are not alone or abandoned.
We invite you to stand with Mukhtar Mai and Veena Malik. Circulate their videos. Highlight the truth about what is going on in Pakistan today. Animate this fight in such vivid color that it becomes impossible for the world to ignore. Sitting on the sidelines is not an option.
Thor Halvorssen is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Pedro Pizano is the global media liaison for the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and onFacebook.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]Twenty-five years of violating Indian nuns with impunity[/h][h=3]If the Church is serious about fighting rape, a change of attitude is necessary[/h]

Indian Christians take part in a peace rally and protest in Allahabad in this March 22 photo after the rape of a nun in West Bengal. (Photo: AFP / SANJAY KANOJIA)
[h=5]Christopher Joseph, Kochi, India[/h][h=4]July 10, 2015[/h]

It is 25 years since the Indian media reported what they then called the first rape case involving Catholic nuns in Independent India. No one has yet been punished for the crime.
Police did arrest four men in connection with the July 13, 1990 rape of two nuns in their convent in Gajraula, near Delhi. However, the trial proved farcical when it was determined they were in jail when the crime was committed.
The court rebuked the police and awarded the nuns compensation. The court also said the case could not be closed until the real culprits were arrested. But it is now a forgotten case. High-ranking Church officials told me this week they have no clue as to how the so-called investigation is progressing.
Media reports said the case was handed to India's top investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation. Theoretically, they are still investigating the case.
Between 1990 and 1995, New Delhi's Theological Research and Communication Institute recorded 20 more cases of murder, rape and assault on Catholic clergy and nuns in India. Since then the number of incidents has grown with about 100 attacks being recorded in recent years.
In the last year the figure has doubled to more than 200, since Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalistBharatiya Janata Party came to power, according to data supplied by Christian leaders.
Another nun was allegedly raped last month in Raipur, while a 71-year-old nun was raped in a convent near Kolkata. Police are investigating these crimes, but if the probes follow a similar pattern to other incidents, all involved, except the victim, will forget about the crime until another one happens.
In the rush to move forward, no one seems to be bothered about getting justice for the victims.
In nearly all cases the perpetrators get away with it.
Over the past 25 years, only one person has been convicted and jailed for raping a nun. This crime occurred in Odisha in 2008. Two others were handed prison terms for sexual assault in the same case but they are out on bail.
No one else has been convicted or punished for raping a Catholic nun in this country despite some cases reaching court. This kind of impunity encourages criminals to commit more heinous acts.

Christian leaders say these crimes are part of an orchestrated effort by Hindu hard-liners to harass and subjugate the religious minority.
Police see the offenses as being among thousands of routine crimes being committed across the country. Hindu leaders dismiss Christian allegations against them as baseless and politically motivated.
All have their points, but if the criminals in the first few cases were caught and punished appropriately, the situation today would have been different.
We are seeing a pattern. Crime repeated; words repeated; victims forgotten. The Church and state move forward with no sense of sin in their omissions.
One nun, who was raped some time ago, told me how she has become frustrated with the protracted court case and wishes to see it end, even if it means the culprits go unpunished.
Each time the case comes up she is forced to re-live the ordeal answering questions from lawyers and the media, she said.
Why is this happening?
In most cases, the rapes were not spur of the moment crimes committed while carrying out a robbery. In the Kolkata case, they specifically chose the 71-year old nun leaving younger nuns in the convent alone.
In the Raipur attack, the culprits deliberately chose the 47-year nun, taking care not to disturb two younger women sleeping next door. They also came prepared with drugs to give to the nun. It was evident they were making a statement against Christians with their crime.
Rape can mean a statement of subjugation in Indian society. It can mean: 'We trample upon what you love, respect and revere… your sister, wife and mother. You live as a subject to us or get out.'

• She is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.

[/COLOR]
Rimsha Masih, a young Pakistani Christian girl, who was arrested in August 2012 by Pakistan's police for alleged blasphemy, has escaped the country with the direct help of Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and AVAAZ, a civic organization. Local media and her parents said she was as young as 11 at the time of her arrest; medical reports classified her as an "uneducated" 14-year-old with a mental age younger than her years. Accused of burning pages of the holy book for Muslims, the Quran, Masih, under Pakistan's "blasphemy laws," faced the death penalty.
Masih fled with her family members to Canada, where Immigration Minister Jason Kenney instructed officials to process the family's applications for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds.
While Masih and her family are fortunate, no one knows what will happen to the rest of the Christians of Pakistan. Even though they make up only about two percent of the population -- or precisely because of it: there are so few, they may appear invitingly vulnerable -- they suffer beatings by their neighbors, murder by the police and imprisonment by the courts.
Last month, three Christian women, Arshad Bibi, Sajida Bibi and Sauriya Bibi (Bibi means a lady or girl) were brutally beaten and forced to parade naked by the armed henchmen of a landlord, who happens to connections in ruling party PML(N).
According to reports, the incident occurred on the night of June 3, as the male members of the family were at work. The armed men entered the house by jumping the boundary wall, then unlocked the gate from inside. The women, along with two elderly relatives, were asleep. The attackers looked for the men; when they could not find them, they began to beat the three women. They then took the young Christian women into the street, tore off their cloths and forced them to parade naked.
Aasia Bibi, another Pakistani Christian woman who was the Pakistani court, has now been imprisoned for four years under the country's blasphemy law. After having been given a death sentence, she is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. For this statement, she was brutally beaten by her Muslim co-workers and arrested by the police.
[TABLE="width: 500"]
[TR]
[TD]

Aasia Bibi's family members campaign for her release in Spain, December 13, 2012. (Source: HazteOir.org)[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Killing, oppression and humiliation are more and more frequently taking place in Pakistan. In addition to the well-known cases of Martha Bibi, Younis Masih, Rifaqaat Masih, Sawan Masih, Samuel Masih [Masih, meaning "messiah", is a very common name among Pakistan's Christians] and many others are also being subjected to killings, imprisonment with long sentences, beatings, and burnings. In just the past few months, for instance, Pakistani police killed three Christian boys for love affairs with Muslim girls. Afzal Masih 20 and Iftekhar Masih 20 were killed on Aprl 29, and Adnan Masih was tortured, then killed, by the police on June 10.
In August 2012, an 11-year-old Christian boy was found dead, with his lips and nose sliced off, his stomach removed and his legs mutilated. Police said he had also been subjected to sodomy.
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child reports that as many as 2,000 girls and women from various minority sects have, through rape, torture and kidnapping, been forcibly converted to Islam; and in 2011 alone, 161 people were charged with "blasphemy." According to reports, in 2009, eight Christians were burned to death in Pakistan's province of Punjab after rumors spread of a desecration of the Quran.
In April, 2013, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that the risk to Pakistan's minorities has reached a crisis level. The Commission said that the blasphemy laws, and others, are used to violate religious freedoms and foster a climate of impunity.
Blasphemy laws are, at present, the most significant tool for persecution against the Christian community. These laws, however have also often been used to settle personal disputes or just to make Pakistan into a Christian-free state. These trends sharply escalated when, in 1986, Pakistan's late military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, harshly amended the British-era blasphemy laws in Pakistan's penal code, with sections 295-C, 298-A, 298-B, and 298-C the most dire:

Section 295-C: "Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet…shall be punished with death or imprisoned for life…"
Section 298-A: "Uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings…."
Section 298-B: Misuse of epithets, descriptions, titles reserved for certain holy personages or places…"
Section 298-C: "A person who poses himself as a Muslim…. or in any manner whatsoever outrages the feelings of Muslims." [Emphasis added.]
​

No later government has since dared to re-amend them.
Since 1986, more than 1200 people have been charged under blasphemy laws. The Asian Human Rights Commission has cited the Islamabad-based institute Center for Research and Security Studies in a report which says that more than 1,000 people have been charged in Pakistan for committing offences against the blasphemy law. Since 1990, 52 people have been extra-judicially murdered for being implicated in blasphemy charges. Among them, 15 were Christians.
Nasir Khan, a Pakistani who resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has said that no evidence is required before the court; just the verbal statements of two or three persons are enough to punish a non-Muslim for blasphemy.
The Urdu newspapers Insaf and Khobrain both reported on 28 August 2000 that a Justice of the Lahore High Court, Nazir Akhtar, said that "Anyone accused under blasphemy charges should be killed on the spot by Muslims as their religious obligation and that there is no need for legal proceedings for a blasphemer." Justice Akhtar continued: "We shall slit every tongue that is guilty of insolence against the Holy Prophet."
The Christians of Pakistan are also being scapegoated during national and local elections. A provincial assembly candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11, 2013 election loss.
According to Younus Iqbal, the chairman of the Anjuman-e-Mazareen, a peasant movement fighting for land rights, what blares from the village mosque is: "Burn their homes to the ground…Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph colony."
On March 9, about 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians in the Joseph Colony and destroyed 175 houses after the rumor spread of a remark against Islam by a Christian. In 2009, eight Christians were burned alive after a blasphemy accusation. More instances of young Christian girls raped, abducted, kidnapped and murdered include:

• Nisha, a nine-year-old Christian girl, abducted by Muslims, gang raped, murdered by repeated blows to her head, and dumped into a canal (May, 2009).
• Gulfan, nine-year-old Christian girl, raped by a Muslim man. During her ordeal, the rapist told her not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls (December, 2010).
• Lubna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, kidnapped, gang raped, and murdered by a group of Muslims (October, 2010).
• Anna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, gang raped for eight months After she escaped, her Christian family was in hiding from both the rapist and the police (October, 2011).
• After a gang raping a 13-year-old Christian girl, Muslims came to her house and beat her pregnant aunt. The police then accused the girl of committing adultery with the three men (June, 2012).
• Amirah, a teenage Christian girl, murdered during an attempted rape (December, 2011).
• Mehek, a 14-year-old Christian girl, abducted at gunpoint in broad daylight from her parents' house. One of her abductors declared he would "purify her" by making her Muslim (August, 2011).
• Shazia, a 12-year-old Christian girl, raped and murdered by a rich Muslim lawyer, who was then acquitted (November, 2010).
• A powerful Muslim businessman kidnapped two Christian sisters, whom he forced to convert to Islam and then marry him (May, 2011).

Although Rimsha Masih and her family fled to Canada to escape death threats, they left behind hundreds of "Rimshas," captive in their own land and facing death, rape and abduction, just due to their religion.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]Why INDIA rated / ranked as WORST country for women[/h][COLOR=rgba(85, 85, 85, 0.74902)]Amrit Thiara January 14, 2015 [/COLOR]
Thomson Reuters Foundation, legal news service, launched a global opinion poll of gurus on the worst and best nations for women in the G20. Guidelines that advertise gender equality, precautions towards violence and exploitation and reach to health care make CANADA the best place for the woman among the world’s leading economies, while child marriage, infanticide and slavery make INDIA the worst, the analyze showed.So many women in so many countries, their fundamental rights remain a luxury and still in some of the most developed economies women are typically considered 2nd rate citizens. This opinion poll also shows that laws and treaties on women’s rights often don’t reflect the truth on the ground, ” said Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO.

Condition of Women in INDIAThis survey ranked the 19 nations that make up the group of twenty economies in terms of how women do use six categories:
1)- Workplace Opportunities.
2)- Quality of Health.
3)- Freedom from Violence.
4)- Participation in Politics.
5)- Access to Resources.
6)- Freedom from Trafficking and Slavery.

06/03/2011 01:41 pm ET | Updated Aug 03, 2011

• 
  [*=center]
  [*=center]

• 
  [*=left]
  Thor HalvorssenFounder, Human Rights Foundation

By Thor Halvorssen and Pedro Pizano
They raped her.
Fourteen men raped Mukhtar Mai. And this was not a criminal act; the village council authorized it. You see, rape is standard punishment in Pakistan for women and girls who have brought dishonor to their families or communities. But Mukhtar, a fragile and soft-spoken woman, refused to live by the cultural norm -- in Pakistan the victim remains silent or commits suicide. Mukhtar challenged tradition and waged a one-woman campaign against this most horrific of crimes that Pakistani men continue to carry out against their mothers, daughters, and sisters.
Mukhtar Mai was a 30-year old woman living in Meerwal, a remote village in Pakistan, when in June of 2002, her 12-year old brother Abdul Shakoor was allegedly seen walking with a girl from the higher-caste tribe, the Mastoi. The Mastoi took it as an offense and demanded that Muhktar be raped to avenge their honor. The Jirga or high court of Meerwal ordered the rape. Fourteen "volunteers" went to her house and while her family watched, they dragged her out and gang-raped her. She was then paraded naked in front of onlookers.
One month later, investigators found that Mukhtar's brother Abdul had never actually been walking with any girl, never mind one from the Mastoi. In fact, he had been kidnapped and raped by three men from the Mastoi, and they claimed he was walking with the girl to cover up their crime.
Violence of this sort is common practice in Pakistan, considered part of an ancient ethical code, commonly referred to as "honor revenge" and "honor killings." They are perpetrated at the very perception of dishonor, such as: engaging in homosexual acts, dressing in an unacceptable manner, or having an inappropriate non-sexual relationship (such as walking down the street with someone). The Jirga -- an all-men council -- analyze the situation and enforce the tradition, and its victims are almost always women and girls.
We had the opportunity to meet Mukhtar last year at the Oslo Freedom Forum. She spoke with a quiet but intense demeanor. "Usually a question that I'm asked is: why did I take a stand against the oppression and raise my voice for myself and for women's rights? To raise a voice against oppression is my basic or fundamental right. I have raised my voice for women's rights so what happened to me, may have happened, but it should not happen to any other woman."
Mukhtar Mai is a Pakistani victim of honor punishment who refused a life of silence and instead spoke out against her attackers and on behalf of women's rights. In her speech to the Oslo Freedom Forum she explains why she raised her voice - so that what happened to her would not happen to any other woman.
After almost 10 years of bitter legal proceedings, Mukhtar's case made its way to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. On April 21, 2011, the verdict was handed down. It acquitted five of the accused and convicted just one of them, upholding an earlier decision. Thirteen of the 14 men who gang raped her went free and the reaction of the assembled crowd (including the Pakistani media present at the court) was applause.
"April 21, 2011, will be remembered as a black day in Pakistan's history," a Pakistani human rights defender, wrote us in a recent email. "Not because this was the day when the Supreme Court acquitted the alleged rapists of a poor, marginalized woman. It will be marked as the day when, once again, Pakistan's colonial criminal justice system failed to protect the vulnerable, thereby rendering a heinous crime such as gang rape almost unpunishable."
There was one brave and dissenting opinion, though. In the words of Mukhtar, who wrote to us five days after the verdict, this means that there "is a ray of hope to ask the court for review, though I hold no optimism that justice will be dispensed in review, but I want no stone unturned in my struggle for justice and realization of women rights in Pakistan."
Mukhtar Mai is a simple woman from a small town and her resolve, given enough attention across the world, could inspire men and women who believe in dignity and human decency to dramatically expand Mukhtar's effort. One of them is already doing so in Pakistan.
Veena Malik, an entertainment personality famous for starring in a reality TV series in India, takes a stand against those men in Pakistan who believe women are objects. She confronts an Islamic Mullah on national Pakistani TV .
Veena Malik, has taken a stand, in a entirely different arena, against those who believe women are objects and should be treated like doormats. An entertainment personality famous for starring in a reality TV series in neighboring India, she engaged an Islamic Mullah, on national Pakistani TV during an interview where she was ambushed. She was accused of dishonor -- the old faithful ploy -- for her actions and style of dress. She was even told that her own son should be ashamed to see pictures of his mother. Like Mukhtar, she refused to remain silent and accused the Mullah of hypocrisy, told him that she did not regret her actions, and turned the accusations around on him using the Holy Koran. The footage of the interview is a triumph in that it succinctly captures the challenges faced by the women of Pakistan.
The men of Pakistan are not going to wake up one day and give women their inalienable rights and their dignity. Women there must be organized, assisted, but most of all, they must know that they are not alone or abandoned.
We invite you to stand with Mukhtar Mai and Veena Malik. Circulate their videos. Highlight the truth about what is going on in Pakistan today. Animate this fight in such vivid color that it becomes impossible for the world to ignore. Sitting on the sidelines is not an option.
Thor Halvorssen is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Pedro Pizano is the global media liaison for the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and onFacebook.

 

[rustam e hind]

[h=1]Woman gang raped and paraded in [/h]VEHARI:




A 17-year-old girl was abducted, raped and paraded naked around the streets of her village for refusing the advances of a local landlord.
According to local residents, Saleema* was alone in her home when Ijaz Ahmed and his friends, Bilal, Shehbaz, Muazzam and Tahir broke into her house and raped her. Saleema’s brother Rasheed told the police that Ijaz had been stalking his sister for several months and she had refused him. “He began to threaten her and me,” he said. Rasheed and Saleema’s parents died a few years ago and they were both living with their grandfather and an old uncle.
“I had refused him several times. He threatened to kill my brother and me,” Saleema told the police. On Saturday night, five men broke into Saleema’s house and raped her while her brother was at work. “They beat up my grandfather and uncle and they could barely walk,” she said. Locals said that the men later dragged Saleema outside in the dera and paraded her in the streets of the village. “The men kept making loud claims about her being their ‘property’ and no one said a word because they were armed,” said a villager.
Rasheed registered an FIR in Machiwaal Police Station. “At first the police refused to even file the FIR but now they have done so,” Rasheed said, adding “I know they will not follow it up because Ijaz Ahmed is the son of a feudal lord Khalil Ahmed.” Rasheed said that the feudal lord’s family had been pressurising his family and had threatened to kill them if they went to the police. An FIR No 27/2011 has been lodged but Rasheed and his sister said that the police had only lodged offences under Section No 376/1 but did not file a rape or gang rape charge.
“I have issued a medical certificate testifying that she was gang raped. The girl was also dragged through the village,” Vehari district hospital Dr Ghazala confirmed. “The hospital has already treated three members of the family as the girl’s grandfather and uncle were brought in with severe injuries after they tried to rescue her,” she said.
Station House Officer (SHO) Rafiq Joiya said that the police were searching for the criminals. However locals said that they had seen Ijaz return to the village and saw him beat up Rasheed. “They beat him to a pulp after he filed the case and broke his nose,” said a villager Karim.
“He came to me and threatened to kill me if I did not take the case back,” Rasheed said, while he was in the hospital.
Rasheed, Saleema and their grandfather have asked for the Punjab Chief Minister to take up their case. “The police will do nothing because Ijaz and his cronies are roaming about freely in the streets,” Rasheed said, adding “everyone knows where they are and they have boasted that they will kill all of us.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the victims
Published in The Express Tribune, January 18[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=2]Indian PM shocked at low conviction rate for caste atrocities[/h]

Expressing shock over the abysmally low conviction rate for cases of atrocities against dalits and adivasis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asks state governments to pay more attention to the issue and “pursue on priority” court cases related to such matters
Although the Indian Constitution abolished untouchability in Article 17 and made its practise in any form a crime against the Constitution and against humanity, backed by penal laws for its prevention -- the Untouchability Offences Act, 1956 (later the Civil Rights Protection Act, 1976) and the present Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 -- the frequency of such violations has steadily been rising.
According to a 1991 Union Ministry of Social Welfare document: “…Every hour, two dalits (are) assaulted, every day three dalit women (are) raped, two dalits (are) murdered and two dalit houses burnt in India. It is a frequent spectacle, the dalit women are disrobed in public view and paraded naked in the villages for no fault of theirs, often mass murders of dalits (are) committed…”
Even the redress mechanism fails to deliver. Conviction rates under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 are below 30% and pendency is as high as 85.37%. By contrast, the conviction rate under the Indian Penal Code is 42% for all cognisable offences.
These facts shocked Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while inaugurating a conference of state ministers of welfare and social justice in New Delhi on September 7, 2009. “State governments need to give more attention to this issue,” he said while directing ministers to conduct meetings of state and district-level vigilance committees on a regular basis and pursue such cases on priority.
“Reports of atrocities against SCs and STs continue to appear with disturbing regularity. I have in fact written to the chief ministers of all states recently to enforce the provisions of the SC/ST Act,” the prime minister said, underlining the need to make disadvantaged groups “equal partners in the developmental process”.
Referring to the self-employment scheme for rehabilitation of manual scavengers, a programme run by the Ministry for Social Justice, Singh said: “I am told that more than half of the identified beneficiaries under the scheme are yet to be rehabilitated. States should be more proactive in implementing scholarships and hostel schemes for SCs, STs and OBCs.”
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia noted: “In the Planning Commission we have been implementing the SC sub-plan and are engaged with other ministries to ensure its implementation.” Noting that the compliance of states was “not satisfactory”, he said the Planning Commission had written to chief ministers that their annual plans would be cleared only if they implemented the SC sub-plan properly.
Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Mukul Wasnik called for a strategic partnership between civil society and industry to improve the effectiveness of ongoing government schemes for SCs and STs and to ensure social justice in social and economic spheres.
India has been under some pressure from the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Special Rapporteur on Race, and some foreign governments that have made caste one of their central concerns ever since dalit NGOs led a high-profile campaign at the World Conference against Racism in 2001.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its 2008 report ‘BROKEN PEOPLE: Caste Violence Against India’s Untouchables’, has detailed how more than one-sixth of India’s population, some 160 million people, are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused at the hands of the police and of higher caste groups that enjoy the state’s protection.
HRW observes that: “The potential of the law to bring about social change has been hampered by police corruption and caste bias, with the result that many allegations are not entered in the police books. Ignorance of procedures and a lack of knowledge of the Act have also affected its implementation. Even when cases are registered, the absence of special courts to try them can delay prosecutions for up to three to four years. Some state governments dominated by higher castes have even attempted to repeal the legislation altogether.”
Investigations by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Human Rights Commission, and numerous local NGOs all concur that impunity is rampant when it comes to implementation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

06/03/2011 01:41 pm ET | Updated Aug 03, 2011

• 
  [*=center]
  [*=center]

• 
  [*=left]
  Thor HalvorssenFounder, Human Rights Foundation

By Thor Halvorssen and Pedro Pizano
They raped her.
Fourteen men raped Mukhtar Mai. And this was not a criminal act; the village council authorized it. You see, rape is standard punishment in Pakistan for women and girls who have brought dishonor to their families or communities. But Mukhtar, a fragile and soft-spoken woman, refused to live by the cultural norm -- in Pakistan the victim remains silent or commits suicide. Mukhtar challenged tradition and waged a one-woman campaign against this most horrific of crimes that Pakistani men continue to carry out against their mothers, daughters, and sisters.
Mukhtar Mai was a 30-year old woman living in Meerwal, a remote village in Pakistan, when in June of 2002, her 12-year old brother Abdul Shakoor was allegedly seen walking with a girl from the higher-caste tribe, the Mastoi. The Mastoi took it as an offense and demanded that Muhktar be raped to avenge their honor. The Jirga or high court of Meerwal ordered the rape. Fourteen "volunteers" went to her house and while her family watched, they dragged her out and gang-raped her. She was then paraded naked in front of onlookers.
One month later, investigators found that Mukhtar's brother Abdul had never actually been walking with any girl, never mind one from the Mastoi. In fact, he had been kidnapped and raped by three men from the Mastoi, and they claimed he was walking with the girl to cover up their crime.
Violence of this sort is common practice in Pakistan, considered part of an ancient ethical code, commonly referred to as "honor revenge" and "honor killings." They are perpetrated at the very perception of dishonor, such as: engaging in homosexual acts, dressing in an unacceptable manner, or having an inappropriate non-sexual relationship (such as walking down the street with someone). The Jirga -- an all-men council -- analyze the situation and enforce the tradition, and its victims are almost always women and girls.
We had the opportunity to meet Mukhtar last year at the Oslo Freedom Forum. She spoke with a quiet but intense demeanor. "Usually a question that I'm asked is: why did I take a stand against the oppression and raise my voice for myself and for women's rights? To raise a voice against oppression is my basic or fundamental right. I have raised my voice for women's rights so what happened to me, may have happened, but it should not happen to any other woman."
Mukhtar Mai is a Pakistani victim of honor punishment who refused a life of silence and instead spoke out against her attackers and on behalf of women's rights. In her speech to the Oslo Freedom Forum she explains why she raised her voice - so that what happened to her would not happen to any other woman.
After almost 10 years of bitter legal proceedings, Mukhtar's case made its way to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. On April 21, 2011, the verdict was handed down. It acquitted five of the accused and convicted just one of them, upholding an earlier decision. Thirteen of the 14 men who gang raped her went free and the reaction of the assembled crowd (including the Pakistani media present at the court) was applause.
"April 21, 2011, will be remembered as a black day in Pakistan's history," a Pakistani human rights defender, wrote us in a recent email. "Not because this was the day when the Supreme Court acquitted the alleged rapists of a poor, marginalized woman. It will be marked as the day when, once again, Pakistan's colonial criminal justice system failed to protect the vulnerable, thereby rendering a heinous crime such as gang rape almost unpunishable."
There was one brave and dissenting opinion, though. In the words of Mukhtar, who wrote to us five days after the verdict, this means that there "is a ray of hope to ask the court for review, though I hold no optimism that justice will be dispensed in review, but I want no stone unturned in my struggle for justice and realization of women rights in Pakistan."
Mukhtar Mai is a simple woman from a small town and her resolve, given enough attention across the world, could inspire men and women who believe in dignity and human decency to dramatically expand Mukhtar's effort. One of them is already doing so in Pakistan.
Veena Malik, an entertainment personality famous for starring in a reality TV series in India, takes a stand against those men in Pakistan who believe women are objects. She confronts an Islamic Mullah on national Pakistani TV .
Veena Malik, has taken a stand, in a entirely different arena, against those who believe women are objects and should be treated like doormats. An entertainment personality famous for starring in a reality TV series in neighboring India, she engaged an Islamic Mullah, on national Pakistani TV during an interview where she was ambushed. She was accused of dishonor -- the old faithful ploy -- for her actions and style of dress. She was even told that her own son should be ashamed to see pictures of his mother. Like Mukhtar, she refused to remain silent and accused the Mullah of hypocrisy, told him that she did not regret her actions, and turned the accusations around on him using the Holy Koran. The footage of the interview is a triumph in that it succinctly captures the challenges faced by the women of Pakistan.
The men of Pakistan are not going to wake up one day and give women their inalienable rights and their dignity. Women there must be organized, assisted, but most of all, they must know that they are not alone or abandoned.
We invite you to stand with Mukhtar Mai and Veena Malik. Circulate their videos. Highlight the truth about what is going on in Pakistan today. Animate this fight in such vivid color that it becomes impossible for the world to ignore. Sitting on the sidelines is not an option.
Thor Halvorssen is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Pedro Pizano is the global media liaison for the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and onFacebook.

 

[rustam e hind]

World | Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:45am GMTRelated: WORLD
Pakistani teen "raped" and paraded over "honour"

KARACHI

A group of Pakistani men has been accused of raping a teenaged girl and forcing her to parade naked through her village because one of her relatives eloped with a young woman from the men's family, police said on Wednesday.
Such attacks, known as honour crimes because they are committed in response to a perceived slight on a family's honour, are common in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, especially in backward, rural communities.
Police said the girl's father had filed a complaint on Saturday in Ubaro town, 530 km (330 miles) from the city of Karachi, saying a group of 11 men had kidnapped his daughter, raped her and forced her to parade naked.
The father told police the men were furious because the girl's cousin had eloped with and married a young woman from their family.
"Some villagers have said the girl was raped and her clothes torn off," investigating police officer Aftab Farooqi told Reuters.
"They also claim she was forced to walk half naked in the village streets before some older woman covered her with a blanket," he said.
The girl is in hospital in Ubaro, police said.
Another senior police official, Mushtaq Khoso, said police had arrested four of the 11 men named in the complaint and police were awaiting a medical report to confirm the 16-year-old had been raped.
Another police officer said certain influential people were pressing the girl's father to drop his complaint.
The case brings to mind a similar attack on a village woman in 2002.
The woman, Mukhtaran Mai, was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council in Punjab province as punishment because her brother had had a relationship with a young woman without the approval of her family.
Mai pressed charges against her attackers and rose to international prominence as a women's rights campaigner.
Mai's case highlighted Pakistan's laws on rape and helped galvanise public opinion behind a government-backed change to Islamic laws, approved late last year, that makes it easier for women to seek justice in civil courts.
Under the old Islamic law on rape, a woman risked prosecution for adultery unless she could produce four male witnesses to a rape.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

Bus ....aik baar kitni news lagye ga ...Humara mulk mein itna kachra nahi hai ...jitna tunay India ko banadiya hai ....aik news 10 baar laganay kay baad bhi koi news nahi hai [hilar][hilar][hilar][hilar]

A 17-year-old girl was abducted, raped and paraded naked around the streets of her village for refusing the advances of a local landlord.
According to local residents, Saleema* was alone in her home when Ijaz Ahmed and his friends, Bilal, Shehbaz, Muazzam and Tahir broke into her house and raped her. Saleema’s brother Rasheed told the police that Ijaz had been stalking his sister for several months and she had refused him. “He began to threaten her and me,” he said. Rasheed and Saleema’s parents died a few years ago and they were both living with their grandfather and an old uncle.
“I had refused him several times. He threatened to kill my brother and me,” Saleema told the police. On Saturday night, five men broke into Saleema’s house and raped her while her brother was at work. “They beat up my grandfather and uncle and they could barely walk,” she said. Locals said that the men later dragged Saleema outside in the dera and paraded her in the streets of the village. “The men kept making loud claims about her being their ‘property’ and no one said a word because they were armed,” said a villager.
Rasheed registered an FIR in Machiwaal Police Station. “At first the police refused to even file the FIR but now they have done so,” Rasheed said, adding “I know they will not follow it up because Ijaz Ahmed is the son of a feudal lord Khalil Ahmed.” Rasheed said that the feudal lord’s family had been pressurising his family and had threatened to kill them if they went to the police. An FIR No 27/2011 has been lodged but Rasheed and his sister said that the police had only lodged offences under Section No 376/1 but did not file a rape or gang rape charge.
“I have issued a medical certificate testifying that she was gang raped. The girl was also dragged through the village,” Vehari district hospital Dr Ghazala confirmed. “The hospital has already treated three members of the family as the girl’s grandfather and uncle were brought in with severe injuries after they tried to rescue her,” she said.
Station House Officer (SHO) Rafiq Joiya said that the police were searching for the criminals. However locals said that they had seen Ijaz return to the village and saw him beat up Rasheed. “They beat him to a pulp after he filed the case and broke his nose,” said a villager Karim.
“He came to me and threatened to kill me if I did not take the case back,” Rasheed said, while he was in the hospital.
Rasheed, Saleema and their grandfather have asked for the Punjab Chief Minister to take up their case. “The police will do nothing because Ijaz and his cronies are roaming about freely in the streets,” Rasheed said, adding “everyone knows where they are and they have boasted that they will kill all of us.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the victims
Published in The Express Tribune, January 18[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011.

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]Woman Paraded Naked, Thrashed by Daughter-in-law's Kin[/h]
By PTI
Published: 13th November 2015 08:21 PM
Last Updated: 13th November 2015 08:22 PM

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0​

[COLOR=#000000 !important]BHIND: A 45-year-old woman was allegedly paraded naked and thrashed by family members of her daughter-in-law in Lahar town in the district, police said today.
The incident took place yesterday and five accused, including a woman, have been identified by the police and a case has been registered against them.
According to police, those indulged in the alleged crime were enraged over the marriage of the victim's son with a girl from their family.
Also read: Woman Accused of Witchcraft Paraded Naked in MP, Forced to Drink Sewage
"The victim's son had a court marriage with the girl sometime back, which was opposed by the latter's parents," Bhind District Superintendent of Police (SP) Navneet Bhasin said quoting the complaint.
"Yesterday, when they came to know that their daughter had returned to Lahar, they forcibly entered her house. However, when they did not find the newly-wed couple inside, they allegedly pulled the 45-year-old woman out, stripped her and then beat her after chopping off her hair. She was then paraded naked in the area," the SP added.
After some time, they escaped leaving the woman there. The victim's family members later took her to a nearby hospital, which referred her to Gwalior for treatment, the SP said.
The accused were identified as Murli Manohar, Ravi, Ramprakash, Jaisingh and Vijaylaxmi and a case has been registered against them under sections 294, 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC and police are probing the stripping charges against them, the SP said.
"The victim's clothes and her chopped hair were recovered from the spot," Bhasin said.
The woman's husband Bhagwandas has alleged that police have booked the accused under mild sections of the IPC.
Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission (MPHRC) has directed Bhind SP to submit a report on the issue.
Congress MLA from Lahar Dr Govind Singh has condemned the incident and alleged negligence on the part of police in dealing with the matter with seriousness.

[/COLOR]

World | Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:45am GMTRelated: WORLD


KARACHI

A group of Pakistani men has been accused of raping a teenaged girl and forcing her to parade naked through her village because one of her relatives eloped with a young woman from the men's family, police said on Wednesday.
Such attacks, known as honour crimes because they are committed in response to a perceived slight on a family's honour, are common in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, especially in backward, rural communities.
Police said the girl's father had filed a complaint on Saturday in Ubaro town, 530 km (330 miles) from the city of Karachi, saying a group of 11 men had kidnapped his daughter, raped her and forced her to parade naked.
The father told police the men were furious because the girl's cousin had eloped with and married a young woman from their family.
"Some villagers have said the girl was raped and her clothes torn off," investigating police officer Aftab Farooqi told Reuters.
"They also claim she was forced to walk half naked in the village streets before some older woman covered her with a blanket," he said.
The girl is in hospital in Ubaro, police said.
Another senior police official, Mushtaq Khoso, said police had arrested four of the 11 men named in the complaint and police were awaiting a medical report to confirm the 16-year-old had been raped.
Another police officer said certain influential people were pressing the girl's father to drop his complaint.
The case brings to mind a similar attack on a village woman in 2002.
The woman, Mukhtaran Mai, was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council in Punjab province as punishment because her brother had had a relationship with a young woman without the approval of her family.
Mai pressed charges against her attackers and rose to international prominence as a women's rights campaigner.
Mai's case highlighted Pakistan's laws on rape and helped galvanise public opinion behind a government-backed change to Islamic laws, approved late last year, that makes it easier for women to seek justice in civil courts.
Under the old Islamic law on rape, a woman risked prosecution for adultery unless she could produce four male witnesses to a rape.

 

[rustam e hind]

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE > PAKISTAN > PUNJAB
Women paraded naked after ‘asking for girl’s hand in marriage’ for son

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Women paraded naked after ‘asking for girl’s hand in marriage’ for son

By Owais Jafri
Published: August 8, 2012

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The men tore the women’s clothes and recorded videos of them.

MULTAN: A woman and her sister were paraded naked in the Khangarh subdistrict of Muzaffargarh on Wednesday after she asked for a girl’s hand in marriage for her son.
According to details, Jamila* Mai’s son Asim*had a love affair with Asma*, daughter of Bilal Arayin, who lived in their neighbourhood.
According to residents of the area, Asim had been beaten twice by Asma’s brother when he tried to meet her. The matter got resolved by locals every time. Recently, Asma requested Asim to send his parents to ask her hand in marriage.
When Jamila and her sister Rukhsana* Bibi took Asim’s proposal, Bilal who has connections with a feudal family became angry and locked them up in a room and called his friends. The men tore the women’s clothes and recorded videos of them. Then they tied the women to a motorcycle rickshaw and paraded them naked in the area.
Jamila said that the men told her that they will teach her a lesson about honour and the importance of the Arayin tribe in the area. “He said, you are a Baloch and will remain a Baloch and you do not deserve any honour and respect,” she added.
The women were paraded in the area of Adaa Liaquatabad and were brought to a local bus/wagon terminal to make their punishment public.
An eyewitness told The Express Tribune that the men kept on filming the women while parading them.
The men ran away, leaving the women naked on the road, when residents of the area started protesting against them. According to the residents, they could not do much as the men belonged to a feudal family.
Another eyewitness Muhammad Iqbal told The Express Tribune that the police was to blame because they were reluctant to take any official action against the men.
The police came to resolve the issue three hours after residents of the area protested and blocked the national highway by burning tyres. They raided Bilal’s house but he was not found and instead Abdul Ghaffar Arayin and his son Irfan Arayin were arrested.
An FIR has been lodged under Section 354-A, 148 and 149 in Khangarh Police Station against Abdul Ghaffar Arayin, Irfan Arayin, Irshad Arayin, Iqbal Arayin, Munir Hussain, Mureed Hussain and five other unknown criminals on the application of Jamila.
SHO Khangarh Police Station Kamal Mustafa told The Express Tribunethat three teams have been constituted to arrest the accused.
The arrested men, talking to The Express Tribune, denied the marriage proposal story and said that they were told that the women had entered the house to rob them, so they decided to punish them.
Representative of Human Rights Commission in Muzaffargarh, Amjad Ali Amjad, demanded that the accused should be prosecuted in an anti-terrorism court and sections of terrorism should be added in the FIR. He added that the civil society and other political leaders should also join them in protests against the incident.
Sub Inspector Chaudhry Ghulam Rasool told The Express Tribune that the incident involved a property dispute instead of a marriage proposal. He added that Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) local leader Amir Karamat gave protection to the women after the incident and brought them to the police station for legal activity.
*Names have been changed to protect identity

 

[rustam e hind]

[h=1]Gambat: Cops Who Paraded A Couple Naked Suspended[/h]August 04, 2012, By AFP 0 0 Google +0 0

KHAIRPUR: A Station House Officer (SHO) and two of his Assistant Sub Inspectors have been suspended for parading a man and a woman naked in Gambat, a town located near CM Sindh Qaim Ali Shah’s ancestral city Khairpur, Geo News reported Saturday.

Reportedly the couple was arrested on charges of "intent to commit adultery" in Mirbahar area of Gambat on July 27 after which they were forced to walk naked through the town to the police station.

According to SSP Khairpur, Irfan Baloch, a police party had raided a suspected brothel last month and allegedly caught a man and a woman committing adultery, however, he added that his department was looking into the allegations that the couple was made to walk naked to the police station.

“If the cops accused of such inhuman treatment towards the couple were found guilty, they will not be spared”, he said.

- See more at: http://www.geo.tv/latest/80023-gambat-cops-who-paraded-a-couple-naked-suspended#sthash.HOyU1Sw4.dpuf

 

[rustam e hind]

8-Y-O Christian Girl Beaten, Left Naked on Street by Muslim Family


BY STOYAN ZAIMOV , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
December 1, 2015|8:35 am
image: http://images.christianpost.com/full/87761/pakistani-christians.jpg

(PHOTO: REUTERS/MANI RANA)Women from the Christian community attend a protest after twin blast attacks on two churches in Lahore March 15, 2015. Bombs outside two churches in the Pakistani city of Lahore killed 10 people and wounded more than 55 during Sunday services, rescue workers said, and witnesses said quick action by a security guard prevented many more deaths. A Pakistani Taliban splinter group claimed responsibility.

A law group in Pakistan is pressing criminal charges against a Muslim family that allegedly beat and left naked on the streets an 8-year-old Christian girl, in order to punish her uncle.
The American Center for Law and Justice said the affiliated Organization for Legal Aid in Pakistan is preparing the charges, which revolve around a feud the girl's maternal uncle, Iftikhar Masih, is involved in.
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Pakistan Might Ban Blasphemy Laws After 60,000 Killed, Brother of Murdered Christian Official Says

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/87763/pakistani-christians.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Raped 13-Y-O Christian Girl Kidnapped, Forced Into Islamic Marriage

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/89923/pakistan.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Killers of Pakistani Christian Couple Burned Alive in Brick Kiln Still At-Large

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/78838/pakistani-christians.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Muslims Who Gangraped Christian Girls at Gunpoint Acquitted by Pakistani Court

According to reports, Masih broke Pakistani taboo due to his relationship with his Muslim girlfriend. The girlfriend's Muslim family was allegedly furious at the interreligious relationship, and decided to punish the 8-year-old Christian girl as retribution.
The Muslim family reportedly kidnapped the Christian girl, named Parwasha, on her way home from school, after which she was stripped naked and beaten.
When the girl ran home to her family, they sought help from the village elders, but did not receive any. The family then went to the local police station, only to find out that the Muslim family had already filed a complaint against the entire Christian family for shaming Masih's Muslim girlfriend.
"Our legal team in Pakistan visited the village and gathered the facts. We are now preparing a petition, seeking an order from the court directing the police to file criminal charges against the assailants," wrote ACLJ Senior Litigation Counsel Shaheryar Gill.
"If our petition is accepted, the charges will be filed under section 354-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, which severely punishes assaults and the use of criminal force against a woman resulting in stripping her and exposing her to public view. We request your prayers for justice for Parwasha and her family," he added.
Young Christian girls and women often face violence that goes unpunished in Pakistan. Earlier in November, the British Pakistani Christian Association revealed that a 13-year-old Christian girl had been abducted, raped, and forced into Islamic marriage.
"Sadly these cases go to Shariah Courts where Christian lawyers are not allowed to defend victims and Muslim lawyers notoriously provide shallow prosecution services meaning Sana is more than likely going to remain in an abusive relationship for the rest of her life,"said Wilson Chowdhry, Chair of the BPCA, referring to the 13-year-old girl.
"The majority of the girls abducted in this way are around 12 years of age, so laws regarding the legal age of consensual marriage could save a large proportion of victims; however, failures by the government to enforce these laws suggests that passion for justice is non-existential," he added.
Gill told The Christian Post in a later interview, however, that while a rule does indeed exist that requires lawyers appearing before the Shariah courts to be Muslim, there is an exception in the same rule that says a non-Muslim lawyer may appear if his client is non-Muslim.
Gill added that such cases do not go to Sharia courts anyway, since cases of rape, forced-marriages, kidnapping, blasphemy, assault, communal attacks, murder, are heard by regular courts.
In a separate case, a group of Muslims who gangraped two teenage Pakistani Christian sisters at gunpoint last year were recently acquitted of the charges, after a key witness was allegedly bribed into changing his testimony.

The sisters and their father had been warned against pressing charges, and Muslims attackers fired gunshots at their house after they did so, but without managing to wound anyone.




Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/p...-family-attackers-151348/#2SEXSprBdpZ9Y8QE.99

 

[Dalit Freedom]

Indian Man pours acid onto wife's genitals for dowry in Madhya Pradesh
P Naveen,TNN | Sep 4, 2014, 12.38 PM IST


BHOPAL: A man allegedly poured acid onto his wife's genitals after she failed to meet his demand for more dowry.


This incident was reported from Guna district in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday evening where his friends and family members not only held her down while battery fluid from their tractor was being poured into her private parts, but also forced her to drink kerosene.


Though the woman suffered serious burn injuries on her genitals, abdomen and thighs, her husband and his family members confined her to her room and did not provide any medical treatment to her. It is alleged that it took her several hours to get medical help after the attack.


Victim's father has approached senior police officers seeking strong action against the accused.


Police said that her husband Kalyan Ahirwar, who thought she was dead, called her father and said she committed suicide. But she gained consciousness after some time. Victim narrated the ordeal to her father and doctors at the district hospital.


She got married to Kalyan Ahirwar eight years ago. Her father told police that harassment started in 2009.


In 2010 a case of dowry harassment was also registered against the accused. This case was withdrawn after an out of court settlement between the two families.


Despite a compromise and a verbal assurance they continued harassing her.


"The matter took an ugly turn on Wednesday when Kalyan and his family he poured the acid on her body," said an official at Myana Police Station in Guna.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...get&utm_medium=Int_Ref&utm_campaign=TOI_AShow

BY STOYAN ZAIMOV , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
December 1, 2015|8:35 am
image: http://images.christianpost.com/full/87761/pakistani-christians.jpg

(PHOTO: REUTERS/MANI RANA)Women from the Christian community attend a protest after twin blast attacks on two churches in Lahore March 15, 2015. Bombs outside two churches in the Pakistani city of Lahore killed 10 people and wounded more than 55 during Sunday services, rescue workers said, and witnesses said quick action by a security guard prevented many more deaths. A Pakistani Taliban splinter group claimed responsibility.

A law group in Pakistan is pressing criminal charges against a Muslim family that allegedly beat and left naked on the streets an 8-year-old Christian girl, in order to punish her uncle.
The American Center for Law and Justice said the affiliated Organization for Legal Aid in Pakistan is preparing the charges, which revolve around a feud the girl's maternal uncle, Iftikhar Masih, is involved in.
Free Sign Up CP Newsletter!

Related

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/78839/pakistani-christians.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Pakistan Might Ban Blasphemy Laws After 60,000 Killed, Brother of Murdered Christian Official Says

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/87763/pakistani-christians.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Raped 13-Y-O Christian Girl Kidnapped, Forced Into Islamic Marriage

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/89923/pakistan.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Killers of Pakistani Christian Couple Burned Alive in Brick Kiln Still At-Large

image: http://images.christianpost.com/thumb/78838/pakistani-christians.jpg?w=80&h=44&l=50&t=40

Muslims Who Gangraped Christian Girls at Gunpoint Acquitted by Pakistani Court

According to reports, Masih broke Pakistani taboo due to his relationship with his Muslim girlfriend. The girlfriend's Muslim family was allegedly furious at the interreligious relationship, and decided to punish the 8-year-old Christian girl as retribution.
The Muslim family reportedly kidnapped the Christian girl, named Parwasha, on her way home from school, after which she was stripped naked and beaten.
When the girl ran home to her family, they sought help from the village elders, but did not receive any. The family then went to the local police station, only to find out that the Muslim family had already filed a complaint against the entire Christian family for shaming Masih's Muslim girlfriend.
"Our legal team in Pakistan visited the village and gathered the facts. We are now preparing a petition, seeking an order from the court directing the police to file criminal charges against the assailants," wrote ACLJ Senior Litigation Counsel Shaheryar Gill.
"If our petition is accepted, the charges will be filed under section 354-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, which severely punishes assaults and the use of criminal force against a woman resulting in stripping her and exposing her to public view. We request your prayers for justice for Parwasha and her family," he added.
Young Christian girls and women often face violence that goes unpunished in Pakistan. Earlier in November, the British Pakistani Christian Association revealed that a 13-year-old Christian girl had been abducted, raped, and forced into Islamic marriage.
"Sadly these cases go to Shariah Courts where Christian lawyers are not allowed to defend victims and Muslim lawyers notoriously provide shallow prosecution services meaning Sana is more than likely going to remain in an abusive relationship for the rest of her life,"said Wilson Chowdhry, Chair of the BPCA, referring to the 13-year-old girl.
"The majority of the girls abducted in this way are around 12 years of age, so laws regarding the legal age of consensual marriage could save a large proportion of victims; however, failures by the government to enforce these laws suggests that passion for justice is non-existential," he added.
Gill told The Christian Post in a later interview, however, that while a rule does indeed exist that requires lawyers appearing before the Shariah courts to be Muslim, there is an exception in the same rule that says a non-Muslim lawyer may appear if his client is non-Muslim.
Gill added that such cases do not go to Sharia courts anyway, since cases of rape, forced-marriages, kidnapping, blasphemy, assault, communal attacks, murder, are heard by regular courts.
In a separate case, a group of Muslims who gangraped two teenage Pakistani Christian sisters at gunpoint last year were recently acquitted of the charges, after a key witness was allegedly bribed into changing his testimony.

The sisters and their father had been warned against pressing charges, and Muslims attackers fired gunshots at their house after they did so, but without managing to wound anyone.




Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/p...-family-attackers-151348/#2SEXSprBdpZ9Y8QE.99

 

[rustam e hind]

[h=1]Pakistan Might Ban Blasphemy Laws After 60,000 Killed, Brother of Murdered Christian Official Says[/h]

• 
  
  
  (Photo: Reuters/Faisal Mahmood)​
  Members of the Pakistani Christian community attend a protest rally to condemn Sunday's suicide attack in Peshawar on a church, in Islamabad, September 23, 2013. A pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the 130-year-old Anglican church in Pakistan after Sunday mass, killing at least 78 people in the deadliest attack on Christians in the predominantly Muslim country.

By Anugrah Kumar , Christian Post Contributor
November 25, 2015|8:35 am
The brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, a government minister who was killed by terrorists for opposing the controversial blasphemy laws in Pakistan, told the U.K. parliament that his country finally appears to be moving toward religious freedom.
The people of Pakistan have seen enough religiously-motivated violence that has killed an estimated 60,000 people in 20 years, and now want tolerance, Paul Bhatti, whose brother was killed in 2011, told the parliament last week, according to Catholic Herald.
"We are still facing the cruel and harsh realities of violence against the weak and voiceless people of our community," but there is improvement, he was quoted as saying.
Last October, the Lahore High Court upheld the death penalty of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother who was convicted of blasphemy. She was sentenced in 2010, a year after she was accused. She was harvesting berries with a group of Muslim women, who accused her of drinking from the same water bowl as them. Following an argument, the women told a local cleric that Bibi had blasphemed against Islam.
Pakistan's blasphemy laws, which are embedded in Sections 295 and 298 of the Pakistan Penal Code, carry death penalty, and yet there is no provision to punish a false accuser or a false witness of blasphemy.
Bhatti said at the parliament that violence "has left our entire nation shocked and discouraged, raising many questions" about the direction Pakistan is going. "We can gain inspiration and courage by looking to those who have gone before us who stood for peace, justice and unity at such great cost," he added.
"I am pleased to share with you that I feel and see that Pakistan is changing," he said. "Present military and civilian operation against terrorism is bringing fruits: all extremist organizations are banned, most terrorist groups are weakened, killers of my brother are arrested and one was killed.
"The people of Pakistan are gradually coming out of oppression and fear, which has dominated them for many years."
The Supreme Court of Pakistan recently upheld the death sentence of a security guard who assassinated former Punjab Governor Salman Taseer for publicly speaking against the blasphemy laws on behalf of the Christian woman Bibi.
The apex court dismissed an appeal to revoke the death sentence for the convict, Mumtaz Qadri, who was supposed to guard Taseer but chose to assassinate him in January 2011, two months before Shahbaz Bhatti's assassination.
Bhatti told the U.K. parliamentarians that such verdicts have "given us great hope" that the peaceful, tolerant and religiously plural society envisioned by the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is achievable.



Source URL : http://www.christianpost.com/news/p...my-laws-islam-asia-bibi-salman-taseer-150913/

 

[Dalit Freedom]

[h=1]5-yr-old child raped by 35-year-old man in India[/h][h=1][/h][h=1][/h]TNN | Aug 16, 2014, 05.08 AM IST






















BANGALORE: The chief minister may have stressed on safety and security of girls and women in his Independence Day speech on Friday morning, but a sexual predator on the prowl did not let the city feel rest assured even for half a day.

In a grisly incident, a 95-year-old woman was allegedly raped by a 35-year-old autorickshaw driver at Nyanappanahalli, near Begur, off Outer Ring Road, south Bangalore, on Friday afternoon.

The incident happened when the woman was returning home by an auto from Bannerghatta Road after visiting some relatives there.

Nyanappanahalli is located between Bannerghatta Road and Hosur Road.

The autorickshaw driver stopped some distance away from her house as the road was not motorable. Police said the driver offered to walk her home. The path was surrounded by bushes and the man allegedly dragged her into one of the bushes and raped her.

Passersby, who found the woman in a semi-conscious state alerted Hulimavu police. Police reached the spot around 4 pm. She was brought to Jayanagar General Hospital around 5 pm.

Hospital RMO Dr Kishore Kumar said their gynaecologists examined the woman. "It looked like a case of sexual assault. The woman's clothes have been sent for forensic examination," he said.

The doctor said the woman appeared to be about 85 years old and was sent home after treatment. She has been asked to return on Saturday for more tests and scanning.

Police said the woman is unable to give a statement or identify the autorickshaw driver. "We are trying to find his identity, but we have no details on him except that he looked to be

August 04, 2012, By AFP0 0 Google +0 0

KHAIRPUR: A Station House Officer (SHO) and two of his Assistant Sub Inspectors have been suspended for parading a man and a woman naked in Gambat, a town located near CM Sindh Qaim Ali Shah’s ancestral city Khairpur, Geo News reported Saturday.

Reportedly the couple was arrested on charges of "intent to commit adultery" in Mirbahar area of Gambat on July 27 after which they were forced to walk naked through the town to the police station.

According to SSP Khairpur, Irfan Baloch, a police party had raided a suspected brothel last month and allegedly caught a man and a woman committing adultery, however, he added that his department was looking into the allegations that the couple was made to walk naked to the police station.

“If the cops accused of such inhuman treatment towards the couple were found guilty, they will not be spared”, he said.

- See more at: http://www.geo.tv/latest/80023-gambat-cops-who-paraded-a-couple-naked-suspended#sthash.HOyU1Sw4.dpuf