Category Archives: human rights

Afghan Court Confirms Reduced Sentences in Mob Killing of Woman – {Ten Years – they will probably appeal and win… Too many men still in dark in Afghanistan}

Men sentenced to death in the brutal killing of Farkhunda, a young woman who was an Islamic scholar, had their sentences cut to as little as 10 years.

Original enclosures:

Source: Afghan Court Confirms Reduced Sentences in Mob Killing of Woman

Being Jerusalemite : A Jordanian Refugee in Israel | nadiaharhash

{Dehumanization Plus!}

But as if there is a curse following the Palestinian being, she sent me an hour later a photo with her new residency written on it: “A Jordanian refugee in Israel”. She tried at the beginning or rationalize with them saying that this was wrong. She is not a Jordanian refugee in Israel. They insisted she was. She was trying to explain to them that she was Jerusalemite. She tried or explains her status and they insisted she was lying and that she was a refugee. Somehow, apparently, together with the crisis of refugees she was a cause of threat as an assumed refugee. Actually a confirmed refugee after that new residency that gave the employee a reason to panic and consider her a potential threat, to a level where she forced her to leave, and when my daughter refused insisting that this was a mistake, they called the police or get her out. The woman was telling her: You are a liar. You are a refugee. This is not even a passport that you are carrying “. My daughter called me crying, trying to get out the whole feeling of humiliation she got experienced being dragged out of a place by the police in front of people watching her in what felt like a public humiliation act. She was questioning something else: “ Am I a Jordanian refugee?” the whole thing made her question her own identity. What she knows as basic rights. All those laws that define her special status as a person living under occupation with a special status. A status that the international law, with a country likes France that secures the status quo of Jerusalem that secures the status of Jerusalemites. While we spend our lives carrying a nationality that is not ours. Living in our country as “immigrants”, moving around with a document that is not a passport that calls on a state of panic each time we check through borders. And then an employee who decided to carry on the Zionist vision of Israel with Jerusalem as the unified capital with the no dignified, some day extinct people, also forces us on new definitions. Did this woman decide a law? Or was it her own idea? This is a question that the French government should answer .

Source: Being Jerusalemite : A Jordanian Refugee in Israel | nadiaharhash

a revolution is coming | nadiaharhash

We are talking about a population that is killed every day under occupation measures from one side and witness corruption that is drowning a whole nation in its hollow holes to a level where nothing is left except a scream in a voice of a protest. People are practically starving. What the government is doing in order to find a solution is of course denying that anything is happening. For the whole month now, the teachers have been on strikes. Tens of thousands of students are not going to school. And what is the prime minister saying? It is a conspiracy against him. What solution did any of those too many policy and decision making from all directions are offering? Imposing a state of fragmentation within the society. Implementing forceful measures/ putting checkpoints. Threatening teachers. Using mosques as ways of urging people to rebel against the teachers. The ministry of education has turned into an intelligence force against teachers, where teachers are called and threatened. Replacements of teachers were suggested. Some people came out to say that the president has nothing to do with this. Of course he doesn’t have anything to do with this. The president is in another universe. I think he believes he is running another state. I completely understand him I have to say. Who wants to be a president of a stateless state? The deterioration of the situation and what is following it is a striking indicator of the failure of this government. It is of course normal, since every person comes to power and transforms the whole concept of nation building into a single building of his own throne. They create a legacy of themselves, to themselves and they behave as if the people are there to serve them. We become their inherited properties. This continuous abuse of the nation can only have a consequence as such of today. The stories that we hear about the restrictions and the threats, aside from all those grounding embarrassing statements from those who claim power are to shameful from one side and continue to prove that these people can no longer be there. There is this issue that these people are not chosen by the people. We didn’t choose this government, which is officially temporarily and with a dignified framework as a technocratic government that will ensure the elections. It came to stay forever. Exactly like everything else. I don’t know if it is worth to keep calling for the president to interfere. To do something to save the situation before it goes into more destruction. I admit that the massive protests of today gave me a breeze of hope. This nation is alive. And no measures for oppression and restrictions (and sadly I don’t refer to occupation here) can stop them.

Source: a revolution is coming | nadiaharhash

IRIN | Mongolian livestock succumb en masse to the freezing dzud

Around half of Mongolia’s 3.1 million people rely on livestock production. But with oversupply, prices have plunged on animal products such as milk, wool, meat and camel hair.  Each sheep or goat – the most common livestock – is worth around $30. A cow is worth between $250 and $500, depending on meat quality. A camel is worth about $500, and a horse about $200 to $250, according to estimates by the Asian Development Bank.   “Consequently, there is an incentive to increase animal numbers, leading to the colossal numbers we see today, at over 50 million head of livestock, which degrades the precious pasturelands,” said Robert Schoellhammer, country director for the ADB. The trend has been devastating when combined with climate change. The average temperature in Mongolia has increased by 2.1 degrees Celsius since 1940, more than double the rise of average global temperatures, according to the UN Environment Programme. In its 2014 Global Climate Risk Index, the advocacy group German Watch ranked Mongolia the eighth most vulnerable country to direct economic losses from weather-related events.

Source: IRIN | Mongolian livestock succumb en masse to the freezing dzud

Seeds of salvation – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

It’s Bente Navaerdal’s job to check on the vault. When she first came to Svalbard, she thought she would stay just three years, but it didn’t take long before the remote Arctic archipelago had a hold on her. “I felt it the moment I landed at the airport, ‘Yeah, this is my place on Earth’,” she says. An engineer, she is now into her fourth year on Svalbard and has no intention of leaving anytime soon. “I hope that in three, four, five years I can feel like, ‘OK, now I am finished with Svalbard and I can go back [to the mainland]’, but I’m not sure,” she says. “I’m really not sure.”

Source: Seeds of salvation – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Agenzia Fides News : Murder in Yemen

Regarding the responsibility for the massacre, the Vicar for Northern Arabia warns not to heed the manipulations of persons who aim to criminalise Islam indistinctly as a whole: “To kill in the name of God” Ballin tells Fides “is something terrible which no genuine Muslim can accept. Those who commit similar inhuman crimes are individuals dominated by and ideology which unbalances the human person”. Often, vicissitudes of Christian martyrdom intersect in a mysterious manner, historic convulsions fomented by clashes for power: “These outbreaks of violence” the Comboni Bishop continues “must also be seen in connection with unbalance produced in the area by the lifting of sanctions on Iran , which has now become more powerful and open. To blame is also the race to lower the price of oil and the battle for hegemony in the region, between Arabia anxious to maintain its Wahabit Empire and Iran anxious to reestablish the Persian Empire”. Pope Francis described the massacre in Aden “senseless and diabolic violence”, and in a message issued through his Secretary of State cardinal Pietro Parolin he prayed that the sacrifice of the sisters and their friends and helpers “will awaken consciences, lead to a change of hearts and inspire all parties involved to lay down their weapons and turn to the path of dialogue”. There is still no information on the plight or whereabouts of Salesian Father Tom Uzhunnanil, who was in the assaulted residence. “It would seem he has been abducted, but this has yet to be confirmed ” said official Salesian sources. In the meantime a statement issued by the al Qaida network in the Arabian peninsula and taken up by Arab media denied any involvement of the Jihadist group in the massacre in the Care Home in Aden.

Source: Agenzia Fides News

Protests break out at memorial for slain Honduran activist Berta Caceres | News | DW.COM | 05.03.2016

International outrage There has been strong international condemnation of the murder, and the US government on Friday called for a thorough investigation into her death: “The United States condemns the murder of civil society activist Berta Caceres and calls upon the Honduran government to conduct a prompt, thorough, and transparent investigation and to ensure those responsible are brought to justice,” a State Department release said. “We offer our sincere condolences to her family, friends, and the people of Honduras, who have lost a dedicated defender of the environment and of human rights. We offer again the full support of the United States to help bring the perpetrators to justice.” A coalition of more than 40 human rights groups from across the Americas called for an “independent, impartial” investigation into the killing.

Source: Protests break out at memorial for slain Honduran activist Berta Caceres | News | DW.COM | 05.03.2016

Pope: ′We can speak of an Arab invasion′ of Europe | News | DW.COM | 04.03.2016 And the good that will result…

“How many invasions has Europe experienced in the course of its history? It has always been able to overcome them; moving forward and finding itself better through the exchange between cultures,” the pope said, in an apparent reference to Europe’s Renaissance, which was partially fostered through the preservation of Greek philosophical works by Muslim scholars in Spain and elsewhere in the Arab world. EU member states have struggled to form a comprehensive strategy to handle an influx of asylum seekers and migrants – many from war-torn countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa – that saw more than 1 million people arriving in the 28-nation bloc in 2015. Ex-Soviet satellite states, including Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, have told Brussels that they refuse to take in more asylum seekers under an EU plan to relocate refugees according to a quota system. “Sometimes I wonder where you’ll find a [French Foreign Minister Robert] Schumann or [German Chancellor Konrad] Adenauer, these great founders of the European Union,” the pope said. Countering populism, extremism The pope responded to the rise of far-right populism in Europe, which has given way to such movements as Germany’s “anti-Islamization” PEGIDA as well as anti-immigrant political parties, by stating that ideologies are the “poison of politics.” “When a country closes itself to a healthy notion of politics, it ends up being a prisoner hostage to ideological colonization. Ideologies are the poison of politics. You have the right be right or left. But ideology takes away freedom. “If you want to avoid everyone turning towards extremes, you must nurture friendship and the pursuit of the common good, beyond political affiliations.” Francis also announced that the Vatican is preparing a meeting with officials from al-Azhar University in Cairo, known as the Muslim world’s most prominent institution of Sunni thought.

Source: Pope: ′We can speak of an Arab invasion′ of Europe | News | DW.COM | 04.03.2016