Middle East Aggregator

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the Constitutional Court must explain its decision to overturn a government-led reform allowing students to wear Muslim headscarves at university.

Last week's Constitutional Court ruling was the most serious setback for the Islamist-rooted AK Party since it came to power in 2002 and analysts said it increased the chances of the party being banned for Islamist activities, in a separate case.

Erdogan reiterated that the court was not authorized to examine the content of a constitutional amendment and should look only at the technical aspects of the reform.

"The Constitutional Court must certainly explain why it examined the contents of the reform in the (headscarf) case," he told a parliamentary group meeting.

The Constitutional Court normally gives reasons for its rulings after announcing the decision. The court's chairman said in this case that the justification would be announced, but not for the time being because of speculation surrounding the case. (Reuters)

Labels: Freedom of Religion, Human Rights, Turkey

A decision by Turkey's top court to annul a government reform which lifted a ban on Muslim headscarves at universities is a blow to freedom of religion and other fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.

Turkey's Constitutional Court overturned late on Thursday a reform which would have allowed students to wear the Muslim headscarf in universities. Analysts said the decision increased the chances that the AK Party would be closed down for alleged Islamist activities in a separate case at the same court.

"This decision means that women who choose to wear a headscarf in Turkey will be forced to choose between their religion and their education," Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"This is a truly disappointing decision and does not bode well for the reform process," Cartner said. (Reuters)

Labels: Freedom of Religion, Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Turkey

The United States has operated more than a dozen "floating prisons" to hold and question suspected Islamist extremists as part of its so-called "war on terror," a British rights group said Monday. Reprieve, a legal action charity, said it believed that as many as 17 ships had been used to interrogate prisoners "under torturous conditions before being 'rendered' to other, often undisclosed, locations."

The US military has previously confirmed that it has occasionally used ships to hold prisoners during its operations in Afghanistan.

Other bodies - including the Council of Europe, national parliaments, the media and former prisoners - have also raised the issue, Reprieve said.

But the Pentagon denied the allegations Monday.

"There are no prison ships," spokesman Colonel Gary Keck told AFP. "There are no detention facilities on any ships. Sometimes there have been transports on ships, but not as a detention facility."

Asked what he meant by a "detention facility," Keck said that "detention is a long-term place to be."

A US defense official added that it was possible US Navy ships had been used as a temporary "holding arrangement" until prisoners could be moved to more permanent locations. (AFP)

Labels: Human Rights, U.K., U.S.

A parliamentary majority approved a two-year extension of Egypt's longstanding emergency law last week. While opposition figures and human rights groups blasted the decision, government officials justified the move by pointing to the ostensible threat of terrorism.
"The storm of terrorism blows strong around us and our enemies lie in wait," Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif told the assembly in advance of the vote. "Ordinary laws will not be enough to stop them."
Early Monday (May 26), President Hosni Mubarak abruptly issued a decree requesting an official extension of the state of national emergency until Jun. 1, 2010. Hours later, with virtually no time for debate, the assembly -- dominated by Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party -- granted the request.
The emergency law, in place since the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat in 1981, grants the government sweeping powers of arrest without charge. It also gives the state free reign to censor media, ban popular demonstrations and conduct extensive surveillance on citizens suspected of representing a "danger to national security."
The law was last extended in May of 2006, only days after a spate of bomb attacks in the Red Sea resort town of Dahab. At the time, opposition parliamentarians wore conspicuous black sashes bearing the slogan "No to Emergency".
In the absence of official figures, local rights activists say tens of thousands of people currently remain in detention -- some for more than a decade -- under the emergency law. (IPS)

Labels: Egypt, Human Rights

Fifteen years after police took away her husband, Zeinab Ahmed says she has lost hope he will return to help raise their daughter, born while he was in jail.

Mohamed el-Leithi stood trial in a military court with dozens of Islamists charged with belonging to the radical group Vanguards of Conquest. He was acquitted but remains in jail under an emergency law that allows police to hold suspects for long periods without charge.

"Where is justice?" said Ahmed, wearing a black veil that only showed eyes welling with tears. "Drug dealers get out of jail. Murderers get out of jail. What has he done?"

About 18,000 Egyptians are detained without charge under the emergency law, in force since Islamist militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Amnesty International says.

The prospect for their early release diminished this week when parliament extended the law for two years. Local and international human rights groups accuse the ruling establishment of using it to crush dissent. (Reuters)

Labels: Egypt, Human Rights

Sixty years after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, governments in scores of countries still torture or mistreat their people, Amnesty International said Wednesday in a report that again urged the United States to close down the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

In its annual report, the London-based human rights watchdog said “flashpoints” in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq/ and Myanmar “demand immediate action.”

“World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost,” Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement accompanying the report. “As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses than can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”

The report singled out for criticism China, the United States, and Russia and accused the European Union of complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects. The European Union, it said, must “set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.” (NY Times)

Labels: Amnesty International, Human Rights, Torture, U.S.

About 18,000 people are being held in Egyptian jails without charge or trial, Amnesty International said on Wednesday, two days after emergency laws allowing their continued detention were renewed. "Some 18,000 people continue to be detained without charge or trial on the orders of the Interior Ministry under the emergency law," the London-based right group said in its annual report. Most are held in conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, with hundreds reportedly sick with ailments including tuberculosis and skin diseases, it said. Amnesty said that many detainees were still being held despite their acquittal by courts and repeated orders for their release. Egypt on Monday extended for another two years the 27-year-old state of emergency that allows detainees to be held without charge or trial, in a move slammed by rights groups as anti-constitutional. The state of emergency was first imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of President Anwar Sadat and has been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents. Last year, Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if a new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready. An Egyptian inmate told AFP on Sunday that 280 prisoners at Borg al-Arab jail, near the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, had started a hunger strike over their continued detention despite repeated court orders for their release. (AFP)

Labels: Amnesty International, Egypt, Human Rights, Judiciary

Much more needs to be done to prevent the killing and displacement of civilians in places such as Darfur, Somalia, Israel and Columbia, U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes said on Tuesday.

Civilians continue to account for the majority of casualties in armed conflict, often in flagrant violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, Holmes told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on civilians in armed conflict.

In the first five months of this year, more than half a million people have been displaced by conflict, with 337,000 civilians fleeing Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Somalia and Sudan, he said.

Holmes called for the creation of a Security Council expert group on the protection of civilians, which he said would be an informal forum bringing together all council member states.

"A more consistent approach to integrating the protection of civilians into all relevant aspects of the Council's work could make a very real difference to the lives of millions trapped in the chaos and horror of war," he said.

Ambassadors from council and other U.N. member states gave speeches expressing support for Holmes' statement. (Reuters)

Labels: Human Rights, U.N.

Egypt has extended a controversial decades-old state of emergency by two years from June 1, despite pledges it would be replaced by new legislation.

Parliament passed the law on Monday after a debate following a decision by Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president, a parliamentary official said.

The state of emergency was imposed in 1981, following the assassination by Islamists of Anwar Sadat, Egypt's former president.

It has been repeatedly renewed despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.

Last year Mufid Shehab, the judicial and parliamentary affairs minister, said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if the new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.

"The state of emergency has for decades been one of the main causes of human rights violations in Egypt," Hafez Abu Sada, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, told the AFP news agency. (Al Jazeera)

Labels: Egypt, Human Rights

The Egyptian government plans a one-year extension to an emergency law that grants police sweeping powers of arrest, an official said on Sunday.

Hours earlier security forces detained 18 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood.

The official, who asked not to be named, said the government would shortly present to parliament a bill to extend the emergency law, which expires at the end of the month, after failing to prepare in time an anti-terrorism law that would encapsulate similar powers.

The emergency law, which has been in force since 1981, allows the police to hold people without charge for long periods and enables the authorities to refer civilians to military courts, where defendants have fewer rights.

Human rights groups say some detainees have been in custody more than 10 years without trial or charge. Along with the opposition, they accuse the government of abusing the emergency law to target political dissidents and predict it will continue the same practices when the anti-terrorism law is passed. The government denies these charges.

"Comparing the emergency law and the anti-terrorism law is like comparing the devil and the deep blue sea," Mohamed Habib, the Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader, told Reuters. (Reuters)

Labels: Egypt, Human Rights

MADRID: Moroccan soldiers deliberately sank a boat carrying would-be migrants trying to reach Spain, drowning about 30 people, survivors of the incident were quoted as saying by a Spanish newspaper Wednesday. El Pais quoted "at least five survivors" as saying between 29 and 33 migrants, four of them children, drowned off Al-Hoceima, northeastern Morocco, on April 28 after the soldiers punctured their inflatable boat. A Moroccan security source told AFP Monday that 10 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa had drowned when three vessels sank off Al-Hoceima on April 28. A Moroccan non-governmental organization quoted survivors as saying 36 had died. El Pais said the survivors were taken to the border with Algeria, and Moroccan authorities have tried to cover up the tragedy. Around 70 migrants left Morocco at around 3:00 am on April 28 in a bid to reach Spain, the newspaper said. Two hours later, they came across a Moroccan naval vessel and soldiers approached the migrants in a motor launch. "One of the soldiers jabbed a knife into the rubber and told us 'now go to Spain if you want,'" El Pais quoted one of survivors, identified as Campos, as saying. "We tried to patch it up and we continued on with difficulty, but I think that we would have made it if they had not returned," said another survivor, Erick O., a Nigerian fisherman who said his wife and 3-year-old daughter were among those who drowned. The launch returned and a soldier began threatening the migrants with a knife. "We asked them to take us back with them to Morocco because, with the boat in the state it was, it was almost impossible to continue," said Campos. "We begged them to look at our children and babies." A Moroccan officer then took the knife and "punctured the boat four times in different places," after which it sank in a few seconds. Another Moroccan launch came to help, El Pais said. (AFP)

Labels: Human Rights, Morocco

Kajbar is a tiny village on the river Nile, selected by Sudan as the site for a $200m (£100m) dam which will flood dozens of surrounding villages.

In theory, hydroelectric power will be the first stage of a drive towards a more industrialised state, and, according to the President, Omar al-Bashir, an important step towards eliminating poverty.

It looks like a worthy aim for a country where the average income is under £1 per day, but it may be coming at a high cost. On 13 June last year, Sudanese security forces opened fire on a demonstration against the plans. The facts about the incident are hard to obtain because journalists have been prevented from reporting it. But according to eyewitnesses, several thousand largely Nubian protesters set out to march towards the dam company's administrative HQ, and found themselves blocked by soldiers at a narrow ravine.

Video footage shot by a local cameraman shows tear gas being fired and the crowd running through groves of date palm trees towards the Nile. Without warning, local people say the soldiers fired live rounds straight into the crowd. There was panic. By the end of the day, four people had been killed, and more than 20 seriously wounded. And the local Nubian opposition to Khartoum's hydroelectric scheme had hardened into active political resistance. "In the name of God, we will not keep quiet, even for a moment," said Osman Ibrahim, a local leader of the campaign, who witnessed the events. "We will resist and resist until the last drop of blood in our veins." (Independent)

Labels: Alternative Energy, Egypt, Human Rights

The UN Security Council should address serious concerns about the detention policies of the US-led forces in Iraq, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

The New York-based group says thousands of Iraqis are being held indefinitely and without judicial review.

It claims that many inmates are subject to judicial review processes that do not meet international standards.

HRW says the US improperly uses Council resolutions which permit internment for "imperative reasons of security".

Separately, the group adds that there are also concerns about what is describes as widespread torture of detainees by the Iraqi authorities.

US and Iraqi officials have so far not commented on the claims by HRW. (BBC)

Labels: Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Iraq, Torture, U.S.

Egypt has freed a woman detained earlier this month for forming a group on the Facebook social networking site that called for protests over price hikes, a security official said. Interior Minister Habib al-Adli ordered Esra Abdel-Fattah's release after her mother appealed directly to President Hosni Mubarak for her to be freed, the official said Wednesday.

"She is free, they have released her from the women's prison in Qantar," her lawyer Emir Salem told AFP.

Fattah, 27, was among several bloggers, including Mohammad Sharkawi and Malak Mustafa, arrested ahead of what was supposed to be a nationwide protest on April 6. Egyptian police took her from a Cairo coffee shop a week before the planned day of action. Her Facebook group had 64,000 members, but observation of the day of protest was sporadic.

Instead, protests focused on the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, where three people were killed by police after clashes erupted when demonstrators pulled down posters of Mubarak. (AFP)

Labels: Egypt, Free Speech, Human Rights

In Riyadh, the college day begins for female students behind a locked door that will remain that way until male guardians come to collect them. Later, in a female-run business, everyone must vacate the premises so a delivery man can drop off a package. In Jeddah, a 40-year-old divorced woman cannot board a plane without the written permission of her 23-year-old son. Elsewhere, a female doctor cannot leave the house at all as her male driver fails to turn up for work. These scenes make up the daily reality for half of the Saudi Kingdom, the only country where women legally belong to men.

After more than a decade of lobbying, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has finally been granted access to Saudi Arabia, where it has uncovered a disturbing picture of women forced to live as children, denied basic rights and confined to a suffocating dependency on men.

Wajeha al-Huwaider, a critic of Saudi's guardian laws that force women to seek male permission for almost all aspects of their lives, is one of a growing number demanding change. "Sometimes I feel like I can't do anything; I am utterly reliant on other people, completely dependent. If you are dependent on another person, you've got nothing. That is how the men like it. They don't want us to be equals."

The House of Saud, in alliance with an extremist religious establishment which enforces the most restrictive interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, has created a legal system that treats women as minors unable to exercise authority over even trivial daily matters. (Independent)

Labels: Human Rights, Saudi Arabia, Womens Rights

Saudi women are being kept in perpetual childhood so male relatives can exercise "guardianship" over them, the Human Rights Watch group has said.

The New York-based group says Saudi women have to obtain permission from male relatives to work, travel, study, marry or even receive health care.

Their access to justice is also severely constrained, it says.

The group says the Saudi establishment sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

Saudi clerics see the guardianship of women's honour as a key to the country's social and moral order. (BBC)

Labels: Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia, Womens Rights

Two Palestinian teenagers died on Sunday of wounds sustained in an apparent Israeli attack that killed a Reuters cameraman in the Gaza Strip last week, raising the total death toll in the incident to six, medics said.

Hospital officials named the pair as Ahmed al-Najar, 17, and Bilal al-Dhaimi, 16. They were wounded when one or more missiles apparently fired by an Israeli tank sprayed cameraman Fadel Shana with tiny darts as he was filming on Wednesday.

Human rights activists and local residents have given the ages of three men and youths killed instantly alongside Shana as between 13 and 22.

Reuters has demanded an urgent inquiry from the Israeli military which has expressed regret but has not yet confirmed that its tank, seen firing in the final seconds of Shana's surviving video, delivered the fatal round or rounds.

Shana's body armour, which bore a blue-on-white "PRESS" marking, was ripped off by the attack, which medical examination showed had thrust several 1.5-inch (38-mm) metal darts through his neck, shredding his flesh and severing his spine. (Reuters)

Labels: Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Weapons Ban

Pope Benedict XVI Friday launched a spirited defense of human rights and multilateralism, and called for greater dialogue between cultures in a landmark address to the UN General Assembly.

Dressed in his white robes, the 81-year-old pontiff reminded all 192 UN member states of their duty to protect their people from human rights abuses.

"Every state has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights," he told a packed assembly on his first visit to UN headquarters since becoming pope three years ago.

"If states are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter," he said.

At a 2005 summit here, world leaders committed themselves for the first time to endorse the concept of "responsibility to protect" their people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. (AFP)

Labels: Human Rights, U.N.

Last week, 8-year-old Nasser went alone to the court of justice in Sanaa, Yemen's capital city, to find a judge who would agree to accept her claim against her father for compelling her to marry a 30-year-old man. She also insisted that the judge force her husband to divorce her.
Yemenite law states that 15 is the minimum legal age for marriage, but does permit girls younger than that to marry on condition that the couple "does not engage in intimate relations."

Nasser told journalists that every time she wanted to play outside, her husband demanded that she return home to sleep with him.
The court on Tuesday annulled the marriage and ordered the girl's family to pay compensation to the husband.
According to Yemenite journalists, this story reflects the massive gap between a seemingly reformed republic and the reality on the ground. (Haaretz)

Labels: Human Rights, Yemen

Dozens of Egyptians injured during last week's demonstrations in the industrial city of Mahalla are being kept illegally handcuffed to their hospital beds, an Egyptian rights group said on Sunday. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said that chaining the injured to hospital beds is a violation of Egyptian and international law and of medical ethics. "Victims of police brutality should receive care and treatment, not further abuse and violations of their right to health," said Ragia Elgerzawy of the EIPR's Health and Human Rights Program. "It is disgraceful that these violations are committed without any objection from prosecutors or hospital doctors."

Egyptian newspapers on Sunday published photographs of those injured in the demonstration who had their arms and in some cases their legs handcuffed to their beds in what the EIPR said was a routine practice. Two people died in two days of rioting over price hikes and low pay in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla el-Kobra on April 6 and 7. A doctor at Mahalla Hospital said last week that 96 people had been injured in the rioting, including seven who are in critical condition. "A person in good health could suffer serious health complications if their movement is restricted for long periods," said Elgerzawy. "These risks are exacerbated if the restrained person is already suffering from injuries or illness, and the Doctors' Syndicate is under a legal obligation to end this harmful and unethical practice." (AFP)

Labels: Egypt, Free Speech, Human Rights

Saudi Arabia needs to enact a penal code to prevent abuse in its justice system, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on Tuesday.

Saudi officials say a written penal code is being prepared as part of an overhaul of the judicial system ordered by King Abdullah last year, including expanding the number of courts and judges.

But the legal system, which mainly applies Islamic sharia law, does not recognize precedent.

"Saudi Arabia should urgently enact a penal code to protect all criminal suspects against arbitrary arrest," the New York-based group said in a statement announcing the publication of two reports based on a year of research and field trips.

"Criminal defendants, especially children, need greater protection against gross abuses during interrogation and unfair trials."

The reports say defendants often face prolonged solitary confinement, ill-treatment, forced confessions, and are denied a lawyer at crucial stages of interrogation and trial.

Judges often use evidence of reaching puberty as a standard for dealing with teenagers, and in 2007 Saudi Arabia executed three juvenile offenders, including a 15-year-old boy who was only 13 at the time of the crime. (Reuters)

Labels: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Saudi Arabia