News

Press Statement

14^th February 2014

The Ethiopian woman in Khartoum, Sudan, who was gang raped by seven men, has been denied by the Attorney General the ability to make a formal complaint of rape and thus instigate a full investigation. She has instead been charged with adultery which carries the potential sentence of death by stoning.

In August 2013, a young Ethiopian woman was lured to an empty property and then brutally gang raped by a group of seven men. The incident was filmed by perpetrators but was then distributed six months later in January 2014. Both the perpetrators and the Ethiopian woman have been arrested and initially investigated under Articles 153 and 154 of the Sudanese criminal code which relate to the making and distribution of indecent material and indecent behaviour.

As the presidency of François Hollande commenced its third year, French society is revealing its profound division between progressive and reactionary stances on gender equality and race issues. The latest protests “Manif pour Tous”, led by Christian rightwing movements against gay marriage were followed by the unbelievable alliance of Black anti-Semitic Dieudonné with the French far-right. “Jour de Colère”, the “Anti-Hollande” protest, gathered together on January 26 the Christian right, extreme right supporters, anti-Islam and anti-Semitic groups.

More than one million people around the world have signed a petition against a new law in Afghanistan on the grounds that it offers the perpetrators of violence against women de-facto immunity. Referred to as the “anti-women gag rule”, the law has been denounced as the culmination of a series of belligerent attempts by the conservative government to undo the momentum in women’s protection initiatives over the last decade.  Yet in Kabul, there are few signs that the law was ever part of any such deliberate strategy, pointing towards the need for a more nuanced approach to the fault lines of gender politics at the dawn of post- NATO Afghanistan.

UPDATE: AFGHANISTAN’S NEW CRIMINAL PROCEDURE CODE REJECTED BY PRESIDENT KARZAI

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) welcomes the news that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai has postponed the signing of the new criminal procedure code, passed by both houses of the Afghan parliament.  Article 26 of the code would have effectively denied women protection from domestic violence and forced or child marriage, and would have given immunity to many perpetrators given its ban on relatives testifying against one another.  Through his Cabinet, the President ordered changes to this article.