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24/1/2011
North Africa: People Power

(Part 2 of IntLawGrrl Karima Bennoune's series on developments in North Africa; Part 1 appeared 1st at IntLawGrrls, here.) Today the Algerian government tried to hold back the winds of change blowing westward from neighboring Tunisia by besieging its own capital city. A peaceful protest called by the Algerian opposition party, the Rassemblement pour la culture et la démocratie (RCD), on the Place du 1er Mai was forcefully disrupted by large numbers of heavily armed riot police. One report claimed that 10,000 police had been deployed. Meanwhile, as many as 42 people were injured, several seriously, and others arrested, including a photojournalist. 

21/1/2011
Pakistan: Women’s Action Forum condemns murder of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer

Women’s Action Forum condemns in the strongest terms the brutal murder of the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, whose principled stand for justice was deliberately and maliciously distorted by extremist elements in the country in the pursuit of their own political ends. Incitement to violence in the name of religion has become widely prevalent in the country and the state has failed in its duty to curb this mischief. The murder of Salman Taseer is part of a strategy adopted since the time of Zia ul Haq to misuse religion in order to undermine democratic dialogue and to establish religious autocracy. This is unacceptable in a Muslim majority country no particular group should be allowed monopoly over religious views. 

20/1/2011
Yemen: Physical assault of human rights defenders

On 14 December 2010, human rights defenders Ms Tawakkol Karman, Ms Bushra Alsorabi and Mr Ali Hussain al-Dailami were physically assaulted during a peaceful protest in Sana'a, Yemen. 
Tawakkol Karman and Bushra Alsorabi are Chairperson and Executive Director respectively of Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), an organisation which campaigns for freedom of the press and other human rights in Yemen. Ali Hussain al-Dailami is the executive director of the Yemeni Organization for the Defence of Democratic Rights and Freedom.

20/1/2011
Azerbaijan: Hijab Ban Controversy

Azerbaijan’s education ministry has banned schoolgirls from wearing headscarves to class, causing outrage among the more devout in this Muslim-majority country. On December 10, a day after Education Minister Misir Mardanov announced that headscarves must not be worn with school uniform, hundreds of parents and children staged a protest near the ministry.

20/1/2011
Sudan: Women Dream of Independence

John Garang, the revered late leader of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, once said that women are the "the poorest of the poor and the marginalised of the marginalised". As the reality of an independent South Sudan approaches, the region's women have vowed they will not remain second class citizens. Margaret Michael Modi, the head of women’s affairs in Central Equatoria State, cast her vote on the first day. "The first day (of the vote) we did not sleep. I went to the polling station and women were crying as they cast their vote," she told IPS over the phone from the southern capital, Juba.

20/1/2011
Iran: Nasrin Sotoudeh’s Husband Arrested, Released

Reza Khandan was released on January 17, 2011. Reza Khandan, husband of imprisoned human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was arrested early this morning when he arrived to the Prosecutor’s office to comply with the summon he received last week. According to reports by the website Change for Equality, the charges against Reza Khandan remain unclear. According to the family members, even though the court set a $50 thousand USD bail for his release, the bail amount posted by Nasin Soutoudeh’s sister has not been accepted.

20/1/2011
Afghanistan: Taliban ready to lift ban on girls' schools, says minister

The Taliban's leadership is prepared to drop its ban on girls' schools, one of Afghanistan's most influential cabinet ministers has claimed. According to Farooq Wardak, the country's education minister, the movement has decided to scrap the ban on female education that helped earn the movement worldwide infamy in the 1990s. Wardak said the Taliban's leadership had undergone a profound change since losing power after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

20/1/2011
Pakistan: Lesbians Live In Silence, Love In Secret

The names in this story have been changed to protect the women's identities out of concern for their safety. Five years ago, Fatima was 23 and studying law in Lahore, Pakistan. She wore blue jeans and a loose shirt and sported short boyish hair. That was the first sign she wasn't a typical Pakistani woman. She leaned in to share a secret she had revealed to only a few other people before: "I'm lesbian," she said hesitantly.

13/1/2011
Pakistan: Asia Bibi facing suicide attack threat

Bibi, the Christian woman who triggered a blasphemy furore in Pakistan and in whose defence Punjab governor Salman Taseer lost his life, is facing a threat of a suicide attack inside a jail, where she is currently lodged. The "Moaviya group", a militant organisation plans to mount a suicide attack on Sheikhupura district jail, where 45-year-old Asia is being held, The Express Tribunequoted its sources as saying. An intelligence report issued last week has corroborated threat to her life.

13/1/2011
Iran: 'Iran Jails Another Lawyer'

This week Iran's judicial authorities sentenced my friend Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer, to 11 years in prison. Her case has attracted only modest attention in the West, but it is the latest example of Iran's unrelenting crackdown on dissent. It deserves greater notice. Nasrin belongs to a younger generation of Iranian human rights defenders who are being systematically bullied by the state into abandoning their work. The government has forced many into exile abroad, while meting out harsh prison sentences to others, like Nasrin, in order to intimidate the remaining few.

The court imprisoned Nasrin—and barred her from practicing law or leaving the country for 20 years—after finding her guilty of "acting against national security" and of "propaganda against the regime." Iran's government routinely levels these charges against lawyers, journalists, nongovernmental organization workers and others whose work it finds troublesome. Nasrin's only crime has been her passionate defense of Iran's most legally vulnerable citizens: juvenile offenders facing the death penalty, human rights campaigners, and prisoners of conscience.