Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys

Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an “honour” killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.

The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.

Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.

The girl had previously been reported missing.

The informant told the police she had been killed following a family “council” meeting.

Her father and grandfather are said to have been arrested and held in custody pending trial. It is unclear whether they have been charged. The girl’s mother was arrested but was later released.

Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.

A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising.

The discovery will reopen the emotive debate in Turkey about “honour” killings, which are particularly prevalent in the impoverished south-east.

Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.

A woman has been tortured by her neighbours for two days and forced to eat human waste before she finally gave in and confessed to practising witchcraft.

Those who beat, punched and kicked Kalli Biswokarma, 47, accused her of casting evil spells on a schoolteacher who had fallen ill in the village of Pyutar, 40 kilometres south of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

“I was victimised because I am a poor woman,” said Ms Biswokarma, who belongs to the Dalit community – the untouchables on the lowest rung of Nepal’s rigid Hindu caste hierarchy.

“Around 35 people came to my home and took me away. They trapped me in a cow shed and forced me to eat faeces and drink urine.

“The next day they cut my skin with blades. I could not bear the torture and I confessed to being a witch just to save my life.”

Hundreds of Dalit women are thought to suffer a similar ordeal every year in Nepal, where superstition and caste-based discrimination remain rife and where most communities still operate on strict patriarchal lines.

Human rights campaigners say the perpetrators of such crimes are rarely brought to justice, with police viewing the persecution of Dalit women as a matter for the community itself to sort out.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has pronounced 2010 the year to end violence against women, but authorities in the impoverished nation admit they face an uphill struggle.

“Superstitions are deeply rooted in our society, and the belief in witchcraft is one of the worst forms of this,” said Sarwa Dev Prasad Ojha, minister for women and social welfare.

“Such traditional practices cannot be wiped away overnight.”

The Women’s Rehabilitation Centre says it has documented at least 82 cases in two years in which women who were tortured by neighbours on charges of witchcraft.

Experts say superstitions about witchcraft are often merely a pretext for victimising women.

For Ms Biswokarma and her family, now back in their home village after a stay in a women’s refuge in Kathmandu, the stigma of being accused of witchcraft persists.

“I am still afraid because some of the people who tortured me are still in the village,” she said.

“I have lost my dignity, but I have not given up hope. I will fight for justice.”

On the left is the picture that the Florida Family Policy Council of Orlando, used to illustrate the gay couple that was awarded custody of a relative. It appeared under the headline: "FL judge violates law, places child in homosexual adoption" (on the right) is the actual couple.

The judge’s ruling said exactly what most people would want to hear in an adoption case.

It said that the 1-year-old boy who had been living with his foster parents was “happy and thriving” — and that a permanent adoption made perfect sense.

It should be a simple story with a happy ending.

Except it is not.

That judge’s ruling — which focused solely on the child’s well-being — enraged some on the religious right.

Why? Because the little boy’s adoptive parents are gay.

So now those who profit from division are pouncing.

They aren’t the people who have cared for this little boy, who have nursed his wounds and tucked him in at night. In fact, they haven’t done a thing for him.

They haven’t consulted the experts — everyone from a child psychologist to a Guardian ad Litem — who say the parents provide precisely the loving environment that this child needs.

All these critics know is that they don’t want gay people to have the same rights as straight people.

So they want him separated from the parents who love him.

“Arrogant judicial activism” was how the finger-waggers at Orlando’s Florida Family Policy Council described the ruling in an alert it sent out to its members last week.

And to make their point about just how frightening this ruling was, the Policy Council included a photograph of the couple — a strange and androgynous-looking duo, one with bleached skin and both with mullet haircuts. The couple look so odd (you literally can’t tell whether they are male or female) that one might wonder how any judge could place a young child with such a disturbing-looking duo.

Except the judge didn’t.

The abnormal-looking couple that the Policy Council chose to illustrate this story is not the same couple granted the right to adopt the child.

No, the two-woman couple awarded custody of the 1-year-old — South Florida trade-show executive Vanessa Alenier and her partner, Melanie Leon — look more like J.Crew models: all-American with catalogue clothes and smiles.

The picture that the Policy Council chose was a grotesque caricature.

These are the dirty tactics of Christianity’s far-right warriors.

Not the majority of mainstream Christians, mind you. Not those who are focused on caring for their own families and practicing their own faith — but those who are obsessed with homosexuality.

These extremists wage their campaigns of intolerance based on deception and misrepresentation.

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Actual Historical Photo of Mohammed

Muslim taxi drivers blocked the entire Oslo 1000 taxis were stopped in the night – in protest against the Muhammad cartoons

Notices went out last night on the taxi radio.

All drivers who opposed the Norwegian Dagbladet publication of the Muhammad cartoons would put the car between two and four at night.

At three o’clock had 1 000 Muslim taxi drivers gathered.

It was hard to get somewhere in the middle of Oslo between two and four at night.

A thousand drivers

When the Norwegian NRK was in place at three o’clock, almost 1 000 Muslim taxi drivers parked their cars inside the city center to protest against the Dagbladet printed caricatures of Muhammad.

It was last Wednesday that Dagbladet had caricatures of the Prophet on its front page, as an illustration to a text that security police had linked to the controversial cartoons on its website.

“Misuse of freedom of expression”

The publication aroused anger among the Muslim taxi drivers, who decided to show its position.

- It is the abuse of free speech, we are reacting against. We do not do anything drastic, but we want to show that we are opposed to what we hold sacred being misused, “said one of the drivers, Munir Rashad to VG Nett.

The protest was peaceful until the police confined themselves to ensure that there was a clear passage for emergency vehicles.

Thanks to Joakim for this story.

Bangladesh Court Orders Protection for Muslim Girl Who Was Punished for Being Raped

Bangladesh’s High Court has ordered authorities in an eastern district to protect and produce in court a 16-year-old girl who was lashed 101 times earlier this month after becoming pregnant as the result of a rape.

The girl, who has not been named, received the punishment on the orders of village elders in the Brahmanbaria district who issued a “fatwa,” or Islamic ruling, declaring that she be flogged for immoral behavior. The elders pardoned the 20 year-old rapist.

The incident occurred five months after the country’s highest court issued a ruling ordering authorities to investigate incidents of extra-judicial punishments and take action against those responsible.

The August ruling came after a rash of earlier floggings of women, including one who spoke to a man from a different community, another who filed a rape complaint, and a third who refused sexual advances made by a relative. In each case locally-issued fatwas ordered punishment of 101 lashes.

In the latest case, Bangladesh’s Daily Star reported that the assailant, who used to taunt the 16-year-old on her way to school, raped her last April. She kept it quiet and her family subsequently married her off to a man in a neighboring village.

But when medical tests shortly after the marriage showed her to be months into her pregnancy, he divorced her. After an abortion she returned to her family home, but village elders then declared the family should be isolated until she was punished.

On January 17, on the basis of the fatwa, she was flogged in the yard of her home. The report said she collapsed and fainted during the assault. The paper named eight men involved, including two mosque imams and the village head elder, Delwar Hossain.

The girl’s father was also fined 1,000 taka (about $15) and another fatwa was issued saying the family would be ostracized if he failed to pay it. The father said the elders’ group was keeping a close watch on the family to ensure they would not take legal action.

After human rights activists visited and the incident was reported this week, a lawyer filed a petition at the High Court in Dhaka, the capital.

The court has directed Brahmanbaria authorities and police to protect the girl and produce her in court on February 7. It also ordered the government to explain why it should not take legal action against those involved in the flogging.

Earlier, the head of police in the district told the Daily Star that police would investigate if the victim filed a complaint.

In an editorial, the newspaper said the police response was incomprehensible, given last August’s court order.

“The incident is shocking not only for the gruesome brutality meted out to the 16 year-old girl, but also because of the attitude of the law enforcing agency who did not act promptly enough to prevent the whipping or take cognizance of the incident later,” it said.

The paper called on the government to “take steps to stop the parallel system of justice that misuse the name of religion.”

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Academics fight rise of creationism at universities

A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur’an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists.

Earlier this month Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin’s theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution.

In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or “intelligent design” in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society’s event in April.

“There is an insidious and growing problem,” said Professor Jones, of University College London. “It’s a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don’t have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease as we see from the United States.”

Professor David Read, vice-president and biological sciences secretary of the Royal Society, said that they felt it was essential to address the issue now: “We have asked Steve Jones to deliver his lecture on creationism and evolution because there continues to be controversy over how evolution and other aspects of science are taught in some UK schools, colleges and universities. Our education system should provide access to the knowledge and understanding gained through the scientific method of experiment and observation, such as the theory of evolution through natural selection, and should withstand attempts to withhold or misrepresent this knowledge in order to promote particular beliefs, religious or otherwise.”

Leaflets questioning Darwinism were circulated among students at the Guys Hospital site of King’s College London this month as part of the Islam Awareness Week, organised by the college’s Islamic Society. One member of staff at Guys said that he found it deeply worrying that Darwin was being dismissed by people who would soon be practising as doctors.

The leaflets are produced by the Al-Nasr Trust, a Slough-based charity set up in 1992 with the aim of improving the understanding of Islam. The passage quoted from the Qur’an states: “And God has created every animal from water. Of them there are some that creep on their bellies, some that walk on two legs and some that walk on four. God creates what he wills for verily God has power over all things.”

A 21-year-old medical student and member of the Islamic Society, who did not want to be named, said that the Qur’an was clear that man had been created and had not evolved as Darwin suggests. “There is no scientific evidence for it [Darwin's Origin of Species]. It’s only a theory. Man is the wonder of God’s creation.”

He did not feel that a belief in evolution was necessary to study medicine although he added that, if writing about it was necessary for passing an exam, he would do so. “We want to become doctors and dentists, we want to pass our exams.” He added that God had not created mankind literally in six days. “It’s not six earth days,” he said, it could refer to several thousands of years but it had been an act of creation and not evolution.

At another London campus some students have been failed because they have presented creationism as fact. They have been told by their examiners that, while they are entitled to explain both sides of the debate, they cannot present the Bible or Qur’an as scientifically factual if they want to pass exams.

David Rosevear of the Portsmouth-based Creation Science Movement, which supports the idea of creationism, said that there was an increasing interest in the subject among students. “I’ve got no problem with an all-powerful God producing everything in six days,” he said. He said it was an early example of the six-day week. Students taking exams on the subject should not be dogmatic one way or the other. “I tell them – answer the question, it’s no good saying it [creationism] is a fact any more than saying evolution is a fact.”

A former lecturer in organic chemistry at Portsmouth polytechnic (now university) and ICI research scientist, Dr Rosevear said he had been invited to expound his theories at many colleges and had addressed the Cafe Scientifique, a student science society, at St Andrews university, Fife. “The students clearly came expecting to have a laugh but they found there was much more to it. Our attitude is – teach evolution but mention creationism and let students decide for themselves.”

Most of the next generation of medical and science students could well be creationists, according to a biology teacher at a leading London sixth-form college. “The vast majority of my students now believe in creationism,” she said, “and these are thinking young people who are able and articulate and not at the dim end at all. They have extensive booklets on creationism which they put in my pigeon-hole … it’s a bit like the southern states of America.” Many of them came from Muslim, Pentecostal or Baptist family backgrounds, she said, and were intending to become pharmacists, doctors, geneticists and neuro-scientists.

Backstory

The doctrine of creationism holds that the origins of humanity and the Earth are recent and divine as related in the book of Genesis. Strict creationists believe Adam and Eve are the mother and father of humanity and God created the Earth in six days. Support for creationism in the UK has traditionally lacked real vigour but in the US a recent poll found 45% of Americans believed God created life some time in the past 10,000 years. Recently American creationists suffered a setback when Ohio’s board of education threw out a model biology lesson plan which gave credence to creationism. Not all creationists believe in a strict six-day creation. Current scientific research suggests the universe is 13bn years old and humans are descended from ape-like creatures.