tagged w/ Flogging
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"The clip, uploaded by members of the Iranian opposition, shows a young many lying on his stomach in a city square and being whipped at least 20 times by a masked man.
To the side stands another man, a cleric, who appears to be instructing the flogger on how to carry out the punishment. Dozens of locals are seen looking on.
The user who published the clip said that it was filmed last Sunday in the village of Miane in northwest Iran. Witnesses said the young man had been arrested for allegedly drinking alcohol.
Consumption of alcohol is forbidden in the Islamic Republic, as is the import or sale of alcohol, although Jews and Christians are permitted to use wine for ritual purposes. From time to time, the police conduct raids to combat the smuggling of alcohol into Iran, mostly from other Gulf countries.
However, many young people remain undeterred by the ban on alcohol and continue to hold parties where it flows freely, apparently unconcerned that they could find themselves in the same situation as the young man in the video.
Public flogging is a punishment given not only for drinking, but also for other violations of Sharia law. Last year, Iranian student Fayman Aaraf was flogged for insulting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a letter he sent from prison. In Aaraf's case, he was not publicly whipped – although his wife and a number of legal officials from Tehran were present.""The clip, uploaded by members of the Iranian opposition, shows a young many... more
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The sentencing of a Saudi Arabian woman to 10 lashes after she drove a car demonstrates the scale of discrimination against women in the Kingdom, Amnesty International said today.The sentencing of a Saudi Arabian woman to 10 lashes after she drove a car... more
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The suspects, including an Islamic cleric, are accused of issuing a fatwa for 14-year-old Mosammet Hena to receive 100 lashes.
A 14-year-old Bangladeshi girl allegedly raped by a much older cousin has died after being publicly flogged for adultery, media reports said.
Hena Begum was sentenced to receive 100 lashes by a village council made up of elders and Muslim clerics in the district of Shariatpur, about 35 miles from the capital, Dhaka, the BBC said today.
She endured about 80 lashes before collapsing Monday, according to The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper. Her family took her to a hospital, where she died.
"What sort of justice is this? My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice. If it had been a proper court then my daughter would not have died," Dorbesh Khan, the girl's father, told the BBC.
Family members said Hena was raped by a 40-year-old married cousin, The Daily Star said. The man's family beat up the teen, then accused of her adultery, the newspaper said.
The very next day, she was sentenced to the flogging in a fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by the village council under Islamic Shariah law, the BBC said.
Her father was also told pay a fine of about $700, police told the BBC.
Four people, including a Muslim cleric, have been arrested in connection with Hena's death, the BBC said. Police said they were looking for another 14 people in the case.
Bangladesh's high court has ordered district officials in Shariatpur to explain why they did not protect the girl, The Daily Star said. The court ruled eight months ago that Shariah punishment was illegal.The suspects, including an Islamic cleric, are accused of issuing a fatwa for... more
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Sudan's judiciary has launched an investigation into the public flogging of a woman after footage of her being whipped repeatedly by laughing policemen was posted on the web.
The YouTube video shows an unidentified woman in a long black dress and a headscarf being ordered to sit down in a parking lot surrounded by policemen and bystanders who do not intervene.A uniformed policeman proceeds to whip her all over her body as she screams in pain and begs them to stop. A second officer laughs when he realises he is being filmed, before joining in whipping the woman, the punishment lasts a minute and a half.Flogging is fairly common is northern Sudan, where sharia law is often enforced arbitrarily. But the cruel and nonchalant behaviour of the security forces and the distress of the victim in this case caused a stir in the country and amongst Sudanese in exile, it has even attracted condemnation in some pro-government newspapers.
*Update: According to reports on 14 December the woman was being flogged as she was wearing trousers under her Islamic clothing. Update by Current.com staff
Sudan's judiciary has launched an investigation into the public flogging of a... more
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Sex trafficking simultaneously exploits both the best and the worst aspects of globalization. The champions of globalization tout the growing ease of conducting business across national borders. Sophisticated communication tools and relaxed banking laws make it possible to exchange assets internationally with ease. Virtual enterprises can operate everywhere and nowhere, making themselves known only when and where they choose.
Organized crime syndicates take advantage of these tools to create more efficient overseas networks. Although most trafficking originates with local operators, they deftly connect to an international sex industry looking to fill slots in brothels, massage parlors, strip joints, and lap dance bars.
A club owner in Chicago can pick up the phone and “mail-order” three beautiful young girls from eastern Europe. Two weeks later a fresh shipment of three Slavic girls will be dancing in his club. Though a number of quasi-independent traffickers were likely involved in moving the girls, the operation would appear seamless to the Chicago client.
The critics of globalization point out that capital flows wherever it can most easily exploit cheap labor. The owners of capital will abandon a specific location quickly once one of two conditions occurs: (1) the assets it exploits are depleted, or (2) those assets can be obtained more cheaply in other markets.
Sex trafficking also manifests itself in this form. Over the past three decades, the prime area for recruiting sex slaves has shifted rapidly from one zone of economic depression to another. In the 1970s, traffickers targeted girls from Southeast Asia “above all Thailand and Vietnam” as well as the Philippines. After ten years or so of mining in Asia, traffickers shifted their focus to African girls from Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana flooded the international sex bazaars. In the mid-1980s and spilling over into the early 1990s, Latin American girls from Brazil, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Central America (especially El Salvador and Guatemala) became the favored pool.
Traffickers move opportunistically to prey on vulnerable populations. In the 1980s, the trafficking of girls out of eastern Europe hardly registered on the radar screen. Following the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union, that situation changed dramatically. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that roughly a quarter of a million females were trafficked within Europe alone “from East to West” since 1991.
Even within eastern Europe, the prime recruitment zones for trafficking shift rapidly to exploit opportunities. In 1992, the vast majority of trafficked victims came from Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. By the mid-1990s girls in those markets had been depleted, so traffickers started targeting Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Moldova. After the turn of the century, the prime recruitment zone shifted to central Asia “Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan” and Georgia.
Wherever the greatest profit can be extracted, there the traffickers move. In an impassioned speech delivered in Brussels, European commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou aptly characterized the “ruthless efficiency” of these modern-day traders in human property:
“They know their business inside out and respond to changes in the market with a speed unmatched by even the most competitive corporations. Their expertise and ability to exploit the market are surpassed only by their disregard for human life. Women are bought, sold and hired out like any other product. The bottom line is profit.”
Children Are Not Prostitutes
Young boys and girls in every city on the globe today are forced to serve as sex slaves. Sex traffickers target twelve- to seventeen-year-old children as their choice candidates. The johns who pay regular visits to brothels prefer adolescents above any other age group. Looked at from the cold perspective of a slaveholder, adolescents also have a longer shelf life. Any older and they start to lose their youthful appeal. Any younger and they may draw the attention of law enforcement authorities.
Because sex trafficking masks itself as prostitution, the general public does not feel outraged. The children are perceived to be criminals or sexual deviants or at best victims of their environment: desperate for survival, the kids “choose” to sell their bodies for profit.
The real criminals hide in the shadows. An illicit network of traffickers, pimps, recruiters, brothel owners, and johns preys on vulnerable kids and forces them into a life of sexual commerce. Once the inner workings of that criminal network are exposed, common sense prevails. Of course a child would not volunteer for the repeated trauma of ten (or more) grown men penetrating their bodies every evening. We have a word for exploiting minors that way: rape.
It should be noted that the same mechanisms of financial bondage and violent intimidation that enslave children are practiced on females of all ages. Adult “prostitutes” too can recount shocking testimonies of pimps locking them in closets, flogging them with coat hangers, and forcing them to service a staggering number of clients. The pimps quite explicitly refer to these women as “my property” and will attack anyone who acts to compromise their control.
Much more important stuff at the link:Sex trafficking simultaneously exploits both the best and the worst aspects of... more
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A Sudanese woman has been fined $200 for the 'indecent' act of wearing trousers. Lubna Hussein was caught, along with 12 other women, in a raid by public order police in July.
Ten of the clothing "criminals" accepted their punishment - which was a fine and a flogging - but Hussein and two others decided to take it to court. She won't be receiving a flogging but, as she refuses to pay, she is likely to be jailed.A Sudanese woman has been fined $200 for the 'indecent' act of wearing... more
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A devout Muslim who forced two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony has walked free from court.
Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, was given a 26 week jail sentence for child cruelty at Manchester Crown Court, with the sentence suspended for 12 months.
He had been found guilty of two counts of child cruelty last month, in a legal first in Britain.
The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, an implement containing five curved blades.
They were taking part in a ceremony to commemorate the death of a Shia Muslim spiritual leader.
When passing sentence, Judge Robert Atherton said: "I reject the suggestion that they were forced to participate, although I consider it likely that the fervour of events is also likely to have affected their wish to participate."
He banned Zaidi from allowing or encouraging anyone under the age of 16 to beat themselves during the next 12 months.
The boys had both received multiple lacerations to their backs during the flogging, mainly superficial, with several deeper cuts.
Zaidi, of Station Road, Eccles, Salford, also flogged himself during the ceremony at a community centre in Levenshulme, Manchester, on January 19.
The boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted they wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not using Zaidi's zanjeer zani.
They said they had flogged themselves with a smaller zanjeer zani from the age of six in Pakistan.
A 14-year-old boy, who was 13 at the time, said Zaidi told them both: "Start doing it, start doing it."
He told the jury: "We said 'we don't want to do it'."
The boy said he saw Zaidi flogging himself with the zanjeer zani before washing his blood from it and handing it to the 15-year-old boy.
He said Zaidi "kept pressuring him" and "make him do the knife thing".
A 20-minute film of the traditional Ashura ceremony, broadcast on satellite television, showed Zaidi flagellating himself until his back was bloody and cut.
The jury heard Zaidi attended a meeting two days before the ceremony, where it was made clear that under-16s were not permitted to flog themselves.
"We cannot eliminate this practice but we can and will work to a code of practice so that the children don't get hurt, the law isn't broken, and the people who do want to take part don't get prosecuted.
Safdar Zia, general secretary of the Jaffria Islamic Centre in Manchester"A devout Muslim who forced two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony has... more
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The boys were pressured into hitting themselves with an implement with five blades, called a "zanjeer zani", at a religious ceremony.
A Shia Muslim was convicted of child cruelty yesterday after he forced two boys to flog themselves during a religious ritual.
Syed Mustafa Zaidi, a warehouse supervisor, told the boys, aged 13 and 15, to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, a wooden-handled implement containing five curved blades used when commemorating the death of Hussain, grandson of Muhammad and one of the most important figures in Shia Islam. Zaidi is due to be sentenced on September 24.
Manchester crown court heard how Zaidi, 44, flagellated himself at an event held in January in Manchester until his back was bloody and cut. Others at the event also flogged themselves. Some of those present, fearing Zaidi would seriously harm himself, asked him to calm down. Zaidi agreed, only to turn his attention to the two boys.
The 14-year-old, who was 13 at the time, told the jury that neither he nor the other boy wanted to injure themselves. He said Zaidi was insistent with the older boy, "pulling him and pushing him, 'keep doing it', telling people 'this is a sad moment and look, he's not doing it'.
"He goes, 'I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it'. He kept pressuring him, make him do the knife thing, pulling him, trying to get his T-shirt off, pulling and pushing him. He was saying, 'just do it, just do it'." He said the 15-year-old "swung it once or twice and said 'I don't want to do it any more'." The older boy was then pulled away by another man.
After the ceremony, the boys went home to their mother, who noticed several deep wounds on their backs and multiple slash wounds. She took them to Manchester Royal infirmary and the matter was reported to the police.
The Ashura ceremony takes place during the first month of the Islamic calendar and commemorates the death of the grandson of the Prophet.
For Shia Muslims the death of Hussain is a period of intense mourning, leading some to beat and whip themselves. The practice is not compulsory and some Shia authorities prohibit it, while others say it should be done only if certain conditions are met.
Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Carol Jackson said: "The CPS wishes to make it clear that this prosecution was not an attack upon the practices or ceremonies of Shia Muslims."
The ruling of child cruelty against Zaidi is a first in the UK.
The boys were pressured into hitting themselves with an implement with five blades,... more
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