NEW DELHI, India – Yesterday, five family members were sentenced to death for the murder of a young couple in 2010.
Neighbor shows where couple was tortured. (Photo Courtesy of BBC)
Members of the young girl’s family tortured the couple in an alleged honor killing. Authorities arrested the girl’s parents, cousin, uncle, and aunt the day after the couple’s murder.
“It can be safely concluded that the prosecution has been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused persons had caused the death of the victims with the common intention after giving them merciless beatings by tying them with rope and thereafter electrocuting them on various parts of their body,” said Judge Ramesh Kumar on Monday.
However, the convicted family could appeal against the decision in a higher court.
Last year India’s Supreme Court ruled that honor killings would receive the death penalty and deemed the crime a “barbaric slur” on the nation.
According to Telegraph, Yogesh, a taxi driver, wanted to marry nineteen-year-old Asha, the daughter of a vegetable seller, but Asha’s family objected because Yogesh belonged to a lower caste.
Local media reports revealed that the Autopsy reports showed that the couple had been tied up, beaten with metal pipes, and electrocuted.
“Medical examination had revealed that the two had died due to the thermoelectric shock from repeated electrocution,” read the Indian Express newspaper.
There are no statistics regarding the number of honor killings in India, but one 2010 study states that as many as 900 people are killed each year for falling in love or marrying despite their families’ objections in the northern states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
Most parents in India still prefer arranged marriages within their own caste and relationships outside of caste are frowned upon.
According to Telegraph, New Delhi lawyer, Ravi Kant, has been fighting to pass a law that will provide detailed and harsh penalties to reduce honor killings
“Such a punishment will certainly have a huge impact on the society. It will serve as a strong deterrent to one and all. The sentencing is also in line with the Supreme Court directive and it must be lauded,” shared Mr. Kant.
By Justin Dorman Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
TEHRAN, Iran – Friday was World Teachers Day. In observance of the event, Human Rights Watch issued a statement that all teachers imprisoned in Iran for speaking out against the government should be set free.
Mohammad Davari is an imprisoned teacher who has been tortured and beaten. (Photo Courtesy of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran)
Many teachers are regularly harassed by the Iranian authorities for making anti-government statements. The government justifies it under the guise of protecting national security. Even comments calling for higher wages are regarded as seditious. As a result, association with a trade union is cause for further persecution.
Since 2009, at least thirty-nine teachers have been detained. Mohammad Davari, Rasoul Bodaghi, Abdollah Momeni, and Mahmoud Bagheri are only a few of the educators who are currently imprisoned. Collectively, the four are serving a sentence of twenty-four and a half years in jail for the national security charges of “propaganda against the regime,” “colluding and assembly with the intention of disrupting national security,” and participating in illegal gatherings. Only Momeni is not a member of a teachers’ trade association.
“The arrest and detention of teachers is symptomatic of the Iranian government’s inability to tolerate any show of dissent, even from those it entrusts with the education of its children,” said Nadim Houry, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Middle East director.
Davari was previously the editor-in-chief of the Saham News website, but is now a teacher. He is a disabled Iran-Iraq War veteran, and was a member of the Central Council of the Iranian Teachers Association and union activist. Since being put in prison, Davari has been tortured. The condition of his teeth have been worsening and he has suffered chest pains. Additionally, he has developed acute psychological illness that has progressively worsened. Prison officials often deny Davari’s privilege to see family and visitors and deny him phone calls. His attorneys have sought a furlough from prison so that he can seek treatment and get the affairs of his mother, whom he had previously been supporting, in order. Not only was his request denied, but his five year sentence was increased to six years.
Rasoul Bodaghi serves on the board of directors of the Iranian Teachers Trade Association. Since being imprisoned, he has been repeatedly beaten by guards in Karaj Gohardasht prison. In the past, the guards have taken Bodaghi into corridors and have tied him to the prison bars where they have assaulted him. Bodaghi has sustained injuries to his head, face, and teeth.
Momeni, the former spokesperson for the Central Council of the Alumni Organization of University Students of the Islamic Republic, has been particularly outspoken.
“[W]e believed and continue to believe that the student movement should not sing the praises of the power structures and those in power, rather it must offer criticism of those who take advantage of their power, no matter what their background, and must defend the rights of the people, including women’s rights and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities,” he wrote to Ayatollah Khomeini in an August 2010 letter from prison.
For his beliefs, he has been imprisoned and subjected to solitary confinement. When he was arrested, security officials used tear gas in a closed, confined space. He was then beaten until he had a bloody nose and bleeding teeth before he was brought to Evin prison. Since his arrival, he has seen the sky on just a few occasions due to his solitary confinement. Momeni would often be interrogated, during which he would be choked until he approached his last moments of consciousness. The constant strangling made eating and drinking incredibly painful. All the while, officials would use torture on Momeni to coerce him to admit to false allegations. In addition to brutally beating him, the authorities would also humiliate him. On one occasion, his head was forced down a toilet filled with feces.
Momeni has called for a truth commission to investigate how prisoners are tortured until they confess to crimes they never committed. The Ayatollah’s present stance is that anything an accused person says about himself in court is credible.
Mahmoud Bagheri was imprisoned for his attendance at protests demanding higher wages for teachers. (Photo Courtesy of the Iranian)
Mahmoud Bagheri, a member of the Iranian Teachers’ Association’s Board of Directors, has twenty-seven years of experience teaching physics. His prison sentence is currently set for nine and a half years. Bagheri’s imprisonment is the result of his attendance at demonstrations where teachers low wages were protested. Like Davari, Bagheri is an Iran-Iraq War veteran who requires medical attention.
Human Rights Watch is not the only group that is striving to make a difference regarding teachers in Iran. Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, has been pushing a new teachers’ rights initiative called “Be Voice of Iranian Teachers.” The group is comprised of human rights activists, journalists, teachers, and lawyers who seek to have the Iranian government listen to Iranian teachers’ legitimate demands without arresting and imprisoning them.
Ebadi’s fear is that, “[w]hen our youth observe that their teachers are imprisoned for legitimate demands, what lesson can they learn from this unjust act of the regime, especially as the teachers in prison have been deprived from due process and some of them have been tortured?”
“Take a stand for teachers” was the slogan of this year’s World Teachers’ Day. Supporting the teachers of Iran was a large part of the discussion held by the United Nations, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, and UNICEF.
By Emily Schneider Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
DAMASCUS, Syria – In a YouTube video posted this week, Syrian rebels claim they are going to start executing the 48 Shiite pilgrims from Iran if Damascus and Tehran do not start complying with their demands.
Two Free Syrian Army fighters wait outside the Dar El Shifa hospital on Thursday. (Photo courtesy of CNN)
The group of pilgrims was abducted in August. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Iranians travel to Syria to visit a Shia pilgrimage site in Damascus, the shrine of Sayeda Zainab. Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan, said the pilgrims were traveling to the airport after visiting the shrine when they were kidnapped. Pilgrims continue to visit holy sites in spite of the increased danger and instability in Syria because they believe in the holiness of the journey.
In August, Iran’s Foreign Minsitry said it was working through diplomatic channels such as the United Nations, but was unable to negotiate their release.
In the video, a rebel officer clothed in camouflage attire addresses the camera. He is standing in front of the group of hostages while he speaks. Several other compatriots, some of them armed, are also present. In his statement, he claims that his group had negotiated with the Syrian authorities regarding the hostage’s release in exchange for the release of rebels held in Syrian government custody. But, he says those efforts failed “because of the reluctance of both the Iranian and Syrian regimes.”
“Unless they start releasing our people from their prisons and cease the shelling of the innocent civilians in our cities and the ongoing random slaughter, within 48 hours, starting from the moment this statement is read, we inform you that for every martyr who gets killed by the Syrian regime, we will kill one of the Iranian hostages,” he says.
Specifically, the rebels demand that Syria’s army withdraw from the Eastern Ghuta area of Damascus province, a rebel commander said on Friday.
“We gave the regime 48 hours starting yesterday to withdraw completely from the Eastern Ghuta area,” Abul Wafa, commander of the rebels’ Revolutionary Military Council in Damascus province, told AFP via the Internet. “We also have other secret, military demands. If the regime does not fulfill them, we will start finishing off the hostages.”
After the group was abducted, a local Lebanese television network broadcast a telephone interview with one of the kidnappers, who said the pilgrims were in good health and that they were “guests,” not hostages. The phone call also revealed that the hostages were being kept in the Aazaz area of the Aleppo province at that time.
This is the second video in which the Syrian opposition used the group as leverage. Initially, there was another video posted in which members of the al-Baraa Brigade of the Free Syrian Army said that they had “captured 48 of the shabiha [militiamen] of Iran who were on a reconnaissance mission in Damascus.” That video also warned that the rebels “will target all its installations in Syria… The fate of all Iranians working in Syria will be just like the fate of those, either prisoners, or dead.”
At the time, there was some debate as to the validity of that video. For now, however, the same group of pilgrims is being touted as a means of negotiating with the Syrian and Iranian governments.
It’s not like Assad woke one morning and said: “I feel like exterminating all the Brutes.” It took a lot of active (Iran, Russia, China, Hezbollah etc.) and passive (Unites States, Europe, Arab states, Muslim states) encouragement to get him there. Now that he is there it will take nothing less than forceful intervention to make him stop. You don’t come all this way to quit. Meanwhile, our cup runneth over with blood, disappointment and discontent.
Thursday October 4, 2012
Today’s Death toll: 120. The Breakdown: toll includes 5 children and 3 women. 52 in Damascus its Suburbs, 35 in Aleppo, 11 in Homs, 9 in Deir Ezzor, 5 in Hama, 4 in Daraa, 3 in Lattakia, and 1 in Qunaitera (LCC).
VOA’s Scott Bobb traveled to the war-torn northern Syrian city of Aleppo Thursday and left with vivid impressions of a complex community wracked by suffering and fear.
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 4 (UPI) — The killing of at least three Hezbollah fighters in Syria’s civil war adds weight to persistent allegations the Iranian-backed movement has deployed military forces to prop up one of its most important allies, beleaguered President Bashar Assad in Damascus.
Some of the fighting between forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and the Syrian rebels has moved closer to the Israeli border and several mortar rounds have landed inside Israeli territory. Israeli officials believe these mortars were not aimed at Israel.
Where there is war there is hunger. This holds true with the conflict now taking place in Syria. The UN World Food Programme, the largest food aid organization, is currently feeding 1.5 million Syrians displaced within their own country.
Some experts thought they saw signs of Russian support for Syria wavering. But now Russia is forcing the UN to water down its condemnation of Syria for its mortar attack on Turkey, suggesting that the bond is still strong.
After Syrian shells killed five civilians in a Turkish border town, Turkey’s parliament authorized military operations against Syria. But Turkey’s deputy prime minister says that this is not a declaration of war.
Had Syria been a major oil producing country chances are the US would have already dispatched military forces to impose a pax Americana and to put a stop to the horrific fighting that has been slowly, but without any doubt, ripping Syria apart and dismantling the infrastructures that make the Syrian state what it is today. Even if the war was to end today it would take years for Syria to return to its pre-war position from an economic and military perspective.
Skirmishes between pro- and anti-Assad Alawites clans continue in Assad’s hometown of Qardaha and nearby communities. Pro-Assad militias have reportedly arrested scores of rivals.
Judging by the spate of announcements by Turkish and western officials, it seems that whatever military option Turkey is envisioning in Syria will be limited in scope and probably restricted to occasional strikes against positions held by pro-Assad militia and troops. Increased aid to rebels is also expected, though this may not necessarily lead to arming rebels with heavy weapons. It’s not clear as well whether Turkish authorities will attempt to coordinate any future strikes with rebels to support their ongoing operations.
BAMAKO, Mali – On Tuesday, a man accused of killing his neighbor was publicly executed by firing squad in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu.
Ansar Dine members have now secured control of northern Mali. (Photo courtesy of Reuters)
An alleged member of the ethnic Tuareg rebel group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), he was accused of killing his neighbor. Eyewitnesses report that he was brought in handcuffs to the execution area and seated with his legs facing Mecca before a judge ordered his sentence to be carried out. “I saw him fall after the shots were fired,” said one witness. “He was shot in the back, but did not die until several hours later,” another said.
The man’s public execution was decreed by an ultra-conservative Muslim rebel group, Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), who is reportedly connected with Al-Qaeda’s north African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
“[The executed man] turned himself in… He was judged, condemned to death and executed this evening. He was shot in the same way he shot his victim. This is what the Sharia says,” Sanda Ould Boumana, a spokesperson for Ansar Dine, told the press on Tuesday.
Ansar Dine and the MNLA used to be allies, but the alliance between the two was short-lived due to internal conflict among their members. Since then, the members of Ansar Dine have been chasing MNLA members out of towns under their control.
Since Ansar Dine took over Timbuktu from separatist groups including the MNLA, the place has been under Sharia law. The public killing is purportedly the latest demonstration by the rebel group of its intention to impose Ansar Dine’s rigid and strict interpretation of Islamic law.
A fews months back, Ansar Dine ravaged through Timbuktu sacking its 15th and 16th century mosques and tombs declaring the sites to be idolatrous and haram (Forbidden in Islam).
More recently, Ansar Dine members have arrested unveiled women, stoned an unmarried couple to death, publicly flogged smokers, amputated at least eight suspected thieves, and administered lashings to people accused of drinking alcohol, according to local eyewitnesses and residents.
Human rights groups, along with the United Nations Security Council, expressed their concern about the increasing number of human rights violations committed by the rebel group. West African countries from the regional bloc ECOWAS already requested the UN to issue a mandate for military intervention in northern Mali. The UN Security Council is scheduled to hold “preliminary” talks over this request on Thursday.
