AFGHAN former politician Malalai Joya hailed the “brave women of Kurdistan” as a “source of inspiration” today, praising them for leading the fight against jihadist terror in Syria.
The activist and writer was ejected from the Afghan parliament in 2007 after she criticised the presence of warlords and criminals among her fellow legislators.
She said people don’t feel safe in Afghanistan, noting that, after nearly two decades of war, “bombs, suicide blasts, drone attacks, public executions, rape and gang rape, abduction and other tragedies threaten the life of our people every second. “
“There is always light and hope, no matter how dark and long the tunnel. It is my belief, and history has shown, that oppression cannot prevail forever. There will always be revolutionary struggle by the masses that will break the back of oppressors, no matter how mighty and powerful they are”, she said.
As George W. Bush Gets “Liberty Medal”, Afghan People Suffer 17th Year in Nation “Made a Hell” by US Invasion. “After the Taliban we were expecting something good, but instead, day by day, it is getting worse”: here.
US airstrikes kill at least 30 civilians in Afghanistan: here.
Malalai Joya, Afghan feminist (and youngest person ever elected to the Afghan parliament), speaks at the rally. Her status as a feminist/human rights activist and as an outspoken critic of the rampant corruption in the Afghan government (and its collusion with shady US interests) has gotten her suspended from Parliament and made her a target for death back home in Afghanistan–she lives underground there. She’s also been a fierce opponent and critic of Obama and his escalation of US war in Afghanistan since his inauguration, and ~coincidentally~, the US State Dept recently tried to refuse her entry into the US for a book/speaking tour until public outcry made them cave in.
Apologies in advance as the first half-minute or so of Joya’s comments are not recorded.
Since the Nato combat mission was wound up at the end of 2014, their principal mission is to “train, advise and assist” Afghan forces.
Most of the advice is at ministerial level and the top ranks of the armed forces, improving logistics and co-ordination.
The only active international fighting units are assisting Afghan special forces, and that is the mission that the helicopters believed to have been involved in the attack on Logar would have been engaged in.
There are air strikes, mostly from unmanned drones, somewhere in the country, every day.
Statistics recently emerged showing that more than 100 bombs were dropped in June – more than twice as many as any other month since combat operations ended.
Civilian and military deaths in coalition air strikes have been a contentious issue in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001. They have provoked anger from the government and from many Afghan people.
‘Friendly fire’ from US helicopters kills 10 Afghan soldiers in Logar: here.
Afghan officials say 14 soldiers killed in US air strike: here.
Afghanistan: sharp rise in women and children casualties in first half of 2015. UN reveals 1,591 civilians killed and 3,329 wounded as war enters its 14th year, as fighting in residential areas and greater role of militias contribute to increase: here.
No warlords need apply — a call for credible peacemaking in Afghanistan: here.
The name of this MP is also spelled, in Latin script, as Osama Mehanna.
This video about Bahrain says about itself:
Dr. Rula Al-Saffar: “Jaw Prison holds over 3000 detainees”
18 February 2014
Dr. Rula Al-Saffar also presented some powerful statistics and case studies, focusing more specifically on the conditions of political prisoners. She retold the stories of Talib Ali, a 15 year old with a 50 year conviction sentence, and Dr. Ali-Ekri, the only specialized paediatrics surgeon in Bahrain who is facing a 5 year sentence simply for treating patients of the uprising.
Of the largest prison in Bahrain — Jaw prison — she described how the maximization of the prison’s 1600 people capacity is being overlooked to the extent where the prison now holds over 3000 detainees, with up to 12 inmates having to share cells built for 3-4 people.
Parliament speaker Khalifa al-Dhahrani said 31 MPs out of the 40-member chamber voted to eject Osama Mehanna, in a statement published by BNA state news agency.
Dhahrani did not disclose the reason behind his removal.
But political sources pointed out that Mehanna had a fierce argument with fellow MPs on April 29 after he criticized the situation at Jaw Prison, in southeastern Bahrain.
Mehanna was elected in October 2011 in partial polls held to replace 18 MPs of the opposition Al-Wefaq party who resigned in protest at violence used to quell a month of pro-reform protests.
Hundreds [of] protesters and oppositions activists have been arrested since the eruption of the February 2011 uprising.
Amnesty International on Monday voiced concerns over the “continuing detention of prisoners of conscience and the harsh sentences handed by Bahraini courts in connection with rioting, including against children.”
Former Afghani Parliamentarian Reveals Impact of US Occupation – MALALAI JOYA
4 Nov 2013
SAN DIEGO | After being passed up for the Nobel Prize and four assassination attempts former Afghani Parliamentarian MALALAI JOYA has made her way to the San Diego to tell of the true impact of the US war in Afghanistan. She appears exclusively on the Next News Network.
Twelve years after the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces, that country continues to suffer through horrific violence. The Taliban has been removed from power, but in its place is a government many consider to be too anxious to continue the war.
In a country where many people consider women to be second-class citizens, a few brave activists are beginning to step forward. Many of these women become victims of repeated assassination attempts. Religious extremists determined to stop them from speaking out include the Taliban, which holds a significant military presence in the nation.
Those who also dare to speak out against their government and the U.S. occupation also face opposition from the government of Hamid Karzai.
Malalai Joya was named one of Time Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential people in 2010. Raised in the refugee camps of Afghanistan and Iran, Joya rose to become one of the youngest members of the Afghan Parliament. She taught in secret schools for girls, and helped establish a free medical clinic.
Joya stood up against what she called a parliament of warlords, and was forced from office in 2007.
The young activist has a new book about her experiences, called “A Woman Among Warlords.” Joya has now survived four assassination attempts.
Malalai Joya is out guest on the show today. She is here to talk to us about her experiences as a female activist in Afghanistan. We will also talk about the effects of the American occupation on the ordinary people of that nation, as well as the future of Afghanistan.
It is hard sometimes to describe the enormous efforts taken by the Afghan political elite and conservative lawmakers to roll back hard won progress on women’s rights in Afghanistan. Here we have yet another frightening example: a new law, passed by both houses of the Afghan parliament and waiting for President Hamid Karzai’s ratification, would prohibit the questioning of relatives of an accused perpetrator of a crime, effectively eliminating victim testimony in cases of domestic violence.
In article 26 of the proposed change in the criminal prosecution code, those prohibited from testifying would include: husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and descendants of those relatives up to the second generation. Doctors and psychiatrists would also be banned from giving evidence.
This proposed law is particularly troubling in a country where violence against women is endemic and, most commonly, is at the hands of a relative. In a 2008 study, Global Rights found that 87% of Afghan women will experience some form of violence in their lifetime; 62% experience multiple forms of violence, including forced marriage and sexual violence.
Women for Afghan Women (WAW) can attest to these findings. Over 90% of the nearly 10,000 women and girls we have served since 2007 have been victims of domestic violence. Our clients have been raped, sold, beaten, starved and mutilated – primarily at the hands of a family member, or in some cases, multiple family members.
Should Karzai sign this law into effect, justice for these women would be virtually impossible. Not only would they be barred from testifying against family members who committed crimes against them, any family member who witnessed the crime would be barred as well.
Under the proposals, WAW clients, such as 15-year-old Sahar Gul who was kept in a basement and tortured by her in-laws, would have been robbed, not only of justice, but of the opportunity to reclaim her power and testify against her tormentors. Furthermore, the doctors who treated her bloodied, malnourished, and burned body would also be barred from testifying. Sahar Gul’s in-laws are serving a five-year prison sentence for torturing her. Had the new measure been law in 2012, her in-laws would likely be free to torture and abuse more women.
Other clients, such as 16-year-old Naziba who was raped by her father, would be left with no other option but to live with the abuse. At Naziba’s rape trial, her mother and uncles courageously testified against her father, and he is now serving a 12-year prison sentence. If Naziba’s relatives had been barred from testifying on her behalf, Naziba’s father might still be raping her today.
The timing of this proposed change to the law is important: a recent report by UN Women found that reported cases of violence against women was up 28% in the past year. This finding is significant because it illustrates that Afghan women are beginning to understand their rights and demand access to them.
Since 2007, our organisation has worked hard to build coalitions with local police departments, government ministries and court officials. As a result of our advocacy, these agencies are referring more and more victims to our services, instead of sending them back home or imprisoning them for running away. In some provinces, such as Kabul, the police are our biggest ally – they refer more women than any other agency. This gives us hope, illustrating that there has been a shift in attitude and perception about violence against women, not only among Afghan women, but at an institutional level as well.
However, should Karzai ratify this law, I fear that women would stop coming forward because prosecutions would be nearly impossible to secure. As an organisation that has been working tirelessly to obtain justice for women and girls who have suffered so much and so needlessly, our hands would be tied. There would be little we could do.
We, along with other human rights activists, refuse to stand back and allow this to happen. The stakes are too high and the consequences too horrific to imagine.
A US federal agency that sought to pay photographers for “positive images” of its work in Afghanistan has canceled the program. The project, created to combat negative news coverage, collapsed amid charges that the effort amounted to propaganda: here.
Malalai Joya — An Afghan activist speaking in University of Melbourne, Australia on April 5, 2012. She survived an assassination attempt just days before entering Australia, which left multiple of her body guards killed and injured.
Afghanistan considers reintroduction of public stoning for adulterers
Proposal to bring back one of the most repugnant symbols of Taliban regime is in draft revision of country’s penal code
Afghan government officials have proposed reintroducing public stoning as a punishment for adultery, Human Rights Watch said, even though the practice has been denounced both inside and outside the country as one of the most repugnant symbols of the Taliban regime.
The sentence for married adulterers, along with flogging for unmarried offenders, appears in a draft revision of the country’s penal code being managed by the ministry of justice.
So, this would mean death by stoning for Tony Blair and quite some other NATO politicians, who made and supported the present regime in Kabul, if they would be Afghan citizens. Err… wait … this horrible penalty is not supposed to be for foreign “benefactors”; or for rich Afghan warlords, on whom the regime is based. Just like under their Taliban predecessors, it is basically aimed at poor people having sex outside marriage.
There are several references to stoning in a translated section of the draft seen by the Guardian, including detailed notes on judicial requirements for handing down the sentence.
“Men and women who commit adultery shall be punished based on the circumstances to one of the following punishments: lashing, stoning [to death],” article 21 states. The draft goes on to specify that the stoning should be public, in article 23.
…
“It is absolutely shocking that 12 years after the fall of the Taliban government, the Karzai administration might bring back stoning as a punishment,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“President Karzai needs to demonstrate at least a basic commitment to human rights and reject this proposal out of hand.”
The penalty violates international human rights standards that ban torture and cruel and inhuman punishment, the rights group said in [a] statement.
Decades More War In Afghanistan? Billions More Stolen From U.S. Taxpayers? Here.
US ultimatum on permanent occupation of Afghanistan: here.
Britain must do more to support Afghan women‘s rights and combating violence against women and girls in the country, Amnesty urged today.
The charity warned ministers that the work done so far has been merely “a drop in the ocean.”
Though the government says it is a “staunch supporter” of Afghan women’s rights, little of its recent work in the country has specifically focused on women’s rights, Amnesty said.
In particular the charity is calling for tangible support on issues such as providing women’s shelters and higher recruitment and retention rates of female police officers.
Currently just one 1 per cent of Afghan police officers are women.
Concerns have also been raised that women’s rights could be sacrificed in reconciliation talks with the Taliban.
NGOs have pointed out that the Afghan government’s 70-strong High Peace Council, set up to thrash out a peace deal, includes only nine women.
Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said time was running out.
She welcomed International Development Secretary Justine Greening’s announcement earlier this week that tackling violence against women will be made a “country strategic priority” for DfID in Afghanistan after 2015.
But Ms Allen said this this prioritisation must be reflected cross-departmentally.
“The bottom line is that there can be no peace in Afghanistan without women’s rights,” she said.
US defense secretary’s Afghanistan trip a debacle: here.
Afghan women lose political power as fears grow for the future: here.
Women’s rights don’t justify invading Afghanistan, and shouldn’t be launched in the name of imperial democracy again: here.
Rights groups found last year that more and more Afghan women are being attacked, despite harsher laws and officials’ pledges to prosecute the perpetrators.
Activist Humaira Rasouli said the marchers wanted violence against women “to be eliminated or at least reduced in Afghanistan,” but unfortunately it “is increasing day to day.”
Riot police stood guard as women and men walked from the Darul Aman Palace outside Kabul to an area near parliament.
Today’s march was peaceful, unlikely previous protests that had been marred by stone-throwing and insults.
It was part of the global One Billion Rising campaign that demands an end to violence against women and uses Valentine’s Day to highlight abuse.
Similar demonstrations were held around the world.
Flashmobs, marches, singing and dances were planned in about 200 countries and, significantly, many occurred in countries where women’s rights are severely held back by religious or social manacles.
In Bangladesh, acid attack survivors rallied across the country.
Monira Rahman of the Acid Survivors’ Foundation said: “It is important to mobilise society in this way to break the silence surrounding violence against women and show that people from all backgrounds have zero tolerance for it.
“In Bangladesh there is currently a big movement against war criminals and we are linking these huge demonstrations to One Billion Rising, because these men severely violated women and encouraged others to rape during the war.”
He made lots of money from wars, but did not like war.
The Nobel Peace Prize, bequeathed by him, should be, according to Alfred Nobel, for those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
The European Union, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, does not deserve that prize. The European Union has not contributed anything to the reduction of standing armies, let alone their abolition. Quite the contrary: in the European Union’s proposed constitution (rejected by referendum voters in France and in the Netherlands) there was a clause making it mandatory for European Union member states to increase their “defence” war budgets. The European Union also wants to have its own armed forces, as if the member states’ armed forces are not already bad enough.
Alfred Nobel in his will left decisions about the Nobel Peace Prize to the parliament of Norway. Norway then was a neutral country. In 2012, however, it is a member of the NATO military alliance.
So, now the bureaucracy in Brussels joins other undeserving Nobel Peace Prize winners; from Martti Ahtisaari from Finland (another ex-neutral, now European Union, country) to Barack Obama (who had only been president of the USA for a short time when he got the prize, and after winning it, escalated the war in Afghanistan).
The European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ‘six decades of work in advancing peace in Europe’, according to Thorbjoern Jagland of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who added: ‘Since 1945 reconciliation has become a reality.’
Try telling that to the workers of Greece and Spain who are being savaged by the EU’s class war austerity measures, to the point where thousands of families are going hungry, and where the Greek workers regard the German-led EU as the ‘Fourth Reich’.
As the world crisis of capitalism deepens, along with its financial crisis, the costs of the maintenance of the EU and the eurozone will see the class war imposed throughout Europe, especially on the streets of its capitals, as workers understand that since the EU can only survive by breaking them, to survive they will have to break the EU, and advance to a Socialist United States of Europe.
With a stunning hypocrisy, the Nobel Committee said the EU had helped to transform Europe ‘from a continent of war to a continent of peace’, and that for over 40 years it had prevented a new Franco-German war.
This new European war has been prevented thus far, by the bourgeoisie of France and Germany uniting to try to carry through what Hitler attempted and could not achieve, uniting Europe, this time under the heel of German and French capital. This is what has kept them from each other’s throats, so far.
On this basis this alliance went forward to break all the pledges that were made to Gorbachev not to advance the EU’s borders and the NATO alliance up to Russia’s frontiers.
In the process the EU played a leading role in a great European war, destroying Yugoslavia and creating a dozen or so new states all under the thumb of Brussels, through the means of pogroms the likes of which had not been seen since Hitler’s days, air attacks and military interventions on the ground, including the mass bombing of Belgrade.
The most recent interventions of the peace-loving EU has been the Italian, French and UK air assault on Libya, with the murder of Gadaffi, and the support for puppet forces in Syria to attempt the overthrow of the Assad government through destroying the country, with France openly calling for military intervention.
Now, with the advent of the capitalist crisis, imperialist wars have been joined by civil wars to preserve the EU by smashing the working class of Europe.
EU ‘democracy’ now sees the EU bankers and politicians appointing key members of the Greek and Italian governments.
This is while the Franco-German alliance weakens, as German capital attacks the ‘lazy southerners’ who are said to be responsible for the entire EU crisis. The Franco-German alliance is now weakening to the point where the German bosses openly proclaim that they are the masters of the new Europe, and that the Greeks and the others must be starved so that the ‘peace loving’ EU can continue.
The truth of the matter is that the Nobel Committee is desperately seeking to prop up the collapsing EU, whose attempt to unite Europe under the rule of Franco-German capital is collapsing.
The EU was an attempt to reconcile the contradictions of the imperialist powers at the expense of the workers of the EU and the workers of Africa and the Middle East especially.
Why the Europe Union Does Not Deserve The Nobel Peace Prize: here.
AT the same moment as France and Germany were being given a Nobel prize for keeping the peace in Europe, ie not going to war with each other for the last 60 years, the two countries were in fact squaring up to each other over the future of the EU, the single currency and ‘policing’ the budgets of the eurozone states: here.
Watchdog the International Peace Bureau branded the decision to hand the Nobel Peace prize to the European Union unlawful today: here.
Noam Chomsky & Malalai Joya: The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan March 25, 2011 Memorial Church, Harvard University: Filmed by Paul Hubbard.
The Film fra Sør Foundation and the Norwegian branch of the United Nations work together on the ‘Film fra Sør Norge Rundt’ project, a film touring programme bringing important films to schools and high schools all over the country. In this regard, the UN’s Stian Bragtvedt conducted an interview with renowned Afghan activist Malalai Joya: here.
Malalai Joya: Democracy never comes with invasion: here.
Afghan electoral officials said today that nine MPs should be removed from their seats because of electoral fraud: here.
The compound of the British Council headquarters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, came under a sustained guerrilla attack on Friday, resulting in nine deaths and 22 casualties: here.
Britain: Peace campaigners said today’s attack on the British Council offices in Kabul showed the continued folly of foreign intervention in the country: here.
Afghan civilians pay lethal price for new policy on air strikes: here.
Few Treatment Options for Afghans as Drug Use Rises: here.
British soldiers in Afghanistan have been banned from wearing skull-and-crossbones badges on their uniforms that declare ‘Death To The Taliban’ and proclaim membership of a ‘Taliban Hunting Club’. The unofficial stick-on badges are now a cult accessory among British troops fighting Taliban insurgents: here. And here.
In 2007, Australian government officials repeatedly told the US embassy in Canberra of its plans to increase Australian troop commitments in Afghanistan, but asked the US government to keep quiet about it, as the plans had not yet been made public: here.
The families of victims of a 2009 Nato air strike in Afghanistan are to sue Germany’s Ministry of Defence for compensation, their lawyer announced on Thursday: here.
More Afghan soldiers deserting the army, NATO statistics show: here.
Malalai Joya, former female Member of the Afghan Parliament, founded an illegal school for girls when she was only 16 and has since founded more schools, health clinics, and an orphanage. She was elected to the national parliament at the age of 25, but was driven out by warlords—even facing 4 assassination attempts. She calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. BBC has called her “the bravest woman in Afghanistan.”
Dear Kitty. Some blog 