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THE BELOW (updated 12 MAR 2022)
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali
The Guardian
30 Aug 2022
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner
<<Saudi woman jailed for 45 years over social media use, says group.
Another Saudi Arabian woman has been sentenced to decades in prison by
the kingdom’s terrorism court for using social media to <violate the
public order>, according to court documents seen by a human rights group.
Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a
specialised criminal court convicted her of <using the internet to tear
[Saudi Arabia's] social fabric>, according to documents that were
obtained and reviewed by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an
organisation founded by Jamal Khashoggi. Dawn shared its findings, which
it said were verified by Saudi sources, with the Guardian. Few details
are known about Qahtani, including her age or the circumstances around
her arrest and conviction. But the news of her decades-long sentence
comes weeks after Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old PhD student at Leeds
University and mother of two children, was convicted and sentenced to 34
years in prison after she returned home to Saudi for a holiday break.
Court documents in Shehab case revealed she had been convicted for the
alleged crime of following the Twitter accounts of individuals who <cause
public unrest and destabilise civil and national security>. In some
cases, she retweeted tweets posted by dissidents in exile. Shehab told a
Saudi court she had faced abuse and harassment during her detention,
including being subjected to interrogations after being given
medications that exhausted her.
In Qahtani's case, Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned her for
<simply tweeting her opinions>, said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for
the Gulf region at Dawn. <It is impossible not to connect the dots
between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's meeting with President Biden
last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against
anyone who dares criticise the crown prince or the Saudi government for
well-documented abuses,> Alaoudh said. Dawn was coming forward with the
news, he said, in the hopes that people who know Qahtani might shed
light on her case. Few details are known about Qahtani, including her
age or the circumstances around her arrest and conviction. But the news
of her decades-long sentence comes weeks after Salma al-Shehab, a
34-year-old PhD student at Leeds University and mother of two children,
was convicted and sentenced to 34 years in prison after she returned
home to Saudi for a holiday break. Court documents in Shehab case
revealed she had been convicted for the alleged crime of following the
Twitter accounts of individuals who <cause public unrest and destabilise
civil and national security>. In some cases, she retweeted tweets posted
by dissidents in exile. Shehab told a Saudi court she had faced abuse
and harassment during her detention, including being subjected to
interrogations after being given medications that exhausted her. In
Qahtani's case, Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned her for
<simply tweeting her opinions>, said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for
the Gulf region at Dawn. <It is impossible not to connect the dots
between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's meeting with President Biden
last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against
anyone who dares criticise the crown prince or the Saudi government for
well-documented abuses,> Alaoudh said. Dawn was coming forward with the
news, he said, in the hopes that people who know Qahtani might shed
light on her case.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/saudi-woman-given-jail-sentence-for-social-media-use-says-human-rights-group
Note from Gino g'Artali: Previously The Guardian publisched an article
about the female studentSalma al-Shebab being sentenced to 34 years in
jail for the same reasons. Read it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/21/plea-for-liz-truss-to-act-after-saudis-jail-uk-student-for-34-years-over-twitter-use
The Guardian
29 Aug 2022
By Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent and agencies
<<China charges 28 people over restaurant attack on group of women.
Chinese authorities said they had charged 28 people and were
investigating 15 officials including police for corruption more than two
months after a shocking incident in which a group of men assaulted four
women at a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan, north-east China.
The men carried out the assault after the women rejected their apparent
sexual advances on 10 June. CCTV footage circulated online showed a man
placing his hand on a woman's back as she shared a meal with two
companions. After the woman pushed him away, the man struck her before
others dragged her outside and dealt a barrage of blows as she lay on
the ground. Another woman was knocked to the floor. The violent attack
reignited a fierce debate about violence against women in China.
Millions on China's social media websites condemned the attack. On
Monday, prosecutors in Hebei province said they would begin legal
proceedings against the suspects – including seven directly involved in
the assault – after they obtained <reliable and sufficient> evidence.
The statement, shared on the Weibo social media site, did not specify a
criminal charge. Police identified the prime suspect in the attack as
<Chen>, saying he had <recklessly used violence to commit evil>,
according to the state broadcaster China Central Television. The
attackers were suspected of being part of a gang, and local media
reported in June that the police response had been slow, prompting
concerns that corruption was involved. In the meantime, authorities from
the Hebei provincial commission for discipline inspection said they were
investigating 15 officials over cor-ruption that involved <evil
organisations>, including those associated with the attackers.
....
Discussion of feminism has grown in China despite pressure from its
patriarchal society, widespread censorship and patchy legal support for
victims. But viral online essays condemning the attack as symbolic of
the country’s larger problem of gender-based violence were censored.
Two women were taken to hospital after the incident and two others
sustained minor injuries, authorities said. Women's rights campaigners
say domestic abuse remains pervasive and underreported in China, while
prominent feminists also face regular police harassment and detention.
Local journalists who travelled to Tangshan to seek information about
the victims were harassed, intimidated and even detained, according to
the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.>>
Read all here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/29/china-tangshan-restaurant-attack-on-women-viral-video-people-prosecuted
Al Jazeera
22 Aug 2022
By Simona Foltyn
<< 'You are not honourable anymore'
Shamed and trafficked into Iraq's sex trade.
Part I – The Ambush
The sedan pulled into a side street in Mansour, an upmarket area of
western Baghdad. The rush-hour traffic on the main thoroughfare had
thinned into a trickle, allowing the neighbourhood to settle into the
mellow, late-morning rhythm of middle-class life. Rolling past the high
concrete walls and manicured hedges, the car paused upon reaching a red
Kia, parked by a small shop that had been agreed as the meeting point.
Two girls, whom we'll call Noor and Shahad, emerged from the backseat.
They wore black abayas, full-length garments usually associated with
more conservative communities. Their long, black hair was straightened
and partly pinned up, the tips distinctly dyed in red and white. They
glanced around nervously as a potbellied, middle-aged man, Husham (not
his real name), shepher-ded them towards the Kia. Noor and Shahad were
about to be sold for $5,000 each. In the distance, Wissam al-Zubaidi
from Iraq’s anti-trafficking unit watched the scene from his black
Toyota Landcruiser. A moustachioed general in his mid-40s, Wissam wore
civilian clothing and Ray Ban aviators, his pistol wedged between his
seat and the centre armrest. The driver of the red sedan was one of his
men, posing as a pimp who wanted to buy prostitutes to work in northern
Iraq. Nearby, a handful more undercover officers stood ready to
intervene. There was an air of confident routine; Wissam's unit had
staged dozens of sting operations like this before, appre-hending lowly
pimps as they traded women in broad daylight, in the middle of one of
the capital's wealthiest neighbourhoods. Since his appointment two years
ago, Wissam had become one of the most active officers in the Ministry
of Interior’s anti-trafficking department. He could claim credit for
many of the sex trafficking cases the minis-try had investigated last
year. But the official figure – a mere 115 cases in 2021 in a country of
40 million – was likely just the tip of the iceberg. For more than a
year, Al Jazeera investigated the sex trade in Iraq, a growing
phenomenon fuelled by deeply entrenched socioeconomic factors and
enabled by a tangled web of corrupt officials and armed groups, a toxic
mix that has become the hallmark of the United States’s post-2003 legacy
in Iraq. The practice appeared to stand in stark contrast to the tenets
of Iraq’s patriarchal society, where honour and reputation are paramount
and closely tied to a woman's chastity. But beneath this veneer of
conservative social norms, young girls from poor backgrounds are
routinely sold into prostitution, Al Jazeera has found through
interviews with more than three dozen individuals, including survivors,
women’s rights activists, security officials, pimps and judges. The
victims tend to be girls and women from underprivileged backgrounds who
are fleeing domestic abuse or child marriage, with traffickers often
exploiting society’s preoccupation with honour to shame vulnerable women
into the sex trade. Iraq's justice system is infused with the same
patriarchal norms and often convicts trafficking survivors for
prostitution. There is far less accountability for those who benefit
from the trade. The pimps and madams that Wissam’s team targeted were
often small cogs in well-oiled machinery that supplied trafficked girls
to brothels, hotels and nightclubs across Iraq, lucrative
esta-blishments that could operate only with the backing of people with
guns and power. Government contacts were needed to issue fake IDs,
facilitate passage through checkpoints and get tipped off before the
occasional police raid, while militias provided protection in return for
a cut of the proceeds. Wissam, who came from a lineage of military
officers and held a firm belief in institutions, insisted that nobody
was immune from prosecution. <The law is above everyone,> read a slogan
scribbled in red paint on the outer walls of his office, housed in a
single-storey, dilapidated police station in the Hai al-Jamiya
neighbourhood. In truth, the unit lacked the resources and political
muscle to turn the tide against the soaring sex trade.
....
Minutes after Husham, Noor and Shahad had gotten into the sedan, the
headlights began flashing. It was the signal to intervene. Hand-guns
drawn, Wissam's men ran towards the car and opened the passenger door.
<Get out,> they ordered Husham, grabbing him by the neck and both hands,
including the one which held the incriminating bundle of hundred-dollar
bills. <This isn't my money,> Husham protested as the officers
handcuffed him and drove him away for interrogation. Noor broke down in
tears, convinced they must have been caught up in a turf war between
competing trafficking networks. Shahad didn’t cry, but her eyes were
wide open with panic as the policemen led them to Wissam’s car. The
survivors were taken to the anti-trafficking unit for questioning. A few
days later, they were admitted to a government-run safe house, where
they shared their stories.>>
Note from Gino d'Artali: Please read the whole article here incl. the
part I didn't. Very important to know the perpetrator got arrested.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/8/22/sex-trafficking-in-iraq
The Guardian
21 Aug 2022
By Shanti Das
<<Plea for Liz Truss to act after Saudis jail UK student for 34 years
over Twitter use.
The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has been urged to intervene in the
<outrageous> case of a Leeds University student jailed in Saudi Arabia
for 34 years over her use of Twitter. Hilary Benn, Labour MP for Leeds
Central, said the UK had a <duty> to press for the release of Salma al-Shehab,
a Saudi national who had been living in Britain and was detained after
returning to visit family last year. Shehab, who has two young children,
was initially jailed for three years for <causing public unrest> and <destabilising
civil and national security> after appearing to support activists and
dissidents on Twitter. But an appeals court last week handed down a new
sentence – 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban – after a
public prosecutor asked the court to consider other alleged crimes. She
has described suffering abuse and harassment behind bars, telling a
Saudi court she was subjected to interrogations after being given
medications that exhausted her. Amnesty International has called for her
<immediate and unconditional release>. In a letter to Truss, Benn says
the UK must intervene, and calls on her to <make representations to the
Saudi authorities> for Shehab <so that she can be freed to return to her
family and to her studies>. He says the case is <completely at odds with
Saudi Arabia's claim to be improving human rights>, writing: <It seems
that all she has done is use her Twitter account to support women's
rights and greater freedom, and to call for the release of imprisoned
activists in Saudi Arabia.> Benn adds: <Saudi Arabia says, 'we're
orming the country.' You can't on the one hand say, 'we are opening up
and liberalising the country,’ and on the other hand send a woman to
prison for expressing her opinions on Twitter.' <I think we have a duty
as citizens and countries to speak out wherever human rights are abused
and denied in this way. The fact that she was a student in one of our
universities adds to that obligation.> He calls the case <shocking and
outrageous>>.
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/21/plea-for-liz-truss-to-act-after-saudis-jail-uk-student-for-34-years-over-twitter-use
and also what happened previously:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/16/saudi-woman-given-34-year-prison-sentence-for-using-twitter
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