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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
News
International
Sudan trouser woman ‘ready for 40,000 lashes’
AFP PHOTO/ASHRAF SHAZLY
Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein. Agence France-Presse
KHARTOUM - A Sudanese journalist facing 40 lashes for wearing “indecent” trousers vowed on the eve of her judgment that she is ready to be whipped 40,000 times in her bid to change the country’s harsh laws. Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, who works for the media department of the United Nations Mission in Sudan, is to be judged on Tuesday after waiving the immunity granted to UN workers. She is to be judged under Article 152 of Sudanese law, which promises 40 lashes for anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing.” Hussein, who is in her 30s and whose husband died of kidney failure, told AFP in a telephone interview: “I’m ready for anything to happen. I’m absolutely not afraid of the verdict.” Police arrested Hussein and 12 other women wearing trousers at a Khartoum restaurant on July 3.
Two days later 10 of the women accepted a punishment of 10 lashes, but Hussein is appealing in a bid to eliminate such rough justice. The other two women are also facing charges. “If I’m sentenced to be whipped, or to anything else, I will appeal. I will see it through to the end, to the constitutional court if necessary,” Hussein said. “And if the constitutional court says the law is constitutional, I’m ready to be whipped not 40 but 40,000 times.” Hussein invited scores of journalists to her first court hearing on Wednesday, when she made a point of wearing the same clothes she wore when she was arrested — moss-green slacks with a loose floral top and green headscarf. Hordes of people, many of them female supporters and some also wearing trousers out of solidarity, crammed into the courthouse for the hearing. “My main objective is to get rid of Article 152,” Hussein said. “This article is against both the constitution and sharia,” the Islamic law ruling northern Sudan. Adding insult to injury, some of the women whipped in July were from animist and Christian south Sudan where sharia law does not apply. “If some people refer to the sharia to justify flagellating women because of what they wear, then let them show me which Koranic verses or hadith (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) say so. I haven’t found them.” Unlike many other Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf, women have a prominent place in Sudanese public life. Nevertheless, human rights organisations say some of the country’s laws discriminate against women. “Tens of thousands of women and girls have been whipped for their clothes these last 20 years. It’s not rare in Sudan,” Hussein said.
Five dead in Peru ‘Shining Path’ attack Agence France-Presse
LIMA - Three policemen and two civilians have been killed in an overnight raid on a special forces base in southern Peru, which the government has blamed on once-powerful Maoist guerrillas. Police on Sunday said around 50 guerrillas attacked the base in San Jose de Secce between midnight and dawn, using explosives and firearms. The bodies of five victims, including two women, were transferred by military helicopter to the nearby Andean city of Ayacucho, 300 kilometers (200 miles) south east of the capital Lima. The Ayacucho area was
among the hardest hit during the Shining Path’s insurgency in the 1980s and is now a hub for Peru’s illicit trade in drugs. In April, President Alan Garcia vowed Tuesday to “crush” the remnants of the rebel group after ambushes killed 14 soldiers in the remote southeast jungles of the country, the worst rebel attacks in 10 years. Peruvian officials have blamed the recent attacks on remnants of the Maoist group — also known by its Spanish name, Sendero Luminoso — who have allied with drug traffickers in the region. Peru is one of the world’s principle coca leaf producers, the main ingredient for making cocaine.
International
Panasonic announces Q1 net loss of 560 mln dlrs
Life Style
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
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Agence France - Presse
AP Photo/Mark Baker
FILE - In this Aug. 1, 2009 file photo, protesters run as police fire tear gas at demonstrators during an anti Internal Security Act (ISA) protest near the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysia’s main lawyers’ organization denounced a police crackdown on a mass rally against a tough detention law, saying Monday, Aug. 3, 2009, that the new government appears determined to stifle criticism.
Malaysia Bar denounces weekend crackdown on public
The Malaysian Bar Council said Saturday’s violent police action against an estimated 20,000 peaceful demonstrators was a violation of their fundamental right to assembly and an “abusive show of power” by the government. Led by opposition leaders, the protesters demanded the abolishment of the Internal Security Act, a law that allows indefinite detention without trial. Human rights activists say the law has often been used to jail government critics. Saturday’s crackdown heightened opposition concerns that Prime Minister Najib Razak, who took office in April, will not fulfill his promises to protect civil liberties. “This new government appears determined to continue stifling public opinion, persecuting and punishing those who dare to speak out while blaming them for creating unrest and disorder,”
the Bar Council, which represents about 12,000 lawyers, said in a statement. Police used tear gas and chemicallaced water and arrested almost 600 people to crush the protest deemed illegal because no permit was obtained. All were freed without charges, except 29 who will be tried on Sept. 4. They were freed on bail Monday. Sixteen were charged with taking part in an illegal assembly, which is punishable by up to a year in prison. The remaining 13 were charged with helping an illegal organization, which carries a possible three-year sentence. Among those arrested was Sivarasa Rasiah, a vice president of the opposition People’s Justice Party. He also was released on bail Monday without charges but was asked to report at a police station on Aug. 17.
Calling the arrests “an exercise of intimidation,” Sivarasa told reporters the crackdown was “another example of brutish, authoritarian behavior of a police force” being manipulated by the government. Government leaders have dismissed the protest as an attempt by the opposition to gain political mileage. Najib said it was “unnecessary and only caused hardship to the people” because the government had already pledged to review the controversial law. Human rights activists have held numerous smaller protests over the years against the Internal Security Act. They say at least 17 people are now being held under the law, mainly for alleged links to militants and document forgery. Since taking office, Najib has released 26 detainees, including five leaders of an ethnic Indian protest. Saturday’s protest was the biggest since November 2007 when tens of thousands of ethnic Indians demonstrated against Malaysia’s laws that give preferences in education and contracts to majority ethnic Malays over minority Indian and Chinese citizens of the country.
Agence France-Presse
cided to bury them in mass graves,” Borno State government spokesman Usman Chiroma said. “It is difficult for them to do so (claim the bodies), because their dead relations were members of the Boko Haram (sect) that waged war against the government. They just don’t want to be associated with them,” Chiroma told AFP by telephone from Maiduguri. He also said security agents aided by local chiefs this weekend have arrested dozens of suspected members of the radical Islamist sect still hiding in Maiduguri after the deadly clashes. “Ward heads, called
Bulama, are now leading soldiers and policemen in a house-to-house hunt for members of Boko Haram and effecting their arrests. So far, scores have been arrested and the operation is ongoing,” he stated. He did not give exact figures for the number arrested, nor how many bodies have been removed. ThisDay newspaper on Sunday put the body count at about 700. Clashes between security forces and sect members in four northern states — Bauchi, Kano, Yobe and Borno — killed more than 600 people in five days of violence, according to police and witnesses.
Associated Press Writer
KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia’s main group of lawyers denounced a weekend crackdown on a mass rally against a tough detention law, saying Monday that the new government appears determined to stifle criticism despite its promises of reforms.
Slain Nigerian sect members buried in mass graves KANO - Nigerian authorities swept dozens of bodies into mass graves Sunday in the grisly aftermath of last week’s Islamist uprising that killed hundreds of people, officials and residents said. Authorities had spent two days clearing bodies off the streets of the northeastern university city of Maiduguri, which bore the brunt of the violence. “Our evacuation team has finished removing all dead bodies from the streets of the city. Families are not forthcoming in claiming the dead bodies. Therefore, the government de-
TOKYO - Japanese high-tech giant Panasonic Corp. announced Monday a big first-quarter loss, blaming weak sales of televisions, digital cameras and other electronic goods during the recession. Panasonic posted a net loss of 52.98 billion yen (560 million dollars) for the April-June quarter, swinging from a year-earlier profit of 73.03 billion yen. Revenue slumped 25.9 percent to 1.60 trillion yen. It logged an operating loss of 20.18 billion yen, against a profit of 109.57 billion yen in the same period of 2008, “due mainly to the effect of a sharp sales decrease and price decline,” the Osaka-based company said in a statement. Panasonic, which is buying its struggling smaller rival Sanyo, left unchanged its forecast for a loss of 195 billion yen in the full business year to March 2010, warning that price competition was likely to intensify further. It expects sales to drop 10 percent to 7.0 trillion yen but operating
profit to rise 2.9 percent to 75 billion yen, unchanged from its earlier projections. The group, which changed its corporate name from Matsushita Electric Industrial in October, is cutting 15,000 jobs and closing dozens of plants as it struggles to recover from its first annual loss in six years. Panasonic is not the only Japanese electronics giant in trouble. Last week Sony Corp. posted a net loss of 37.1 billion yen for the April-June quarter, while Sharp Corp. fell 25.2 billion yen into the red in the same period.
AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO
Japan’s electronics giant panasonic employee displays the new stylish compact digital cameras “Lumix DMC-ZX1” (L), “Lumix DMC-FX60” (R) and “Lumix DMC-FP8” at the company’s showroom in Tokyo on August 3, 2009. The DMC-ZX-1 and FX60 features the world’s thinnest lens in the compact lens unit, portion of the lens measures 0.3mm in thickness. Panasonic will put them on the market on August 21.
RU-486 abortion drug to be allowed in Italy
Associated Press Writer
ROME – Italy has approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, capping years of debate and defying opposition from the Vatican, which warned of immediate excommunication for doctors prescribing the pill and for women who use it. The pill is already available in a number of other European countries. Its approval by Italy’s drug regulation authorities was praised by women’s groups and pro-choice organizations, which say the pill will provide women with an additional, noninvasive procedure. It drew the immediate protest of the Catholic Church, which opposes abortion and contraception. “That’s not how you alleviate human suffering, that’s not how you help women, that’s not how you help mankind,” Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a senior church bioethicist, said in an interview Friday with Associated Press Television News. The Italian Drug Agency ruled after a meeting that ended late Thursday that the drug, which terminates pregnancy by causing the embryo to detach from the uterine wall, cannot be sold in pharmacies but can only be administered by doctors in a hospital. The agency said in a statement that the pill can only be taken up to the seventh week of pregnancy, and not up to the ninth as is the case in other countries. Women who used the
pill between the seventh and the ninth week of pregnancy incurred more risks and had often needed surgery, it said. The decision is expected to be effective in about two months, the agency said. In a nod to the ethical implications associated with the decision and the controversy surrounding it, the agency noted that “the task of protecting the well-being of citizens ... must take precedence over personal convictions.” The 4-1 vote at the agency’s executive branch comes about two years after the agency first started looking at the issue. The pill became available in some parts of Italy on an experimental basis in 2006. For the Catholic Church, the agency’s decision was the latest defeat in its efforts to ban or restrict abortion in the nation that hosts the Vatican. Italy legalized abortion on demand through the end of the third month of pregnancy in 1978, after a long battle between secular forces and the church. Abortion after three months is allowed when the pregnancy is deemed a grave danger to the woman’s mental or physical health. Three years later, Italians voted in a referendum to keep the law, again defying a church-backed campaign. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, issued a strong condemnation of abortion and the RU-486 pill
in a front-page article in Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on Friday. He said the church cannot passively sit back, and insisted the ethical implications of the pill could not be overlooked. “An embryo is not a bunch of cells,” Fisichella wrote. “It’s real and full human life. Suppressing it is a responsibility nobody can take without fully knowing the consequences.” Sgreccia, who called the RU-486 “not a drug, but poison,” said that women taking the pill or doctors ad-
ministering are automatically excommunicated under church law. There were about 121,000 abortions on demand in Italy in 2008, according to figures provided by Italy’s health authorities. That number was down 48 percent from 1982 — the year when the number peaked after the referendum upholding the abortion law — and down 4 percent compared to the previous year. But critics of RU-486 say that taking a pill might reverse that trend because it would make interrupting a
REUTERS/Newscom
A bottle and two pills of mifepristone, formerly know as RU-486 are seen in a handout photo.
pregnancy easier. They also fear that it would be possible to avert a mandatory hospitalization policy and effectively go back to the pre-legislation days of clandestine abortions performed at home without medical supervision. “The apparent ease of this pharmacological method will inevitably lower the level of caution and responsibility,” Romano Colozzi, the only member of the agency to vote against the use of the pill, told the ANSA news agency. Supporters say it has no significant side effects and is safe. Gabriella Pacini, a doctor with the Woman’s Life group that provides medical counseling to women, said that RU486 “has been used for years in Europe, on millions of women and is considered safe and effective.” “Why not give Italian women a choice between pharmacological abortion and surgical abortion?” she said. The RU486 pill, first introduced in France two decades ago, is known chemically as mifepristone and causes an embryo to detach from the uterine wall. A second pill, misoprostol, is used afterward to cause contractions and push the embryo out of the uterus. Doctors can declare themselves conscientious objectors and refuse to carry out abortions. Since 2000, Italy also allows the so-called morning-after pill, which prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall and growing into an embryo.