j’s blog

Reuters AlertNet - UN rights body rebukes North Korea for grave abuses

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, April 14 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Thursday censured North Korea for “widespread and grave violations” — including torture, executions and forced abortions — drawing a sharp rebuke from the secretive communist state.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, whose 53 member states are holding an annual session, urged Pyongyang to cooperate with its special investigator on the Democratic Republic of Korea.

The resolution, brought by the European Union (EU) and Japan, was adopted by a vote of 30 countries in favour, nine against and 14 abstentions, including South Korea.

It expressed deep concern at torture, public executions, arbitrary detention, “infanticide”, imposition of the death penalty for “political reasons”, the existence of a “large number of prison camps” and extensive use of forced labour.

The United States delegation denounced North Korea’s “deplorable human rights record”.

U.S. delegate Sasha Mehra took the floor to say that in North Korea, “150,000 to 200,000 people were believed to be held at detention camps in remote areas for political reasons”.

“Defectors report people dying of torture, starvation, disease and exposure or a combination of causes,” she added. “We stand with the victims of the brutal regime.”

But North Korea’s delegation reacted angrily, accusing the forum of “politicisation, selectivity and double standards”.

“The fundamental purpose of this resolution is to overthrow the state system of the DPRK,” said member Choe Myong Nam.

RNGLEADERS

Most targets of the “naming and shaming” at the Commission were “developing countries pursuing independent policies with ideals different from those of the West,” he added.

Choe singled out Britain and Japan as “ringleaders” of the text, saying Britain appeared “hell-bent on overthrowing the state system of the DPRK hand-in-hand with the United States”.

China’s ambassador Sha Zukang, who voted against the resolution, said: “The effective way to promote human rights does not lie in confrontation and shaming, but rather enlightened dialogue and cooperation.”

“We are against the practice of using human rights issues to exert political pressure on developing countries,” Sha added.

North Korea has refused requests by the U.N. special rapporteur or investigator, Vitit Muntarbhorn, to visit.

Muntarbhorn, a Thai law professor serving in the independent post established a year ago, has reported widespread abuses and urged North Korea to end capital punishment and forced labour.

South Korea’s ambassador Choi Hyuck said that his country shared other countries’ deep concerns about the state of human rights in North Korea but questioned the value of rebukes alone.

“We believe as important as it is for the international community to continuously express its concern over the situation…it is equally important to create an environment that encourages the DPRK to change voluntarily…,” Choi said.

U.S. no slouch either.

Yahoo! News - Group: China Leads World in Executions

LONDON - China accounted for the majority of executions reported worldwide last year, but the true frequency of the death penalty is impossible to track because many of the sentences are carried out secretly, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

During 2004, more than 3,797 people were executed in 25 countries, including at least 3,400 in China, the rights group said. Additionally, more than 7,000 people were sentenced to death in 64 countries, it said.

Iran had the second highest number of executions, at least 159 people, followed by Vietnam, with 64. The United States ranked fourth on the list with 59, the report said.

“The figures released today are sadly only the tip of the iceberg. The true picture is hard to uncover as many countries continue to execute people secretly — contravening United Nations standards calling for disclosure of information on capital punishment,” the organization said.

Amnesty International said there was a worldwide trend toward ending the death penalty; during 2004, five countries — Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and Turkey — abolished it for all crimes.

Several countries, while retaining the death penalty in law, observed moratoria on executions, including Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi and South Korea, the human rights group said.

But the latest figures highlight the ongoing need for international action to outlaw the death penalty, Amnesty added.

“It is worrying that the vast majority of those executed in the world did not have fair trials. Many were convicted on the basis of ‘evidence’ extracted under torture,” it said.

Amnesty cited the case of Ryan Matthews, who in 2004 became the 115th prisoner in the United States released from death row on the grounds of innocence since 1973.

Matthews had been sentenced to death in Louisiana in 1999 for a murder committed when he was 17.

His death sentence was overturned in April 2004 after an appeal judge found that the prosecution had suppressed evidence at the trial, and also on the basis of DNA evidence that pointed to another person as the murderer.

___

On the Net:

Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org

U.S. Newswire : Releases : “Amnesty International’s Annual Death Penalty Report Finds Global Trend Toward Abolition”

WASHINGTON, April 4 /U.S. Newswire/ — During 2004, at least 3,797 people were executed in 25 countries and at least 7,395 were sentenced to death in 64 countries, according to an Amnesty International report released today. The United States’ contribution to the worldwide total dropped from 65 the previous year to 59 in 2004. The United States remained one of the top executing countries, along with China, Iran, and Vietnam.

“Our report indicates that governments and citizens around the world have realized what the United States government refuses to admit-that the death penalty is an inhumane, antiquated form of punishment,” said Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). “Thomas Jefferson once wrote that ‘laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind;’ it is past time for our government to live up to this Jeffersonian ideal and let go of the brutal practices of the past.”

Releasing its annual worldwide statistics on the use of capital punishment, Amnesty International called on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, currently meeting in Geneva, to condemn the death penalty as a violation of fundamental human rights. It also urged the U.S. to join the myriad countries taking steps to abolish the death penalty, and applauded the March 1st Supreme Court decision removing the United States from the list of nations that execute juvenile offenders.

“It’s alarming that the United States was the last country in the world to formally reject the application of the death penalty to minors,” said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, AIUSA’s director of the Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. “The United States should now join the international community in condemning the practice everywhere, and use its international clout to urge countries like China and Iran to conform to international treaties which forbid them from executing minors.”

Amnesty International also called particular attention to instances where U.S. citizens were sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit.

“The cases of Derrick Jamison and the other 118 individuals released from death row since 1973 demonstrate that no judicial system is infallible. However sophisticated the system, the death penalty will always carry with it the risk of lethal error,” Amnesty International USA said. In February 2005, Derrick Jamison became the 119th wrongfully convicted person to be released from death row on the grounds of innocence.

Five countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2004: Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and Turkey. At year’s end, 120 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

——

The higher number of executions in 2004 and the higher concentration of executions in the “top executing” countries reflect a change in the method Amnesty International uses to calculate the number of executions in China. Amnesty International believes that our current, estimated figure for China still represents only the tip of the iceberg. For example, in March 2004 a delegate at the National People’s Congress said that “nearly 10,000″ people are executed per year in China.

Whoops! Sorry…never mind. Good news, at least we changed our minds about killing you.

Yahoo! News - Jailed ‘Killer’ Freed After Wife Turns Up Alive

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese man jailed and badly beaten for his wife’s murder has been freed after she turned up not only alive but with another husband, domestic media said on Monday, revealing a brutal arbitrariness to China’s legal system.

She Xianglin’s wife, Zhang Zaiyu, disappeared after a domestic dispute in 1994 and when a woman’s body was found in a local reservoir, She was detained on suspicion of killing his wife, the China Daily said.

The body was so decomposed it could not be identified, but a local court found She, a former part-time police officer from central Hubei province, guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.

A provincial court later commuted the sentence to 15 years in prison.

She, 39, was coerced into confessing to her murder and badly beaten in prison, the China Daily said.

International human rights groups say police torture is widespread in China and that suspects are held for long periods without trial. But it is rare for a victim, or the domestic media, to go public about police brutality.

She told the Beijing News that when he was first apprehended, police took him to a remote house and interrogated him for 11 days. He was given just two bowls of rice a day, nearly no water, prevented from sleeping and threatened with death.

“A policeman put his gun to my head and said, ‘Believe me, I could shoot you right now’,” She was quoted as saying from a prison hospital bed, where he was receiving a physical check before being released on Friday.

He said he did not remember making a confession, though the local court that ruled on his case was told he had.

The China Daily said photographs published since She’s release showed he had been severely beaten while in jail and his legs and fingers broken.

Zhang resurfaced in late March in eastern Shandong province, where she had gone in 1994 and later married a local man, the China Daily said.

She said he wanted compensation for his years in jail and justice to be done.

“I want those officials involved in my conviction punished,” he was quoted as saying.

Yahoo! News - Khmer Rouge Haunts Cambodia 30 Years Later
By DAVID LONGSTREATH, Associated Press Writer

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Thirty years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge revolutionary peasant army, the horrors of their brutal, murderous rule still stain the fabric of this impoverished Southeast Asian kingdom.

On the outskirts of Phnom Penh, near the Choeung Ek Genocidal Museum, the evidence of mass murder is easily found. Just scraping the surface of communal graves turns up bone fragments, teeth and clothing worn by those put to death by the Khmer Rouge.

Seeking to create a utopian society, the Khmer Rouge abolished private property and money and emptied the cities by driving the urban population at gunpoint into the countryside to live in communal camps.

The genocidal experiment began on April 17, 1975, and wreaked havoc for nearly five years. An invasion by the Vietnamese army early in 1979 ended the group’s reign, but not before an estimated 1.7 million or more Cambodians had died from violence, starvation or overwork.

The Khmer Rouge waged a guerrilla war for two more decades, but its abuses have largely gone unpunished since fighting stopped in 1998.

Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, fell from favor and leadership of the group’s last active faction in 1997. A year later he was dead, and many speculated he had committed suicide. Ta Mok, an 80-year-old known as “the Butcher” who deposed Pol Pot, languishes in a Phnom Penh cell awaiting a U.N. war crimes tribunal that most Cambodians believe will never come to pass.

Prime Minister Hun Sen made deals with other leaders, such as Noun Chea, right-hand man to Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, prime minister of the Khmer Rouge government. They defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1998 and now live safe from prosecution in the autonomous zone of Pailin.

Noun Chea sits quietly in the bedroom of his simple wooden shack watching the sun rise as he listens to morning news broadcasts on a cheap Chinese-made portable radio. He, like Khieu Samphan, grants few interviews and refuses to speak about the past.

Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in the west along the Thailand border, is a derelict town. The gemstones that paid for the arms and ammunition that kept the Khmer Rouge fighting for 20 years have mostly been mined. Teak trees, another source of funds, are gone as well.

Many in Pailin live a grinding existence, much like the rest of Cambodia, where half the people get by on $1 a day.

The once lush jungle of Pailin, the perfect hiding place for the guerrillas, has been turned into slashed and burned farmland that waits for a rainy season now two years overdue.

Staring at dust swirling at his border farm, former Khmer Rouge infantryman Kave Meik says: “Before we didn’t have the freedom and independence but we had plenty of food. Now we have freedom but we don’t have enough to eat.”

Daily Times - Site Edition

SEOUL: North Korea accused the European Union on Friday of a “dastardly act” for criticising Pyongyang’s human rights record after Britain said the reclusive Stalinist state could face sanctions for the way it treats its citizens.

The European Union is expected to present the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva with a resolution condemning North Korea’s record.

British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell, speaking in Geneva on Thursday, urged the United Nations’ top rights forum to condemn any abuses in North Korea, which he said had the “worst record of any country anywhere in the world”.

“If North Korea does not in time genuinely and constructively engage both on our human rights concerns and on the concerns about its possession of nuclear weapons, then I think we will have to look for tougher options of containment or sanctions. I am not advocating that at the moment,” Rammell told reporters.

The North’s official KCNA news agency cited a North Korean delegate to the rights talks as saying the European Union was acting selfishly by backing the position of the United States.

The delegate repeated a charge the North has made before, that Washington was launching an attempt at “bringing down the system of the DPRK under the pretext of human rights”, KCNA reported

DPRK is short for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. reuters

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - British Minister Condemns North Korea’s Human Rights Record

North Korea may have the worst human rights record in the world, a British minister said at a UN conference today.

The long record of human rights abuses, includes abductions, arbitrary detention and extensive use of torture and the death penalty, said Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell in Geneva.

“Arguably, North Korea has the worst human rights record of any country, anywhere in the world,” he said on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva.

“This session has been extremely important, and it’s part of an ongoing process, to shine a spotlight on North Korea in terms of its human rights record,” Mr Rammell said.

Kim Tae Jin, a North Korean who was imprisoned by the government before defecting in 1997, told the commission that “there is absolutely no freedom in North Korea.”

“In a political prison camp in North Korea, one must forget that he or she is a human being,” said Kim, who spent five years in a camp and endured eight months of torture and interrogation.

“There were numerous people who spent 20 to 30 years in the prison camp simply because of some ludicrous crime their grandfather allegedly committed,” said Kim.

Mr Rammell said that the European Union will sponsor a resolution at the commission to condemn North Korea’s record of abuses, adding that he expects it to be passed by a large majority.

Yahoo! News - Russian draft collects `bums, real scum’ as most defer dangerous military posts

By Mark McDonald, Knight Ridder Newspapers

MOSCOW - A certain amount of panic will take hold of Russia on Friday, when the country begins its annual military draft.

Generals will be panicked that they’ll end up with another crop of druggies, convicts and misfits. Mothers will be terrified at handing over their sons to a military that’s notorious for its brutal hazing of new recruits.

And tens of thousands of draft-age young men will fear for their lives as they face two years of menial labor, sadistic senior officers, and, worst of all, a possible deployment to Chechnya. Many will wangle phony deferments, fail to report or simply flee.

“What (the military) ends up with are the social fallouts, trigger-happy people, bums, the homeless, the real scum,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst in Moscow. “And they’ve all got guns.”

Shootings of officers, desertions, suicides, alcoholism, torture in the barracks and drug abuse are rampant in today’s Russian military, according to Felgenhauer and other experts.

Even the chief of the Russian general staff has said the military situation in Russia is “beyond critical” - not an encouraging comment given the country’s huge nuclear arsenal, long-range missiles, and biological- and chemical-weapons depots.

All of which makes the annual draft critical to Russia’s national security - and perhaps the world’s.

“An unsound or unstable Russian military populated with dissolute officers and destitute troopers would be a global liability,” said a senior U.S. official who asked for anonymity because he didn’t wish to be seen as meddling in Russian affairs.

“Nobody should want to see any further degradation in the military here.”

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia, with its million-man military, can’t afford an all-volunteer army, though planners are aiming for an equal mix of conscripts and volunteers by 2007.

Calls for young men to join are countered by an outcry over what many parents feel are the brutal conditions of Russian military life.

“I’m really stunned by the attitude of so many of our Russian women,” said Maria Fedulova, whose son was drafted 10 years ago and sent to Chechnya. “The mothers of these boys are hypnotized. How can they let their sons go to the army? How could anyone?”

Fedulova works for the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, an anti-draft group that opposes Russia’s use of military force in Chechnya. The Mothers are trying to start their own political party, and with a new draft season starting, they’re busier than ever.

“The most terrible thing is that parents still believe the government propaganda,” said Valentina Melnikova, the head of the Mothers committee.

“The adults still say that all kids should do military service. They bring them (to the recruiting station), hold a farewell party and they all drink vodka. Then three weeks later, when their kid has been beaten in the barracks, they show up in our office saying, `How could we know such an awful thing could happen?’”

The military’s target this year is about 150,000 draftees, and recruiters are angry that once again they’ll have to scrape the bottom of the social barrel to meet their quotas.

Senior military planners complain there are so many legal deferments that only 11 percent of draft-age men ever get inducted. And of those, only 30 percent are physically fit enough to get through boot camp.

In the 2003 draft, for example, 17 percent of draftees had various “psychic disorders.” Another 14 percent were alcoholics, 7 percent had police records and 40 percent were high-school dropouts.

The ritualized hazing of recruits in their barracks kills several hundred young soldiers every year and traumatizes countless others. Closely held army reports say that a fourth of all non-combat deaths are suicides, and dozens of soldiers die each winter after overnight punishment sessions outdoors.

Draftees make about $5 a month, and many will find themselves doing menial chores or manual labor, such as building summer houses for senior officers. Many also sell their blood to get extra money.

So it’s little wonder that draft-dodging is epidemic every spring.

An estimated 22,000 young men won’t answer their draft notices this week - it’s called a “summons” here - and tens of thousands of others will use phony medical exams, fake university enrollments or bribery to avoid serving.

When Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov recently floated the idea of ending student deferments, student groups immediately took to the streets in protest. Ivanov quickly backed off, although a major curtailment of deferments is being drafted in the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.

Some young men hurriedly join police forces or fire brigades to get deferments. Quickie “marriages” to single mothers aren’t uncommon: Men with dependents also receive deferments. (Young women aren’t subject to the draft.)

Andrei Nikolayev, a former army general and Duma member, said no more than 500 people ever tried to evade the draft in a given year during the Soviet era. Now the rate is 44 times higher.

Alternative service exists in Russia, but the term is three years, a year longer than the regular military hitch. Young men seeking alternative service also can be assigned to work as civilians - cleaning latrines or painting barracks - in the military units they were trying to avoid.

Maria Fedulova’s zeal to stop the draft stems from her memories of her son, Denis, as a 19-year-old draftee. Denis had fired a weapon only three times in boot camps before he was sent to Chechnya. He worked mostly as a driver, collecting injured soldiers from battlefields, but she remembers him talking about hearing and feeling the crunch of bones as he drove over bodies.

When he was kidnapped by separatists in Chechnya, no one in the military told her. She learned it for herself after his letters stopped and she traveled to southern Russia to find him. An American journalist gave her the news, she said.

Eventually, her son was swapped for a rebel fighter in Russian hands and he came home. But the experience left him scarred. He didn’t speak for two months, and he couldn’t get a job.

“He’s still like a time bomb, ready to go off,” she said. As for her son, “he’d go to prison before he’d ever go back into the army.”

Yahoo! News - S. Korea bars secret video of the North

Tue Mar 29, 3:00 AM ET

A tape of a public execution, smuggled into South Korea, is kept off the air.

By Robert Marquand, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - On a bleached and scratchy video image smuggled out of Kim Jong Il’s closed regime, blindfolded prisoners are tied to white posts on a rocky landscape, shot three times, and dragged away. The rare video footage of summary executions in North Korea - a practice considered routine in the North but never captured on film - was taken by hidden camera March 1 and 2, and smuggled through China to South Korea.

At the time, refugee groups in Seoul were ecstatic. It looked like a human rights slam-dunk: Refugees from the North have long described summary executions - public spectacles where prisoners are shot moments after a death sentence is proclaimed. The shootings are a form of social control via terror, experts say.

Yet in a twist not anticipated by underground groups that carried off the filming, South Korean TV authorities have not let the video be broadcast. The tape has been aired worldwide; Japan recently aired three exhaustive reports.

But due to intense though indirect pressure by Seoul officials, the North Korean execution tapes, purportedly of “middlemen” who help refugees escape to China, are not yet available for viewing by Koreans in the South. The indirect censure adds to frustration among those documenting the gulags and torture in the North. They charge indifference in the South to evidence of manifold suffering by ethnic siblings across the demilitarized zone.

It also raises anew questions about a five-year policy in Seoul of studiously avoiding acts that might upset Pyongyang, for fear of harming fragile North-South relations. South Korea’s ambivalence about a get-tough policy with North Korea may also factor into the mechanics of the six-party talks over the North’s recently declared nuclear program.

“We have told of many public executions [in the North]. But officials in Seoul always ask us for material evidence,” says Pak Sang Huk, an escapee from the North. “Now that we have evidence, they don’t want to see it…. The people who brought this tape through China were speechless when they visited KBS [Korean Broadcast Service] studios, and were shunned.” Mr. Pak claims those who filmed the executions risked their lives to do so.

Seoul’s effort to avoid broadcasts of negative images or facts about North Korea is part of a larger strategy dating to the Sunshine Policy and Korean summit of 2000. In this view, unification of North and South can’t be achieved if the South criticizes or acts in a manner that the North deems hostile.

“Kim Jong Il holds public executions to show the Kim family is omnipotent,” says Jae Jin Suh of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “It is naive to think that Pyongyang will respond to a push by Seoul to change and treat its people better. We need to focus on what is effective, not what we think we should say.”

Of late, the South has stopped raising the North’s abuses in international bodies. In 2003, South Korea withdrew from a UN Geneva process when it required a vote on North Korea’s human rights record. In 2004, Seoul abstained from voting. A new South Korean defense white paper released this month after a three-year delay, deletes a former reference to the North Korean Army as the “main threat.”

Critics say that to stifle or disallow comment about the unpredictable Kim leaves the South in the position of being influenced or governed by Kim’s own whims. Supporters of Sunshine say that patience is needed, and a return to hostile accusations could create a standoff that would slow foreign investment in the South. Critics say millions are suffering now.

The taped executions took place near Hoeryang, along the Chinese border. South Korean intelligence officers have told Western reporters the tape is far too detailed to be a fake. Yet officially the tape’s authenticity is “still under investigation.”

North Korean refugees claim that an underground group called Youth League for Freedom shot the tape, which records about 104 minutes over two days.

The camera is held at mid-body and initial images are of a rush of dark winter coats, a thronging crowd, police officers pushing people into line. Some 1,500 persons appear scattered around a rocky ravine. At one point, a white “propaganda truck” pulls up and over a megaphone one hears a charge read out. The accused are described as prostitute traffickers. (Sources insist the executed were helping Koreans escape the North.)

In due course, white posts are hammered into the ground. Then two men are escorted from a tent. Their arms are tied to the post. People stand on top of bicycles to see. A woman is heard to say, “I can’t watch this.” A police chief’s voice calls out, “Aim, fire, fire, fire.” Nine shots by three soldiers ring out from behind the prisoners, who instantly fall. An official with a megaphone can be heard saying, “How pathetic is the end of these traitors of the fatherland.”

Such footage is rare, coming from one of the world’s most closed states. Since 1956, North Korea has been sorted into a hierarchy of those with greater or lesser adoration for the ruling Kim family. At the top is a “core class” of supporters, followed by a “wavering class” whose loyalty is questioned, and a “hostile class” that are outcast. The Kim family “recognizes only a part of the population,” notes Stephen Bradner, a veteran US adviser in Seoul. “The rest are considered disposable.”

Evidence of a system of gulags where hundreds of thousands of the hostile class live has been confirmed by satellite imagery. From 1995 to 1999, between 1 and 3 million starved to death. Detailed knowledge of the North is difficult to obtain.

Nearly half the geographical area is off limits. Distrust of foreigners is profound. A fifth of the population are alleged to be informers, and a half dozen security agencies compete with each other to quash dissent, say US sources.

What the tape shows, apart from punishment seemingly in excess of the alleged crime, is that the accused have no lawyer, are not allowed to speak, and have no appeal, says Abraham Lee, a human rights lawyer in Seoul who also heads Refuge Pnan, which offers sanctuary for refugees.

US and Japanese sources describe a practice of stuffing rocks in the mouths of the accused - making them unable to shout out last words against the regime.

Many activists express dismay at a disinterest in the fate of fellow Koreans. Gyeng-seob Oh, who runs the newsletter NKnet, says, “When I first saw the footage, I thought it would be front-page news. But South Korea, the most important market for this information, was not interested.”

The only public airing of the tape in Korea came March 25 in a basement room of the Seoul National Assembly Library. One refugee testified that Pyongyang had in recent years declared that executions should be kept indoors. A large public outdoor gathering suggests that a crackdown may be under way, experts mused.

Another refugee plaintively asked the group what South Koreans will say to North Koreans “once North Korea is liberated. “What will we say when they ask us, ‘What did you do to help?’ “

Yahoo! News - Kuwait Professor Gives Up on Speech Fight

By DIANA ELIAS, Associated Press Writer

KUWAIT CITY - A liberal university professor — tired of legal and verbal assaults from fundamentalists who say he mocks Islam — has given up his fight for freedom of speech in a country he says has become infested with the "germs and viruses of hatred and tyranny."

Ahmed al-Baghdadi — sentenced last week to a suspended one-year prison term for mocking Islam — said he has written his last newspaper column. Earlier, he said he would seek asylum in a Western country to protect his life, his family and his freedom of expression.

On Saturday, the Kuwait University political science professor told The Associated Press he also was considering less drastic options, such as retirement or spending a year abroad, which would be easier on him and his family.

"Writing and living in the shadow of fear is impossible, and dignity is above all," al-Baghdadi wrote in his final column Saturday.

He said legal battles have broken his only weapon — his pen — and there was nothing left for him but to surrender.

Al-Baghdadi’s decision came a week after the Appeals Court convicted him of mocking Islam and handed down a suspended one-year prison sentence, overturning an acquittal by a lower court. It also ordered him to pay a $6,825 deposit, which would be forfeited if he commits the same offense within the next three years.

Al-Baghdadi, an archrival of religious extremists who also took him to court in 1999, has appealed the verdict to the higher Cassation Court, but he said Saturday in his final column for the Al-Siyassah daily newspaper that he would not return to writing even if he won the case.

"It is not a matter of a court ruling here or a court ruling there," he wrote. "It is the sick climate that is filled with germs and viruses of hatred and tyranny."

The legal battle stemmed from a June 5, 2004, column in which al-Baghdadi wrote that he sent his son to an expensive foreign school rather than a state school because he did not want "ignorant" teachers to teach him "how to disrespect women and non-Muslims." Wrong teachings could lead his son to terrorism, he said.

"In short, I want to have a son with an education and a mind I can be proud of, not (a son) with backward thinking," he wrote.

Two Muslim fundamentalists complained to judicial authorities about the column and al-Baghdadi was tried and acquitted by a misdemeanor court.

The Appeals Court, however, ruled the professor had made "derogatory" comments about Islam by linking terrorism and "backward thinking" to religious classes at state schools.

For more than a decade, this small, oil-rich ally of Washington has been pulled between politically strong fundamentalists, who want to fully implement Sharia, or Islamic law, and the less powerful Westernized liberals, who call for more democracy and freedom of expression.

The 1962 constitution guarantees freedom of expression but laws penalize those who insult the country’s religion.

In his farewell column, al-Baghdadi said he could not play "the Kuwaiti roulette" by continuing to write without knowing when the next court case would come.

The U.S.-educated al-Baghdadi, who specializes in political Islam, has been campaigning for years against fundamentalists who he said "terrorize" writers and journalists.

"If terrorism spreads, nobody will be spared. Everyone could be gripped by the neck for a word or a joke unsuspiciously uttered, and accused of being against religion," he wrote in a December 1999 column.

That year, al-Baghdadi was convicted of blaspheming Islam when he wrote that the Prophet Mohammed initially failed to convert nonbelievers in the holy city of Mecca. Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, pardoned the professor and he was released from prison after serving about half of his one-month sentence.

Yahoo! News - South Korean Lawmakers See North ‘Execution’ Tapes

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - Grainy video purporting to show public executions in North Korea captures the depravity of the communist state, South Korea’s opposition leader said on Friday, urging Seoul to press Pyongyang on human rights.

Members of parliament from the main opposition Grand National Party and human rights activists screened two tapes at the South’s National Assembly library that they say were smuggled from the North.

Activists say the tapes were made with a hidden camera and show thousands gathering at two separate events to watch public executions in and near Hoeryong, south of North Korea’s border with China.

"Among all the horrendous things that have happened in the North, this is the most egregious," said Park Geun-hye, Grand National Party leader and daughter of assassinated president Park Chung-hee.

"The government of South Korea should investigate this and stop this," she said. Her party takes a harder line on North Korea than the ruling Uri Party, which has not publicly pressed the North on its suspected human rights abuses.

The videotapes were broadcast over three nights from last week on Japanese national network NTV.

In the first video, which activists said was taped on March 1, a propaganda van travels near a public market in Hoeryong as people in the crowd speak in North Korean accents about getting a good view.

Eleven people are shown. They are charged with being human trafficking brokers who smuggled North Korean women across the border for arranged marriages with Chinese men.

LIFELESS

In an outdoor trial that takes less than 20 minutes — where no defense is presented — two of the 11 are sentenced to death. The Japanese broadcaster magnified the executions, which take place in the distance, so that they can be seen more clearly.

In the distance, one man is tied to a post by his head, torso and legs. Three soldiers fire one round each at the head, breaking the ropes as the man slumps forward, then the chest as the ropes break again and the man slumps forward more, and finally the legs, as the lifeless body falls to the ground.

The other person is executed in the same manner. The bodies are then stuffed into burlap bags and tossed into the back of a van as children run to the scene to get a glimpse of the action.

There is also a second video activists say was taken on the following day in the same general area that shows an execution of one other person in the same manner.

The total running time for the videos is 105 minutes and the Japanese broadcaster used satellite imaging and videotape taken from the Chinese side of the border to match features from Hoeryong with those shown in the video

"The North Korean authorities start to publicise executions by going to factories and other places about a week before they take place in order to build up crowds," said Park Kwang-il, a North Korean refugee, who said executions are a regular part of the system.

The North is one of the world’s most tightly controlled societies, but reports have filtered out of persistent rights abuses that include networks of prison camps, public executions and guilt through association where relatives of criminals are also punished.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has adopted resolutions expressing serious concern over human rights conditions in North Korea. Pyongyang denies human rights abuses and criticizes the United States and other countries for taking it to task.

Blogger wins conditional release - Breaking - http://www.smh.com.au/technology/

The Bahraini moderator of an online discussion forum said on Tuesday he and two web technicians detained on charges of defaming the ruler of the Gulf island state of Bahrain had been freed after two weeks in custody but could not change addresses until the case was closed.

“They released us last night, but the investigation is continuing,” Ali Abdel Imam, editor of the Bahrainonline website who had been in detention since February 27, said.

The three were detained on charges of “defaming the ruler, inciting hatred against the regime and spreading rumours and lies that could cause disorder,” lawyer Ahmed Al Arayedh said after their arrest.

He said the trio were accused of running a website that made it possible to publish such material, not of writing the material themselves.

The two web technicians, Hussein Yussef and Mohammad Al Musawi, were arrested on March 1.

The three were released after refusing an earlier offer to pay the equivalent of $US2660 bail.
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Abdel Imam said he and his colleagues had not been told when they would be questioned again or if the public prosecutor would respond to their request to bring an independent web expert into the investigation to help clear up technical matters.

“We sought to prove to the prosecutor that anyone can log on to the website and post any material. We can control the material after, not before, it is posted,” Abdel Imam said.

Last Thursday, police dispersed dozens of supporters who rallied outside the police station where the three were held. Another protest was staged outside the prosecutor’s office on Sunday.

Calls for the men’s release also came from Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

In 2002, Bahrain’s information ministry censored websites on the grounds of inciting sectarianism or propagating lies, sparking protests by activists.

Here’s a good overview on the lack of freedom of speech in many countries, especially the Middle East. Would you be brave enough to write what you do if there was the possibility of punishment such as 14 years in an Iranian prison? Don’t take your freedom of speech, if you have it, for granted:

Scoop: William Fisher: Blogging In The Middle East

Tuesday, 15 March 2005

By William Fisher

In democracies throughout the world, ‘blogging’ - setting up personal websites, known as weblogs, able to receive comments from readers - has grown exponentially over the past few years.

In the United States, there are literally millions of ‘blogs’. Their growth has been accelerated by five main factors.

1. First, the number of home computers has grown enormously. Some 61% of adults in the U.S. have Internet access at home and 71% have computers.

2. Second, access to the online technology for creating a blog has become easier and simpler.

3. Third, the U.S. has a relatively high literacy rate.

4. Fourth, for the past decade - but particularly after the historic and controversial presidential election of 2000 - Americans have become increasingly cynical about reporting by newspapers, radio, and broadcast, cable and satellite television controlled by giant corporations.

5. Finally, America has become a deeply divided nation politically and socially. Citizens with widely divergent points of view have found blogging a way to express their ideas and join or create communities of like-minded bloggers.

When satellite television arrived, it was hailed by journalism watchers as the ‘the new media’. But, predictably, its novelty was short-lived. Now, there are indications that, over the next decade, the Internet generally, and blogging in particular, may become the ‘new new media’ - America’s primary source of news.

However, it’s not there yet - a recent survey Gallup for CNN showed that only one in four Americans are either very familiar or somewhat familiar with blogs. So the jury is still out on whether virtual reality will replace Gutenberg. However, trends point in that direction.

Not yet in the Greater Middle East, though there are many parallels. For example, blogging technology is available to anyone with access to the Internet, and content can easily be created in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and other languages. While home computer ownership is still embryonic, there is pretty solid anecdotal evidence of deep suspicion of government-owned ‘mainstream media’ that spurred growth in the ‘blogosphere’ elsewhere.

But there is at least one critical difference. In most of the countries in the Greater Middle East, using a personal weblog to express political dissent can land you in jail as easily as taking part in an unauthorized political protest in the public square.

Iran is one of the worst offenders. Recently, an Iranian weblogger was jailed for 14 years for ’spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries’ after using his blog to criticize the arrest of other online journalists. Despite the risks, an estimated 75,000 Iranians among its five million Internet users maintain online ‘blogs’. Especially among middle class youth, they have become an important way for Iranians to express dissatisfaction. As in Iran, most countries of the region impose varying degrees of restriction on weblogs.

Saudi Arabia, where authorities block some 400,000 websites, is among the most restrictive. It is unclear how many blogsites there are in the Kingdom, but those that are accessible focus largely on political dissent.

Typical is a site called "The Religious Policeman". One recent posting said, "What Reforms? There aren’t any Reforms! The government promised to set up a higher commission on women’s affairs, guaranteed women participation in the recent National Dialogue Forum… .and in the National Human Rights Commission… the National Dialogue Forum… agreed to change nothing, the ‘team photo’ had no women in it, anyone with any sense left in tears."

In Iraq today, there are hundreds of blogsites, most run by Iraqis, some by American and other coalition soldiers. They are communist, monarchist, Kurdish, Assyrian, Islamist, Shiite, Sunni, nationalist and secularist. Their political positions range from full support for the U.S. invasion and occupation to rabid calls for jihad against the Americans.

For example, on the one-year commemoration of the start of the Iraq war, a 24-year-old woman computer programmer wrote in her "Baghdad Burning" blog, "Occupation Day, April 9, 2003: The day we sensed that the struggle in Baghdad was over and the fear of war was nothing compared to the new fear we were currently facing. It was the day I saw my first American tank roll grotesquely down the streets of Baghdad - through a residential neighborhood. And that was April 9 for me and millions of others…and the current Governing Council want us to remember April 9 fondly and hail it our ‘National Day’ … a day of victory … but whose victory?"

Mona El Tahawy, a columnist at the daily Asharq Al Awsat, writes that bloggers in Iran and Iraq "have inspired others in the Arab world… Despite working in an elite medium, requiring a computer and literacy", she said, "bloggers are the voice of the true Arab street, especially the young." But free expression comes at a price.

In Egypt, authorities have tightened their control of the country’s 600,000 web users. The webmaster of the English-language Al Ahram Weekly was sentenced to a year in prison for posting a sexually-explicit poem, and a 19-year-old student was sentenced to a month in jail for "putting out false information" after reporting a serial killer on the loose in Cairo.

In Syria, one blogger asked others to sign an online petition addressed to " The White House" and "The Elyses" (palace). "With the killing of Hariri in Lebanon" it said, "Syrian Ba’athists are out of control. Who’s next? Syria is inciting civil war in Lebanon." Another Syrian, calling himself "Kafka", wrote that President Assad’s speech "made the Syrian people forget that (he) "never cared to give a damn about us since he came to power… ."

In Tunisia, President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali has been determined to stamp out all cyber-dissidence. Among many others, a prominent lawyer was arrested for posting an article online. In Bahrain, two online forum moderators were arrested. Nonetheless, a Bahraini blogsite, called "Sabbah’s Blog" was busy organizing a "Middle East Bloggers Meetup". Dozens of enthusiastic comments were posted by readers.

Even in Afghanistan, poorest of the poor, blogging is beginning to catch on. One Afghan blog reports, "During the Taliban we didn’t have the Internet, but now there are about 25 net cafes in Kabul, and also some in Herat, Kandahar, and Balkh provinces. People are really interested to use the Internet but it’s too expensive… only rich people can afford it."

If political dissent via blogging has not yet risen to the level of "new, new media" in the western democracies, it is at least not yet constrained by government regulation (though Congress and the Justice Department have floated various proposals to do just that). In fact, there may be a bizarre inverse relationship between the suppression of free expression and the proliferation of blogs. In the U.S., the number of blogs has increased significantly during the Bush Administration, when millions of Americans feel passionately that their civil liberties are being eroded by the ‘war on terror’. That outcry has generated equally passionate response from bloggers on the right.

Maybe the lesson for heads of state in the Middle East is: Increase freedom of speech and reduce the challenge and expense of having to deal with this cyber uproar.

*************
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. His weblog is THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BILL FISHER (http://billfisher.blogspot.com/)

In Bahrain, you’re ‘free’ to speak as long as those in power like what you say.  If the powers that be don’t like what you have to say they might take your freedom away:

Aljazeera.Net - Bahraini blogger to appear in court

The Bahraini moderator of an online discussion forum detained on charges of defaming King Hamad will appear before a prosecutor and then decide if he will go on hunger strike, his lawyer and a brother have said.

"Ali Abd al-Imam, editor of the Bahrainonline website who has been in detention for 15 days, will appear before a prosecutor tomorrow," lawyer Ahmad al-Arayadh told AFP on Saturday.

"He might be kept in detention for another 15 days, freed or put on trial," Arayadh said.

Abd al-Imam was arrested on 27 February, and two technicians with the website - Hussain Yussif and Muhammad al-Musawi - were arrested on 1 March, on charges of "defaming the king, inciting hatred against the regime and spreading rumors and lies that could cause disorder," Arayadh said after their arrest.

‘Defaming king’

But he stressed on Saturday that the trio were accused of running a website that made it possible to publish such material, not of writing the material themselves.

Ali Abd al-Imam "will decide whether he will go on hunger strike depending on the decision of the prosecutor tomorrow"

Hussain Abd al-Imam,
Ali Abd al-Imam’s brother
Abd al-Imam’s brother, Hussain, said he had visited him at the police station where he is being held and was told he had put off a hunger strike he had been due to start on Saturday.

Abd al-Imam "will decide whether he will go on hunger strike depending on the decision of the prosecutor tomorrow," Hussain said.

Abd al-Imam’s two colleagues, who are also under detention for 15 days, will presumably be referred to the prosecutor once that period expires.

Protests

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has meanwhile condemned the detentions.

Despite political reforms introduced by the Bahraini government in recent years, authorities have "criminally prosecuted journalists, censored foreign publications (and) censored political websites," the committee said in a statement, calling for the men’s immediate release.

Police on Thursday night dispersed dozens of people who rallied outside the police station where the three are held in solidarity with the men.

In 2002, Bahrain’s information ministry censored internet sites on the grounds of inciting sectarianism or propagating lies, sparking protests by activists.

Yahoo! News - Women fear losing rights in new Iraq

Fri Mar 4

By Liz Sly Tribune foreign correspondent

The women at Nasar’s beauty salon were Christian and Muslim, Sunni and Shiite, but they spoke with one voice on an issue that worries them all.

"I’m sure they will form an Islamic government and our freedom will be gone," Suzan Sarkon, 30, said as she settled in to get her long black hair trimmed. "We’ve never lived freely in Iraq (news - web sites), and now I think we never will."

"I will commit suicide if that happens," vowed Karama Saeed, 27, who said she cried when she heard that the group led by the secularist interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi won only 14 percent of the vote in Iraq’s landmark election. "No," she said, reconsidering. "I will leave the country."

As Iraq embarks on its uncertain journey toward crafting a new constitution, Iraqi women have perhaps more to win or lose in the process than anyone.

Since the election results were confirmed, many women have expressed deep concerns about the direction in which they see their country headed. A coalition of Islamist Shiite parties won the largest share of the seats in Iraq’s new National Assembly. The parties have nominated an Islamic scholar to be prime minister, and though they insist they do not want to impose a religious government on Iraq, they have made it clear they expect Islam to feature in the new constitution.

Yanar Mohammed, a women’s rights campaigner, has no doubt that the parties represented in the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, intend to use their majority to introduce Shariah, or Islamic law, into the constitution that the assembly will write.

Fearing marginalization

"This was their mandate. It’s their policy. If you are an Islamist party, it’s the priority on your agenda," she said. "Ibrahim al-Jaafari is well-decorated to look like a Western man, but he has this 100 percent Islamic agenda, and women will be inferior if he takes over."

Though al-Jaafari, the Shiite candidate for prime minister, and other Shiite leaders have said they do not want an Iranian-style Islamic government, they have said repeatedly that they will not allow laws that "contradict Islam" and that the "Islamic identity" of Iraq should be preserved–wording that, if included in the constitution, would open the door to the application of Islamic law in many areas of life that mostly affect women, experts say.

At a minimum, that likely will mean applying Shariah to civil and family laws, according fewer rights to women than men in areas such as marriage, divorce and inheritance, said Joyce Wiley, an authority on Iraqi Shiites at the University of South Carolina. "I’m afraid it’s not going to be very good for women," she said.

Salama Khafaji, a newly elected Shiite legislator, says women have no reason to fear Shariah. Many women who voted for the Shiite coalition support the idea of Islamic laws, which does not mean they want to impose their views on other women, she said.

"Many women choose to wear hijab," said Khafaji, who always wears a black head-to-toe abaya. "It will be voluntary."

But a climate in which religious values are being asserted by the country’s government may make it difficult for women who don’t want to cover themselves to resist social pressures to conform, said Mohammed, who plans to organize a march demanding a secular constitution on March 8.

The marked increase in the number of women wearing head scarves these days is only the most outwardly visible sign of the creeping Islamization of society that has already taken place since the U.S. invasion, leaving many women living under a de facto form of Islamic rule, she said.

"There are armed men everywhere. If you go without the protection of the scarf, they can stop you and you may get assaulted," Mohammed said. "And there’s pressure from husbands and fathers. Being good and chaste means you put a veil on. They tell you it’s voluntary, but how can it be voluntary when there’s that much pressure on you?"

The liberation promised by the U.S. invasion has so far eluded most Iraqi women. With gunmen roaming the streets and kidnappings a daily occurrence, protective fathers and anxious husbands keep their daughters and wives at home. Women have been targeted for failing to cover their heads and for expressing views such as those of Mohammed, who has received several death threats.

These days a trip to the beauty salon is one of the few escapes for women who no longer feel safe going out on the streets. At Nasar’s, in one of Baghdad’s safer neighborhoods, customers linger after their beauty treatments, smoking cigarettes, sipping sweet black coffee and talking about their increasingly restricted lives.

"Everyone I know stays home. It’s been two years since I went out with my friends," said Tara Husham, 22, whose Muslim father and Christian mother say she must be home by 5 p.m.

`Destroying us’

"Our lives have been devastated," said customer Saeed, a Christian and mother of two who barely dares to go out since she was chased last month by gunmen she believes were trying to kidnap her. "It’s destroying us psychologically."

"If there is Islamic law, it will be worse," Husham said. "Islamic law is very traditional–women must obey everything men say. It means democracy will be denied to us."

As she spoke, a figure cloaked in black entered the salon, striking a stark contrast with the other women dressed in jeans and tight sweaters.

Tearing off her head scarf and shaking loose her blond-streaked hair, Anwar Sobhi, 30, explained that she traveled from a neighborhood overrun by radical Sunni insurgents, where graffiti on the walls threatens death to women who don’t cover their hair and where the beauty salons were forced to close months ago because they are deemed un-Islamic.

"Of course, I don’t want to dress like this. … I want to wear what I like," said Sobhi, who is Shiite. "When I was a child, my parents used to try to make me wear hijab to school, and when I got around the corner I would take it off. It was just like suffocation."

She only began covering up last month, after she was threatened by armed men.

"Where I live, not even one lady can go out without completely covering her hair," she said. "It’s just too dangerous."

The other women listened with sympathy and alarm.

"If George Bush (news - web sites) thinks this is liberation, then he should make his own wife and daughters wear hijab," said Hanan Azzawi, 36, one of the salon’s stylists.

A strong streak of secularism runs through Iraqi society, the legacy of decades of rule by the quasi-socialist Baath Party. And it is by no means guaranteed that the Islamists, who hold a slim majority of the seats in the National Assembly, will be able to enforce their demands.

Allawi has mounted a challenge to al-Jaafari’s candidacy, and he is wooing women legislators, who have been given a third of the seats under Iraq’s election rules. Approval of the new constitution requires a two-thirds majority, and the secularist Kurds, who hold more than a quarter of the seats, also are opposed to Islamic law.

The women at Nasar’s say they hope Allawi prevails, and if he doesn’t, they are counting on help from another source.

"If America lets the Shiites rule Iraq, they will make a union with Iran (news - web sites) and it will create a very big power in the Middle East," said Husham, who finds it hard to believe U.S. forces invaded Iraq to install an Islamic government. "I’m sure America doesn’t want that. I’m sure they have a plan."

If not, Azzawi, the stylist, says she expects Bush to help out.

"He will have to issue visas for America with this new constitution, because we will all be leaving," she said. "Do they need hairdressers in America?"