Children: The Love of a Parent and the Death of a Child

In Yakima Washington,  an 18-month-old boy died when a dresser apparently fell on top of him, according to police.  I cannot imagine the feelings the parents have.  It is beyond imaginable, the pain they feel and endure.  It is an unimaginable pain for the rest of us, and one that never abates, but is embraced.  A parent has a child and would give their life for their child, and to have a dresser or dog, or pool, or anything take the life of that child ... we weep for the child and for the family.  Yet, there are places in the world where the people who give birth to you, raise you, teach you, protect you ... will kill you if they feel slighted.

There is no protection and the people we trust most - our mother and father, end up being the killers.  What do we say about any civilization or culture that tolerates, perpetuates, permits ... this to continue!

In Pakistan, five girls were killed for having fun. Then the story took an even darker twist. 

By Pamela Constable 

Washington Post

December 17 at 7:00 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It was just a few seconds, a video clip of several young women laughing and clapping to music, dressed for a party or a wedding in orange headscarves and robes with floral patterns. Then a few more seconds of a young man dancing alone, apparently in the same room.

The cellphone video was made six years ago, in a village deep in Kohistan, a rugged area of northwest Pakistan. It was the last time the young women, known only as Bazeegha, Sareen Jan, Begum Jan, Amina and Shaheen, have ever been definitively seen alive.

What happened to them remains a mystery. Their fates have been shrouded by cultural taboos, official inertia, implacable resistance from elders and religious leaders suspected of ordering their deaths, and elaborate subterfuges by the families who reportedly carried out those orders.

Even in Pakistan, where hundreds of  “honor killings” are reported every year, this case was extreme. According to court filings and interviews with people who investigated it, the families confined the girls for weeks, threw boiling water and hot coals on them, then killed them and buried them somewhere in the Kohistan hills.

Later, when investigators appeared, relatives and community leaders insisted that the girls were still alive and produced a second set of similar-looking girls to prove it. They even disfigured one girl’s thumbprints so she couldn’t be checked against the identity of the victim she was supposed to impersonate.

The story illustrates many of the reasons Pakistani officials have failed to curb the problem of honor killings. These include the cruel sway of traditional tribal councils, known as jirgas, over uneducated villagers; the lengths to which such leaders may go to defy state authority; and the casual worthlessness they assign to the rights, lives and even identities of young women. 

Today, the truth is finally beginning to emerge, mostly through the efforts of a few individuals including Afzal Kohistani, a young man whose brothers were killed as a result of the incident. He spent years seeking help from local and provincial officials, then petitioned the Supreme Court. In 2012, his case was dismissed, but last month the high court reopened it and ordered a new investigation that has produced a chilling report.

“This has destroyed my family. The girls are dead, my brothers have been killed and nothing has been done to bring justice or protect us,” said Kohistani, 26, who has received death threats. “I know I will probably be killed, too, but it doesn’t matter,” he said in an interview last week. “What happened is wrong, and it has to change.”

Renewed judicial interest in these long-ago events coincided with another encouraging development: the passage of a law in Parliament that strengthened judicial powers in honor-killing cases. Often, even when such crimes manage to reach the courts, there is no punishment because the law allows victims’ families to “forgive” the perpetrators — who are often their own relatives.  

The new law, passed in October, gives judges more ammunition to impose life sentences for honor killings in extreme circumstances, allowing them to overrule personal deals by making the murder a crime against the state. But supporters fear that cultural and political resistance will continue to prevent justice being done.

“We don’t know yet whether the law will make much difference. Punishment is still not mandatory, and forgiveness can still negate justice,” said Benazir ­Jatoi, a lawyer who works on women’s rights. “Until there is more political will, I don’t think the lives of ordinary women threatened with honor violence will change.”

The Kohistan case unfolded in a conservative rural region where social mingling between genders is taboo. The girls’ participation in a coed singing party was risky enough, but someone posted the video on the Internet, where it spread rapidly, bringing shame on their community before the vast virtual world. 

The mingling of young men and women at a village singing party, along with the spread of this video, was considered a dishonor to their community in a conservative rural region of Pakistan. (TWP)

The head of the local jirga, a Muslim cleric, allegedly issued a religious decree ordering the five girls to be killed for dishonoring their tribe, along with the boy seen dancing and every member of his family. There was no resistance from the community. After the girls were disposed of, several brothers of the boy were also caught and killed. The rest of the family, including Kohistani, fled the area.

There things stood for more than a year. No crimes were reported, and no one came to investigate. Kohistani, a college graduate from one of the area’s wealthier families, said he repeatedly approached local and provincial officials, reporting the killings and seeking protection, but was chided for opposing the jirga’s verdict. 

“No one in my district or my province has ever spoken against honor killing. They tell me I have defamed my culture, my religion, my tribe,” Kohistani said this month. “Everybody knows what happened, but no one is ready to come forward. This is an illegal, unconstitutional and un-Islamic tradition, but people don’t even consider it a crime.”

With assistance from a lawyer in Islamabad, Kohistani appealed directly to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, a liberal activist, personally took up the case in 2012 and ordered two fact-finding missions sent to the remote area by helicopter.  

When the visitors demanded to see the girls, their families at first refused but eventually presented three girls and said they were the ones in the video. The three delegates had no chance to speak to the girls in private, but they compared their faces with images from the video. Two were convinced of the likenesses; the third, Farzana Bari, said she had doubts. 

“I was upset and confused. We had no translators who knew their dialect, and everyone there insisted these were the same girls,” recounted Bari, an academic in Islamabad. “When we got back the second time, I filed a dissenting report, but the judge closed the case. I still feel terrible.”

After that, life in the village apparently returned to normal for several years. One journalist sent photos of both groups of girls to analysts in England, who found only a 14 percent chance they were the same individuals. That evidence was taken to a provincial court, but it declined to take action. Kohistani, in the interview, named each of the original girls and their replacements, who he said were similar-looking sisters, cousins and sisters-in-law. 

Finally, last month, Kohistani’s crusade got an unexpected break when the Supreme Court, under a new chief justice, agreed to accept his petition. Once more, a fact-finding mission was sent to the village. This time, it included a district judge and two police officers, armed with government ID records with the heights and thumbprints of the missing girls. 

What they encountered was hair-raising. 

In his report afterward, Kohistan Judge Shoaib Khan said the village elders were “unanimous” in insisting that the girls were alive. But two of the girls they produced were much younger than the victims, according to their official birth dates. A third could not be identified because both thumbs had been burned; her parents insisted that it was from a cooking accident. He concluded that at least two girls did not match the ones in the video and that the others were probably also impostors.

“All this leads to the suspicious conclusion that something is wrong at bottom,” Khan wrote. The case, he advised, “needs exhaustive inquiry.”

On a recent day, Kohistani, wearing a conservative suit and carrying a copy of the judge’s report, walked up to the Supreme Court. He smiled slightly as he shook hands with his attorney, and they went inside to wait for the next hearing. 

To Protect Peace

Pakistani minister personally offers reward for anti-Islam filmmaker's death

From Nasir Habib, CNN

updated 10:25 AM EDT, Sun September 23, 2012

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- A Pakistan government minister has personally offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who kills the man who made the anti-Islam movie that is drawing ire throughout the Muslim world.

Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour announced the bounty at a news conference Saturday, but he made clear to CNN he was speaking for himself and not as a government representative.

Asked whether he was concerned about committing or condoning a crime as a government official, Bilour said, "I am a Muslim first, then a government representative."

Opinion: Pakistanis can debunk myths about Islam peacefully

He said he invited the Taliban and al Qaeda to carry out the assassination.

I am a Muslim first, then a government representative

Sen. Zahid Khan, a spokesman for Bilour's political party, said the minister's action is not representative of the Awami National Party.

"We believe in nonviolence. How could we make such announcements?" Khan said. "Our party has been fighting against militancy and extremism for years. How could we invite Taliban and al Qaeda to kill someone? Taliban and al Qaeda are our enemies who have killed our loved ones."

"We have lots of concerns over the statement of our colleague," he added.

The leftist Awami National Party is a coalition partner in the federal government led by President's Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party. The ANP is a ruling party in northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Photos: Anti-U.S. demonstrations worldwide

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemns the bounty issued by Bilour, Gilani's spokesman said Sunday.

Shafqat Jalil said the prime minister will take up the issue with the head of the Awami National Party.

Bilour did not mention the filmmaker by name, but he was likely referring to Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who U.S. officials say is behind the privately produced film.

Nakoula and his family have already left their California home and gone into hiding amid the worldwide storm of protest, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced.

Actress in anti-Islamic film files lawsuit against filmmaker














Islam

America basher’s backfire: Killed by flag smoke

By ANDY SOLTIS

 
Post Wire Services
September 18, 2012

In an apparent case of red, white and blue revenge, a Pakistani protester died yesterday after inhaling smoke from a burning American flag during an anti-US rally.

Abdullah Ismail succumbed at Mayo Hospital in Lahore a day after attending the fierce protest at the city’s Mall Road, where an estimated 10,000 people rallied.

Witnesses said Ismail had complained of feeling ill after breathing fumes from burning flags, Pakistan’s Express Tribune reported.

Another Pakistani protester was killed during clashes with police yesterday after demonstrators set a press club ablaze, apparently angry that their protest of an anti-Islam film wasn’t getting enough media coverage.

Hundreds set fire to the club in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Upper Dir area, authorities said. Police said cops charged the crowd, beating them with batons.

The mob then set a government office ablaze.

The protester died and several were wounded when police and the demonstrators exchanged gunfire, police said.

Also yesterday, a man died after being shot in the head Sunday during a march in which hundreds of people broke through a barricade to get to the US Consulate in the southern city of Karachi.

There were more clashes in Karachi yesterday as demonstrators from the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party tried to reach the consulate.

Police lobbed tear gas, fired rounds in the air and made 40 arrests. No injuries were reported.

Pakistanis have also held many peaceful protests against the film, which critically portrays the prophet Mohammed. One held in the southwest town of Chaman yesterday was attended by about 3,000 students and teachers.

The chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court ordered the state telecommunications authority to block the film on YouTube because it is considered blasphemous.

Pakistan: Religion and Law

Christian Girl’sBlasphemy Arrest Incites a Furor in Pakistan

New York Times

B.K. Bangash/Associated Press

By DECLAN WALSH and SALMAN MASOOD
Published: August 20, 2012

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The arrest and imprisonment of a Christian girl accused of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws stoked a public furor on Monday, renewing international scrutiny of growing intolerance toward minorities in the country.

The police jailed the girl, Rimsha Masih, and her mother on Friday after hundreds of Muslim protesters surrounded the police station here where they were being held, demanding that Ms. Masih face charges under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. A local cleric had said Ms. Masih had burned pages of the Noorani Qaida, a religious textbook used to teach the Koran to children.

By Monday night, as Pakistani Muslims celebrated the feast of Id al-Fitr, Ms. Masih and her mother were being held in Adiala jail, a grim facility in nearby Rawalpindi, awaiting their fate. Meanwhile, a number of the girl’s Christian neighbors had fled their homes, fearing for their lives, human rights workers said.

Senior government and police officials agreed with Christian leaders that the accusations against Ms. Masih were baseless and predicted that the case would ultimately be dropped.

Still, the case has already grabbed global headlines and inspired a hail of Twitter posts, even though several details are in dispute.

Christian, and some Muslim, neighbors said Ms. Masih was 11 years old and had Down syndrome. Senior police officers dismissed those claims; one described her as 16 and “100 percent mentally fit.”

Whatever the truth, experts said Ms. Masih’s plight highlighted a wider problem. “This case exemplifies the absurdity and tragedy of the blasphemy law, which is an instrument of abuse against the most vulnerable in society,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch.

While non-Muslims have long been vulnerable to persecution in Pakistan, the state’s ability to protect them is diminishing. Last week, gunmen executed 25 Shiites after taking them off a bus near Mansehra, in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. On Saturday, Hindu leaders in Sindh called on the government to protect their community from forced conversions by Muslim extremists.

But it is the emotionally charged blasphemy issue that has most polarized society. Ever since the governor of Punjab Province, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down by his own bodyguard in January 2011 for his support of blasphemy reforms, the space for public debate has narrowed in Pakistan.

Violent mobs led by clerics have framed the argument, as appears to have happened in Ms. Masih’s case.

Neighbors said the girl’s family were sweepers — work shunned by Muslims but common among poor Christians — and lived in a slum area in Islamabad.

Malik Amjad, landlord of the family’s rented house, said the controversy started early last week after his nephew saw Ms. Masih holding a burned copy of the Noorani Qaida. The nephew informed a local cleric, Khalid Jadoon, Mr. Amjad said.

Desecration of Muslim holy texts is illegal in Pakistan and punishable by death. But Mr. Amjad said the incident bothered few local residents initially and caught fire only at the instigation of the cleric and two conservative shopkeepers.

“He tried to shame people by saying, ‘What good are your prayers if the Koran is being burnt?’ ” Mr. Amjad said.

Mr. Amjad said he handed the girl over to the police for her own protection and criticized the cleric’s role. “He exaggerated the incident and provoked people,” he said.

It was not clear how, or even if, Ms. Masih had come across the burned religious book. One neighbor, Malik Shahid, said it might have simply become accidentally swept up in a trash pile she was collecting.

The Pakistani police often are forced to register blasphemy cases against their wishes, human rights campaigners say, either to save the accused blasphemer or their own officers from attack.

In July, a large crowd, prompted by inflammatory statements from local mosques, swarmed a police station in Bahawalpur district in southern Punjab, searching for a blasphemy suspect who was being interrogated by police. The mob seized the man, beat him to death and burned his body outside the station.

A similar mob attack occurred in June in Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, although in that case the police beat back the protesters.

The turmoil comes just days after Pakistanis marked the country’s 65th independence anniversary amid muted ceremonies and considerable soul-searching across the political spectrum.

“Desecrating graves, arresting 11 year old with Down syndrome, targeting of Shias — the list goes on. This is not what r religion is about,” Shireen Mazari, a staunch nationalist commentator, said on Twitter.

The adviser to the prime minister on national harmony, Dr. Paul Bhatti, said he hoped to defuse Ms. Masih’s situation through talks with moderate Muslim leaders. Dr. Bhatti is the brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, a minister for minorities who was gunned down outside his Islamabad home in early 2011, weeks after Mr. Taseer’s death.

Even if Ms. Masih avoids blasphemy charges, her family is unlikely to ever return home. Although nobody has been executed under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, even suspected blasphemers are in danger for the rest of their lives.

Several have been killed by vigilantes; others have been forced to flee Pakistan.

pakistan

Honor Killings: Pakistan is Rife with the murder of innocents.

Barbarism.  Animals.  Yet animals are not so unkind.  For people to speak of honor ... who have neither honor nor humanity, bespeaks a great deal ab out these cretins.  But, on the other hand - for anyone to be so naive as to believe such things do not happen and all will be well ... they walked into it, and Darwin sorted them out.

Scottish businessman and wife shot dead in Pakistan 'honour killing'

A Scottish businessman and his American wife were shot dead in the street in a suspected honour killing while on holiday in Pakistan, it has emerged.

3:45PM GMT 24 Nov 2011

Saif Rehman, 31, from Glasgow, and his wife 30 year-old wife Uzma Naurin, who is from New York, were gunned down while on a shopping trip in Gujrat earlier this month.

Reports say their car was ambushed by four men and Mr Rehman was killed instantly before Mrs Naurin was taken away with the group. Her body was found a few hours later dumped in nearby bushes on November 1.

It is believed the couple were accompanied by a driver, Mr Rehman’s sister and her two-year-old daughter.

The other passengers are thought to have escaped unharmed.

Pakistani police are investigating claims of "tension" between the couple’s parents over their marriage three years ago.

They were married in Manchester before a more elaborate ceremony, involving both sides of the family, occured in Glasgow in June.

Attendees of the wedding reported that it appeared that the differences might have been resolved.

The couple's friend, Saif Ali, from Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, said they were in the country for a family wedding and were returning from a shopping trip when they were killed.

''They were going back home and basically, all of a sudden, the driver just stopped the car," he said.

''Four people were in a different car which stopped in front of them.

''They pulled Saif and his sister and his wife out of the car and as soon as he was pulled out of the car, they shot him without saying anything.''

Mr Ali added: ''Five minutes up the road they basically killed her (Uzma Naurin) as well.

''She wasn't found until quite a bit of time later.

''Probably about three or four hours later she was found as they had basically put her in the shrubs somewhere, just on the side of the road.''

Police in the Punjab region of Pakistan are understood to be investigating whether the couple, who reportedly married in Glasgow in February, were the victims of an ''honour killing''. They are said to be treating their deaths as a targeted attack.

Mr Ali told the BBC that Mr Rehman's sister and niece were in the same car as the couple, but were not killed after being asked to identify themselves. It is also reported that nothing was stolen from the vehicle.

Mr Ali, 30, of Cumbernauld, Dunbartonshire, owns a mobile phone repair company, met Mr Rehman – who operates a similar firm called GSM Communications in Glasgow – three years ago.

The Foreign Office is not involved in the case as Mr Rehman was a Pakistani national and Mrs Naurin was a US citizen.

islam

Pakistani Honor Killings

Pakistan honour killings reach 675 this year

At least 675 honour killings have been carried out in Pakistan during the first nine months of this year, according to a human rights group which is calling for urgent steps to protect women and girls.

By Rob Crilly, Islamabad

4:17PM GMT 20 Dec 2011

The shocking tally highlights the scale of violence against women in conservative, rural parts of the Muslim country, where rape victims are routinely sentenced to death by village elders and murderers can escape court by paying blood money.

Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said too many cases were dismissed by police as private, family affairs.

"It is one of the signs of a paternalistic and feudal society," she said.

"The government introduced a law in 2006 to check this and at least more cases are now being registered.

"But the status of women in these societies means that anything they do is seen as a reflection of the family's honour and that there is some sympathy for the perpetrators of these murders."

The murders include at least 71 victims under the age of 18, a figure expected to rise by the time the group publishes its report in February.

About 450 of the women killed from January to September were accused of having "illicit relations" and 129 of marrying without permission.

Some victims were raped or gang-raped before being killed, according to the preliminary report. At least 19 were killed by their sons, 49 by their fathers and 169 by their husbands.

Many cases are dismissed when relatives of the victim accept "diyat"or blood money from the accused.

Campaigners say they are encouraged by two laws passed last week, stiffening the penalty for acid attacks and criminalising practices such as marrying off young girls to settle tribal disputes, but that there is still a long way to go.

Doctors at Multan Hospital were on Tuesday trying to repair the face of Salma Bibi, 18, who was brought to them after her husband allegedly sliced off her nose.

She told relatives he believed she was about to run away with another man.

islam

Taliban - Execution of Bus Passengers

Of course the Taliban can be trusted.  This was just a few over zealous people who probably regret their actions.  They were probably upset with the US and instead took it out on shia.

Official: Assailants attack buses in Pakistan, kill 18

February 28, 2012|By the CNN Wire Staff

In an unusual attack in a relatively peaceful region of northwest Pakistan, assailants ambushed four passenger buses, pulled out Shiite males and killed 18 of them Tuesday, police said.

Pakistani officials swiftly condemned the attack, with President Asif Ali Zardari saying the "culprits of such a heinous crime will not be spared."

The attack took place in the mountainous Kohistan district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, senior police official Muhammad Ilyas said.

The attack was unusual in both its scope and its sectarian nature in a region that normally does not see much militant activity.

Police official Khurshid Khan said this was the first time an incident of this magnitude had taken place in the area.

Sunni-Shiite Muslim violence has been minimal in the past and this is the first time an organized terrorist attack targeting either group has taken place," he said.

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Ahmed Marwat, told CNN that his group claims responsibility for the attack.

The interior minister, Rehman Malik, immediately formed a team to investigate the incident and promised a report within three days, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

The buses were carrying passengers from Rawalpindi to the city of Gilgit in northwest Pakistan, Ilyas said. Gilgit is an area with a considerable population of Shiites.

Assailants stopped the buses early Tuesday morning and ordered the passengers out, he said.

They then singled out the male Shiite passengers, lined them up and shot them, Ilyas said.

Eight others were injured in the attack, but Sunni passengers were unharmed, he said.

Even though the area is not known for militant activity, Pakistan -- a majority Sunni Muslim nation -- has a long history of sectarian violence. Shiites make up roughly 20 percent of a population of about 170 million.

Muhammad Amir Rana -- the head of an Islamabad based think tank that monitors militant activity in the region -- says in recent months tensions have escalated between Sunni's and Shiites in the district of Kohistan with a number of targeted killings. He says the killings were usually single deaths that didn't make headlines. Rana says local leaders were trying to bring peace between the sects in the region.

"I think this is a result of the rising tension in the region in the past couple of months," he said. "We've seen targeted killings there but nothing of this magnitude. This can destroy the peace talks that were taking place in the area between different groups."

taliban