The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (121): Unconscious Deportation

A group of illegal Mexican laborers from the northern Indiana and Illinois region walk to board a train in Chicago, Ill., to be deported to their native Mexico, July 27, 1951

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The AP is out with an incredible report detailing the stories of undocumented immigrants who were deported by American hospitals, while they were unconscious.

Two of the immigrants profiled, Jacinto Cruz and Jose Rodriguez-Saldana, were unlucky enough to be involved in car accidents and their punishment was being flown to Mexico while still in a coma.  The kicker is, they had health insurance, because they had solid jobs, but without documentation proving legal immigrant status, the hospital took it upon themselves to deport Cruz and Rodriguez-Saldana. ….

When the men awoke, they were more than 1,800 miles away in a hospital in Veracruz, on the Mexican Gulf Coast. (source)

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (120): The Crime of Carrying Condoms

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The NYPD can arrest you for carrying condoms … Trans and carrying condoms? You must be a prostitute, and condoms are the proof! Wearing a tight t-shirt and carrying condoms? You must be a prostitute, and condoms are the proof! A sex worker who is trying to keep herself safe in her work? You are actually a prostitute, so go to jail, or at the very least get your condoms taken away so your work is more dangerous. The condoms-as-evidence policy serves absolutely no one. (source)

Here’s an excerpt of the supporting deposition:

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (118): The Commodification of Children

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Taj Mohammad tries hard to hold back his tears as he describes the most painful decision of his life.

“I had to sell my six-year-old daughter Naghma to a relative to settle an old debt,” Mr Mohammad says, staring blankly at the tattered tarpaulin roof of his small mud shelter.

A shy girl with a smiling face, Naghma is now engaged to a boy 10 years older than her. Mr Mohammad says his daughter may have to leave for the boy’s home in Helmand‘s Sangin district in a year.

His wife and mother-in-law sob inconsolably as they try to protect Naghma and her seven siblings from the harsh Afghan winter outside.

“Everyone in the family is sad,” says Naghma’s grandmother, who was herself a child bride. “We cry. We are in pain. But what else could we do?” she asks. …

“To keep my family alive, I took a loan of $2,500 [about £1,600] from a distant relative,” Mr Mohammad says. …

He says he was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his three-year-old son and an uncle, both of whom died in the cold earlier this month, when the distant relative sent a message demanding his money back.

“He wanted his money back. But I couldn’t pay. No-one would lend money to me,” he says.

“Then a relative suggested that I give my daughter in lieu of money.” (source)

More on child marriage and commodification. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (117): Segregation of HIV-Positive Prisoners

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South-Carolina is now the only US State where HIV-positive prisoners are segregated in separate housing units with unequal program opportunities, inferior mental health care and fewer work options.

There’s absolutely no reason to do that, unless you want to maintain the reign of sexual terror that is still widespread in US prisons. AIDS is almost exclusively transmitted by way of sexual intercourse and needles. Segregating HIV-positive prisoners makes it easier for prison rapists to pursue their hobby. If you don’t know who’s positive and who’s not, you’ll think twice about raping someone. In the “HIV wards”, since they contain only HIV-positive prisoners, there’s also no more reason to refrain from rape.

Things like this make it hard to believe that legislators and prison authorities are not intent on making prison as horrible as possible.

More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (116): Gendered Bicycle Policy in North Korea

North Koreans ride bicycles past a propaganda poster in Kaesong, North Korea Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. Kaesong, which sits just north of the Demilitarized Zone separating North Korea and South Korea, was the ancient capital of the Koryo Dynasty for 500 years until 1392. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

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It’s now illegal (again) for women to ride bicycles in North Korea. The country’s leader Kim Jung Un reinstated his father’s absurd law, but only after he lifted the ban last year.

The late Kim Jong Il decreed in the mid-90s no woman should ride a bike after the daughter of a top general, the vice-chair of the National Defense Commission, was killed riding a bike in Pyongyang. (source)

Hardly the worst North Korean rights violation, but absurd enough. And part of a mindset. Transportation restrictions have always been popular in totalitarian regimes. They prevent people from socializing, forming groups and realizing that they’re not the only ones living in misery. They also help to impoverish people, focusing their attention on their own individual survival and away from politics.

More about the Koreas. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (115): Detection of Homosexuality in Malaysian Children

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The Malaysian government has begun holding seminars aiming to help teachers and parents spot signs of homosexuality in children, underscoring a rise in religious conservatism in the country.

So far, the Teachers Foundation of Malaysia has organised 10 seminars across the country. Attendance at the last event on Wednesday reached 1,500 people, a spokesman for the organisation said.

“It is a multi-religious and multicultural [event], after all, all religions are basically against that type of behaviour,” said the official.

The federal government said in March that it is working to curb the “problem” of homosexuality, especially among Muslims who make up over 60% of Malaysia’s population of 29 million people.

According to a handout issued at a recent seminar, signs of homosexuality in boys may include preferences for tight, light-coloured clothes and large handbags, local media reported.

For girls, the details were less clear. Girls with lesbian tendencies have no affection for men and like to hang out and sleep in the company of women, the reports said. …

Official intolerance of gay people has been on the rise. Last year, despite widespread criticism, the east coast state of Terengganu set up a camp for “effeminate” boys to show them how to become men.

The latest seminar for the teachers and parents was run by deputy education minister Puad Zarkashi, his office confirmed.

Zarkashi wasn’t immediately available for comment but national news agency Bernama quoted him as saying that being able to identify the signs will help contain the spread of the unhealthy lifestyle among the young, especially students.

“Youths are easily influenced by websites and blogs relating to LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] groups,” he was quoted as saying.

“This can also spread among their friends. We are worried that this happens during schooling time.” (source, source)

Ominously, the story doesn’t tell us what they plan to do with the detected children, apart from sending them to a reeducation camp. I’m afraid it may involve something like this.

More on LGBT rights here. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (114): Child Starves to Death in the UK

banksy’s beggar

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The government has been warned it must urgently fix flaws in its support system for successful asylum seekers, after a destitute child starved to death in temporary accommodation in Westminster. … [T]he family had become dependent on “ad hoc” charitable handouts despite a successful asylum claim because of “significant problems” transferring the family from Home Office to mainstream welfare support services. The family of three was forced to “actually become homeless” before local authorities could offer official help. (source)

Brings to mind this older post. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (113): If You Don’t Bite or Kick Your Rapist, It Isn’t Rape

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[T]he Connecticut State Supreme Court overturned the sexual assault conviction of a man who had sex with a woman who “has severe cerebral palsy, has the intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old and cannot verbally communicate.” The Court held that, because Connecticut statutes define physical incapacity for the purpose of sexual assault as “unconscious or for any other reason … physically unable to communicate unwillingness to an act,” the defendant could not be convicted if there was any chance that the victim could have communicated her lack of consent. Since the victim in this case was capable of “biting, kicking, scratching, screeching, groaning or gesturing,” the Court ruled that that victim could have communicated lack of consent despite her serious mental deficiencies. (source)

This is outrageous. Lack of physical resistance is not evidence of consent, nor should it be. If you require rape victims to fight back you’ll only cause more violence and more harm since attackers will answer violence with violence. Rape victims should not be asked to go to such lengths in order to prove that they did not consent. And in any case, one has to assume lack of consent in the case of people with a mental defect, as in the example above. The same is true for people under the statutory age of consent.

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (112): The Tagging of Prisoners With HIV

Jew in Paris, wearing the star

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You can’t tell by looking at someone whether he or she is living with HIV. That is, unless you catch a glimpse of a man who’s living with HIV in the state of Alabama’s prison system.

There are over 200 male prisoners living with HIV in Alabama. The Alabama Department of Corrections requires each of them to wear a white armband at all times, making their health status obvious to other inmates, prison staff, and visitors. The practice is a huge affront to prisoners’ privacy and confidentiality. (source)

Let’s list some of the other things that are wrong with this:

• Why on earth would anyone want to protect prison rapists? Or is it true that the modern day prison system is merely a sanitized front for the perpetuation of medieval punishment?
• Measures such as these nourish the stigma of HIV patients.
• They promote false beliefs about HIV transmission.
• Etc.

More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (111): In Jail For Something That is Not a Crime

woman in Afghan jail, photo by SHAH MARAI AFP Getty Images

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Around 70 percent of Afghanistan’s female prisoners are in jail for running away from home despite the act not being a crime under the law (source). Another absurd prison story from Afghanistan is here.

More on the rule of law and on domestic violence. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (110): An Execution Nobody Wants

Terrance “Terry” Williams

Child advocates, former prosecutors, mental health professionals, former jury members, and the victim’s widow are asking for clemency for a survivor of child sexual abuse who killed his abuser and is scheduled to be executed October 3. Terrance “Terry” Williams was raised by a physically violent mother and was first raped at the age of 6, before being raped repeatedly by his school teacher. As a teenager, he was sexually abused by two adult men, one of whom used his position as a church leader to prey on teenagers and boys. Three months after turning 18, Terry killed one of his abusers, the day after he had raped him.

But the jury had no idea about this abuse. Terry was too ashamed to bring it up. The prosecution, which knew about the abuse, didn’t share it with the defense lawyer, who was so incompetent he met with his client for the first time the day before the trial started. Terry’s co-defendant  didn’t testify about the abuse because, as  he now states in a sworn affidavit, the police and prosecution pressured him not to because they wanted to present the murder as a robbery.

Since the abuse has been revealed, jurors have come forward to say they would not have opted for a death sentence.  Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that does not require the judge to instruct the jury that a life sentence means life without the possibility of parole, and jurors have also said they would not have voted for the death penalty if they had known that parole was not a possibility.

The death penalty in itself is barbaric, but it’s especially disturbing when there are mitigating circumstances. And sadly, Pennsylvania is a huge death penalty state. It has executed more than 400 people since the death penalty was reinstated, and has the fourth largest death row in the country. A bipartisan Senate task force in Pennsylvania is reviewing the state’s death penalty. Let’s hope they recommend a moratorium or, even better, abolition.

In the mean, time, you can sign this petition urging Governor Tom Corbett, the PA Board of Pardons, and the District Attorney to grant clemency for Terry. (source)

More on capital punishment is here. More posts in this series are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (109): Excessive Sentencing in the U.S., Ctd.

escape scene from “O Brother Where Art Thou”

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“[T]hree-strike laws” impose a life sentence on persons who have been convicted of three or more serious crimes. However, the definition of serious crimes depends on the each state. In most states, all three must be violent crimes. But in some states, this is not the case. California law mandates the life sentence for any third felony conviction so long as the first two were deemed “violent” or “serious.” Moreover, an individual can receive multiple strikes from a single incident, leading to unexpected life sentences.

In Rummel v. Estelle, the Supreme Court upheld a life sentence with the possibility of parole for William James Rummel for a felony fraud crime amounting to $120.75. On his third offense, Rummel refused to return money received as payment for unsatisfactory repairs of an air conditioning unit, resulting with a life sentence. In Lockyer v. Andrade, Leandro Andrade received a mandatory sentence of 25 to life for stealing a total of nine videotapes at two different K-mart stores. (source)

Other examples are here. Some incarceration statistics are here. And more posts in this series are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (108): Fatwa for Opposing Ban on Premarital Sex

A cleric has issued a fatwa calling for the death of the editor of Morocco’s Al-Ahdath Al-Maghribia daily newspaper, Moktar el-Ghzioui, after he went on television proclaiming his opposition to article 490 of the Moroccan penal code, which criminalizes premarital sex. The BBC reported last Thursday that Ghzioui is in fear for his life following his controversial public statements in defense of sex before marriage, which is still taboo in many countries and religions.

A Moroccan imam told the BBC that if the code prohibiting premarital sex was removed, “we will become wild savages. Our society will become a disaster.” (source)

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (107): Excessive Sentencing in the U.S.

Group of polygamists in the Utah Penitentiary, circa 1885

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[T]he state of Texas … sentenced Willie James Sauls last week for … the crime of stealing a purse. Sauls was sentenced to 45 years in prison. The prosecutors in the case justified the long sentence by pointing out that Sauls has prior convictions and that he “already had chances to address the issues with his behavior.” And with that, they decided this purse snatcher should be locked in prison until he’s 82.

Also in Texas, in 2010, Larry Dayries stole a tuna sandwich from Whole Foods while wielding a knife. He had prior convictions for burglary and theft, so the sandwich incident landed him a 70-year sentence. Larry will be 111 at the end of his sentence.

Down the road in Mississippi, Anthony Crutcher is serving a 60-year sentence for selling $40 worth of cocaine. Anthony was sentenced under Mississippi’s habitual offender laws; his two prior convictions were also nonviolent, minor drug crimes. Anthony is due out of prison a month after his 101st birthday. (source)

That should deter potential criminals. Except that is doesn’t:

A 2003 review of the research on sentence severity and crime rates concluded that “sentencing severity has no effect on the level of crime in society.” And in 2005, researchers at California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office concluded that the state’s notoriously punitive three strikes law, which will send a third-time felony offender to prison for 25 years to life even for a nonviolent offense, has no clear effect on crime rates in the state. (source)

Similar cases are here, here and here.

More on deterrence, on “tough-on-crime” policies and on prison population rates. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (106): Honor Killing in Open Court

Javed Iqbal Shaikh used his lawyer’s coat to smuggle the firearm into the courtroom and kill his sister, Rahila. He was arrested at the scene and charged.

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[T]he gunning down last week of a woman by her brother, a lawyer, in front of dozens of witnesses in a packed courtroom in the bustling city of Hyderabad [Pakistan] marks an alarming new low.

The family of 22 year-old Raheela Sehto had already made their fury at her marriage to Zulfiqar Sehto – a love match struck without their permission – abundantly clear. They reacted by filing a claim with local police that their daughter had been kidnapped by her 30-year-old husband, a life-long neighbour who had wooed Raheela over the years, although largely through clandestine mobile phone conversations.

Her uncle had tried to throttle her with a scarf at an earlier appearance at the high court in Hyderabad in July. The couple had petitioned the court for its protection and to try and have the kidnapping charges thrown out.

But Sehto, a university graduate working for the local electricity company, said they felt they had no reason to fear for their lives in court, even when in the earlier part of the morning he was sitting almost directly in front of his wife’s eventual killer, Javed Iqbal Shaikh, her brother.

Shortly after the two judges had returned to their seats after a break, Shaikh, dressed in the black suit and tie of his profession, produced a gun he had smuggled into court, lunged at Raheela and shot her point-blank in the left side of the head.

“Before she fell to the ground, my wife was looking straight at me,” said Sehto. The gunman, Shaikh, then tried to shoot Sehto, but was overpowered by police.

…

According to the latest survey of violence against women by the Aurat Foundation, a rights group, there were 2,341 honour killings in 2011 in Pakistan – a 27% jump on the year before. The report also said there were more than 8,000 abductions and 3,461 rapes and gang rapes.

But the figures were just “the tip of the iceberg”, it warned, saying researchers relied on those cases that were reported in the media only. (source)

More about honor killings. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (105): The Boiling-in-Oil of Ishikawa Goemon Along With His Son

Ishikawa Goemon (1558-1594) was a semi-legendary Japanese outlaw hero who stole gold and valuables and gave them to the poor. Goemon is notable for being boiled alive along with his son in public after a failed assassination attempt on the civil war-era warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

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Another version:

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More here. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (104): Homosexuals Suffering the Egg Test in Lebanon

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First of all, the state has no business criminalizing and prosecuting people for homosexual behavior. And secondly, even if it does it shouldn’t force doctors to commit anal rape in order to detect such behavior.

The Lebanese Order of Physicians has rounded on a controversial practice in which chicken’s eggs are inserted in the anus of suspected homosexuals and banned doctors from carrying out the so-called egg tests.

Doctors participating in the “test” have been warned by the order that they face disciplinary measures.

The “test” was conducted on 36 men who were arrested during a raid on a gay porn cinema in Beirut.

The men were charged with “acts against nature” and forced to undertake the “tests of shame”, according to Lebanese magazine L’Orient-Le Jour. ….

The Justice Ministry reissued instructions that prosecutors had to obtain consent before the tests took place. It added that refusal by a suspect to comply with the test could be used as “evidence of homosexuality”. (source)

Furthermore, why would people even believe that the egg test can prove homosexuality?

A similar practice is common in Turkey. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (103): Stoning of Gays is OK According to Bulgarian Priest

Sofia’s first gay parade in June 2008 was attacked with Molotov cocktails. Photo by BGNES

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There was an LGBT Pride Parade planned for June 30th in Sofia, Bulgaria, and it seems that some have yet to take the view that these things are inherently harmless and boring:

On June 6, Father Evgeni Yanakiev of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was quoted in the newspaper Standart as saying: “Our whole society must, in every possible way, oppose the gay parade that is being planned. For this reason, today I appeal to all those who consider themselves Christians and Bulgarians. Throwing stones at gays is an appropriate way.” On June 12, Father Yanakiev confirmed his statement in an interview on Bulgarian national radio. … It is all the more chilling given that two previous pride parades, in Sofia, have been marred by violent attacks on participants. …

After Father Yanakiev made his statements about this year’s parade, the Holy Synod – the highest authority in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – was urged to denounce his call for violence. But in a statement on June 13, the Holy Synod did not even address the incitement to hatred and violence. Instead, it said that homosexuality is “an unnatural lust that unconditionally harms both the personality of those who commit it and the society as a whole” and confirmed the church’s firm opposition to such “immoral manifestations” as the pride parade. (source)

Fortunately, the event took place without disturbances. More on gay rights, stoning and incitement. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (102): North Korean Prison Camps

Here are two pictures drawn by North Korean defectors who spent time in the country’s notorious prison camps:

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More on Korea. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (101): The Horrible Crime of Alcoholism

execution in Iran

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Amnesty International is urging Iran – a country known for its unemcumbered use of the death penalty- to halt the execution of two men (not in the image above) convicted for the third time of consuming alcohol. The men already have received 80 lashes for two previous convictions.

Article 179 of Iran’s “exotic” Penal Code provides for a mandatory death sentence following a third conviction for drinking alcohol.

What’s next? Life imprisonment for picking your nose in public? Forced labor for speeding? Decapitation for sorcery? Oh, I see …

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (100): Lex Talionis in Kindergarten

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A Texas teacher will lose her job after ordering more than 20 kindergartners to line up and hit a classmate accused of being a bully … The teacher at a suburban San Antonio school is accused of orchestrating the slugfest after a younger teaching colleague went to her last month seeking suggestions on how to discipline the 6-year-old [not in the image above] …

The police report alleges the teacher chose to show the child “why bullying is bad” by instructing his peers to “Hit him!” and “Hit him harder!” … “Twenty-four of those kids hit him and he said that most of them hit him twice,” Amy Neely, the mother of 6-year-old Aiden …

The mother added — and the police report confirmed — that some of Aiden’s classroom friends told him they didn’t want to hit the boy but did so because they were afraid not to. (source, source)

More on lex talionis and corporal punishment. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (99): Private Prisons in the U.S.

Buster Keaton in jail

As if the incarceration rate in the U.S. isn’t high enough already, the partial privatization of U.S. prisons creates some perverse incentives: the prison industry’s goal is to extract as much public money as possible by locking up the maximum number of people; this in turn fuels “tough on crime” policies and the insane war on drugs. Some examples:

The private prison industry was secretly involved in drafting Arizona’s harsh anti-immigrant law to boost demand for its immigrant detention centers. The Corrections Corporation of America has offered to help relieve the fiscal crises of 48 states by buying their prisons—provided the states sign a contract to keep them 90 percent full for the next twenty years, regardless of the crime rate. (source)

Not long after 11 September 2001, Steven Logan, the CEO of Cornell Companies (now part of the for-profit prison corporation GEO Group Inc) had good news for its shareholders. In a quarterly earnings call, Logan enthusiastically talked about tighter border control and a heightened focus on (immigrant) detention in the wake of the attacks. As he put it, “more people are gonna get caught. So I would say that’s a positive.” (source)

Note that more than 120,000 of America’s record 2 million prisoners are in private jails, plus a large number of illegal immigrants.

More on the problems created by excessive reliance on financial incentives here. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (98): Free Speech in Taiwan

Olivia de Havilland and Dirk Bogarde in the 1959 movie "Libel"

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Taiwan National University (NTU) Department of Agricultural Economics professor Wu Pei-ing, aged 53, was handed a final sentence of 10 days in prison or a fine by the High Court on Thursday for calling a fellow professor “worthless.”

At 8am on March 3 last year, when Wu was speaking with department head Hsu Shih-hsun, fellow professor Jerome Geaun approached her and said he felt compelled to “severely protest” that she was speaking too loudly. He asked Wu to lower her voice.

Wu at first said “Keep out of matters that don’t concern you,” but Geaun insisted that she keep her voice down, prompting Wu to say: “Go report it to the police, to the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) for noise pollution, OK?”

While Hsu attempted to mediate the dispute, Wu said to Geaun: “Who do you think you are? You’re a worthless nobody,” despite a previous warning from Geaun’s that her comments came very close to a personal insult.

Geaun later sued Wu for libel and defamation of character… The High Court ruled that Wu was guilty of publicly insulting Geaun for calling him “worthless”. (source, source)

More on libel. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (97): Free Speech in Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe as a young man, photo by JP Laffont / Sygma / Corbis

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Richmore Mashinga Jazi, a self-employed carpenter, was watching live coverage of Mugabe’s birthday bash last Friday while drinking with friends when he allegedly suggested that the 88-year-old president had sought help to blow up the balloons. …

“Who helped Mugabe blow up his birthday balloons, does he still have the energy?” is the statement that got Mugabe’s loyalists mad, resulting in the arrest of Jazi.

Jazi is now before the Mutare magistrates court on allegations of undermining the authority of the President. …

Mutare prosecutor Truman Joma … told the court that Jazi made the statement knowing that there was real risk or possibility that the statement was false and that it could cause hatred or contempt of the person of the President.

He alleged that Jazi was mocking and insulting the President by referring to his age and health. Trouble for Jazi started when he asked where prominent Mutare resident Penjeni Gwinyai, who had just entered into the bar, was coming from.

Gwinyai, the state alleged, informed Jazi that he had been at Sakubva stadium to witness Mugabe blow up his birthday balloons, prompting Jazi to query if Mugabe still had the energy to do so. Gwinyai informed the police leading to Jazi’s arrest. (source)

More on Mugabe and Zimbabwe. More absurd human rights violations.

Related articles

• Zimbabwe Carpenter Arrested Over Balloon Comment (abcnews.go.com)
• Mugabe blows £600,000 on birthday party (independent.co.uk)

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (96): No Rest for the Dead in Russia

Oliver Cromwell's Head

(source, read the story here)

Russian police are taking the unusual step of filing new tax evasion charges against lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in their custody two years ago.

The trial of the defendant … would be the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history, according to a statement by the former employer, Hermitage Capital.

The death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer, in November 2009 drew international criticism over Russia’s human rights record, especially after accusations arose that he had been denied proper medical care. …

Police officials reopened the case against Mr. Magnitsky last summer, saying it would provide a chance for relatives and supporters to clear his name. Relatives, though, said they had not asked for that, and executives at Hermitage said the motive was something else entirely: to vindicate the officials Mr. Magnitsky had accused of corruption. Magnitsky’s original arrest on charges of tax evasion came shortly after he testified against two interior ministry officials, accusing them of embezzelement. …

Does anyone know of a precedent anywhere in the world for a posthumous prosecution? According to Hermitage, it’s never been done in Russia, even during the Soviet period. Even Adolph Hitler wasn’t posthumously prosecuted, though there was some discussion of the idea at Nuremburg. Oliver Cromwell was posthumously executed in 1661, three years after his death, but I can’t come up with any examples in modern times –particularly not for a crime like tax evasion. (source)

Maybe it’s wrong to label this a human rights violation; the dead probably don’t have rights. Still, it can be seen as the continuation after death of a very real violation of a living person’s rights. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (95): Don’t Say “Blow Away” When You’re a Muslim

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A casual text message to work colleagues encouraging them to ”blow away” the competition at a trade show allegedly plunged a Muslim man into a terrorism probe.

Telecommunications sales manager Saad Allami says the innocent message, aimed at pumping up his staff, has had devastating consequences on his life.

The Quebec man says he was arrested by provincial police while picking up his seven-year-old son at school. A team of police officers stormed into his home, telling his wife she was married to a terrorist. And his work colleagues were detained for hours at the U.S. border because of their connection to him.

Those are the allegations Allami makes in a lawsuit filed last month.

The Moroccan native is seeking $100,000 from the Quebec provincial police force, one of its sergeants, and the provincial government. The six-figure sum is being sought for unlawful detention, unlawful arrest, loss of income and damage to his reputation. (source)

More on islamophobia and the war on terror. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (94): Virginity Tests in Egypt

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Egypt’s army has devised an original method to defend itself against possible allegations of rape by women “in its care”:

By now, almost everyone has heard the about the 18 women protestors in Egypt’s Tahrir Square who this past spring were detained, beaten, given electric shocks, strip searched and forced to submit to “virginity tests“. (source)

May I suggest that trying to protect yourself against potential charges of rape by violating women’s bodies isn’t really very smart? Of course, the real reason for these tests is torture and intimidation. Women will probably think twice before participating in protests if they know what may happen if they are detained. The tests themselves are horrific, but they can also entail future harm: if the tests are negative, women risk prostitution charges, jail sentences and social stigma.

The tests involve an inspection of a female’s hymen, on the mistaken assumption that her hymen can only be torn as a result of sexual intercourse. This is one account of the way in which the tests were conducted:

[T]he female detainees were separated into two groups, the married and unmarried. The seven unmarried women were given a medical checkup during which the “virginity test” was done. …

“They took us out one by one … they took me to a bed in a passageway in front of the cell. There were lots of soldiers around and they could see me.

I asked if the soldiers could move away and the officer escorting me teased me.

A woman prison guard in plainclothes stood at my head and then a man in military uniform examined me with his hand for several minutes. It was painful. He took his time”. (source)

Fortunately, an Egyptian court has now ruled that virginity tests on female detainees are illegal, referencing the human rights guaranteed in the Egyptian Constitutional Declaration of 2011 as well as Egypt’s obligation under international law. Which of course doesn’t mean the tests will end. Virginity tests in general have not been outlawed, only those taking place in military detention premises. And it remains to be seen if the military will respect the ruling.

More on gender based violence. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (93): Witchcraft in Saudi Arabia

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Witchcraft is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia. Recently, another person was executed:

the Saudi Interior Ministry announced on Monday that it had beheaded a woman named Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser for practicing “witchcraft and sorcery.” The London-based al-Hayat newspaper, citing the chief of the religious police who arrested the woman after a report from a female investigator, claims Nasser was tricking people into paying $800 per session to have their illnesses cured. (source)

How do prosecutors prove that someone is in fact a witch?

[T]he bar for proving someone guilty isn’t very high. Witch hunting is fairly institutionalized in Saudi Arabia, with the country’s religious police running an Anti-Witchcraft Unit and a sorcery hotline to combat practices like astrology and fortune telling that are considered un-Islamic.

But institutionalized is not the same thing as codified. A top official in the kingdom’s Ministry of Justice told Human Rights Watch in 2008 that there is no legal definition for witchcraft (Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a penal code) or specific body of evidence that has probative value in witchcraft trials.

Instead, judges have wide latitude in interpreting Sharia law and sentencing suspected criminals. And Amnesty International claims these judges use witchcraft charges to arbitrarily ”punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion.” A Human Rights Watch researcher tells The Media Line that foreigners in particular are often the targets of sorcery accusations because of their traditional practices or, occasionally, because Saudi men facing charges of sexual harassment by domestic workers want to discredit their accusers.

The evidence arrayed against witchcraft suspects typically revolves around statements from accusers and suspicious personal belongings that suggest the supernatural, in a country where superstition is still widespread. (source)

In 2007

Saudi authorities beheaded an Egyptian pharmacist who had been accused by neighbors of casting spells to separate a man from his wife and placing Korans in mosque bathrooms. “He confessed to adultery with a woman and desecrating the Koran by placing it in the bathroom,” the Saudi Press Agency reported, adding that books on black magic, a candle with an incantation “to summon devils,” and “foul-smelling herbs” had been found in the pharmacist’s home. (source)

Here’s an alternative verification procedure:

More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (92): When Hate Speech Laws Go Too Far

I’ve often defended hate speech laws, especially when they are designed in such a way that they can curb speech that risks violating the rights of people who are targeted by hate speech. (For instance, cross burning can restrict people’s freedom of residence and movement). However, I also admit that many hate speech laws go way too far and punish speech that, as vile as it may be, doesn’t harm anyone’s rights. Here’s a recent example:

A woman who was filmed allegedly shouting racial abuse at fellow passengers on a tram in south London will spend Christmas in prison after she was remanded in custody during a court appearance. She has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence.

Emma West, 34, from New Addington, south London, cried as magistrates watched a video of the incident, which has been viewed more than 11m times since it appeared online on 27 November. She was arrested after the footage was posted on YouTube. (source)

The video footage, which sparked a Twitter trend with the hashtag #MyTramExperience on Monday, shows a woman complaining about ethnic minorities living in Britain. She starts by saying: “What has this country come to? … with loads of black people and a load of fucking Polish. You ain’t English either. None of you are fucking English. Get back to your own fucking, d’you know what?

“Sort out your own countries. Don’t come and do mine. Britain is nothing now. Britain is fuck all.”

One of the passengers on the tram asks her to mind her language, saying: “There are little kids on the tram.” The woman points to the child on her lap and says “I’ve got a little kid here.” (source)

The woman is obviously vile and disturbed, but as I understand it from the reporting, her speech doesn’t harm anyone. It’s not like in John Stuart Mill’s example of the mob in front of the corn dealer’s home, being told that corn dealers are starvers of the poor. Hence no reason to prosecute her, let alone put her in prison.

More absurd human rights violations. More on hate speech.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (91): Marry Your Rapist and Get Out of Jail

After the attack, [Gulnaz] hid what happened as long as she could. But soon she began vomiting in the mornings and showing signs of pregnancy. It was her attacker’s child.

In Afghanistan, this brought her not sympathy, but prosecution. Aged just 19, she was found guilty by the courts of sex outside of marriage — adultery — and sentenced to twelve years in jail.

Now inside Kabul’s Badam Bagh jail, she and her child are serving her sentence together.

Sitting with the baby in her lap, her face carefully covered, she explains the only choice she has that would end her incarceration.

The only way around the dishonor of rape, or adultery in the eyes of Afghans, is to marry her attacker. This will, in the eyes of some, give her child a family and restore her honor.

Incredibly, this is something that Gulnaz is willing to do. …

We found Gulnaz’s convicted rapist in a jail across town. While he denied raping her, he agreed that she would likely be killed if she gets out of jail. But he insists that it will be her family, not his, that will kill her, “out of shame.” (source)

Similar cases here, here and here. And then there’s this:

Last year, … in Morocco, a judge ordered a 16-year-old girl named Amina Filali to marry the man who raped her. She committed suicide in March, prompting widespread outrage and condemnation of article 475, which allows a rapist to marry his victim in order to escape jail. (source)

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (90): Prohibiting People From Standing Together and Doing Nothing

Some old-fashioned, Soviet style anti-imperialist propaganda: "No, Belarus not for sale"

(source)

President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus … drafted a law that would prohibit a “joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been chosen beforehand, including an outdoor space, and at a scheduled time for the purpose of a form of action or inaction that has been planned beforehand and is a form of public expression of the public or political sentiments or protest.” The measure, which in the words of the New York Times “prohibit[ed] people from standing together and doing nothing,” was proposed in response to a series of weekly protests that had begun a month earlier, whereby citizens gathered in public parks or on street corners each Wednesday night and did nothing more than clap their hands or synchronize their cell phones to ring at an appointed time. … There was nothing overtly political about these protests. … There was no mention of the name “Lukashenko.” Not even the word “freedom,” which has gained a new global currency in the wake of the Arab upheavals, crossed anyone’s lips. (source)

The image seems to have been inspired by this one:

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (89): A Sentence of 5 Years for Using a Contraband Cell Phone in Prison

Justin Walker in a picture posted to his Facebook page from inside his prison cell using a smuggled-in cell phone

(source)

[P]arole commissioners tacked on five more years to the sentence of Dwayne Kennedy [not in the image above] — for using a contraband cell phone in prison. Kennedy, who has been incarcerated since 1990, wasn’t using the phone to order a hit on someone on the outside or to organize a drug ring. He was excitedly calling his family to let them know that he had been granted parole and was being released.

Kennedy willingly admitted his choice to use the phone was “just stupid,” but his excitement at the prospect of going home got the best of him. Still, the parole board revoked his parole grant after the cell phone was found. Thanks to a 2008 ballot measure, he must spend another five years behind bars until he can go before the parole board again. Kennedy’s parole commissioners were all too eager to enforce the measure, claiming his eagerness to violate the prison’s cell phone ban makes him an “unreasonable risk of danger to society.”

For the last seven years, Kennedy has displayed good behavior behind bars. He also has a job and stable home waiting for him upon his release, two major factors that greatly reduce the likelihood he will reoffend and return to prison. But never mind those details. As the L.A. Times points out, prison officials would rather spend $250,000 from taxpayers over the course of the next five years to keep Kennedy locked up, clinging to fear-driven tough on crime policies that have made California this incarceration-loving country’s prime example of egregiously overcrowded prisons. (source)

More on tough on crime policies, on overcrowding in prisons, and on incarceration rates. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (88): Gendercide Leads to Trafficking and Wife-Sharing

(source)

Gendercide has a number of harmful consequences that aren’t limited to selective abortion and infanticide, but I hadn’t heard of this one yet:

When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband’s two brothers who had failed to find wives.

“My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers”, said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village community centre in Baghpat district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

“They took me whenever they wanted – day or night. When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand”, said Munni, who had managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor. …

Social workers say decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the population of women in some parts of India, like Baghpat, and in turn has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of “wife-sharing” among brothers. (source)

I used to believe that the shortage of women resulting from gendercide could in the longer term have a silver lining, in the sense that it could improve women’s bargaining positions relative to men and could therefore also improve their wellbeing and the protection of their rights. But it seems I have to change my mind. More on gendercide here. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (87): You Can’t Do What I told You to Do

Banksy, Frisk

(source)

Critics say that as part of the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy, officers routinely tell suspects to empty their pockets and then, if marijuana is displayed, arrest them for having the drugs in public view, thereby pushing thousands of people toward criminality and into criminal justice system. (source)

More on the war on drugs. More Banksy. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (86): “We Inflict an Injustice Upon You, and Then We Make You Pay For It”

Two horrible cases of government officials treating people unjustly and then making them pay for it:

1.

According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, “A Las Cruces woman has been charged $1,122 by a local hospital for a forcible body cavity search ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency that did not turn up any illegal substances.” The search was conducted pursuant to a search warrant, based on what the police said was “‘credible information from a reliable source’ that the woman was concealing up to an ounce of heroin”…

Fortunately, a story a couple of days later relates that the county did indeed pay — which I think they’d have to do, since I see no legal basis for holding the woman responsible for a procedure that she didn’t seek and didn’t benefit from. The involvement of a lawyer, though, suggests that it took some work and expense to get the county to pay, work and expense that the woman shouldn’t have been put through (even assuming the search itself was justified). (source)

2.

The Arizona Department of Corrections is charging people money to visit their loved ones in prison. … New legislation allows the department to impose a $25 fee on adults who wish to visit inmates at any of the 15 prison complexes that house state prisoners. The one-time “background check fee” for visitors, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, has angered prisoner advocacy groups and family members of inmates, who in many cases already shoulder the expense of traveling long distances to the remote areas where many prisons are located.

An Arizona official confirmed that these “background check fees” will not actually pay for background checks, but are instead intended to make up part of the state deficit. This policy not only places an unfair burden on those who wish to visit prisoners, but is bad for public safety. According to the ACLU’s David Fathi: We know that one of the best things you can do if you want people to go straight and lead a law-abiding life when they get out of prison is to continue family contact while they’re in prison…Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish. (source)

And for those of you who think incarceration isn’t inherently unjust, read this, this and this. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (85): Three Weeks in Jail for Throwing a Pie

Laurel and Hardy pie throwing scene

Comedian Jonathan May-Bowles was yesterday sentenced to six weeks in jail for throwing a shaving-foam pie at Rupert Murdoch whilst the media tycoon was giving evidence at the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Better known as “Jonnie Marbles”, May-Bowles was also ordered to pay £250 costs and a £15 victim fine after pleading guilty to one count of common assault and another count of causing harassment, alarm or distress … Of those six weeks, Jonnie will serve three. …

Jonnie’s sentence was handed down by the same judge who gave policeman Marcus Ballard 150 hours unpaid work for pushing a teenager through a shop window. She also gave James Allen QC a 12-month supervision for beating his wife over an uncooked dinner. She let off TSG Sergeant Delroy Smellie over hitting G20 protester Nicola Fisher across the face and whacking her in the legs with a baton.

As argued by Jonnie’s lawyer in court “slapstick and pie throwing is a recognised form of protest.” No injury was caused — nor was there any intent to cause it — and there was limited damage to the suit. (source)

More absurd human rights violations here. More about pie throwing here and here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (84): “Small Mistake” Leads to Jail Time, Job Loss and Most Likely Poverty

a real criminal

(source)

Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier’s check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery … The next day, a Friday, the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn’t afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier’s check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier’s check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at. …

[M]iddle-class people enjoy all sorts of protections against misfortune. For poor people, a single thing going wrong can lead to a life-altering spiral — they lack the social and financial resources to overcome one problem, so a flat tire become a late day at work which becomes a lost job, an overcharge fee busts a checking account, which in turn becomes a ruined credit rating. (source, source, source)

Note that Ikenna is black, which was probably not completely irrelevant when his trustworthiness was questioned.

This point is related to the so-called bee-sting theory of poverty. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (83): 8 Years in Prison for Sex Doll Prank?

In case you were wondering why there are so many people in jail in the U.S.:

When 18-year-old Tyell Morton put a blow-up sex doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school [in Indianapolis], he didn’t expect school officials to call a bomb squad or that he’d be facing up to eight years in prison and a possible felony record. … [S]ecurity footage showed a person in a hooded sweatshirt and gloves entering the school with a package and leaving five minutes later without it. … Administrators feared explosives, so they locked down the school and called police. K9 dogs and a bomb squad searched the building before finding the sex doll. … “Their reaction is understandable, but use the school disciplinary process. Don’t try to label the kid a felon for the rest of his life.” (source)

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (82): Children as Involuntary Suicide Bombers

(source unknown)

While targeting civilians in Kabul, the Taliban allegedly tricked an eight-year old girl into carrying a package containing a remote-control detonated bomb. Only the girl was killed in the blast. … [T]he girl was unaware that the bag she had been given by Taliban insurgents held a bomb. Her body was taken to a nearby security check post, and the police called her relatives. (source)

A similar case was described here. More absurd human rights violations are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (81): Arrested for Feeding the Homeless

Charles Chaplin and Paulette Goddard in a scene from Modern Times

Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested … when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park. … The penalty for violating Orlando’s ordinance is 60 days in jail, a $500 fine or both. … Orlando police arrested five more activists from behind a makeshift buffet table at Lake Eola Park …, bringing to a dozen the number charged in the past week with violating city restrictions on feeding the homeless. The members of the group Food Not Bombs were ladling out corn on the cob, rice, beans and watermelon to about 35 people when they were handcuffed. … They were violating a controversial city ordinance that prohibits sharing food with large groups in a downtown city park more than twice a year. (source, source)

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (80): Solitary Confinement for 28 Years

(source)

Thomas Silverstein, who has been described as America’s “most isolated man,” has been held in an extreme form of solitary confinement under a “no human contact” order for 28 years. Originally imprisoned for armed robbery at the age of 19, Silverstein is serving life without parole for killing two fellow inmates (whom he says were threatening his life) and a prison guard, and has been buried in the depths of the federal prison system since 1983. …

Silverstein [has been held] in a series of what constitute the most secure and isolated housing in the federal prison system: in the notorious Control Unit at Marion, the supermax prototype; at USP Atlanta in a windowless underground “side pocket” cell that measured 6 x 7 feet (“almost exactly the size of a standard king mattress,”); at Leavenworth in an isolated basement cell dubbed the “Silverstein Suite”; on “Range 13″ at ADX Florence, where the only other prisoner was Ramzi Yusef; and finally in ADX’s D-Unit, where he can hear the sounds of other prisoners living in neighboring cells, though he still never sees them.

The following is from Tommy Silverstein’s description of his life at USP Atlanta:

The cell was so small that I could stand in one place and touch both walls simultaneously. The ceiling was so low that I could reach up and touch the hot light fixture.

My bed took up the length of the cell, and there was no other furniture at all … The walls were solid steel and painted all white.

I was permitted to wear underwear, but I was given no other clothing. …

During my first year in the side pocket cell I was completely isolated from the outside world and had no way to occupy my time. I was not allowed to have any social visits, telephone privileges, or reading materials except a bible. I was not allowed to have a television, radio, or tape player. I could speak to no one and their was virtually nothing on which to focus my attention.

I was not only isolated, but also disoriented in the side pocket. This was exacerbated by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have a wristwatch or clock. In addition, the bright, artificial lights remained on in the cell constantly, increasing my disorientation and making it difficult to sleep. Not only were they constantly illuminated, but those lights buzzed incessantly. The buzzing noise was maddening, as there often were no other sounds at all. This may sound like a small thing, but it was my entire world.

Due to the unchanging bright artificial lights and not having a wristwatch or clock, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Frequently, I would fall asleep and when I woke up I would not know if I had slept for five minutes or five hours, and would have no idea of what day or time of day it was.

I tried to measure the passing of days by counting food trays. Without being able to keep track of time, though, sometimes I thought the officers had left me and were never coming back. I thought they were gone for days, and I was going to starve. It’s likely they were only gone for a few hours, but I had no way to know. (source)

More on solitary confinement and prison conditions. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (79): Saggy Pants = Police Brutality

(source)

A case similar to this one:

Derby, Kansas, high school sophomore Jonathan Villarreal was walking to the bus after school when a police officer ordered him to pull his pants up above his hips. Jonathan refused, on the grounds that the school day was over. …

[Villarreal] said one of the officers, a man who was larger than him, pulled him to the ground by the neck and told him to stop resisting arrest. Villarreal denied he was resisting.

Both officers kneed him in the back and neck while he was on the ground, he said.

Because they were physical with him, he struggled to get up, but was pushed back down, he said.

At one point as he tried to get up, Villarreal said he felt his arm break when he was pushed back down.

After Villarreal tried three times to get up, one officer fired a Taser at his chest, he said. Although he was wearing a heavy coat, he still felt an electrical shock, he said. (source, source)

More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (78): The Exploited Shall Not Commit Suicide

(source)

Factories making sought-after Apple iPads and iPhones in China are forcing staff to sign pledges not to commit suicide, an investigation has revealed.

At least 14 workers at Foxconn factories in China have killed themselves in the last 16 months as a result of horrendous working conditions.

Many more are believed to have either survived attempts or been stopped before trying at the Apple supplier’s plants in Chengdu or Shenzen.

And they were made to promise that if they did, their families would only seek the legal minimum in damages.

An investigation of the 500,000 workers by the Centre for Research on Multinational Companies and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom) found appalling conditions in the factories.

iPad

Foxconn admits that it breaks overtime laws, but claims all the overtime is voluntary.

Some officials within the company even accused workers of committing suicide to secure large compensation payments for their families.

Anti-suicide nets were put up around the dormitory buildings on the advice of psychologists. (source)

More absurd human rights violations. More about labor conditions, about work and about suicide.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (77): The Execution of Hugh Despenser

Execution of Hugh Despenser, Lord of Glamorgan

(source)

An example of criminal justice in medieval England:

Hugh Despenser the younger tried to starve himself before his trial, but face trial he did on 24 November 1326, in Hereford… He was judged a traitor and a thief, and sentenced to public execution by hanging, as a thief, and drawing and quartering, as a traitor. Additionally, he was sentenced to be disemboweled for having procured discord between the King and Queen, and to be beheaded, for returning to England after having been banished.

Immediately after the trial, Despenser was dragged behind four horses to his place of execution, where a great fire was lit. He was stripped naked, and Biblical verses denouncing arrogance and evil were written on his skin. He was then hanged from a gallows 50 ft (15 m) high, but cut down before he could choke to death.

In Froissart‘s account of the execution, Despenser was then tied to a ladder, and – in full view of the crowd – had his genitals sliced off and burned (in his still-conscious sight) then his entrails slowly pulled out, and, finally, his heart cut out and thrown into the fire.

Just before he died, it is recorded that he let out a “ghastly inhuman howl”, much to the delight and merriment of the spectators. Finally, his corpse was beheaded, his body cut into four pieces, and his head was mounted on the gates of London. (source)

A similar story is here. More absurd human rights violations and more on capital punishment.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (76): Paintballing Women Into Submission

In Chechnya, security forces shoot paintball pellets at women leaving home without a headscarf:

Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has imposed an Islamic dress code on women, and his feared security forces have used paintball guns, threats and insults against those refusing to obey. …

Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of women who have experienced or witnessed attacks or harassment for their refusal to adhere to the Islamic dress code.

One of the victims, identified as Louiza, told the rights group that she and a friend were attacked while walking down Putin Avenue in Grozny on a hot day last June, wearing skirts a little below the knee, blouses with sleeves a bit above the elbow and no headscarves. Suddenly a car without a license plate pulled up, its side window rolled down and a gun barrel pointed at them.

“I thought the gun was real and when I heard the shots I thought: ‘This is death,’” she recalled in the report. “I felt something hitting me in the chest and was sort of thrown against the wall of a building.

“The sting was awful, as if my breasts were being pierced with a red-hot needle, but I wasn’t fainting or anything and suddenly noticed some strange green splattering on the wall and this huge green stain was also expanding on my blouse.”

The 25-year-old woman said her friend was hit on her legs and stumbled to the ground. Men dressed in the black uniform of Kadyrov’s security forces looked out of the car’s windows, laughing and sneering. …

Threatening leaflets also appeared on the streets of Grozny, warning women that those who fail to wear headscarves could face “more persuasive measures.” …

Kadyrov told local television that he was ready to give awards to the men who carried out the attacks and that the targeted women deserved the treatment. (source)

More absurd human rights violations here. More on women’s rights here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (75): Prison Slavery

chain gang scene from "O Brother Where Art Thou"

(source)

Although inmate labor is helping budgets in many corners of state government, the savings are the largest in corrections departments themselves, which have cut billions of dollars in recent years and are under constant pressure to reduce the roughly $29,000 a year that it costs to incarcerate the average inmate in the United States.

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, introduced a bill last month to require all low-security prisoners to work 50 hours a week. Creating a national prison labor force has been a goal since he went to Congress in 1995, but it makes even more sense in this economy, he said. (source, source)

Looks like a good reason to be “tough on crime“. More on the human rights implications of the recession is here. More on forced labor here, and on prison conditions here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (74): What Blasphemy?

Campaigners [in Pakistan] yesterday demanded the release of a schoolboy who was arrested and imprisoned for writing alleged blasphemous remarks about the Prophet Muhammad on an exam paper. Under the country’s draconian laws, he could face the death penalty. … It is unclear what Mr Samiullah may have written. When the police were asked about his alleged offence, they declined to elaborate, suggesting that it would blasphemous to repeat the words written. (source)

More about blasphemy here. More absurd human rights violations here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (73): You Can’t Say Asshole in Germany

(source)

Helmut Manz, who serves as deputy spokesman for the Left Party in North Rhine-Westphalia, was attending a demonstration outside a hall where Thilo Sarrazin, former Bundesbank Board member, was scheduled to speak. (Sarrazin is the author of the controversial book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany Does Itself In”), in which he disparaged the work ethic and intelligence of Germany’s Muslim immigrants, views German Chancellor Angela Merkel was quick to criticize as “absurd.” ) Someone in the crowd reportedly heard Manz call Sarrazin an “ass,” prompting Sarrazin to file a complaint against Manz. According to Der Spiegel’s report, German law proscribes cursing at others with expletives. Manz has now been sentenced to pay a fine of 500 Euros or spend 50 days in jail but is appealing. In an interview about his sentence, Manz said that he does not remember making the remark, adding:”All racists, which therefore includes Mr. Sarrazin, are assholes.” (source)

More absurd human rights violations here. Also more about obscenity, fighting words, insults and hate speech. And more about free speech in general.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (72): Political Rights in Zimbabwe

Nearly a third of Zimbabwe’s 5.5m registered voters are dead, research has found. Others appear to be up to 120 years old, improbably outstripping the country’s average life expectancy of 43.

The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said the country’s electoral roll was a “shambles” and should be overhauled before fresh elections, which could be held this year.

A new electoral register is a key demand of the Movement for Democratic Change , which has accused President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party of counting “ghost voters” in its own favour. (source)

If you’re unclear about democratic rights as human rights, go here. More about Zimbabwe here. More absurd human rights violations here.

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The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (71): Arrested for Having a Suspicious Bagel on a Plane

arrest of Ognjen Milatovic

A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment. That “suspicious package” turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.

Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C. on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

Monday’s incident is another example of other passengers essentially becoming the authority on terrorist activity on planes.

Recently, passenger complaints have resulted authorities taking action against innocent passengers who went to the bathroom too often on a flight and who were just being annoying.

In the hyper-sensitive world of flying, sneezing too often could get you kicked off a flight and questioned by the FBI.

Milatovic, who is a mathematics and statistics professor at the University of North Florida, was minding his business when other passengers turned into super sleuths.

Passengers reported hearing strange noises coming from a plastic bag. State police said later that the bag contained a set of keys, a bagel with cream cheese, some other small food items, a hat and a wallet.

When confronted by the US Airways crew about his “suspicious package,” Milatovic got on his cell phone. The crew asked him to hang it up and sit down. When he refused, he was cuffed. Milatovic was also charged with interfering with the operation of an aircraft. (source, image source)

More absurd human rights violations are here. More on the war on terror here. More on airport security here.

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