Video of Taliban Flogging Rattles Pakistan

[BanglaBhoot]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The video shows a young woman held face down as a Taliban commander whips her repeatedly with a leather strap. “Leave me for the moment — you can beat me again later,” she screams, pleading for a reprieve and writhing in pain.

Paying no heed, the commander orders those holding her to tighten their grip and continues the public flogging. A large group of men quietly stands and watches in a circle around her.

The woman in the video is a 17-year-old resident of Kabal, in the restive Swat region in northwestern Pakistan. The images, which have been broadcast repeatedly by private television news networks in Pakistan, have caused outrage here and set off bitter condemnation by rights activists and politicians.

They have also raised questions once again about the government’s decision to enter into a peace deal in February that effectively ceded Swat to the Taliban and allowed them to impose Islamic law.

The two-minute video is the first known case of a public flogging of a woman in Swat. Apparently shot on a cellphone and widely circulated in the picturesque valley, it demonstrates vividly how the Taliban have used public displays of punishment to terrify and control the local population.

It was not clear what the young woman was accused of.

One account said she had stepped out of her house without being escorted by a male family member, according to Samar Minallah, a rights activist. Ms. Minallah said she distributed the video to local news outlets after it was sent to her by someone from Swat three days ago.

Another account said a local Taliban commander had falsely accused the teenager of violating Islamic law after she refused to accept his marriage proposal.

A Taliban spokesman defended the punishment to the Geo Television Network but said it should not have been done in public.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister of North-West Frontier Province, where Swat is located, also tried to play down the flogging by claiming that the video was recorded in January, before the peace agreement. He called it an attempt to sabotage the peace agreement.

Not many seemed willing to countenance the argument.

“This is absurd,” Athar Minallah, a lawyer who campaigned for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, said in a telephone interview. “No one can give justification for such an act. These handful of people have taken the population hostage, and the government is trying to patronize them. If the state surrenders, what will happen next?”

Asma Jahangir, one of the country’s leading rights activists, condemned the flogging as “intolerable.”

“This is an eye-opener,” she said in a televised news briefing in Lahore. “Terrorism has seeped into every corner of the country. It is time that every patriotic Pakistani should raise a voice against such atrocities.”

She said she would join other rights activists and citizens in a rally against terrorism on Saturday in Lahore, where militants stormed a police academy this week.

“It will be a peaceful march to show that the people of Lahore will not stay silent,” she said.

Jugnu Mohsin, a peace activist and publisher of Friday Times, the country’s most popular weekly newspaper, blamed the military for allowing the Taliban to gain strength and giving the militants a free hand to commit such atrocities.

Ms. Mohsin said she had received threats from Islamic extremists.

“I know that the federal and provincial governments are innocent victims and bystanders,” she said. “The military has handed over the ownership and refuses to fight.”

In February, after 20 months of losing battles against the Taliban in Swat, the government and the military accepted a peace deal and the establishment of Islamic courts in the region.

In return, Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the Taliban in Swat, pledged to lay down the weapons and end the violence.

Those who opposed the deal said it would strengthen the militants and give them time to regroup and tighten their control in Swat.

The government said the agreement would end the violence.

Hundreds of schools have been destroyed in Swat, several government officials beheaded and education of girls banned under the Taliban.

Both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani condemned the flogging and ordered an investigation.

Taking notice of the video, Mr. Chaudhry formed an eight-judge panel in the Supreme Court to examine the case, a news release by the Pakistani court said.

The justice ordered the interior secretary to bring the young woman before the court on Monday.

Sherry Rehman, the former information minister and a member of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, demanded immediate action by the government.

“Ignoring such acts of violence amounts to sanctioning impunity,” Ms. Rehman said in a statement. “The fire in the Swat Valley and our northern regions can engulf other parts of the country, if we do nothing to put it out.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/world/asia/04swat.html?hpw

 

[A1Kaid]

Yaar I don't care if others consider my comment off topic, but I would like to make a point here.

So much media attention has been given to this story, and it's not by accident but by design.

Why is it that so much attention has been given to this one incident over/ more than all the inhumane, human right violations, rapes, kidnappings, and murders, and looting done by the Indian terrorist forces in Kashmir....

The media wants to focus on this as if this flogging is some major epic center of the problem in our region, No I am not excusing the crime, but it sure as hell doesn't compare to Kashmir crisis.

I'll tell you why, it is because there are these Yehudi/Zionist and members the elite, who have decided to focus so much attention on this story, to further degrade Pakistan's and Islam's image in the world media.

You really think dumb Westerners are going to see this video, and say "wow the Taliban is so bad", NO they are going to say "Pakistan is bad!", this is the effect of their method.

Anyway this needed to be mentioned and that's why I am saying it now! So I don't want to hear from some troll to go and start a new thread because this is off topic in their opinion, quite frankly I am making a connection here.

Also it's really quite ironic how these ignorant foolish brainwashed Indians want to share their sincere sympathies for the victim in the flogging video, and label the perpetrators as wicked and evil men, when their own Indian Army as perpetrated crimes 100 times worse against the Kashmiri people, heck even their own Muslim population (Gujarat massacre is one example)...

So please Indian members most of you, I don't give a damn about you shedding your Crocodile tears...Save it for someone who cares.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

A test for Obama

Nothing like confronting up close what really bad allies look like to remind you of the virtues of your better ones. As NATO's leaders prepare to meet on Saturday to discuss Afghanistan, the news is full of stories reminding us of the yawning chasm that exists between the values of the society we are committing blood and treasure to assist and our own.

America's hand-picked man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, put those differences in stark focus with his decision to sign a new law that legalizes rape within marriage and prohibits women from venturing outside the house without the permission of their husbands. The law, deeply objected to by human rights groups and, one can only suppose, anyone with a brain or a heart, was characterized by Senator Humaira Namati, quoted in a story in the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, as "worse than during the Taliban."

Perhaps this development puts the administration's search for a moderate Taliban in perspective. If we can tolerate such behavior from our "friends" perhaps we will therefore now find it easier to tolerate in our enemies. What's more, the Taliban themselves seem to be in the midst of a vigorous PR campaign seeking to position themselves as the Afghanistani equivalent of MoveOn.org or Arianna Huffington (if she weren't a woman, and thus had fewer rights and less respect than a stray dog in the street.)

Speaking of which the attempt to present a new, warmier, cuddlier Taliban was recently described in the Huffington Post as follows:

The Taliban are now prepared to commit themselves to refraining from banning girls' education, beating up taxi drivers for listening to Bollywood music, or measuring the length of mens' beards, according to representatives of the Islamist movement. Burqas worn by women in public would be "strongly recommended" but not compulsory.

Of course, the effort to paint a smiley face on every rock used for their public stonings is just in its formative stages and is cast in a somewhat different light by the fact that the "mainstream" "democratic" Afghan government put in place by the United States has taken such a brutal, medieval stance toward half its populace.

It is therefore easy to see why Barack Obama's European tour seems to be such a lovefest even if the Europeans themselves are less-than-enthusiastically responding to U.S. requests for their active support in AfPakia. Today, when French President Sarkozy offered to take one U.S. prisoner from Guantanamo and send something like 150 gendarmes and a mobile charcuterie to Afghanistan, he was embraced by Obama as though he were the 21st Century Lafayette.

Indeed, reading the heart-rending stories about the Afghans and at the same time seeing the lengths that, for example, the French and in particular, Sarkozy have gone to on behalf of restoring the trans-Atlantic relationship, I regret poking fun at the French as allies a few weeks back. It was entertaining, but it is was a bit of a cheap laugh at the expense of an ally who was, after all, right about most of criticisms of Bush Administration policies.

Which brings us to an early challenge for the Obama Administration and for all of NATO. While much is made of their initiatives to reach out the Taliban and the merits of their new AfPak strategy, we need to stop and ask ourselves if we aren't overlooking a vitally important question: why does the mistreatment of male terrorists in Guantanamo outrage us more than the abuse of average women in Afghanistan? Which, in fact, is more odious to core American values?

Cheney argued America's national security interests justified our abrogation of international treaties and the U.S. constitution. Is it any different to argue that our national security interests should obligate us to continue to support a government that so disregards the fundamental rights of women?

Or shouldn't the Obama Administration and the West set a new standard and demand that international minimum human rights standards be upheld by our allies or we will no longer support them? This is truly an opportunity to draw a line between the moral failings of the last administration and this new one and one of the best ways to judge NATO going forward will be not simply in terms of its force levels in Afghanistan but in terms of what it is actually fighting for.

A test for Obama | David Rothkopf

 

[roadrunner]

The media wants to focus on this as if this flogging is some major epic center of the problem in our region, No I am not excusing the crime, but it sure as hell doesn't compare to Kashmir crisis.

Actually flogging was common in Pakistan in the 80s as legal punishment.

A bit harder than what they showed there though.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

By law - women must preen for men

Let's take a walk,” I suggested to Aziza. Kabul was in full bloom. The sun's rays had burnt the barren earth, but didn't reach us in the basement apartment in a grey, dilapidated neighbourhood in the outskirts of the city. My back was aching after weeks hunched on the floor listening to women talk of life behind four walls.

“A walk?” She looked at me in bewilderment. “A walk to where?”

“Just around here,” I tried.

Impossible. A walk without a purpose was a forbidden walk. She would just never get permission. The only reasons to leave the house were to run important errands or visit relatives.

Aziza belonged to a well-off and relatively liberal family. Yet the male head of the family would decide her whereabouts as he did with all the female members of his family.

Years have passed since our talk. Western politicians focus on improving conditions for women and children - and the conservative Afghan culture keeps hitting back. Schools are built to educate girls - and then torched to the ground. Aid programmes aimed at helping women are set up - and Afghan female activists are murdered and silenced. A constitution that proclaims equal rights for men and women is approved - and is then broken daily by the judgments of local shuras and jirgas, traditional assemblies of elders.

Aziza couldn't leave the house without permission, and she still can't. Now this “imprisonment” might just be a rule of custom, but it risks becoming part of the formal law of Afghanistan. A new, frighteningly strict family law that will apply to the Shia Hazara minority has been passed in parliament. A woman will, by law, not be permitted to leave the house without the permission of her husband and obedience to the man will be put into statute. The laws state that “the wife is bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires” and that a man “has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night”.

So what will this law change? Not very much, simply because Afghanistan is not governed by the rule of law, but by that of men - fathers, uncles and husbands. Only one fifth of all cases are tried in formal courts, while 80 per cent are tested in jirgas and shuras where the “judges” often have no formal training. Instead the male elders who pass judgment base it on their personal opinions.

These judgments often violate Afghan state law and universal human rights. A defendant might get his house burnt down as punishment. Or he might have to pay his accuser, at times with money, at times with women. A girl from the family of the defendant can be given to the accuser's family to settle the dispute. Sales of girls can settle opium debts and the gang rape of young girls in full view of their families can be used as punishment outside the law.

Domestic violence has not been curbed. More than half of the marriages are with girls under 16 - and, according to a UN survey, this happens regularly with girls even down to six years of age. If a girl runs away from a violent husband, she is the one who is punished. Women's prisons are filled with those whose only crime was to flee from their husbands or because they have been accused of adultery.

It is not only a rule of men; it is also a rule of money. A judge's salary is about £40 a month and judges are either bribed, or threatened, to pass their judgments. Needless to say, the elder husband is more likely to receive the money than the runaway girl.

If people believed that the suppression of women disappeared with the Taleban, they will have to think again. The new rulers of President Karzai's Afghanistan are in many respects just as conservative as their predecessors. Attitudes do not change overnight, and the attitudes towards women are deep-rooted.

So what has been achieved since the fall of the Taleban in 2001? Have the thousands of troops sent by the international community - followed by many thousands more - been able to protect the most vulnerable?

Some women, those with education or jobs, are better off; but many others are worse off since the security situation has been worsening. Few studies on the conditions of women have been conducted in the vast southern part of the country, so little is known of the state of women in the former strongholds of the Taleban.

My friend Aziza's life continued. She was forced into marriage. The rules imposed by her father were exchanged for the rules imposed by her husband, and every year a new child arrived.

“Too early, too soon, too tired,” she tells me on the phone about the yearly pregnancies. Now, if she says “no” it might even be against the law. And leaving her new husband's house? Never without permission. The long path to women's liberation in Afghanistan is definitely no walk in the park.

By law - women must preen for men | Åsne Seierstad - Times Online

 

[RescueRanger]

Yaar I don't care if others consider my comment off topic, but I would like to make a point here.

So much media attention has been given to this story, and it's not by accident but by design.

Why is it that so much attention has been given to this one incident over/ more than all the inhumane, human right violations, rapes, kidnappings, and murders, and looting done by the Indian terrorist forces in Kashmir....

The media wants to focus on this as if this flogging is some major epic center of the problem in our region, No I am not excusing the crime, but it sure as hell doesn't compare to Kashmir crisis.

I'll tell you why, it is because there are these Yehudi/Zionist and members the elite, who have decided to focus so much attention on this story, to further degrade Pakistan's and Islam's image in the world media.

You really think dumb Westerners are going to see this video, and say "wow the Taliban is so bad", NO they are going to say "Pakistan is bad!", this is the effect of their method.

Anyway this needed to be mentioned and that's why I am saying it now! So I don't want to hear from some troll to go and start a new thread because this is off topic in their opinion, quite frankly I am making a connection here.

Also it's really quite ironic how these ignorant foolish brainwashed Indians want to share their sincere sympathies for the victim in the flogging video, and label the perpetrators as wicked and evil men, when their own Indian Army as perpetrated crimes 100 times worse against the Kashmiri people, heck even their own Muslim population (Gujarat massacre is one example)...

So please Indian members most of you, I don't give a damn about you shedding your Crocodile tears...Save it for someone who cares.

This is already being discussed elsewhere on the fourm...

 

[Goodperson]

This is already being discussed elsewhere on the fourm...

Perhaps its discussed in various threads.

Video - Girl of 17 flogged by Taliban savages in Swat

17 year old Girl whipped

Poll: Adjournment motion by Sherry Rehman against flogging

But I am surprised Munshiji did not include India and RAW.