Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India party reserves women posts, January 29, 2008

Party leader Sushma Swaraj described the move as “historic” and a step towards “empowerment of women”.

The BJP and ruling Congress have backed reservation of a third of parliamentary seats for women since 1999.

The bill has been put forward several times, but has never been passed through parliament.

The proposal to reserve 33% of seats in the federal parliament and state assemblies has met with stiff resistance from several smaller parties.

Analysts say that the BJP and Congress parties’ support for reservation in parliament and state assemblies has also been unconvincing because they did not have enough women in their party positions.

Now the BJP has announced that it will give a third of party positions to women workers and senior party leaders said the party constitution would be amended to allow for the change.

“This [decision] will go down as a historic one … and it will be mentioned in the history of women’s empowerment in India,” BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said.

Women MPs make up only 8% of the present lower house of the Indian parliament.

Radio Australia - Asia Pacific - AFGHANISTAN: Journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy, January 28, 2008

In Afghanistan, a young journalism student has been sentenced to death for blasphemy, after allegedly distributing an article on why Muslim women can’t have more than one husband. Judges in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif accuse 23-year-old Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh of humiliating Islam by giving copies of the article to his fellow students. But the media advocacy group which employs Mr Kaambakhsh’s brother Yacoub says the young student’s being targeted to persuade his brother to stop reporting on human rights abuses in Afghanistan.

Presenter - Corinne Podger Speaker - Jared Ferrie, Institute of War and Peace Reporting in Kabul

FERRIE: He’s accused of downloading a number of copies and articles from the internet. My understanding is that the article was critical of the way that women are treated according to Islam. So he’s been accused of downloading this article, printing it out and distributing it at the university. And so the charge against him is blasphemy.

PODGER: IWPR believes his sentence has nothing to do with distributing an article about gender in Islam, but it’s rather a punishment or intimidation aimed at his brother who workers with you?

FERRIE: Right, he denies that he downloaded this article and distributed it. What he and his brother Yacoub are assuming is that this is actually an indirect attack at Yacoub, and Yacoub is a journalist with IWPR, and he’s done a number of controversial stories over the years. For example, on warlord essentially who are, one in particular is a member of parliament and he’s been accused of all sorts of abuses, basically Yacoub in his stories has exposed a number of human rights abuses that have taken place and his stories points a finger at this fellow in particular. Another one was on the sexual exploitation of young boys, it’s apparently a common practice in certain parts of the country where warlords will actually take a young boy of maybe 13 or 14 and essentially use the young boy as a sex slave. So Yacoub did a story which indicated that the practice is actually quite widespread and growing in certain parts of northern Afghanistan. Certainly Yacoub has faced intimidation and threats over the years. He’s thinking that this is actually an indirect act at him, after his brother was imprisoned the authorities came to Yacoub’s home and they demanded to see his notes for particular stories, his sources, they wanted him to open up his computer and show them his information, which he refused to do. Certainly there are connections between warlords and people in the government, some of whom are warlords and the judicial system which is in Afghanistan known to be quite corrupt. So it certainly is possible, I’m not saying this, we don’t have the facts at this point, but it certainly is possible that the judiciary is being used by certain powerful people to actually persecute Yacoub and his brother.