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i will not rest as long as this is.

the well being of the beings and of this planet are my obsession.

it is with love and reverence i place these testaments here for record.

your voice is heard and i bear witness

what i do from here is for you…

i am thinking of you and hold you in the light and love of my attention/intention.

the time has come to call to attention the council of grandmothers.

bless,

ing

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***Picture source unknown and directly unrelated.

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Child Bride in Yemen Bleeds to Death

A 13-year-old in an arranged marriage bleeds to death four days after her wedding.

-Faye Brennan

Warning: this is a terribly sad story.

In Yemen, arranging child marriages is a popular practice, with more than a quarter of Yemen’s females being married under the age of 15. This is partly because of the tribal belief that, the younger the bride, the better the chance that she will be obedient to her husband. These marriages are also very tempting to poor families, as the husband must pay the family for his underage bride.

So, children as young as 12 and 13 are being married to men in their 20s and older. Girls like one 13-year-old from Hajja province, who was married to a 23-year-old man, and then died just four days after their wedding. She bled to death – from a tear in her genitals.

Her husband was her brother’s good friend, and the two had arranged to “exchange” their sisters because it would be cheaper than usual bride-prices. The husband has since been detained by authorities after his wife’s death on April 2.

In September, another child bride (this time, a 12-year-old), died after struggling to give birth for three full days.

Unfortunately, Yemen authorities can’t agree on what the appropriate age limit should be on child marriages. The minimum age used to be 15, but that was annulled in the 1990s. Last year, a law set the minimum at 17, but that was repealed and sent back to parliament for review. A final decision on the law is expected to be announced this month.

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Libyan woman bursts into hotel to tell her story of rape

March 26, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff

Breakfast at a Tripoli hotel housing international journalists took a decidedly grim turn Saturday when a desperate Libyan woman burst into the building frantic to let the world know she had been raped and beaten by Moammar Gadhafi’s militia.

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Her face was heavily bruised. So were her legs. She displayed blood on her right inner thigh.

She said her name was Eman al-Obeidy. She was well-dressed and appeared to be a well-to-do middle-aged woman. She spoke in English and said she was from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and had been picked up by Gadhafi’s men at a checkpoint east of Tripoli.

She sobbed and said she was held against her will for two days and raped by 15 men.

“Look at what Gadhafi’s brigades did to me,” she said. “My honor was violated by them.”

She showed the journalists how she had been tied at her wrists and ankles. She had visible rope burns.

“We are all Libyans,” the woman said. “Why don’t you treat us the same?”

CNN could not independently verify al-Obeidy’s story but her injuries appeared consistent with what she said.

Government officials quickly closed in to stifle her. But she persisted, wanting the journalists, staying at the Rixos Hotel, to see Gadhafi’s brutality firsthand.

International journalists, including CNN’s staff, are not allowed to move freely in the Libyan capital and are escorted out of the hotel only on organized outings by government minders. This was the first time a Libyan opposed to Gadhafi attempted to independently approach the journalists here.

What followed was a disturbing scene of how Gadhafi’s government operates.

Security forces moved to subdue the woman. Even a member of the hotel’s kitchen staff drew a knife. “Traitor!” he shouted at her in contempt. Another staffer tried to put a dark tablecloth over her head.

One government official, who was there to facilitate access for journalists, pulled a pistol from his belt. Others scuffled with the journalists, manhandling them to the ground in an attempt to wrestle away their equipment. Some journalists were beaten and kicked. CNN’s camera was confiscated and deliberately smashed beyond repair.

Security men said al-Obeidy was “mentally ill” and was being taken to a “hospital.” They dragged her unceremoniously to a waiting white car.

She kicked and screamed. She insisted she was being carted off to prison.

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“If you don’t see me tomorrow, than that’s it,” she yelled.

The journalists believed al-Obeidy’s life to be in danger, and several of them demanded to see her. At a news conference later, they challenged Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim on what they had experienced.

Kaim told them that authorities were investigating the incident. “We will let you know,” he said.

Later, a government spokesman said al-Obeidy was “safe” and “doing well.” He said her case was a criminal one — not political — and that she has been offered legal aid. Officials later said the woman was sane and would bring criminal charges against her attackers. Journalists would be able to see her, they added.

But his assurances did little to assure the journalists who had witnessed Gadhafi’s firm and pervasive grip on Libyan society. A woman who dared to speak against him was quickly silenced. Journalists who dared to tell her story paid a price.

It was one tale that perhaps went a long way in illuminating the need to protect Libya’s people.

UPDATED  4/6/2011….

Posted by Amy Oppenheim on Apr 5, 2011 – 10:02:42 AM

Eman al-Obeidy, from YouTube
LIBYA—Eman Al-Obeidy, the alleged rape victim in Libya who has been missing since she first told reporters she was raped and tortured, has finally been released from government custody.

Al-Obeidy is no longer being held by the government, but she says she still fears for her life. When al-Obeidy ran into a hotel in Tripoli on March 26 to tell journalists she was beaten and raped by Gadhafi’s soldiers for being a part of the rebel forces, she was escorted away from the premises by government officials and was not seen again until April 4.

During the time in which al-Obeidy was missing, her family insisted that they had not heard from her and that she was still in Gadhafi’s custody, but government officials maintained that they did not know her whereabouts and that she was most likely in a women’s shelter.

When al-Obeidy returned from her absence and met with reporters in Tripoli, she attested to being held by Gadhafi’s forces for days after being taken away from the hotel on March 26. She stated that during this time the government demanded she change her original story, saying that it was the rebel forces, rather than Gadhafi’s followers, who raped and tortured her.

During her captivity, al-Obeidy said that government officials poured water on her face and threw food at her during their questioning and attempt to persuade her to change her story.

Despite this alleged pressure to alter her tale, al-Obeidy remains true to her original story and is urging journalists to tell her account of what happened.

Al-Obeidy is currently not charged with any criminal offenses, despite the accused rapists’ earlier attempt to charge her with slander, but she nonetheless fears leaving her house because she says she is tormented by government officials whenever she goes outside.

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Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death

http://theislamawareness.blogspot.com/2011/04/only-14-bangladeshi-girl-charged-with.html

Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.
Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena’s family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.

Sharia: illegal but still practiced

Hena’s family hailed from rural Shariatpur, crisscrossed by murky rivers that lend waters to rice paddies and lush vegetable fields.
Hena was the youngest of five children born to Darbesh Khan, a day laborer, and his wife, Aklima Begum. They shared a hut made from corrugated tin and decaying wood and led a simple life that was suddenly marred a year ago with the return of Hena’s cousin Mahbub Khan.

Mahbub Khan came back to Shariatpur from a stint working in Malaysia. His son was Hena’s age and the two were in seventh grade together.
Khan eyed Hena and began harassing her on her way to school and back, said Hena’s father. He complained to the elders who run the village about his nephew, three times Hena’s age.

The elders admonished Mahbub Khan and ordered him to pay $1,000 in fines to Hena’s family. But Mahbub was Darbesh’s older brother’s son and Darbesh was asked to let the matter fade.

Many months later on a winter night, as Hena’s sister Alya told it, Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.
Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan’s wife heard Hena’s muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.
The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan’s house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.

Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.
Darbesh Khan and Aklima Begum had no choice but to mind the imam’s order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.

“What happened to Hena is unfortunate and we all have to be ashamed that we couldn’t save her life,” said Sultana Kamal, who heads the rights organization Ain o Shalish Kendro.

Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.

The Supreme Court also outlawed fatwas a decade ago, but human rights monitors have documented more than 500 cases of women in those 10 years who were punished through a religious ruling. And few who have issued such rulings have been charged.
The government needs to enact a specific law to deal with such perpetrators responsible for extrajudicial penalty in the name of Islam.

Last month, the court asked the government to explain what it had done to stop extrajudicial penalty based on fatwa. It ordered the dissemination of information to all mosques and madrassas, or religious schools, that sharia is illegal in Bangladesh.

“The government needs to enact a specific law to deal with such perpetrators responsible for extrajudicial penalty in the name of Islam,” Kamal told CNN.
The United Nations estimates that almost half of Bangladeshi women suffer from domestic violence and many also commonly endure rape, beatings, acid attacks and even death because of the country’s entrenched patriarchal system.
Hena might have quietly become another one of those statistics had it not been for the outcry and media attention that followed her death on January 31.
‘Not even old enough to be married’

Monday, the doctors responsible for Hena’s first autopsy faced prosecution for what a court called a “false post-mortem report to hide the real cause of Hena’s death.”
Public outrage sparked by that autopsy report prompted the high court to order the exhumation of Hena’s body in February. A second autopsy performed at Dhaka Medical College Hospital revealed Hena had died of internal bleeding and her body bore the marks of severe injuries.

Police are now conducting an investigation and have arrested several people, including Mahbub Khan, in connection with Hena’s death.

“I’ve nothing to demand but justice,” said Darbesh Khan, leading a reporter to the place where his daughter was abducted the night she was raped.
He stood in silence and took a deep breath. She wasn’t even old enough to be married, he said, testament to Hena’s tenderness in a part of the world where many girls are married before adulthood. “She was so small.”

Hena’s mother, Aklima, stared vacantly as she spoke of her daughter’s last hours. She could barely get out her words. “She was innocent,” Aklima said, recalling Hena’s last words.

Police were guarding Hena’s family earlier this month. Darbesh and Aklima feared reprisal for having spoken out against the imam and the village elders.
They had meted out the most severe punishment for their youngest daughter. They could put nothing past them.

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