Category Archives: Human Rights

This is a cross-post by Tendance Coatesy

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The International Crimes Tribunal yesterday issued arrest warrants against already detained four Jamaat-e-Islami leaders on charges of committing genocide and crimes against humanity and peace during the Liberation War.

“Warrants of arrest should be issued against these four people to ensure effective and proper investigation,” Tribunal Chairman Justice Nizamul Huq said allowing the prosecution prayer after submission of Chief Prosecutor Golam Arif Tipu.

The four Jamaat leaders are Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami, Secretary General Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mojahid and senior assistant secretaries general Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla.

More Here. Hat-Tip to Enty.

Jamaat Leaders Arrested for War Crimes

By Faheem Haider

Take a look at the video of the fascinating discussion on the banning of the niqab which saw the Mona Eltahawy, British-Egyptian feminist take on Tariq Ramadan’s dishonest dissembling.

The debate was electric, not least because this is probably one of the only times you will ever hear the “Muslim right wing” as a stakeholder in the niqab debate identified on British TV.

Kirsty Wark: But the question, surely, is not whether there are feminist reasons for wearing the veil or not. It is ‘why is wearing the veil becoming more prevalent rather than less prevalanet’?

Mona Eltahawy: I think it has become more prevalent because the space has been left completely uncontested to the Muslim right wing which does not respect anyone’s rights whatsoever except for this one right to cover a woman’s face. No one has pushed back against the Muslim right wing. I detest the political right wing but I equally detest the Muslim right wing and I will not sacrifice women. Integration has largely failed across Europe even in the UK, with multiculturalism. But we’re not going to sacrifice women for it.

This is a cross-post by Joseph Mathai from Himal Southasian

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Gita Sahgal was suspended from her post as head of the gender unit of Amnesty International consequent to a Sunday Times article published in 7 February 2010. In this article Sahgal expressed her discomfort with the Amnesty International’s collaboration with Moazzam Beg, a former inmate at Guantanomo Bay, in Amnesty’s “Counter Terror With Justice” campaign. She is quoted to have said that for Amnesty “to be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”

On the same day Sahgal issued a statement where she spelt out the essential basis of her discomfort: “The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights.”