Proof that right-wing Muslims and right-wing Christians are exactly the same
This report brings to my mind the stories I used to hear growing up in Oklahoma about the Baptist homes for "unwed mothers" that are sprinkled throughout the Bible Belt. They are basically private Baptist-run juvenile detention centers to which parents send their pregnant teenage daughters to ride out their pregnancies until the babies can be wrested away from them and given to adult Baptists to raise. When I was in college, a story broke about the righteous man who ran one of these homes in Florida. He was raping the girls regularly, and he had been doing it for years. Funny, he was also a local leader of an anti-abortion group.
Libya: Women, Girls Locked Up Indefinitely Without Charge‘Protective’ Facilities Serve as Places of Arbitrary Punishment
The Libyan government is arbitrarily detaining women and girls indefinitely in “social rehabilitation” facilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Officially portrayed as protective homes for women and girls “vulnerable to engaging in moral misconduct,” these facilities are de facto prisons.
The 40-page report, “A Threat to Society? Arbitrary Detention of Women and Girls for ‘Social Rehabilitation,’” (available online at: http://hrw-news-mideast.c.topica.com/maaexGUaboFu0a5QBpWb/ )documents numerous and serious human rights abuses that women and girls suffer in these facilities. These include violations of their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, personal dignity, privacy and due process.
Libyan authorities are holding many women and girls in these facilities who have committed no crime, or who have completed a sentence. Some are there for no reason other than that they were raped, and are now ostracized for staining their families’ “honor.” Officials transferred the majority of these women and girls to these facilities against their will, while those who came voluntarily did so because no genuine shelters for victims of violence exist in Libya.
“These facilities are far more punitive than protective,” said Farida Deif, Middle East and North Africa researcher for the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “How can they be called shelters when most of the women and girls we interviewed told us they would escape if they could?”
“Social rehabilitation” facilities have a distinctly prison-like character. The women and girls sleep in locked quarters and are not allowed to leave the gates of the compound. The custodians sometimes subject them to long periods of solitary confinement, occasionally in handcuffs, for trivial reasons like “talking back.” They are tested for communicable diseases without their consent upon entry, and most are forced to endure invasive virginity examinations. Some residents are as young as 16, but authorities provide no education, except weekly religious instruction.
These women and girls have no opportunity to contest their confinement in a court of law, and typically have no legal representation. The exit requirements of “social rehabilitation” facilities are in themselves arbitrary and coercive. There is no way out unless a male relative takes custody of the woman or girl or she consents to marriage, often to a stranger who comes to the facility looking for a wife.
During meetings with Human Rights Watch in late January, the Libyan government promised to look into the abuses documented in the report. Aisha al-Qadhafi, daughter of Libyan leader Mu`ammar al-Qadhafi, also promised to investigate the matter. She presides over Wa’tassimu, a charity the government has charged with overseeing Tripoli’s “social rehabilitation” facilities. In late February, the managing director of the charity informed Human Rights Watch that the government just established a specialized council to study the conditions in all of Libya’s “social rehabilitation” facilities including examining the physical and psychological well-being of the women and children detained. It remains unclear who will be on the council and how it will function.
Human Rights Watch welcomes the establishment of the new council and calls on the council to investigate conditions in the centers first-hand and objectively document violations of Libyan law as a first step. Ultimately, the Libyan government should release all women and girls not serving criminal sentences who are nevertheless confined in these facilities and establish purely voluntary shelters for women and girls who are at risk of violence.
“Libya cannot use protection as an excuse to lock up women,” said Deif. “Women and girls who need protection from violence deserve genuine shelters, not punitive detention.”
Select testimonies from Libyan women held in the “social rehabilitation” homes featured in the report:
It is as if we’re criminals even though we didn’t do anything wrong. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
A man raped me on the street on August 8, 2004... I went directly to the center in Tarhouna, because my brother would kill me if he found out. I went directly from the center to the social welfare home. The prosecutor called my parents. He told them my story. They visit me but they won’t officially receive me. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
My mother died in a car crash when I was two. My father married a Moroccan woman. We didn’t understand each other. We had lots of problems. She’d hit and insult us. Eventually my father kicked me out. He gave me a ticket to visit my relatives. I worked in a restaurant. I made clean money. I didn’t smoke or take drugs. A year later, my father came to pick me up because people were talking. The prosecutor told me that I could either come here or go home with my father. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
Related MaterialLibya: Need to Deepen Rights ReformPress Release, January 25, 2006 http://hrw-news-mideast.c.topica.com/maaexGUaboFu1a5QBpWb/
Libya: Women, Girls Locked Up Indefinitely Without Charge‘Protective’ Facilities Serve as Places of Arbitrary Punishment
The Libyan government is arbitrarily detaining women and girls indefinitely in “social rehabilitation” facilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Officially portrayed as protective homes for women and girls “vulnerable to engaging in moral misconduct,” these facilities are de facto prisons.
The 40-page report, “A Threat to Society? Arbitrary Detention of Women and Girls for ‘Social Rehabilitation,’” (available online at: http://hrw-news-mideast.c.topica.com/maaexGUaboFu0a5QBpWb/ )documents numerous and serious human rights abuses that women and girls suffer in these facilities. These include violations of their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, personal dignity, privacy and due process.
Libyan authorities are holding many women and girls in these facilities who have committed no crime, or who have completed a sentence. Some are there for no reason other than that they were raped, and are now ostracized for staining their families’ “honor.” Officials transferred the majority of these women and girls to these facilities against their will, while those who came voluntarily did so because no genuine shelters for victims of violence exist in Libya.
“These facilities are far more punitive than protective,” said Farida Deif, Middle East and North Africa researcher for the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “How can they be called shelters when most of the women and girls we interviewed told us they would escape if they could?”
“Social rehabilitation” facilities have a distinctly prison-like character. The women and girls sleep in locked quarters and are not allowed to leave the gates of the compound. The custodians sometimes subject them to long periods of solitary confinement, occasionally in handcuffs, for trivial reasons like “talking back.” They are tested for communicable diseases without their consent upon entry, and most are forced to endure invasive virginity examinations. Some residents are as young as 16, but authorities provide no education, except weekly religious instruction.
These women and girls have no opportunity to contest their confinement in a court of law, and typically have no legal representation. The exit requirements of “social rehabilitation” facilities are in themselves arbitrary and coercive. There is no way out unless a male relative takes custody of the woman or girl or she consents to marriage, often to a stranger who comes to the facility looking for a wife.
During meetings with Human Rights Watch in late January, the Libyan government promised to look into the abuses documented in the report. Aisha al-Qadhafi, daughter of Libyan leader Mu`ammar al-Qadhafi, also promised to investigate the matter. She presides over Wa’tassimu, a charity the government has charged with overseeing Tripoli’s “social rehabilitation” facilities. In late February, the managing director of the charity informed Human Rights Watch that the government just established a specialized council to study the conditions in all of Libya’s “social rehabilitation” facilities including examining the physical and psychological well-being of the women and children detained. It remains unclear who will be on the council and how it will function.
Human Rights Watch welcomes the establishment of the new council and calls on the council to investigate conditions in the centers first-hand and objectively document violations of Libyan law as a first step. Ultimately, the Libyan government should release all women and girls not serving criminal sentences who are nevertheless confined in these facilities and establish purely voluntary shelters for women and girls who are at risk of violence.
“Libya cannot use protection as an excuse to lock up women,” said Deif. “Women and girls who need protection from violence deserve genuine shelters, not punitive detention.”
Select testimonies from Libyan women held in the “social rehabilitation” homes featured in the report:
It is as if we’re criminals even though we didn’t do anything wrong. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
A man raped me on the street on August 8, 2004... I went directly to the center in Tarhouna, because my brother would kill me if he found out. I went directly from the center to the social welfare home. The prosecutor called my parents. He told them my story. They visit me but they won’t officially receive me. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
My mother died in a car crash when I was two. My father married a Moroccan woman. We didn’t understand each other. We had lots of problems. She’d hit and insult us. Eventually my father kicked me out. He gave me a ticket to visit my relatives. I worked in a restaurant. I made clean money. I didn’t smoke or take drugs. A year later, my father came to pick me up because people were talking. The prosecutor told me that I could either come here or go home with my father. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
Related MaterialLibya: Need to Deepen Rights ReformPress Release, January 25, 2006 http://hrw-news-mideast.c.topica.com/maaexGUaboFu1a5QBpWb/
posted by thankgodforpbr at 3/11/2006 04:29:00 PM
3 Comments:
That is disturbing. As you mention with the home for unwed mothers, it reminds me of the episode of Law & Order SVU where the judge raped his daughter and then had her committed to a detention facility due to her "behavioral problems" when she became pregnant.
I appreciate your knowledge and research. We need more people who, like you, actually care about marginalized peoples and societies. There is such a need for awareness and understanding, and I'm glad that you bring that to our law school class. You challenge people and make them think, and I am thankful for the way that you've challenged me.
I would like to say, however, that while you seem so committed to the idea of opening peoples eyes and minds to those who have been traditionally shunned, you, in turn, shun all of us you call "conservative." You want to bridge gaps and remove stereotypes, but you only want to do that for certain groups of people. In your effort to get people to see your point of view, you make assumptions about those who think differently. Isn't this what you're fighting against? The idea of seeing a large group of people in a negative light because of your preconceived ideas and refusing to take the time to learn about them or realize what they're really thinking?
I am a right-wing conservative Christian...no, I wasn't born that way, no my parents aren't like that. Yes I think for myself and develop my beliefs based on what I have discovered to be true. The fact that I'm heterosexual, go to church, and don't care to experiment with drugs doesn't mean that I can't understand. It doesn't mean that I don't care about people or want to make a difference in their lives. Im also doing public interest law this summer, im also frustrated by people who turn others away based on superficial reasons, and i'm also horrified by this article. Its a terrible thing. But don't ostracize all right-wing Christians because some of them act this way. Im from the Bible belt, and i don't know anyone who would approve of putting their child in a home to avoid the "embarassment" of having a child out of wedlock.
I just want you to know that your battle isn't with the right wing conservatives...there are plenty of us who agree with you in more ways than you think. Don't cut people off who are trying to raise their voices with you. I think your battle is more against apathy, misunderstanding, and selfishness....there is plenty of that going around in every group, community, and nation.
Anonymous,
You got me. Really. I admit it. I tend to make generalizations about those who would self identify, or would fall into, the class of those called "conservative", religiously, politically, economically, socially, all, or any combination of all of the above. I shouldn't. I'll try to do better.
The root of my, perhaps, mental wall against all things conservative is certainly my upbringing. Shocking as it may sound, I did grow up in an extremely fundamentalist, conservative evangelical traditional household and community. I attended a fundamentalist, literalist, post-millenial "Bible beating" (literally, the pastor would slam his hand on his Bible when he really got into his sermon and the spirit caught him) church. For many years of my adolescence, there was cause for me to darken the churchhouse door every day for one function, service, or prayer meeting or another.
I learned alot of good things from this experience that I often forgot amidst all the pain and bitterness that I also harbor from it. I learned the value of service and community. I learned to do whatever someone needed whenever she needed it without having to be asked or expecting anything in return. Its a big reason why I am the way I am now. Certainly. But I also learned a great deal of self-loathing, fear, and judgment. And I can't seem to forgive the people who instilled that along with all the good.
I remember having sex at a young age and being so scared that my parents would literally beat me to death if I accidently got pregnant. I remember realizing I was attracted to women and hoping that I could repress it long enough to get out of my town so I wouldn't get beaten up by my peers. And there's worse. There's the ministers who were a tad too licentious and touchy-feely. That's all I have to say about that.
I'm bitter and angry about my childhood and I'm bitter and angry that anyone else would have to go through it. I appreciate the conservatives like you, anonymous, who conserve the best of the tradition and strive to reform the rest and not let it continue. We need that, because obviously people are gravitating toward the evangelical fundamentalist tradition, not away from it.
In closing, I would say that I guess I can't call myself a conservative because there is little of what exists now in our society that I would want to conserve. In many ways, that to me means resurrecting values that have been lost, like community and generosity. But that doesn't seem to me to be conservative, because those things have unfortunately been lost overall, save for small pockets of good people here and there.
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