Press statement ...(Monitor) condemns police assault Tunisian.The Chief of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights in the city of Bizerte.

Exposure colleague Ali bin Salim Chief of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, on the morning of the holidays December 20, 2007 in the city of Bizerte to attack by the Tunisian police, while he was prepared to receive the Amaadith friends, a number of police preventing them from entering the headquarters of the Association for the use of force. They were Mr. Ali Ben Salem, aged 77 years, was Doce under the legs, leaving him bodily injury and breaking his glasses. The head of the Territory and the head of the Bizerte and supervisors were present on this outrage, leading to the transfer colleague Ali bin Salim to the hospital situation deplorable.
The Palestinian Human Rights Foundation (Monitor) strongly condemns and deplores the attack by the police against Tunisian colleague "Ali Ben Salem" (77 years), Chief of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights in the city of Bizerte and a number of his fellow members of the Association during a meeting at the headquarters of the Association in Eid Al-Adha holidays to exchange congratulations.
It also demands (Monitor) Tunisian authorities to open an investigation impartial judiciary in the attack and for those responsible, and urge the Tunisian government to curb such attacks and to prevent recurrence and to ensure the necessary protection for human rights defenders and commitment by the International Bill of Human Rights..

Palestinian Human Rights Foundation (Monitor)

Information Section January 28, 2007

The United Arab Emirates: Citizens with No Native Country

Cairo on: December 4, 2007

The United Arab Emirates: Citizens with No Native Country

the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists (APHRA) follows up the different dimensions and developments of the people "with no nationality" in the Arab gulf states, the phenomenon that has no equivalent in either developed or developing countries. In fact there is no precise estimation of this phenomenon. But this is mainly due to information obscuring imposed by governments.
The "people-with-no-nationality" phenomenon causes several bad effects to both people with and without nationality in these countries. It, therefore, needs to investigate for determining its causes and finding solutions. For causes, it is clear that political reasons, namely religious politics conflicts, lie behind this phenomenon.
As the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists (APHRA) observes this phenomenon, it confirms that it utterly contradicts with all international human rights conventions. "People with no nationality" are lacking identity or legal protection by any state. They are deprived of all rights, freedoms or privileges. While alive in practice, they dead in law. They have no documents and can not document their marriages, properties. They do not even have any properties. In addition, they are deprived of the rights to work, free education, medical care, etc.
In short those people are deprived of the globally acknowledged right to have the nationality of the countries in which they and their ancestors were born. According to the international law, people acquire the nationality of the countries in which they are born or the nationality of their parents or that of the country in which they reside for certain time periods (only fives years in some cases). All these requirements are met by the "people with no nationality" in the United Arab Emirates. The least of requirements is that they have documents that prove that they were citizens of the individual emirates before the political unification. Yet, the federal state did not take these documents seriously. This negation clearly contradicts with the universal declaration of human rights that states in article 15 that "every individual has the right to have a specific nationality and that individuals can not be deprived of the rights to have or change nationality". It also contradicts with article 3/24 of the international covenant on civil and political rights. Furthermore, this negation also conflicts with the federal constitution that "gives all citizens the nationality of the United Arab Emirates according to the law, provides them with the due protection beyond borders in accordance with observed international rules and regulations, and states that nationality can not be dropped unless in the exceptional cases determined by law".
Being moved by the suffering of this big group of people in different gulf Arab states, APHRA requests authorities in the United Arab Emirates to offer effective and decisive solutions to this enduring problem so as to let those people enjoy the rights and freedoms guaranteed by all international human rights conventions, namely by giving them the nationality of the United Arab Emirates.
APHRA also appeals to all concerned Arab and international organizations, mainly United Nations, to join forces to put an end to the suffering of this group of people by applying the international human rights conventions giving them the nationality of the states in which they live.

Finally APHRA asks all human rights organizations all over the world to adopt this issue in the future until these people are given the nationality of the states in which they live.

Saudi King pardons gang raped woman

Qatif Girl" case caused intl. outcry

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz issued a royal decree annulling the penalty imposed on the Saudi woman in the heavily covered rape case known as "The Qatif girl”, according to a Saudi daily

The King issued the decree in his capacity as the guardian of the kingdom who has the right "to revoke sentences if that serves public interest," Saudi newspaper Al-Jazeera reported on Monday December 17

Saudi Minister of Justice Dr. Abdullah bin Mohamed told the DAILY that the king has the right to modify or cancel “taazeer” sentences, that is ones related to crimes for which there is no clear punishment ordained by aLLAH, as opposed to “Houdoud” (set penalties for grave sins like apostasy, adultery…etc)


"King Abdullah always cares about what is best for the people. He closely follows judicial rulings and makes sure penalties will not have negative psychological impacts on the convicts. He uses his right as guardian of the nation to alleviate people's suffering, while ensuring justice is secured

The Minister further stressed the transparency and independence of the judicial system in the kingdom: "Judges are keen on protecting the people in accordance with Islamic laws. And what happened is the best proof of the efficiency of Islamic courts: the judges pass the ruling they see as fair, and the convicted has the right to contest it via the legitimate channels."

The rape victim and her lawyer contested the Qatif court ruling that sentenced her to 90 floggings for "illicit privacy." The girl was accused of being alone with a man not related to her when seven men kidnapped and gang-raped her. However, the court passed a stricter ruling that sentenced the girl to 6 months in jail and 200 floggings. This sentence was annulled by the king's decree.

AIDS victims are martyrs: Egypt Muslim authority

Arab world has second highest HIV infection rate

The head of the Religious Guidance Department at Egypt's Ministry of Religious Endowments ruled that death by AIDS is considered martyrdom, press reports said. Sheikh Ahmed Abu-Youssef referred to the Prophet's (PBUH) saying that: "He who dies of intestinal disease is a martyr" and pointed out that 90% of the patients "sincerely repent" before they die.
Of the 2,086 documented HIV cases since 1986, only 960 patients are still alive,
DR. Mamdouh Wahba, the Deputy Chairman of the Department for Combating Contagious Diseases at the Egyptian Ministry of Health told Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Youm.
Wahba said the WHO report about HIV in Egypt triggered concern,
since it said that for each reported case, 10 go unreported.Many people who suspect they are infected refuse to take the necessary medical tests, Al-Azhar University's reproductive health professor
Dr. Ahmed Ragaei said.Ragaei added that although the number of people infected in the Arab region is one of the lowest in the world, the rate that HIV infections are spreading ranks second.

Jordan mum kills newborn, dumps it in sewer

Hours after baby rescued from garbage dump

A few hours after a newborn was found shivering with the cold in a garbage bag in the Jordanian capital, the police said they found a dead baby in a sewer.The latest incident took place in a small town in West Jordan, so police were able to identify the mother easily. They went to her house, where they found her with her mother and uncle.Preliminary investigations revealed that the woman was illicitly involved with a laborer in the town, and got pregnant. After the delivery, her mother strangled the baby.

The woman, her mother, and her uncle then got rid of the body by throwing it in the sewage system of their bathroom, police said, making it easier to uncover the crime. A short while earlier, two garbage collectors found a naked newborn in garbage bag under a bridge in central Amman. Although the bag was black and tightly closed, the baby's cries attracted their attention."The baby was blue from the cold," Petra News Agency quoted the head of the Amman Environment Department, Omar Al-Abbadi, as saying.The director of the Islamic Cultural Center at the University of Jordan, Ahmed Al-Awaysha, said "disgrace, not poverty" was to blame for the recent cases in the country.

UNICEF shocked by rampant rape in Somalia

The United Nations Children's Fund's representative for Somalia on Friday voiced his concern at the increasing number of rape cases in the country's war-torn capital Mogadishu."Sexual violence and rape are part of the game now," Christian Balslev-Olesen said at a press briefing on the deteriorating access to health in Mogadishu."We had not seen the level and kind of open violence against civilian populations that we are seeing now," he said, citing several instances of women being raped at checkpoints in broad daylight.All parties involved in the conflict are involved in sexual violence, although aid workers on the ground said rapes were mainly committed by government militias and their Ethiopian allies.

"The people who were not able to leave Mogadishu seem to be in a situation that we have never, ever seen in the past 16 to 17 years," the UNICEF official said.Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the fighting in Mogadishu in recent months, leaving six out of 16 districts in the capital almost completely empty.Waves of displaced people are flooding nearby camps and seeking shelter with relatives across the country, but those who stay behind are facing unprecedented abuses and violence.

UNICEF noted that children were increasingly at risk, with 80 percent of all schools closed in Mogadishu.

The U.N. agency also said that children were being recruited by government militias and Islamist insurgents alike, thus making them "legitimate targets" in the conflict.Any movement inside Mogadishu exposes civilians to deadly risks and the multiplication of checkpoints manned by extortionist government militias and warlords in and around the city are making any bid to flee equally perilous.Checkpoints have also greatly impeded civilians' access to health, leaving victims of shelling and other fighting unable to receive medical assistance."People bleed to death in their houses," said one aid worker."We are therefore appealing to everyone involved in this conflict to allow women and children safe passage across the city so that they can access basic, life-saving medical services," Balslev-Olesen said.Ethiopian troops last year came to the rescue of the transitional Somali government and defeated an Islamist militia that briefly controlled large parts of the country.

The Islamist movement's remnants have since reverted to urban guerrilla tactics, launching hit-and-run attacks in Mogadishu which have drawn a heavy government response

Moroccan prisoner smuggles woman into his cell

he convinced guards it was a bag of clothes

A Moroccan jailed for terrorism offences smuggled a woman into his prison cell in a large plastic bag and spent six hours with her there before being caught, media reports said Thursday.The prisoner is serving time in a Casablanca jail for belonging to the radical Islamist movement Salafia Jihadia and engaging in "terrorist activities," newspapers said.The young woman came to see the prisoner on Tuesday and he smuggled her from the visiting room into his cell in a bag that he persuaded guards contained clothes, according to Assabah newspaper.

The Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki paper said the woman spent six hours there before the pair were caught, adding that the prisoner was subsequently transferred to another jail in Casablanca.An official from the Ain Borja prison confirmed "the discovery by guards of a woman inside the prison" but said the media reports contained "inaccuracies". He told AFP in particular that she was only in the prisoner's cell for an hour.An inquiry has been launched into how the incident, thought to be the first of its kind, could occur