August 21, 2002.
- Export promotion Council for Handicrafts target Middle East Garment market
- Maruti to buy and sell pre owned cars
- Focus on abandoned babies controversy
- Tanzania : HIV/AIDS debate hots up among Religious Leaders
- Mobile clinic to treat street children with STDs
Denial of appeal against stoning sentence for Adultery sparks
international outcry
ABIDJAN, 20 August (IRIN) - Monday's decision by an appeal court in
northern Nigeria's Katsina State to uphold a death sentence imposed on a
woman found guilty of adultery has sparked an international outcry.Human rights organisations called the decision a cruel and inhuman
application of Sharia (Islamic) law. "The legal system is being used to
punish adult women for consensual sex," said LaShawn Jefferson, executive
director of the Women's Rights Division of the Human Rights Watch. "The
death penalty is never an appropriate punishment for a crime, and, in this
instance, the very nature of the crime is in doubt," Jefferson said in a
statement on Tuesday.After the woman, thirty-year-old Amina Lawal, gave birth out of wedlock, a
Sharia court sentenced her in March to death by stoning. A man she
identified as the father of the baby was discharged for lack of evidence.
The execution of her sentence was subsequently postponed by 18 months, by
which time Lawal’s eight-month-old baby would have been weaned. Monday's
decision conformed the stay of execution.Jefferson urged the Nigerian government to commute Lawal's death sentence,
drop the criminal charges against her, abolish the death penalty and end
the prosecution of consensual sex between adults.Amnesty International also condemned the ruling. "This judgment is
incompatible with the Nigerian constitution and also with Nigeria's legal
obligations under international human rights law and the African Charter
for Human and People Rights," it said on Monday in a news release. "The
practice of stoning to death is the ultimate form of torture or cruel,
inhuman and degrading punishment prohibited by both the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against
Torture."Amnesty asked Nigeria's government to allow Lawal to enjoy her right of
appeal to a higher, impartial, independent tribunal which follows the due
process of law. "This sentence must not be carried out," it said.Lawal was the second woman to be sentenced to death by stoning since
states in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north began introducing the
Islamic legal code in 2000. The first, Safiya Husseini, was sentenced last
year in Sokoto State, but that verdict was quashed on 19 March, the same
day Lawal received her sentence.Tanzania : HIV/AIDS debate hots up
NAIROBI, 20 August (IRIN) - A leading Tanzanian health official has warned
religious and civic leaders against "infighting" and "finger pointing" in
the war against HIV/AIDS in the country. Herman Lupogo, chairman of the
Tanzanian Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS), the leading agency fighting the
spread of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania, told IRIN on Monday that an open and
accurate debate was the only positive way forward in preventing the spread
of HIV/AIDS in the country."While discussing these issues, religious and civic leaders should
recognise the potential impact of their comments and the difficulties
involved in withdrawing them," Lupogo said. "When it comes to the fight
against HIV/AIDS, we look at them [social and religious leaders] as role
models, and a lot of people listen to what they say. Therefore, they
should be pretty careful about what they say."He made the comments following several weeks of high-profile debate within
the Tanzanian media and among civic and religious leaders over whether
condoms are an effective method of preventing of HIV/AIDS transmission.The debate was recently sparked off by Reginald Mengi, TACAIDS
commissioner and media owner, who criticised religious leaders' stand
against condom use. In a hard-hitting statement, Mengi said religious
leaders who discouraged their congregation from using condoms would be
"participating in [the] murder" of every believer who contracted AIDS from
unprotected sex.Religious leaders - Catholic and Muslim alike - responded strongly to
these allegations. Cardinal Polycarp Pengo, the Roman Catholic Archbishop
of Dar es Salaam, reportedly said that the use of condoms had been
scientifically proved to be ineffective. Some Muslim leaders, for their
part, reiterated the claims that condoms merely promoted prostitution.Lupogo said none of the attacks - neither Mengi's, nor the subsequent
reactions - had been constructive, as "we are together in this campaign
and we shouldn't start pointing fingers at one another", and some
statements being made were not based on scientific fact. "People like Mr
Mengi are very influential, so when they come up with a statement, it
certainly carries a certain amount of weight, and definitely, if it
happened to be the wrong one, it also carries a lot of damage, which ever
way you look at it," Lupogo said.Lupogo, however said that there was "definitely" a place for an accurate
debate in the fight against HIV/AIDS, as it made people "more aware of the
issues" at hand and encouraged others "to think about what is happening,
and look around for ways of explaining things".While Tanzania had come a long way during the last decade to reduce the
stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, "it is still not mentioned in some rural
areas, although they are burying their relatives every day", he added.Mobile clinic to treat street children with STDs
JOHANNESBURG, 20 August (IRIN) - Street children and child sex workers in
Zambia's capital Lusaka will soon become familiar with a kerb crawler of a
different kind - a mobile clinic equipped especially to treat children for
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).Merab Keremire, director of MAPODE (Movement of Community Action for the
Prevention and Protection of Young People Against Poverty, Destitution,
Diseases and Exploitation), said while her organisation was doing outreach
work on the pavements of the Zambian city, they realised that there was a
need for a facility dedicated to treating children with STDs.The boys and girls - between the ages of 8 and 15 - were usually taken to
nearby medical centres for treatment but they didn't always have adequate
facilities or staff, she explained.But now, with the help of a donation from British-based Streetchild
Africa, MAPODE will cruise the city streets at night in a mobile clinic
staffed by a dedicated nurse and a doctor on call, with free medication
from local hospitals and clinic.The project would seek out both boys and girls who need treatment. The
focus, however, would primarily be on girls who, Keremire feels, are more
vulnerable."Females are exploited and are treated as sex objects. In the street there
are taxi drivers, conductors, security guards, mad guys, and a small
little girl loitering gets abused a lot," she told IRIN."We have a home for about 23 boys at the moment but girls don't have that
option. They get raped and their bodies get violated. The street boys live
in a group and they survive by forming a gang to protect themselves," she
said."The boys don't get raped but there is a lot of 'compassionate sex' among
themselves and they need treatment for STDs. They get healed unless they
have HIV/AIDS. But the little girls have to deal with pregnancies,
abortions, problems with their wombs - they are in a bad state."Keremire said a nurse was about to arrive in the country from abroad to
start the project. The clinic would also travel at night as the groups of
sleeping children were easier to find then."We find them sleeping in the doorways at midnight and we ask them how
they are and they tell us who needs help," she said.Keremire said the next step was to get the children off the street. They
had arrived through a combination of setbacks - a death in the family, a
father unable to cope alone with children, no money. "The bottom line is
that there aren't sufficient child protection structures for them."Meanwhile, MAPODE hopes to buy a house to set up a permanent clinic and a
skills training centre for girls. Other current projects include a
computer school to equip children with modern skills.SWAZILAND: Focus on abandoned babies controversy
MBABANE, 20 August (IRIN) - A wave of baby murders are commanding front-page news in the small conservative kingdom of Swaziland. But while editorial writers are denouncing "mother murderers", women's rights groups argue the rising number of abandoned babies are a symptom of gender inequality in this traditional society.
On Thursday last week, a baby wrapped in a blanket was left by an unknown person on the white line separating the lanes of a highway entering Manzini, Swaziland's most populous urban area. The baby was scooped up by a motorist before he could be run over, and taken to hospital.
That same day, the excitement of scavengers at the municipal dump at the Matsapha Industrial Estate outside Manzini turned to horror when a plastic bag they at first thought contained meat, proved to be the burial shroud for a baby's corpse.
"Women who abandon their babies in fields and alongside roads will be arrested for child endangerment. Women whose abandoned babies die will be charged with murder, and so will of course women who kill their babies," Willie Masuku, public relations officer for the Royal Swaziland Police Force told IRIN.
Masuku appeared on Swazi television to beg destitute women to accept counselling and consider options like putting a child up for adoption as alternatives when they are faced with unwanted pregnancies.
But, according to an attorney with the Swaziland chapter of Lawyers for Human Rights, if murder charges are to be filed, "to be morally tenable, the man who impregnates a women and runs away rather than assuming responsibility for a baby is a contributor to the outcome if the baby is abandoned or killed. He must be charged as an accessory to murder."
In Swaziland, women are legal minors who cannot take out a bank loan, own property, or enter into a contract without permission of a male relative. Some men take advantage of women's lack of rights by promising to maintain indigent women in exchange for sex, and then abandoning them when pregnancy occurs.
"It is like child abuse, where an abused child will grow up to abuse children as an adult. The abandoned woman will abandon the baby who results from an exploitative liaison," Agnes Kunene, a social worker in Manzini told IRIN.
As proof of gender bias in Swaziland, Kunene pointed out that the police and the Swazi media all condemned "murderous mothers" for the dead baby found at the dump site and the baby left in the middle of the highway.
"No one knows who abandoned those babies. The police have no clues. It could have been the babies' fathers who don't wish to support them. It could have been relatives of the mother. It could have been the mother's father who does not want to pay a penalty for his girl breaking the 'umcwasho' chastity rules," Kunene said.
The custom of umcwasho, where young women wear woollen tassels to show their adherence to traditional rules that forbid sexual intercourse before marriage, is criticised by Doo Aphane, legal advisor for the Swaziland branch of Women in Law in Southern Africa.
"The reintroduction of the custom by royal authorities was done without consulting the girls. It was imposed. If a girl falls pregnant, her family must pay a fine of a cow. This is a terrible burden during a time of food shortages," she said.
To illustrate the pressure girls face to maintain chastity under the reintroduced umcwasho rules, a pregnant teenager hung herself last month, and left a note saying she could not face her family. In half of the 20 recent cases of baby abandonment where a mother was traced by police, the young women or girls who were arrested said they were afraid of their families' reactions to the birth of their babies.
Senator Mbho Shongwe became the first Swazi official to call for legalised abortions last month in parliament. "Girls who can afford it go across the border to have the operation done in South Africa. Poor girls risk their lives with kitchen table abortions here. It is a reality, and we have to face up to it. Abortion will save girls' lives and will end the abandonment of unwanted babies," he told IRIN.
"Abortion is murder. Baby dumpings are murder. The mothers leave their babies in pit latrines and in the bush where they can be devoured by dogs. This shows the level of sin that abounds in the country," responded Reverend Jabulani Dlamini from the rural district of Mliba.
Eighty-percent of respondents to a questionnaire published by the Times of Swaziland, after Shongwe proposed legalised abortions, shared Reverend Dlamini's views.The senate on Thursday submitted a motion to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to construct "a relief village which will take care of children from helpless mothers and families". But such a complex would not address the underlying cause of baby abandonment, which is poverty and women's inequality, activists warn. "Women need to be economically empowered so they do not have to give in to demands for sex in order to survive," said Aphane. [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
Export promotion Council for Handicrafts target Middle East Garment market
keralamonitor.com August 21, 2002
Dubai --India's Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) will make its
debut with an official pavilion at Ambiente Arabia - the international
gifts and homeware show being held in Dubai next month."Our total exports in 2000 - 2001 were well over US $1.45 billion an
increase of 13.70 per cent on 1998 - 1999 figures," said Rakesh Kumar,
Executive Director, EPCH. "Although there is a huge potential in the
Middle East for handicrafts our share in the region remains minimal
compared to our best markets like the US and Europe. Ambiente Arabia
will help push our sales in the region."EPCH is a non-profit organisation which works under the administrative
control of Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Ministry of Textiles,
Government of India and governed by the policies of Ministry of
Textiles. It's membership has grown from 35 in 1986 to over 6,000
companies to date.A dozen EPCH member-companies are expected to participate in the show
making it the exhibition's largest pavilion."Another important factor, influencing our plans to tap this market
further, is our close proximity and very good business links to the region."Daghestan will also host a pavilion making its Middle East debut at
Ambiente Arabia. To date, exhibitors from Europe, Russia and the Far
East have confirmed participation in Ambiente Arabia, which will occupy
a hall at the Dubai International Exhibition Centre."Current industry estimates show that the Middle East retail market will
be worth US $500 billion by 2010," said Sally Hodgkinson, Project
Director, Ambiente Arabia. "Recent downturn in other economies means
more and more companies are eyeing the Middle East as a lucrative alternative."The show, organised by IIR Exhibitions and Conferences, has been
re-launched as a dedicated annual event running alongside the Motexha
Autumn fashion and retail exhibition.Maruti to buy and sell pre owned cars in Jaipur
Maruti Udyog Limited, the car market leader in the country, today announced its entry into the business of pre-owned cars in the city. This business will be conducted under the brand name 'Maruti True Value'.
August 19, 2002, Jaipur: The first True Value outlet in Rajasthan was launched at channel partner K.P.Automotives(Pvt.) ltd. by Managing Director of Maruti Udyog Limited, Mr Jagdish Khattar, here today.To provide reassurance to customers, every vehicle bought under True Value will carry a one-year warranty and three free services. Convenient finance options will also be offered to buyers of Maruti True Value cars.
Maruti True Value will also offer benefits for sellers of pre owned cars. Under Maruti True Value, Maruti cars less than 4 years old, having been driven upto 60,000 km and not changed two previous ownerships, will be accepted for purchase. Designated engineers from Maruti will be present at True Value outlets. They will conduct a standard 120-point check of a vehicle brought to the outlet.
All this will allow a transparent and fair evaluation process. This is currently missing in the existing market for pre-owned cars, which is highly unorganised. The new systems and processes that Maruti True Value brings will improve the condition of the market and make it more convenient for customers to buy and sell pre owned cars.
Under True Value, the seller will have the option to be paid in cash, or get a True Value car in exchange or a brand new Maruti car in exchange.
'No one knows your Maruti car better than Maruti' - based on this premise, Maruti will channelise its expertise to ensure that transactions in pre owned cars are transparent and fair. Cars bought from owners by Maruti True Value will be taken to state-of-the-art workshops. Using Maruti Genuine Parts, skilled technicians will refurbish them for resale under the Maruti True Value brand.
Maruti True Value will verify the bona fide of the seller as well as buyer to ensure neither party is put to inconvenience as a result of the transaction.
The service has so far been launched in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Faridabad and Lucknow.
Maruti True Value is one of the four service businesses that Maruti has entered into. The others are - lease and fleet management for companies, auto insurance and auto finance. Together, these businesses are enabling Maruti to provide mobility-related solutions and extend its relationship with the customer during the entire ownership cycle.
Maruti True Value will expand the family of Maruti customers and provide reassurance to existing Maruti customers about resale of their cars. It is further proof of Maruti's commitment towards enhancing customer satisfaction.
