[Question] Petition: Stop Election of Pakistan to U.N Human Rights Council

I’m currently going through a process where I’m seriously questioning my intellectual abilities so I have my doubts when I criticize this petition. People here who are more knowledgeable on this issue please reblog and comment. My issue with this petition is their use of “allows “honour” attacks against women where acid is thrown on their faces.” As a disclaimer, I cannot click the PDF link provided where it describes the issue more in detail, but based on how people are commenting, I doubt most of the people who signed it read the PDF document anyway. UN Watch, who created the petition, is an organization that is determined to remove corruption in the UNHCR.

I do not like the term honor attacks as used above. I feel like ‘honor attacks’ could easily be replaced with the term ‘homicide,’ and the petition would be de-legitimatized. I could easily come up with a petition against the United States, but instead of using their own human rights records, I could write some sort of sensational report on gruesome murders (based on my frequent watchings of Unsolved Mysteries when I was younger), and I think the end result would be the same as writing ‘honor attacks.’

To me, I feel like they are saying Pakistan ‘allows murders to happen.’ I mean does that mean that Pakistan doesn’t care about women being murdered? Are they taking advantage of homicide rates to legitimize the petition? Or are they using the term to sensationalize the issue and get people to sign it?

Can someone respond? Is my thinking on this stupid?

Hindu Girls Abducted and forced into a Muslim marriage || IRIN

“The abduction and kidnapping of Hindu girls is becoming more and more common,” Amarnath Motumal, a lawyer and leader of Karachi’s Hindu community, told IRIN. “This trend has been growing over the past four or five years, and it is getting worse day by day.”

He said there were at least 15-20 forced abductions and conversions of young girls from Karachi each month, mainly from the multi-ethnic Lyari area. The fact that more and more people were moving to Karachi from the interior of Sindh Province added to the dangers, as there were now more Hindus in Karachi, he said.

“They come to search for better schooling, for work and to escape growing extremism,” said Motumal who believes Muslim religious schools are involved in the conversion business.

“Hindus are non-believers. They believe in many gods, not one, and are heretics. So they should be converted,” said Abdul Mannan, 20, a Muslim student. He said he would be willing to marry a Hindu girl, if asked to by his teachers, “because conversions brought big rewards from Allah [God]. But later I will marry a `real’ Muslim girl as my second wife,” he said.

According to local law, a Muslim man can take more than one wife, but rights activists argue that the law infringes the rights of women and needs to be altered.

Read More

The Kalash in Perspective || Gene Expression

Women Expose Secret Genital Cutting Rite || IPS News

“It was a dark and dingy room, where an elderly woman asked me to take off my panties, made me sit on a low wooden stool with my legs parted and then did something…I screamed out in pain,” recalls Alefia Mustansir, 40, of her childhood experience.

Her friend, Sakina Haider, remembers “putting up a good fight” before she succumbed. “I was told by my grandmother that I was being taken to the doctor to address burning in the genital area when soap went there while bathing!”

Both Haider and Mustansir have refused to have their daughters undergo circumcision or female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), the Dawoodi Bohras’ best-kept secret until young women from the community first began to speak up against it a few years ago.

Bohras, a sub-sect of Ismaili Shia Muslims, are a tight-knit community, with a majority residing in India and Pakistan, and estimated to number two million the world over.

An article in the Dec. 12 issue of the popular Indian weekly ‘Outlook’ says: “Khatna (circumcision) is a tradition the Bohras trace back to their origins in (north) Africa, one they continue with because they see this as an attempt to stay true to their faith.”

The Outlook article goes on to say that “most Bohra women and men even today would rather keep this practice a secret rather than question a custom that is now universally seen as a gross violation of a woman’s body.”

Read More