Religion News Blog » Human Rights Violations

Saudi woman executed for ‘witchcraft and sorcery’

Religion News Blog — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:24:23 +0000

A Saudi woman has been executed for practising "witchcraft and sorcery", the country's interior ministry says.

Amnesty International says the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion.

Pakistani Christian Sentenced for ‘Blasphemy’ Dies in Prison; Murder Suspected

Religion News Blog — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:53:20 +0000

Qamar David’s life had been threatened since he and a Muslim, Munawar Ahmad, were accused of sending derogatory text messages about Muhammad in June 2006, said David’s former lawyer, Pervaiz Chaudhry.

David was convicted under Section 295-C under Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws for derogatory remarks against Muhammad in a case registered at Karachi’s Azizabad Police Station, with another case registered at Saddar Police Station pending.

China Court Upholds 15 Year Imprisonment For Pastor Yimiti

Religion News Blog — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:31:56 +0000

An ethnic minority house church leader remained detained in China's troubled northwestern Xinjiang region Sunday, March 6, after a court rejected an appeal to review his 15 years prison sentence on charges of revealing state secrets to overseas groups.

United Nations officials and local Christians have linked the sentence to Pastor Alimujiang Yimiti's Christian conversion, his leadership of a house church with his wife Gulinuer and two sons, and apparent involvement in sharing reports of religious persecution.

Wikileaks

Religion News Blog — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:37:40 +0000

The US government says "At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information."

Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

Religion News Blog — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 16:21:06 +0000

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

George Bush’s human rights violations

Religion News Blog — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:48:04 +0000

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to someone close to Bush who has read the book.

George W. Bush: Torturer in Chief.

• Red Cross: America practiced torture • Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America’s war on terror • The horrors really are your America, Mr Bush • Poll: On torture, evangelicals not looking to Bible, doctrine • George Bush has claimed to be a Christian -- a follower of Jesus Christ, and many people who also consider themselves to be 'Christians' believe him. Yet he lied about the fact that America -- under his leadership and with his approval -- tortured people. He tried to redefine torture, but torture by any other name is just as vile. Christians who support that kind of behavior -- and those kind of leaders - are not followers of Jesus Christ, since their very behaviour shows they do not even know Him. • National Religious Campaign Against Torture

And then there's this... • US defends human rights record before UN body

When good people do bad things

Religion News Blog — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 10:28:37 +0000

Is it possible for a really good person to turn evil? Do you think you have an inner demon that could be triggered to make you rob a bank, steal from a neighbor or torture another human being?

Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University and author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, has performed some of the most groundbreaking experiments in the history of psychology.

Dr. Zimbardo is the featured guest on Dr. Phil today. Find out what happens when several audience members are put to the test! Will they blindly follow instructions from an actor who looks like an authority figure? And, find out how the horrific abuses discovered in 2004 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq mimic the results from Dr. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1970s. See the surprising parallel that demonstrates just how easily a good person can be drawn to the dark side.

In an interview with cult expert Steve Hassan, Zimbardo -- author of this remarkably lucid article on cults -- specifically refutes cult propagandists' claims that “there is no such thing as mind control” and talks about specific techniques such as deception, manipulation, authority iinfluence, group influence and control of Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotions.

U.S. Ducks As Cluster Bomb Ban Takes Effect

Religion News Blog — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:25:06 +0000

Memo to the handful of people that still like to think of America as a 'Christian country':

Every war must end, instructed the U.S. strategist Fred Ikle. But leftover unexploded ordnance can be a war’s legacy, particularly when small and unstable munitions lay around areas where civilians rebuild their lives after the fighting stops. That’s why a new international ban on cluster munitions will take effect on Saturday. The U.S., however, isn’t part of the accord.

More than 30 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions — the threshold for it entering into force — and over 100 have signed it since 2008. Holdouts include Russia, Israel and the United States. All three of those countries have used cluster bombs in the past decade.

According to the Pentagon’s 2008 policy, cluster munitions are actually humane weapons. Cluster opponents don’t buy it. “The vast majority of U.S. allies have banned this weapon,” Thomas Nash, the coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition, said in a statement e-mailed to Danger Room. “In line with his rhetoric on multilateralism, Obama needs to bring the U.S. in line with other nations that respect international law and the protection of civilians in armed conflict.”

We're not holding our breath.

California: Field Poll finds 70% support death penalty

Religion News Blog — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:05:19 +0000

Wild West 'ethics' persist: Californians maintain their solid support for the death penalty as a punishment for serious crimes, but are divided on whether they would impose a death sentence or life without parole for first-degree murder, according to a Field Poll being released today.

The survey of registered voters found 70 percent backing for capital punishment, up from 67 percent in the last statewide poll in 2006. Substantial majorities supported it, regardless of age, gender, race, religion or party. Twenty-four percent opposed the death penalty and 6 percent had no opinion.

But when a smaller number of voters were asked which sentence they preferred for a first-degree murderer, 42 percent said life in prison without parole and 41 percent said death. Another 13 percent said it would depend on the circumstances, and 4 percent had no opinion.

The last time the Field Poll asked that question, in 2000, it found that 44 percent chose the death penalty and 37 percent favored life without parole.

China tortured, killed Tibetans in 2008 crackdown, rights group says

Religion News Blog — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:50:28 +0000

For offenses as minor as printing a Tibetan flag, sending a text message about rioting or holding a photograph of the Dalai Lama, large numbers of Tibetans were badly beaten and tortured, and in some cases killed, by Chinese security forces in 2008, a human rights group reported Thursday.

In the most comprehensive report yet on the crackdown on Tibetans during and after March 2008 protests, the most serious in decades, New York-based Human Rights Watch interviewed 203 people described as Tibetan eyewitnesses.

"The scale of human rights violations related to suppressing the protests was far greater than previously believed," the report states. "Chinese forces broke international law — including prohibitions against disproportionate use of force, torture and arbitrary detention."