Systematic Rape in Congo Reportedly Continues Despite Peace Agreements
Although there is a peace agreement in place and elections scheduled later this year to end the Democratic Republic of Congo’s seven year civil war, human rights activists who visit the DRC say that the systematic use of rape continues to be used by various forces involved.
At its heart, the DRC civil war has its root in an ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis that led to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in less than 4 months.
In 1997, fearing Hutus were preparing to launch an attack from the DRC, the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda supported Laurent Kabila’s coup against DRC dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. When Kabila won and attempted to expel Rwandan military forces from the Congo, a civil war erupted that at one point included 9 other African nations.
Systematic rape has been a frequent tactic in the civil war. A 2004 Amnesty International report estimated that as many as 40,000 women had been raped by military and paramilitary forces from 1998-2004. The AI report said that sexual assault had been committed by forces on all sides of the conflict.
Human rights activists such as Eric Schiller returning from the DRC claim that although there is a peace in place, the rapes and violence have not abated. Schiller told the Canadian Press,
It [systematic rape] is very extensive, it is ongoing, it seems to have become a modus operandi.
This is hardly surprising giving AI’s report in late 2004 that the transitional government in place in the DRC was indifferent at best to the plight of the victims of sexual violence. According to AI’s report,
Insufficient resources and the fact that the country is still balanced between war and peace are often used as excuses by the government to justify its inaction on these issues. Questioned by Amnesty International on the government?s weak commitment on care for survivors of sexual violence, the deputy health minister claimed that this was due to the lack of resources and the complex configuration of the government. He clearly indicated that his ministry will limit its work to caring for victims if and when it is able to, and that the government “cannot establish a global policy on rape because rape is an isolated phenomenon and is not an epidemic or disease like cholera”(58).
If Schiller is correct, little appears to have changed in the year and a half since the release of the Amnesty International report.
Source:
Democratic Republic of Congo: Mass rape - time for remedies. Amnesty International, 2004.
Congo rape victims seek solace. Jackie Martens, BBC, January 24, 2004.
Report shows DR Congo rape horror. BBC, October 26, 2004.
Systematic rape in eastern Congo continues despite pleas for intervention. Dennis Bueckert, Canadian Press, March 5, 2006.
Tags: Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rape
Japan as Safe Haven for Parental Kidnappers
The Japan Times recently published an excellent article on Japan’s role as a safe haven for parents who kidnap their children in violation of child custody orders in their home countries.
The article leads with the case of Murray Wood whose two children went from Canada with his ex-wife to visit their ailing grandfather in Japan in November 2004. The children have remained in Japan ever since, despite a Canadian court’s ruling months earlier that granted Murray Wood sole custody to the children.
Unfortunately, Wood has few options since Japan is not a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction which sought to prevent exactly this sort of cross-border child abduction by parents. Under that convention, children like Wood’s would have to be promptly returned to their country of origin which would have the final say in all custodial matters.
According to the Japan Times,
The Canadian Embassy said it is presently dealing with 21 cases of child abduction, while the figure for the British Embassy was about five. The U.S. Embassy said it is aware of 20 children who have been abducted and taken to Japan.
So why hasn’t Japan signed the convention like most developed countries? A 1996 Los Angeles Times article suggested that cultural norms related to marriage and divorce were the likely reasons. According to the Los Angeles Times,
In Japan’s historically non-litigious society, the family court is designed to provide ways for problems to be resolved amicably, with the help of a court-appointed mediator. Attorneys said there is no legal mechanism to award joint custody of children, but the noncustodial parent may be given visitation rights.
. . .
Kunio Koide, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official, said his government does not see the need for signing the treaty because Japan’s Protection of Personal Liberties Act prevents an individual from being illegally restrained. But Koide acknowledged that it would be difficult to prosecute a parent under that act.
The article further notes that Japan does not treat parental kidnapping as a crime, so even in cases where parents have been convicted of parental kidnapping in the United States and managed to travel to Japan, the United States is not able to extradite those individuals from Japan.
Sources:
Lost in a Loophole: Foreigners Who Are on the Losing End of a Custody Battle in Japan Don’t Have Much Recourse. Evelyn Iritani, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1996.
Japan remains safe haven for parental abductions. Masami Ito, Japan Times, December 31, 2005.
Tags: Japan
Pakistani Earthquake Used as Opportunity to Steal Property from Widowed Women
According to the United Nations’ Integrated Regional Information Networks, the earthquake in Pakistan at the end of last year was used as an opportunity to steal land and other property from unmarried women.
Typical of such victims is Zumera Bibi. The IRIN report describes how Zumera and her four daughters left their house temporarily after the quake. While she was gone, her dead husband’s nephews seized the property and claimed it as theirs. According to the IRIN story,
Zumera has no sons, and as tradition dictates she and her daughters have no right to the property, which would revert back to the brothers of her husband on his death. Even though, under the law, her daughters should get at least a share in the inheritance, this is frequently denied to women.
Well there’s a shock from a part of the world where women can be raped as a method of tribal revenge.
The IRIN story goes on to say that,
In some cases, the claims of the women to hte property have been challenged, and according to reports received by NGOs active in quake-hit areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), women without mail family members have been forced to vacate homes or else hand them over to male relatives in the hope that, in return, they will help care for them and their children.
With apparently no credible system of property rights, it is easy to understand why Pakistan’s per capita GDP sits at a pathetic $2,400. In the process of impoverishing women like Zumera, Pakistan is impoverishing the entire nation.
Source:
Pakistan: Female quake survivors losing property. Integrated Regional Information Networks, January 3, 2006.
Tags: Pakistan
Does Abortion Cause Women to Be Physically Abusive?
Does abortion cause women to be more likely to physically abuse their children? That’s how research by Bowling Green State University professor Priscilla Coleman is being portrayed by conservative news outlets like The Washington Times, but the claim largely falls apart on close examination.
Coleman studied 518 low-income women in Baltimore that included 118 abusive mothers, 119 neglecting mothers, and 281 mothers with no history of either neglect or abuse. Out of that sample, Coleman found that women who had experienced any sort of pregnancy loss, such as an abortion of miscarriage, had a 99 percent higher risk of abusing their children than those who had never had an abortion according to the Washington Times.
The Times quotes Coleman as saying,
There’s a good number of women who have abortions, experience it as a … loss with bereavement, some guilt — guilt is a pretty common experience with abortion. Those kind of effects could cause anger, and we know parents who abuse their children often have anger-control issues.
But does this really tell us that having an abortion is linked to physical abuse of children? Consider another study that Coleman did that used just this sort of methodology.
For a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Coleman examined 56,000 women who were part of California’s Medicaid program. Of that sample, 15,000 had had abortions, compared to 41,000 who had not. Coleman then tracked admissions for psychiatric illnesses by the women in the year after they either had an abortion or gave birth.
Only 0.7 percent of women who gave birth were hospitalized for psychiatric problems, while 1.5 percent of the women who had an abortion were hospitalized for psychiatric problems in the following year. Moreover, women who had abortions had a 160 percent higher risk of being admitted to a hospital for psychiatric women in the first 90 days after having an abortion than did women who gave birth in the first 90 days afterward. After four years, however, the women who had abortions only had a 50 percent higher risk of hospitalization for a psychiatric condition as compared to the women who gave birth.
But as even Coleman herself acknowledged, what these studies cannot tell us is if women who have abortions are more likely to be abusive or suffer psychiatric problems or if women more likely to be abusive or suffer psychiatric problems are also simply more likely to have abortions. As Arizona State University professor Nancy Russo told the Toledo Blade,
It is just as plausible that the direction of causality is reversed . . . that psychiatric problems cause women who become pregnant to feel less capable of raising a child and to terminate their pregnancy.
Coleman agrees, telling the Toledo Blade,
There are a whole lot of factors that lead up to the decision [to have an abortion], a whole lot of lifestyle circumstances, and that can be predictive. So when you look at the negative effects, what are you really looking at? is it a product of their choice? Or are they experiencing depression or whatever because they were battered? Or because of the abortion? It’s hard to tease apart.
All of these comments apply equally to the claim about abortion and child abuse being linked. It could be that women who are more likely to abuse children are also more likely to have abortions.
Sources:
After decades of research, evaluationg abortion’s effect still difficult. Jenni Laidman, Toledo Blade, January 22, 2004.
Abuse risk linked to abortion. Shepherd Pittman, The Washington Times, November 3, 2005.
Abortion Linked to Abuse. Josh Montez, Family.Org, December 30, 2005.
Tags: Abortion, Child Abuse, Priscilla Coleman
New Mexico Hounded Father for Support for Non-Existent Child
In December, Wendy McElroy wrote about one of the strangest cases of child support gone awry in a case where a man was hounded by the state of New Mexico to support a child that didn’t actually exist.
Viola Trevino essentially invented a child that did not exist and claimed that Steve Barras was the father. Barreras denied being the father, but ended up paying $20,000 in child support before the fraud was exposed.
Trevino went to extreme lengths to pull off her fraud. She filed a false paternity test using a DNA sample from an adult daughter of Berreras, and enlisted a friend of hers who worked at a lab to process it. Based on the results of the fraudulent paternity test she obtained a court order for child support.
Trevino went on to obtain a Social Security card, Medicare card and a birth certificate for the invented child.
Barreras repeatedly told New Mexico’s child services that he couldn’t possibly be the father of Trevino’s child because he had a vasectomy years prior to the child’s birth and tests showed a zero sperm count. New Mexico authorities basically ignored him when he tried to tell them that the child did nto exist, with one worker telling him, “your daughter does exist, as I am sure you already knew.”
Only after Barreras hired a private investigator and New Mexico TV station KOBTV did a report on Trevino’s case was Trevino finally ordered to produce her now allegedly 5-year-old daughter in court.
On the day of that hearing, Trevino snatched a 2-year-old girl from her grandmother and tried to pass the girl off in court as her daughter.
McElroy reports that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has asked the state’s Human Services Department for an investigation and report on how this fraud was allowed to go on for so long.
Obviously Barreras case is an extreme example, but that fact that Trevino could pull of this sort of fraud for 5 years whille Trevino’s pleas that he couldn’t possibly be the father are indicative of just how broken the system is.
Source:
Agency culpable in child support scam. Wendy McElroy, Fox News, December 14, 2004.
Tags: New Mexico, United States, Wendy McElroy
British Study Confirms that Multiple SIDS Deaths Not So Unusual
This site frequently mentions cases where parents or others kill children and escape with ridiculously lenient sentences. But there is another sort of injustice, and that is where overzealous officials use pseudoscientific nonsense to create a hysteria that convicts people of crimes that they did not commit.
Such a wave of hysteria hit the United Kingdom in the late 1990s when a number of women were convicted of multiple homicides in deaths that the defense claimed were due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Rather than just relying on the physical evidence of autopsies, etc., prosecutors also pulled in alleged experts like Dr. Roy Meadow who testified that the odds of a couple having more than one child die from SIDS was astronomically low.
For example, Sally Clark was convicted of murdering her 11-week old son Christopher in 1996 and her eight-week old son Harry in 1998. Clark’s defense was that the children died from SIDS. But Meadow testified at her trial that the odds of the two boys dying from SIDS was “one in 73 million.” Meadow provided similar testimony at the murder trials of other women who had more than one child death.
But Meadow’s claim was pure speculation backed up by no evidence. As the Royal Statistical Society noted in a press release it issued about Meadow’s claim,
In the recent highly-publicised case of R v. Sally Clark, a medical expert witness drew on published studies to obtain a figure for the frequency of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS, or “cot death”) in families having some of the characteristics of the defendant’s family. He went on to square this figure to obtain a value of 1 in 73 million for the frequency of two cases of SIDS in such a family.
“This approach is, in general, statistically invalid. It would only be valid if SIDS cases arose independently within families, an assumption that would need to be justified empirically. Not only was no such empirical justification provided in the case, but there are very strong a priori reasons for supposing that the assumption will be false. There may well be unknown genetic or environmental factors that predispose families to SIDS, so that a second case within the family becomes much more likely.
The well-publicised figure of 1 in 73 million thus has no statistical basis. Its use cannot reasonably be justified as a “ballpark” figure because the error involved is likely to be very large, and in one particular direction. The true frequency of families with two cases of SIDS may be very much less incriminating than the figure presented to the jury at trial.
“Aside from its invalidity, figures such as the 1 in 73 million are very easily misinterpreted. Some press reports at the time stated that this was the chance that the deaths of Sally Clark’s two children were accidental. This (mis-)interpretation is a serious error of logic known as the Prosecutor’s Fallacy. The jury needs to weigh up two competing explanations for the babies’ deaths: SIDS or murder. Two deaths by SIDS or two murders are each quite unlikely, but one has apparently happened in this case. What matters is the relative likelihood of the deaths under each explanation, not just how unlikely they are under one explanation (in this case SIDS, according to the evidence as presented).
It turned out that the odds were actually closer to 1 in 100.
In fact, in December the results of the largest study of second-infant deaths was published and found that a) second-infant deaths are not that rare, and b) in 80 percent of cases, second-infant deaths were due to natural causes rather than homicide.
Published in the Lancet, research by Professor Robert Carpenter, studied all 6,373 families who had lost an infant due to SIDS and the enrolled in a program designed to support them with their next child.
Of those 6,373 families, Carpenter’s research found that 57 of the second-infants died. It found that nine deaths were inevitable, including infants born with severe birth defects, and 48 were unexpected deaths.
After interviewing the families and checking autopsy records, 40 of the unexpected deaths were due to natural causes, while 6 were due to probably homicides.
Carpenter was quoted by the Scotsman as saying,
Our data suggest that second deaths are not rare and that the majority — 80-90 percent — are natural. Families who have experienced three unexpected deaths also occur.
. . .
Consequently, although child abuse is not uncommon, from the best available data we believe that the occurrence of a second or third sudden unexpected death in infancy within a family, although relatively rare, is in most cases from natural causes.
Some of the women convicted based, in part, on the testimony of Meadows have had their convictions overturned, but prosecutors bizarrely say they still have faith in Meadows’ testimony. Sound science is clearly not on their agenda.
Sources:
Royal Statistical Society concerned by issues raised in Sally Clark case. Press Release, Royal Statistical Society, October 23, 2001.
Baby-death study finds natural causes evidence. Lyndsay Moss, The Scotsman, December 31 ,2004.
Profile: Sir Roy Meadow. The BBC, April 11, 2005.
Doubt cast on baby killer case. The BBC, July 15, 2001.
Tags: Great Britain
Conference Hears Testimony of Forced Abortion In North Korea
The 6th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees heard testimony in February about alleged forced abortions and infanticide in North Korean prison camps.
Using the alias Park Sun-ja, a 28-year-old defector from North Korea testified that she witnessed both infanticide and forced abortion at Shinuiju Provincial Detention Camp where she had been held for two months in 2000 after having been caught after having crossed into China.
Sun-ja testified that,
I heard the cries of both mother and child through the curtain (at a hospital). And through the partially open curtain, I witnessed the nurse covering the infant’s face with a wet towel on a table, suffocating it. The baby stopped crying about ten minutes later.
Sun-ja testifed that injections to induce miscarriage among pregnant women at the camp were routine.
She also testified to being abused and witnessing abuse by guards at the camp, including,
Severe beatings through the use of sticks, fists (punching), and feet (kicking) were standard practice. Cells were infested with insects, fleas, lice, and other parasites. It was disgusting.
Sun-ja’s testimony obviously needs to be taken with some bit of skepticism given that it was given pseudonymously, but given the immense secrecy in North Korea and other atrocities committed by the regime that we do know about, what she describe is certainly plausible.
Source:
N.K. defector claimed forced abortions. The Korea Herald, February 7, 2005.
Tags: Abortion, North Korea
Indiana Court Rules Lesbian Partner Must Pay Child Support
In February, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that a lesbian woman must pay child support for a child conceived by her partner before the two separated.
In 1997, the woman adopted her partner’s in 1997 when the two were involved in a relationship. After the relationship dissolved, the biological mother of the children sought and received a child support order while the non-biological mother sought to dissolve the adoption.
Lower courts had overturned the support order, but the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the order. Judge John G. Baker wrote in a 22-page ruling that,
Whether a person is a man or a woman, homosexual or heterosexual, or adoptive or biological, in assuming that role, a person also assumes certain responsibilities, obligations, and duties. That person may not simply choose to shed the parental mantle because it becomes inconvenient, seems ill-advised in retrospect, or becomes burdensome because of a deterioration in the relationship with the children’s other parent.
Baker’s ruling followed a November 2004 case in which the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that same sex partners could adopt the children of their partners and still retain parental rights
Source:
State Appeals Court Extends Parental Rights to Gay Woman. Associated Press, November 29, 2004.
Lesbian Ordered to Pay Child Support. Associated Press, February 18, 2005.
Lesbian Partner Ordered to Pay Child Support. Axcess News, February 19, 2005.
Tags: Indiana, United States
UC Rethinks Rejection of Men’s Literature Course
In January, the University of California reversed itself and agreed to accept for transfer credit a course taught by Professor David Clemens at Monterey Peninsula College, “Literature By and About Men.”
In December 2004, Clemens complained that the University of California had rejected his literature course for transfer credit because, the university claimed, the course had a “narrow focus” and “no comparable course in lower division” existed at any of the University of California’s nine campuses.
Clemens wrote following the university’s decision that,
While I don’t question U.C.’s woeful admission that not even one campus offers a course in literature by and about men, U.C. does accept, for lower division transfer from community colleges, such English courses as “Images of Women in Western Literature” from Saddleback, “Contemporary Women Writers” from Santa Barbara, “Women Writers” from Foothill, “Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Multicultural Voices in Literature” from Diablo Valley, “Women in Literature” from Santa Rosa, “Images of Women in Literature” from Santa Monica, “Changing Images of Women in Literature” from Butte, “U.S. Women’s Literature” and “Her Story: Women’s Autobiographical Writing in Multicultural America” from Chabot, “Literature By Women” from Sierra, and “Literature By and About Women” from Shasta, among dozens of other clearly thematic literature surveys.
By what process can U.C. analysts find “Literature By and About Men” not comparable to “Literature By and About Women”? Apparently, U.C. sees comparability as defined only by gender, not by level or type of course, thereby applying a standard of gender discrimination that produces an inequitable, politicized curriculum and differential treatment based solely on sex.
After Clemens wrote about his course’s rejection on a number of web sites dedicated to academic freedom, the University of California initiated its own appeal of the course’s rejection. According to a press release from NoIndoctrination.Org,
Shortly thereafter, Professor Clemens learned that U.C. had a change of heart. It decided it would initiate its own unusual appeal of the course’s rejection. Dawn Sheibani, UC’s Principal Analyst for Community College Articulation, explained to Professor Clemens that U.C.’s rejection was in part because “we have never seen this before” while admitting that such reasoning sounded like “Catch 22.”
After further review by U.C. faculty, “Literature By and About Men” has now been accepted for transfer, making it the only English course in the nine campus U.C. and 109 campus California community college systems to survey “multiple sources, enactments, and depictions of maleness, manhood, and masculinity in essays, films, short stories, and poetry either by men or about men.” “I’m sure the publicity played a big part in U.C.’s decision to recant,” states Professor Clemens.
Sources:
A Victory for Gender Equity at the University of California. Press Release, NoIndoctrination.Org, January 24, 2005.
Sex and the Multiversity. David Clemens, December 20, 2004.
Tags: California
Virginia House Approves Bill that Would Further Regulate Abortion Clinics
As I’ve said before the best hope for success that those opposed to abortion might have is to regulate abortion clinics to death. Numerous superfluous regulations of businesses have been upheld by courts, and pro-lifers could turn the tables on abortion rights advocates by hiding their anti-abortion views behind a patina of ridiculous regulation. Virginia’s legislature is in the process of doing just that.
In February, the Virginia House of Delegates passed House Bill 2784 which would impose a number of new regulations on abortion clinics. Essentially the bill would require abortion clinics that do more than a very small number of abortions to be licensed under the same rules as hospitals, which would likely force clinics to do expensive remodeling and renovation that few could likely afford.
Supporters of the bill, such as state Rep. John Reid know how to talk the safety regulation talk. Reid told the Richmond Times-Dispatch,
If we are going to have legal abortion in the state of Virginia, we have the responsibility to see that they are performed in as sterile and as safe an environment as possible.
Is this guy a Republican representative or a Public Citizen representative? You can almost see the book coming . . .”Abortion: Unsafe At Any Speed.”
Previous such bills passed by the Virginia House have gone nowhere in the Virginia Senate, however, so abortion clinics are unlikely to face such regulations this year.
The full text of HB 2784 can be read here.
Sources:
VA House Advances Bill that Aims to Close Abortion Clinics. Feminist Daily News Wire, February 1, 2005.
Tags: Abortion, United States, Virginia