Where women are killed by their own families

If the headline of this news article would be the only thing showing up, then a lot of people around the world would've assumed that this news article must've been talking about a country where there's Shariah (Islamic law) & where husbands can have up to 4 wives & Islam rules the land etc. All thanks to Western media.

But this news story, although still quite sad & unfortunate, is of the Central American countries where Christianity rules the land. As per the article, top 3 countries in the world where women are most in danger are El Salvador, Jamaica, & Guatemala, & in these countries, Christianity is 80%, 72%, & 87%, respectively.

Now, someone would say, what religion has to do with abusing women. And they would be correct. Religion has nothing to do with how women are treated in the general public. Heck, all major religions pretty much preach the same ideals to run a peaceful & respectful society. But, then, the Western media force feeds the public around the world that Islam teaches its male followers to abuse women.

No, abusing women has nothing to do with Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or any other religion for that matter.

Abuse of women is correlated with the illiteracy, lack of knowledge, special circumstances, & cultural aspects of a society. If a woman is abused in India, that's nothing to do with Hinduism or Islam, but it has to do with how the males are raised to think of women as a sub-species of some sort, or sexual objects, & hence treat them as such. Special circumstance would be as the article suggests that Guatemalan society suffered a 3-decade long war in which men were trained to abuse women. Those men were never re-trained to live in the post-war society as normal humans & hence they abused their own family women. American soldiers went & going through the same thing where they are suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) & hence their loved ones are the ones who suffer the most as a result.

Blaming a specific religion for violence against women does nothing to help a society or women. It actually furthers that violent behaviour & isolate those women in need because religion becomes a target. As we can see, for instance, that clothing choices of Muslim women has become the topic du jour in the Western world of North America & Europe. Banning head scarves won't help any Muslim woman but further isolate that woman, where she might be abused even further, in silence.

Teaching women their value in society & teaching men how women are their equal partners help a society move forward. Respect & gender equality helps a society build a better future. By the way, please keep in mind here that I am not talking about Western feminism but what Islam teaches about gender equality. Western feminism is nothing to do with gender equality. That's taking the balance out of the society & swinging the pendulum way out towards the other end (woman's end) & punish all men in the process.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34978330

Every year an estimated 66,000 women are murdered worldwide. One of the countries with the highest rate of violence against women is Guatemala - so why is it such a dangerous place to be female?

"We are being killed by our fathers, brothers, stepfathers… the very people who are supposed to care for us," says Rebeca Lane, a feminist rapper in Guatemala City.

"Most of us have to live violence in silence so when someone hits us or screams at us we just close our eyes and let go. We have to join other women and talk about it so we know this is not OK, this is not normal."

When Lane was 15, she got involved with an older man who was not only controlling, but also physically & sexually abusive. "He knew what he was doing. He isolated me from my family and friends. I know what it is to live with violence from an early age," she says. The relationship lasted for 3 years.

Now she uses her music to campaign for women's rights. "Poetry saved my life. When I started to write it was vital to my recovery," she says. Her best-known song, Mujer Lunar - Lunar Woman - is a lyrical call for respect for women's bodies, lives & independence.
...

Guatemala has the third highest femicide rate in the world (after El Salvador & Jamaica) - between 2007 & 2012 there were 9.1 murders for every 100,000 women according to the National Guatemalan Police. And last year 846 women were killed in a population of little more than 15 million, says the State Prosecutors Office.

It seems the reason for this lies in the country's brutal past. Lane's main inspiration as a feminist activist is the aunt after whom she is named. She never met her father's sister, but her story helps draw a direct line between the social instability of today & Guatemala's 36-year civil war.

Lane's aunt disappeared in 1981 after she joined left-wing guerrillas fighting the military government. Around the time Lane's aunt died, news began to filter out of the rape, torture & murder of tens of thousands of women & girls - mostly from indigenous Mayan communities accused of supporting the insurgents.

More than a decade later, a UN-sponsored report said this abuse had been generalised & systematic - it estimated that 25% or 50,000 of the victims of Guatemala's war were women.

Sexual violence was "at very high levels and used as a tool of war", says Helen Mack, of the Myrna Mack Foundation. "The stereotype was that women were used for sex and seen as an object, to serve families, and this continues today."

Mack's sister, Myrna - after whom the human rights organisation is named - died after she was stabbed in the street by a military death squad in 1990. Myrna had uncovered the extent of the physical & sexual violence the army had used against Mayan communities.

During the conflict, an army of around 40,000 men & a civilian defence force of approximately one million were trained to commit acts of violence against women. When the war ended & these men returned home, they got no help in readjusting.

Mack believes they redirected their aggression towards their wives, mothers & girlfriends - a culture of violence towards women & an expectation of impunity, which still persists today, developed.
...

In Mack's experience, it is common for women to be threatened in this way or even killed by their attackers. Violence against women is still considered a domestic matter, she says, despite new laws against femicide & other forms of violence against women. In 2008 Guatemala became the first country to officially recognise femicide - the murder of a woman because of her gender - as a crime.

"The difference in Guatemala between the murder of a woman and of a man is that the woman is made to suffer before death, she is raped, mutilated and beaten," says the country's Attorney General Thelma Aldana.

Aldana is trying to change attitudes towards victims who are often blamed for the abuse they receive. "A few years ago the police and forensic investigators would arrive on a crime scene and say, "Look how she is dressed - that is why they killed her [or] she was coming out of a disco at 1am - she was asking for it."
...

"The justice system can do a lot to change culture," she says.

"We asked women to come forward and break the silence. Femicide and other forms of violence against women are now the crimes that are most reported in the country, with an average of 56,000 reports a year - this includes rape, sexual violence, physical and economic violence and murder."

There are now femicide tribunals in 11 of the country's 22 departments or provinces where the judges & police officers receive gender crime training.
...

Laurie Scott calls for Ontario task force to protect sex slavery victims

These kinds of news stories don't usually make the front news. The general public in the Western world is oblivious to these kinds of stories & thinks that these kinds of things, i.e. sexual violence against vulnerable women & sex slavery only happens in law less countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cambodia, & other African & Latin American countries. And these girls & women who unfortunately fall victims to these are not adults or illegal migrants but born-&-bred Canadians & even as young as 11 years old.

Furthermore, this is happening right here in the largest Canadian city; Toronto. But this is not happening only in Toronto or Canada, but happening all over the Western world; US, UK, & other Western European countries.

People who are involved in the rehabilitation of these victims are saying that this problem is not dying down, but actually exploding in major urban areas of North America & Europe. What the heck is going on?

Well, the problem is borne out of multiple factors:

1. Decreasing role of parents: Western philosophy on family, rightly or wrongly, changed in the last few decades that everyone is responsible for their own lives. Parents can, but actively discouraged, to meddle into their daughters' affairs. Heck, the society even gave that kind of parenting a derogatory name, "helicopter parenting."

Girls were taught from schools to general society that you are your own person & should make your own decision. That's all ok when that young lady is old enough (at least in university) to understand her world around her & see what's going on, but telling that to a teen girl is simply wrong. Mix that "independence" teaching with the love-hate relationship a teen has for his/her parents, & you are only going to get a problem.

2. Broken homes: In the latter half of 20th century, more & more homes start to break up. Every one on their own. Parents, when living separately, got more expenses, & hence, working more & more to bring that extra cash. When single parents are working more & more, & looking less & less after their kids, the kids got the free leash on whatever they can do. Well, from dabbling into drugs to coming into contact with the wrong crowd through those drugs to selling their bodies to get those drugs (when out of money) leads these girls to a life of prostitution & sex slavery.

3. Media's objectification of women: Media is an expert in manipulating social values & thinking. People in 21st century have being programmed for the past few decades that women are sexual objects. Of course, internet & easy accessibility to porn only escalated that problem, but media didn't stop there, too. Men & boys are bombarded day & night that women should be used for sexual purposes & then discarded like used tissues.

Movies & TV shows all show women whimpering after men to take them & use them as they please. Young men are being heavily influenced by latest rap & hip hop music videos & these videos don't exactly show men respecting women. Then, on top of that, we got the Kardashian clan, which, ironically, is the young female generation's idol. That idol is effectively teaching young females to rise to the top of social hierarchy through sex.

4. Female dresses: Yes, inevitably, this topic will be breached. Female dresses is pretty much becoming non-existent in the Western world. Men are wearing more & more clothes, while girls & women are encouraged to take it all off ... in the name of latest fashion. Latest fashion trends from the Kardashians is pretty much showing as much as flesh in the public as a female can. Miley Cyrus is showing young females in the West, & effectively, the whole world, that wearing a few strips of clothes, literally, is enough. Heck, we got stories coming out of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, & New York, US, that women are publicly strolling around in the nude (after all, what's the point of those strips, too?)

So, what we can then expect from young impressionable girls, when they are being taught from a young age that do whatever you what to do & it's your body, & nobody in the home is teaching them any proper morals & values, & their celebrity idols are prancing around on the worldwide stages in the nude, & they are seeing that their celebrity idols got their fame & fortunes by baring it all?

They definitely are not going to learn to study hard, don't do drugs, wear proper clothes to school, make good friends, & of course, have good role models in their lives. They are learning, & hence, then actively practicing, with not very good end results, to get what they want by using their bodies as a collateral.

Of course, these factors is not the comprehensive list of all that is causing this problem of prostitution. There are lot more factors. These are just the tip of iceberg. But what I'm trying to say is that this "exploding" problem of prostitution is not so easily resolved by a special vice squad or the close collaboration of a few law enforcement agencies. It may just take the problem underground, which is even more dangerous for the victims. This problem is just a symptom of several other social problems & unless, & until, those problems are handled effectively, this problem of prostitution will not go away.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/18/laurie-scott-urges-ontario-task-force-to-protecting-sex-slavery-victims.html

Ontario is in the grips of homegrown human trafficking, says a veteran Tory MPP, who is calling for the creation of a provincial task force on sex slavery.

Laurie Scott, the member for Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, says women & girls as young as 11 years old are being forced into prostitution here & they are not newcomers from the former Eastern Bloc looking for a better life — they are Canadian-born.

“I’ve heard stories of girls being targeted at the mall food court, the parking lot at their high school or a house party they attended with friends,” she told the legislature last week.

“This province is home to the largest number of domestic human trafficking cases, where victims are born & raised right here in Ontario,” said Scott, who presented a non-binding motion calling on the government to form a special team dedicated to rooting out human trafficking.

It would be similar to the existing guns & gangs unit, in which police officers, Crown prosecutors & social workers work together as a team from beginning to end of an investigation.

“Through this combination of expertise, the task force achieves the dual purpose of apprehending criminals & assisting victims,” Scott said in the introduction to her motion, which passed with all-party support.

Asked whether the passage of the non-binding motion meant a task force would be established, a spokeswoman for Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi said the government would continue to work with its partners “to combat this very serious issue.”

Scott said it’s also important to co-ordinate support for women & girls escaping exploitation.

“One aspect where a provincial task force would be immeasurable would be its ability to help facilitate the creation of safe houses solely for the purpose of sheltering human trafficking victims,” she said.

MPPs were told how pimps frequently move prostitutes up & down the Highway 401 corridor both to meet demand & to make police detection much more difficult.

“Young women are lured through personal relationships, systemically isolated from the family & friends, psychologically & physically abused by those who they trusted & in some cases loved,” said Scott.

Human trafficking was recently front & centre at a legislative select committee on sexual violence & harassment against women. Scott is a member of that committee.

Among those that appeared before the committee was Katarina MacLeod, a former prostitute whose agency, Rising Angels, deals with women trying to escape that life. She said modern-day slavery is out of control.

“From what I see working on the front lines it is getting worse … it is really exploding,” MacLeod told the Star, adding many of the women she sees are under 18.

She said she is hearing of more & more women moving from hotel to hotel, in many cases not even knowing what city they are in.

MacLeod agreed a specialized team in the justice system “fighting for these girls” is needed.

Several police services across the province have vice squads that deal with human trafficking & informally share information.

York Regional Police is recognized for its progressive work on human smuggling, especially in dealing with sex trade workers. Det. Sgt. Peter Casey said the force has not arrested a woman on solicitation charges in the past 7 years — but it does throw pimps in jail.

The people behind the smuggling range from organized crime to teenage boys pimping out girls in their schools because there is “huge” money to be made, said Casey.

“Let’s put it this way, if you are a drug dealer … you can only sell that kilo of cocaine once, but if you are a pimp & have a number of young vulnerable women you are exploiting, you can exploit them over & over & over again, day after day.”

Experts said a woman working in the sex trade can generate revenues of $280,000 a year. And that often goes straight into a pimp’s pocket.
...

The Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services says it has provided about $1.4 million in funding since 2003 to 11 projects under the Proceeds of Crime–Front Line Policing Grant, to help police combat human trafficking in Ontario.

Number of sexual assaults reported on children rises to 85 a day

Although, it is despicable wherever children are sexually abused in the world, but these kinds of stories don't make the headlines in the West. When something like these surfaces in the developing world, people are up in arms that children are not being protected by the law enforcement authorities & government.

Usually, the numbers of sexual assaults on children in those countries is quite small, compared to thousands upon thousands being abused in England or North America.
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http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/17/police-record-85-sexual-assaults-children-day-nspcc

Police are recording 85 sexual assaults on children each day after an increase of more than a third in reports of abuse & exploitation, new figures have revealed.

A total of 31,238 allegations of sexual offences against children, including rape, assault & grooming offences, were made to forces in England & Wales in 2013/14, research by the NSPCC has found. The figures show an increase of 38% – more than a third – on the previous year.

The majority of the victims were aged between 12 & 16 but more than one in four – 8,282 – were younger than 11, the charity said. Of those, 2,895 are estimated to be aged 5 or under, including 94 babies.

More than three-quarters of the reported abuse cases were against girls (24,457). Britain’s largest force, the Metropolitan police, recorded the highest number of sex crimes against children, with 3,523.

The data, obtained through freedom of information requests, reveals a significant year-on-year increase in the number of sex offences against children. In 2012-13, the same research showed that a total of 22,654 sexual crimes against children were recorded by 41 police forces. All 43 forces in England & Wales responded in the latest study.

The NSPCC said that until now the total had largely remained steady & the 38% rise was the biggest increase in 6 years of requesting the figures. Since 2008/09, the number has increased by almost 50%.

Last year the charity helped 2,400 young victims through its therapeutic recovery programme, but it says there are not enough services to support every child who has experienced abuse.

Jon Brown, senior policy officer for the NSPCC, said: “Our estimate is that there are 50,000 children in the country who need help & support for abuse who are not getting it.

“We need the government to step up & breach this gap. It cannot be right that so many children are going without support. We should be treating this as a public health problem given the damage done into adulthood to individuals who have been abused as children.”
...

Police experts say the effect of the case has been to encourage more victims, both those reporting abuse in the past & ongoing abuse, to come forward because they are now more confident they will be believed.

But improved recording methods by police have also been cited as a possible reason for the increase.

Brown said it was not clear whether the increase in reports of abuse was due to an actual rise or increased confidence of victims coming forward.

He agreed with comments made last month by Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk & the national police lead on child abuse, that there was a real increase in abuse taking place, much of it facilitated by the internet.

Responding to the new figures, Bailey said they still represented the tip of the iceberg.

“Many, many, more victims have found the confidence to report abuse, knowing they will be treated with sensitivity & respect, that we will listen to them & that we will take their allegations seriously,” he said.

“Increased reporting means we are dealing with unprecedented number of investigations but it is my belief that more abuse is being perpetrated. The internet has given people the ability to sit in their room & indulge fantasies in a way that simply was not available to them two decades ago.”

Last month Bailey revealed that the police are investigating more than 1,400 prominent men, including politicians, celebrities & those linked to institutions, over allegations that they have sexually abused children in the past. The investigations are being carried out by forces across the country & coordinated by a team running Operation Hydrant.
...

Peter Wanless, the charity’s chief executive, said: “These figures are disturbing & clearly illustrate child sexual abuse is a continuing & widespread problem that needs urgent action. But we know this is still only a fraction of the true number of victims because some endure an agonising wait of many years before telling anyone – & others never reveal what has happened to them.”

UN peacekeepers sexually abused hundreds of Haitian women & girls

Another one of those articles highlighting how UN "peacekeepers" took advantage of vulnerable people in vulnerable situations. Regardless of who stoops so low in the society, helping someone to gain sexual favours is always wrong. However, if this would've been done by non-UN & some groups in Middle East or Africa, not only that group of people is maligned but the whole religion is dragged through the mud & dirt. But when UN "peacekeepers" do the same thing, it's a back-page news (assuming it's considered news at all in the first place). Western hypocrisy at its peak !!!

When the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," showed how UN "peacekeepers" sexually abused girls in war-torn Bosnia, & how UN tried to cover up the whole scandal, the world didn't demand answers from UN for what it has done wrong. UN "peacekeepers" realizing that their actions carry no adverse consequences for themselves or for UN, carried on, business as usual. Now, although, the allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have spread out from Cambodia to Central African Republic to Haiti; thanks to Western media, UN & the world public still won't take any substantive corrective measures & punish those who did wrong.

Well, UN "peacekeepers" will keep doing what they do best; sexually abusing women, girls, & boys in countries where they are sent to serve & protect the vulnerable general public. Doesn't it seem like that UN is starting to become better in hiding scandals nowadays than to actually prevent wars & chaos in the world?
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https://www.rt.com/news/266179-un-peacekeepers-haiti-sexual/

According to a new UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report obtained by the news agency, a third of alleged sexual exploitation & abuse involved minors under 18.

The shocking conclusions were revealed after investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who claimed they were forced to perform sexual acts with UN peacekeepers in exchange for basic necessities.

“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication & household items were frequently cited as the 'triggering need,'" the report says. Those living in the city or in its vicinity had sex in exchange for “church shoes, cell phones, laptops & perfume, as well as money,” report says.

“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers & threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says.

The UN explicitly bans the “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” & discourages relationships between UN staff & those who are under their care. However, only 7 of the interviewed victims “knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation & abuse,” the report states.

The report ... makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.

The report says that the lack of any clear action is “demonstrating significant underreporting,” while noting that assistance to those that suffered is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.

Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution & abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan & Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.

Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9.

However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse & exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

Mentally ill inmates abused in 5,000 US detention centers

Torture of Gitmo & Abu Ghraib detainees doesn't upset one when one considers that mentally ill prisoners are so inhumanely abused in mainland US. Deaths & tortures of African-Americans become less of a surprise when one compares those incidents with this news. After all, those detainees were not even Americans & belonged to a different religion & ethnicity. After all, those African-Americans were of sound mental health (at least most were).

I'm definitely not saying that torturing POWs (Prisoners of War) is all ok or abusing & killing of African-Americans by American cops is ok from any perspective.

What I am saying that in American culture / society, the top brass (government) is showing with their actions, around the world (foreign policy), that the powerful should & can do anything to the powerless without any fear of reprisals or punishment. Even if the army or police do get caught & sentenced, they are out in the general population within a few short months.

The concept, at least in the corporate world, is becoming common that leadership is a very important factor in the success of a company. Leadership defines the culture & tone of the whole organization.

Well, ironically, American governmental leadership has spread this notion in its own citizens that the powerful should eat the lunch of powerless with impunity. It spread this idea by invading countries at will & unilaterally, & killing anyone it likes, without any fear of reprisals. American leadership takes those reprehensible actions because they think that since their army is the largest & most powerful in the world, they can do anything to the powerless. Well, that same idea has sown itself in the common citizenry, where law enforcement authorities (cops) & law enforcement apparatus (prisons) are abusing the powerless with impunity.

You reap what you sow !!!
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http://www.rt.com/usa/258181-hrw-abuse-prisons-inmates/

Human Rights Watch has issued a report stating that mentally ill prisoners are being abused in detention facilities across the US, & that these practices are happening in over 5,000 facilities.

The activist group says inmates are being subjected to unnecessary & excessive use of force, & the problem is widespread.

The report provides details of cases where inmates were shocked with Tasers, & where pepper spray was used against them.

In some cases, prisoners were left in restraint chairs for days, or put in scalding showers.

“I think the public & legislators for far too long have been willing to send people to prison, without thinking a whole lot about what life behind bars [is like]. And what goes on behind bars is often hidden, people don’t know what is happening,” Jamie Fellner, one of the report’s authors & senior adviser at Human Rights Watch, told RT.

“What we wanted to focus on was <…> the fact that in so many cases when force wasn’t required, when you had non-violent, minor non-threatening misconduct by a prisoner that didn’t need to be responded to with force,” Fellner concluded.

Among the especially troubling cases was Nick Christie, a 62-year-old man who had recently stopped taking his medications for depression & anxiety. He was incarcerated in Florida in 2009 for a nonviolent misdemeanor.

At one point, locked in his cell & crying out for medical help, he kept yelling & banging on the cell door.

Prison officials sprayed him with chemical spray over a dozen times in 36 hours, & immobilized him in a restraint chair with a spit mask covering his face. He died from cardiac arrest.

Another Florida prisoner diagnosed with schizophrenia defecated on the floor of his cell & refused to clean it up.

Officers allegedly put him in a scalding shower, left him there for over an hour, & the inmate subsequently died.

However, the case that specifically caught the attention of human rights activists was 35-year-old Christopher Lopez. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic & was discovered on his cell floor semi-conscious.

Staff failed to call medics & instead put Lopez in a restraint chair. A few hours later, he experienced a severe seizure.

The officers finally released him from the chair, but left him lying handcuffed on the floor. Lopez died a few hours later. His lawyer spoke to RT about the case.

“His mother had contacted me & said he had died in custody, she went to look at the body and saw signs of abuse. That got me interested, I got hold of the autopsy report, & began to investigate it,” attorney David Lane said.

“What appeared to be the cause of death was an overdose of psychotropic medication to the point of electrolyte imbalance, & his heart was slowly stopping,” he added.

The lawyer also told RT that the general attitude towards mentally ill inmates in the US is that they are a “management problem,” & they are dealt with like this, “as opposed to mentally ill human beings.”

Around 20% of prisoners in the US have a serious mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder & major depression, according to a press release issued by Human Rights Watch. Inmates suffering from such conditions often find it difficult to cope with imprisonment & to comply with instructions.

Leaked UN report details French soldiers' abuse against young African boys

This news wasn't surprising at all for me. After watching the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," such horrible acts of soldiers working for UN are not a surprise. Heck, even UN's own actions after discovering what French soldiers were doing in Central African Republic are no different than what was portrayed in the movie; bury the evidence, deny any wrongdoing & punish the whistleblower.

Ironically, the world media brings down the house, if & when, these kinds of things are done by so-called "Muslim" groups. Then, the reactions of general public are such that Islam allows these things to happen or Muslims love doing these.

Well, what was driving French soldiers to rape & sodomize small African kids? What was their religion ordering them to do (if they believed in an organized religion / faith)?

Why the general public of "fair" & "just" developed, Western world has such double standards that if a so-called Islamist group performs these acts, then "it's hang-man time" for the whole religion & members of that group but if the same horrible acts are done by their own soldiers, then "it must be a mistake" & "it's all good."

What ISIS do with Yazidi girls / women (I am not condoning those acts ... just putting them in perspectives) is still much less in scope & effect than what soldiers do, under the auspices of UN, in foreign countries from Cambodia to Thailand to Bosnia to Somalia to Central African Republic. At least ISIS doesn't hide what they are doing, unlike UN, which always tries to brush these problems in its rank & file under the proverbial carpet.
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http://rt.com/news/254205-french-soldiers-abuse-boys/

A damning UN report about how French soldiers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9, has been leaked to the Guardian, & the UN official who blew the whistle is facing dismissal.

French peacekeeping troops were supposed to be protecting children at a center for internally displaced people at M’Poko Airport in CAR’s capital Bangui, when the abuse reportedly took place between December 2013 & June 2014. It was at a time when the UN’s mission at the country, MINUSCA, was in the process of being set up.

An internal investigation was ordered by the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights (UNHCR), after reports on the ground of sexual abuse of children displaced by the conflict.

A member of staff from the high commissioner of human rights & a specialist from UNICEF interviewed the children between May & June last year. Some of the boys were able to give good descriptions of individual soldiers who abused them.

Officials in Geneva reportedly received the report in summer 2014.

Swedish national, Anders Kompass, a senior UN aid worker who has been involved in humanitarian work for over 30 years, passed the document on to French prosecutors because of the UN’s failure to take action, sources close to the case told the Guardian.

The newspaper reports that after receiving the confidential UN report entitled Sexual Abuse on Children by International Armed Forces, French authorities traveled to Bangui to investigate the allegations.

A French judicial source said that the prosecutor’s office had received the UN report in July 2014 & that a preliminary investigation had been launched.

“A preliminary investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutor since July 21, 2014. The investigation is ongoing,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.

The UN also confirmed Monday that it had given an unredacted report to the French authorities on the alleged abuse of children by French soldiers in CAR.

“The unedited version was, by a staff member's own admission, provided unofficially by that staff member to the French authorities in late July, prior to even providing it to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' (OHCHR) senior management,” the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General said in a statement.

The report made its way to Paula Donovan from the organization Aids Free World, who then passed it to the Guardian.

“The regular sex abuse by peacekeeping personnel uncovered here & the United Nations’ appalling disregard for victims are stomach-turning, but the awful truth is that this isn’t uncommon. The UN’s instinctive response to sexual violence in its ranks – ignore, deny, cover up, dissemble – must be subjected to a truly independent commission of inquiry with total access, top to bottom, & full subpoena power,” she said.

Last month, Mr Kompass was accused of leaking a confidential UN report & breaching protocols.
 
Kompass was dismissed last week as director of field operations & is now under investigation by the UN office for internal oversight service (OIOS). One senior UN official even said that “it was his [Kompass’s] duty to know & comply” with UN protocols on confidential documents.

Bea Edwards from the US based Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection & advocacy organization, blasted the UN for what is little more than witch-hunt against someone who sought to protect children.

“We have represented many whistleblowers in the UN system over the years & in general the more serious the disclosure they make the more ferocious the retaliation. Despite the official rhetoric, there is very little commitment at the top of the organization to protect whistleblowers & a strong tendency to politicize every issue no matter how urgent.”

France’s Operation Sangaris in CAR began in December 2013. It is now being wound down as Paris hands over security to an 8,500-strong UN peacekeeping force deployed to contain the deadly conflict.

"Shrinking Democracy" by Arend van Dam

"Shrinking Democracy" - Arend van Dam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Social media teacher abuse 'rising'

So now, cyber-bullying is not the exclusive domain of irate & immature kids & teens, but ... surprisingly (& supposedly, mature) parents, too.

So, what & why do we expect kids to stop cyber-bullying when presumably, their own parents are also in on the abusive action? What kind of society is it becoming when teachers are being abused by parents, let alone, the kids?
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http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32145849

Sexist, racist and homophobic remarks were being used by pupils against school staff, as well as offensive comments about appearance, the NASUWT said.
 
There were also examples of parents being abusive on social media, it added.
 
About 60% of 1,500 teachers questioned in a poll said they had faced abuse, compared with 21% last year.
 
In one case, a photograph of a teacher was posted online with an insulting word underneath.
 
In another, pupils used the name of a heavily pregnant school worker to post insults, the teachers' union said.
 
Insulting comments
 
Of those who had been subjected to insults, nearly half (48%) said these remarks were posted by pupils, 40% said they were put up by parents, & 12% said both parents & pupils were responsible.
 
Almost two-thirds (62%) said pupils had posted insulting comments, while just over a third (34%) said students had taken photos or videos without consent.
 
A third (33%) received remarks about their performance as a teacher, 9% had faced allegations from pupils about inappropriate behaviour & 8% had been subjected to threatening behaviour.
 
More than half (57%) of pupils responsible were aged between 14 & 16, & 38% were 11 to 14, the teachers' poll found, with a fifth aged 16 to 19 & 5% were seven to 11.
 
Among the examples published by NASUWT was the case of a student uploading a teacher's photo & then, along with classmates, writing insults underneath.
 
Cancer jibe
 
One teacher had been harassed for nine months by students who sent sexually explicit messages & set up a fake social media account in the teacher's name.
 
The union said it had been told of a teacher receiving the comment "I hope she gets cancer", while the heavily pregnant worker had faced abusive remarks.
 
Another school worker faced comments from a pupil's family member about how they looked & that they were ugly.
 
Chris Keates, the union's general secretary, said: "It is deeply worrying to see that the abuse of teachers has risen by such a huge margin this year. Equally concerning is that it appears that more parents are the perpetrators of the abuse. The vile, insulting & personal comments are taking their toll on teachers' health & well-being, & undermining their confidence to do their job."

Made in Britain? The Saudi-led attack on a Yemeni refugee camp

A great opinion piece by Giles Fraser in the Guardian.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/01/britain-saudi-attack-yemen-refugees-arms-deal

On Monday, a Saudi-led coalition apparently dropped bombs on a refugee camp in northern Yemen. It’s perfectly likely that, as they have admitted before, the Saudis may have used jet fighters that were made in the UK. After all, Saudi Arabia is the UK defence industry’s largest export market. More than 40 innocent people died. Around 200 were injured, many seriously. The Yemeni state news agency showed pictures of dead children laid out on the floor.
 
Apparently, the Saudis were trying to hit a nearby Houthi rebel position. “It could have been that the fighter jets replied to fire, & we cannot confirm that it was a refugee camp,” said a spokesman for the Saudi regime, lamely. Well yes, it was a refugee camp, confirmed the UN. And if the Saudis invade Yemen, thus further extending the widening gyre of Sunni/Shia conflict, expect a lot more of the same. ... And if you think it has little to do with us, that’s because we do not choose to remind ourselves that it may well be Rolls-Royce engines, made in Derby, that will be roaring through the sky, & Eurofighters assembled in Lancashire, that will be doing the bombing. We say little because we have a multibillion pound conflict of interest. We supply the weapons, then throw up our hands in horror when they are used.
 
Perhaps I also ought to declare an interest. I fell in love with Yemen back in the 90s. Its searing heat, its desert, its ancient architecture, its fearsome mountains. I would lie on the top of our flat roof in Taiz & hear the call to prayer floating over the city, echoed by the barking of wild street dogs. There was little to distinguish any of this from the middle ages – except for trucks, a few Aston Villa football tops, lots of dodgy looking eastern European weaponry & the cigarettes that my friend was flogging out of the back of his Toyota Land Cruiser.
 
Yes, Yemen was a political basket case. Indeed, the very idea of some overarching national entity called Yemen hardly shaped the local consciousness. This was a collection of semi-autonomous tribes & communities, especially up in the mountains. They were keep-themselves-to-themselves kind of people. Most of the men spent much of their time lying around chewing khat, a sort of pointless amphetamine version of spinach. I passed my time playing chess with the lepers up at the leper colony run by Mother Teresa’s nuns. Despite the dysentery, despite the humidity, despite the suicidal driving & terrible food, I loved it. It had a wild, epic grandeur & the people a fierce independent mindedness. It doesn’t deserve to be a geo-political battleground for a proxy war between Saudi Arabia & Iran. Indeed, where does?
 
I offer this personal reminiscence because I want to try to humanise a place that can easily seem like little more than a name on a map. Not many people from the UK have reason to visit the Yemen. But this is not to say that we are not up to our necks in this war – worse, we are massively profiting from it. Back in 2012 David Cameron & Lord Stephen Green (of HSBC fame) led a trade delegation to Saudi Arabia, flogging our weapons of war. The coalition government has licensed £3.8bn of arms to a Saudi dictatorship that regularly decapitates its subjects, retains the death penalty for conversion to Christianity, prevents women from having basic human rights, & has exported its extreme version of Wahhabi Islam to other parts of the Middle East, inspiring the likes of Islamic State, to catastrophic effect. “Ethics & values are important to us. They define how we behave towards others & play a major part in how we’re creating a responsible business,” says BAE Systems, who manufactures Eurofighter. That’s a sick joke.
 
Think about it: if Israel had dropped bombs on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, it would be on the front page of every paper. But when the Saudis do it, there is hardly a bat-squeak of interest. We fly our flags at half-mast when their king dies. Even a supine Westminster Abbey pathetically follows suit. And all because of Saudi oil money. We ought to be thoroughly ashamed.