From the
Washington Post:
MOGADISHU, Somalia, Nov. 1 -- A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery, a human rights group said.
Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Monday in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismaayo, Amnesty International and Somali news media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamist militia in charge of Kismaayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.
...
A quarter of Somali children die before age 5; nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence, with violent deaths reported nearly every day.
Islamist fighters with ties to al-Qaeda have been battling the government and its Ethiopian allies since those combined forces pushed the Islamists from the capital in December 2006. Within weeks of being driven out, the Islamists launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians.
UPDATE: From the
Cape Times :
Dhuhulow was placed in a hole up to her neck for the execution late on Monday in front of hundreds of people in a square of this southern port, which the Islamist insurgents captured in August.
"A woman in a green veil and black mask was brought in a car as we waited to watch the merciless act of stoning," one resident, Abdullahi Aden, said.
"We were told she submitted herself to be punished, yet we could see her screaming as she was forcibly bound, legs and hands. A relative of hers ran towards her, but the Islamists opened fire and killed a child."
Stones were hurled at Dhuhulow's head, and the woman was brought out of the hole three times to see if she had died.
Islamic scholars will be outraged, as women being stoned to death are supposed to be buried only up to the waist. The theory being that if innocent, they can escape. Digging them up and re-burying them if they're not quite dead yet is also a no-no. Then there's the bit about machine-gunning another child in the process, that's highly irregular too.
7 comments:
No such things are happening in Iraq but they have oil. Somalia has nothing, just guess what the Americans are fighting for.
Anonymous summarized the core situation brilliantly. The sad fact is that these atracities will continue until the US Government makes human rights abuse resolution more important than petroleum industry profits. At the same time the other Western democracies are equally at fault for allowing these things to continue.
OK, so what should we be doing about it then?
To say "Oh, it's the US Government's fault, going after Oil etc etc" doesn't help. *Who* exactly in the US Government. Congress? The President?
It's easy to blame Dark Evil Forces, but exactly what should they do, what are the nuts and bolts.
There is an Iraqi government now, and the US forces are there on their sufferance.
The abuse of gays and others that is reported daily in Iraq is sometimes the result of anti-government (and anti-US) forces, and sometimes rogue or not so rogue elements within the government itself.
What exactly are the practical steps that can be taken? Are the US forces going to turn into an enemy army occupying a hostile country, or are they there to stabilise a legitimate government, one that most Iraqis have voted for?
In the case of the Somalia, this is not the work of the Government (to the extent that Somalia can be said to have a Government..), but Al Qaeda. The Base - which is a conglomerate of like-minded groups, rather than a monolithic entity.
Rather than throwing up one's hands and blaming the Multinational Oil Companies, the Pentagon, the International Communist Conspiracy, the Elders of Zion, the Evil Geniusses For A Better Tomorrow, or any of the other Illuminati puppets, what can we do?
This particular problem can be, if not solved, then ameliorated by a few JDAMS. The trick is not to kill innocents in the process.
The US is really quite limited in what it can do, and those who criticise it most vehemently often have no idea of the limits they operate under. If they truly were the Evil Ominpotent Force that they're imagined to be, they'd be able to do a lot more. But they're not. Not all the world's problems are actually solvable. This is one of the few where the old adage There Are Few Problems In The Galaxy Which Cannot Be Solved By A Suitable Application Of Concentrated Phaser Fire. applies.
And as for justification - 9/11 proved that the planet isn't big enough for the both of us.
(And anonymous - please, please add a monicker to your post, as there are often several anon's posting simultaneously)
Hmmm...what can we do here in the US?
Elect Barack Obama?
;)
Oh, for some claymores aimed at the stone throwers!
The religion of peace decides to stone to death a 13 year old girl and somehow this is about the US and oil? FFS, give a break!
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