Oz cleric endorses wife beating, marital rape

Posted: Thursday , Jan 22, 2009 at 1002 hrs
Australia's Prime Minister joined Muslim leaders on Thursday in condemning a cleric's comments that husbands are entitled to smack disobedient wives and force them to have sex.

Samir Abu Hamza made the contentious comments in Sydney during a lecture in 2003, but they were first reported Thursday after they appeared in a video posted on the Internet.

During the lecture on marriage delivered to a male audience, Hamza - who has previously had no national profile – ridiculed Australian law that regards forced sex within marriage as rape.

"Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?" Hamza said, adding that wives must immediately respond to their husbands' sexual demands.

He also said a man was entitled to use limited force as a last resort to punish a disobedient wife. "After you have advised them for a long, long time, then you smack them, you beat them and - please brothers, calm down – the beating that the Muhammad showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth."

"You are not allowed to bruise them; you are not allowed to make them bleed," Hamza said. "You don't go and grab a broomstick and say that is what Allah has said."

Hamza could not be contacted for comment Thursday at the Islamic centre he runs in the southern city of Melbourne. Thursday's edition of the Herald Sun newspaper quoted Hamza as saying he stood by his recorded comments.

While Australia is a relatively tolerant and multicultural society, ethnic and religious rifts occasionally flare, with the treatment of women under Islam a flashpoint in this majority-Christian nation.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd condemned Hamza's comments, saying violence toward women was permissible "under no circumstances." "Australia will not tolerate these sort of remarks," Rudd told reporters. "They don't belong in modern Australia, and he should stand up, repudiate them, and apologize."

Joumanah El Matrah, the executive of the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria state, said Hazma's comments were "a grossly inappropriate representation of both the Quran and Muslim views on violence, both in wife beating and rape."

"I don't like to use the word extremism, but certainly his views are outdated and a minority view that is insistent on seeing women as less human than men," she said.

Sherene Hassan, the vice president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said research has found that some imams in Australia share Hamza's stance on domestic violence. She said the council will hold a series of workshops aimed at changing those views.

Conflicts between mainstream Australia and its fast-growing Muslim minority, who number 400,000 in a population of 21 million, have gained a higher profile in recent years.

Australia's former mufti, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, created a furore in 2006 which split the Islamic community with a lecture in Sydney in which he compared women who do not wear head scarves to "uncovered meat" and said immodestly dressed women invite rape.

Tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim youths erupted into days of rioting at Sydney's Cronulla beach in late 2005.

Suicide threats amount to cruelty, can be a divorce ground: HC

Posted: Saturday , Jan 02, 2010 at 1136 hrs


Repeated attempts to commit suicide as well the threats to commit suicide could amount to "cruelty", and it can very well be a ground for seeking divorce, the Bombay High Court has held.

The family court in Pune granted divorce to Varsha and Prakash (both names changed) on the application made by Prakash in 2002, against which Varsha had filed appeal.

Both had been living separately for the last seventeen years.

Prakash's application for divorce was on the ground that his wife was temperamental, she frequently fought with him, and threatened to commit suicide.

In her statement before the family court, Varsha admitted that she had, in fact, attempted suicide twice. Once she tried to jump from a bridge, on another occasion she tried to drink an insecticide, but was saved both the times.

High Court held that family court was right in granting divorce to Prakash, "because the behaviour of the appellant in persistently threatening and attempting suicide would constitute mental cruelty in law".

A husband can not be expected to continue living with the wife in such circumstances, said the division bench of Justices S A Bobde and S J Kathawala.


Varsha's lawyer argued that she was driven to suicide because of her in-laws ill-treated her, but High Court refuted this line of argument, pointing out that "the attempts to commit suicide continued even after the couple moved to a new place and began to live separately from the family of the husband."

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/suicide-threats-amount-to-cruelty-can-be-a/562482/

In New Year gift for India, victims get a voice: the right to appeal judgments

Thursday , Dec 31, 2009 at 0522 hrs



New Delhi:

The New Year will bring a special gift for victims of crime in India. On the second last day of 2009, the government decided to notify a landmark amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), giving victims the right to appeal against a court order acquitting an accused, or convicting the accused of a lesser offence.

Under the amended Sec 372 CrPC, the victim will not need the permission of any law enforcement or prosecuting agency to appeal a court order. Currently, an appeal can be made only if the prosecution so decides.

This and other amendments were cleared by Parliament in December last year, and they subsequently received the assent of the President. However, due to strong opposition by lawyers and some NGOs, the Home Ministry did not notify them.

According to sources, Home Minister P Chidambaram, who was keen to notify the amendments at the earliest, cleared the file today. Once published in the gazette, which is likely to happen tomorrow, the amendments would become enforceable from January 1, 2010.

However, the Ministry has decided not to notify two amendments that the lawyers had opposed strongly — to CrPC Sections 41(A) and 309.

The amendment to Sec 41(A) barred police from arresting an accused for an offence that carries a maximum punishment of seven years without first issuing him/her a “notice of appearance”.

The amendment to Sec 309, aimed at speeding up trials, disallowed the granting of adjournments on flimsy grounds.

Sources told The Indian Express that the Ministry has decided to amend these Sections again as per recommendations of the Law Commission.

An important amendment that will be notified is Section 357A, making it mandatory for state governments to draw up a scheme in coordination with the Centre to provide funds for compensation to victims or their dependents. Victims will be entitled to compensation if the offender is not caught and tried.

Another amendment — to Section 275 — provides for video recording of witness statements in case of offences carrying a punishment of over two years.

Police must complete investigations in a child rape case within three months of registering the case. Rape cases should ideally be investigated only by policewomen.

Also, if a pregnant woman is given the death sentence, the High Court would automatically commute it to life.

http://www.indianexpress.com/columnist/maneeshchhibber/