SUDAN - Flogging A Woman

I have come across this vimeo video of a woman in Sudan being flogged.  I apologise for posting three such brutal posts in a row, but what can I say?  This is the world we live in.  I hope my next posting will be pleasantly weird.

Flogging of Sudanese women in Khartoum from Anne Enke on Vimeo.

Sudan investigates case of woman seen being flogged on YouTube clip

Footage sparks international condemnation as police laugh and joke as they administer whipping to screaming woman

• guardian.co.uk, Monday 13 December 2010 15.15 GMT
• 
  



Screengrab from a YouTube clip of a woman being lashed in a carpark by police in Sudan. Sudan's judiciary has launched an investigation into the public flogging of a woman after footage of her being whipped by laughing policemen was posted to the internet. The YouTube video shows an unidentified woman in a long black dress and a headscarf being ordered to sit down in a parking lot (Warning: Video contains graphic images of violence some may find disturbing). [NOTE:  YouTube removed the video saying that it was too graphic.  That's strange.  I remember once watching a beheading on YouTube.] A uniformed policeman proceeds to whip her all over her body as she screams in pain. A second officer laughs when he realises he is being filmed, before joining in the punishment, which lasts a minute and a half. Flogging is relatively common is northern Sudan, where sharia law is often enforced arbitrarily. But the cruel, nonchalant behaviour of the security forces amid the distress of the victim in this case caused a stir in the country and the diaspora, and even attracted condemnation in some pro-government newspapers. Initially Sudan's deputy police chief, Adel Al-Agib, tried to downplay the incident, saying that the footage was circulated in order to damage the image of the country, according to the Sudan Tribune newspaper. But the judicial authority, which oversees the legal system, released a statement yesterday saying it had launched an official inquiry to see if the punishment had been administered improperly. "The investigation was started immediately after the images of the young woman, being punished under Articles 154 and 155 of the 1991 Sudanese penal code, appeared on the internet," the judiciary said in a statement, according to state media. These articles allow up to 100 lashes for adultery and running a brothel, in addition to a jail sentence. In this case the woman's alleged crime is not known, although comments on social media sites suggest it could have been the wearing of trousers, which has in the past been judged to violate a law governing "indecent or immoral dress". In the subtitles on the clip, a policeman can be heard telling the women that her punishment is 53 lashes, and that she will be jailed for two years if she does not submit to the flogging. Another voice says the woman should comply because "we want to go [home]". During her ordeal, which was witnessed by numerous passers-by, the victim shouts repeatedly for her mother and grabs one the whips of one of the policeman in a vain attempt to stop the beating. The case follows the well-publicised trial last year of Lubna Hussein, a UN worker who was arrested with a dozen other women for wearing trousers at a party in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

BANGLADESH - Whipped Top Death At Age 14

Whipped to death for having 'affair' with married man: Horrific fate of girl, 14, lashed 70 times after alleged rape by cousin

Executed: Mosammet Hena, 14, who was whipped to death for having a relationship with a married man, was allegedly raped by her cousin

A teenager whipped to death in Bangladesh for having a relationship with a married man was allegedly raped by her cousin, it has emerged.
Four Islamic clerics were arrested this week for ordering Mosammet Hena, 14, to receive 100 lashes in a fatwa or religious edict at a village in the south-western Shariatpur district.
It has now been reported that the teenage girl was raped by her married cousin and then accused of having an affair with him.
The girl collapsed after she was lashed in public with a bamboo cane around 70 times on Monday, police chief Shahidur Rahman said.
She was taken to hospital, but died hours later.
Police chief Shahidur Rahman said the 40-year-old man with whom the girl was allegedly involved was also sentenced to 100 lashes, but he fled to escape the punishment.
'We are hunting for the man,' he said.
The girl was reportedly beaten by the man’s family before the lashing sentence was passed.
‘What sort of justice is this?’ the girl's father asked the BBC.
‘My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice. If it had been a proper court then my daughter would not have died.’

Fatwas are illegal in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation governed by secular law

But Islamic clerics often preside over courts that use Sharia law and issue fatwas to deal with issues including extra-marital relationships.
Such incidents usually occur in remote villages where police are unable to gain quick access.

Distress: Villagers gathered outside the teenager's home after news of her execution

Sharia law punishment was outlawed by the Bangladeshi High court last but this latest incident is not the first since the prohibition.

A 40-year-old woman died in December having been caned over an alleged affair with her stepson.

An Evil Seductress - Saudi Arabia

The two countries vying for the most Weird Stuff are India and Saudi Arabia. But there is a big difference in the nature of the Weird Stuff in those two countries. India's Weird Stuff seems to be bizarrities, people saying and doing things that are just plain strange, like marrying dogs and frogs, cobras committing sati, that sort of thing.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia's Weird Stuff tends to be barbarous cruelty. A young woman gets sentenced to a long prison term and 100 lashes. Her crime? Being gang raped. It seems she wasn't supposed to be alone with these creeps who raped her, so she is culpable. I found this picture in a blogpost about this case, but I won't doubt this is the young woman in question, as women in Saudia Arabia are usually flogged in a room in the prison reserved for that purpose.

This story is along similar lines. A 75 year old seductress was met by two young men not members of her immediate family. True, one was a nephew, but that's not immediate enough, even though she breast-fed him when he was a baby. And why did she meet with them? They were bringing her bread!


Wonder what a typical Saudi flogging actually looks like? I didn't find any pictures of a woman actually being flogged, so make do with this man:

Likewise, I did not find any pictures of a woman after a flogging. The best I could do is this man, after an Iranian flogging, I think.


Note the picture. Those are outraged Saudi women. How can anyone tell?




And the Muslims wonder why nonMuslims sometimes cop an attitude about Muslims.

Read on:

03/11/2009 13:52
SAUDI ARABIA
Prison, whipping for 75-year-old widow: her nephew brought her bread
The poor woman is suspected of seducing two young men. She even risks being kicked out of the country. There are criticisms of abuse of power on the part of the religious police, who watch over the morality and behavior of citizens, gravely interfering in individuals' private lives.


Jeddah (AsiaNews/Agencies) - There is great distress in the country over the sentence against a 75-year-old widow who has been condemned to 40 lashes and 4 months in prison for being with two young men, one of whom was her nephew, who were bringing her bread at her request. The religious police (muttawa) who watch over morality and behavior have been criticized for blindly applying sharia, partly for the sake of their own power.

Kamisa Sawadi is a Syrian woman formerly married to a Saudi. Last week, she was found guilty of meeting with two young men who were not her immediate relatives. One of them, Fahd Al-Anzi, is a nephew of her deceased husband; the other is his coworker, Hadiyan bin Zein. The two men, at the old woman's request, had brought her five loaves of bread, but when they left her home they encountered the religious police, who arrested them and sentenced them as well to whipping. According to sharia, the woman is guilty. But her lawyers want to appeal above all by emphasizing that the woman breastfed the nephew when he was a baby, giving her a quasi-maternal relationship with him. In this case, the accusation should be withdrawn.

A few of the newspapers in the Middle East are criticizing the sentence and accusing the muttawa of interfering too much in people's private lives. Some of them suspect that behind the sentence is a vendetta on the part of Fahd Al-Anzi's father, the widow's brother-in-law, who notified the religious police and urged them to intervene against "the scandal," accusing the widow of "corruption."

The poor Kamisa Sawadi has been accused twice before of meeting with men, always in connection with bread deliveries. If the sentence is upheld under appeal, she could even be expelled from Saudi Arabia and be forced to return to Syria, her country of origin.

The lawyer Ibrahim Zamzami notes that a 75-year-old woman cannot be considered a "seductress," but sharia does not distinguish between old and young women.

Laila Ahmed al-Ahdab, who writes for the newspaper Al-Watan, is criticizing the muttawa because it bases all of its accusations on suspicions that are not confirmed by any evidence. She accuses the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" of "misusing religion to serve their own interests."

Last month, King Abdallah fired the chief of the religious police and an imam who had called for the killing of owners of television stations that broadcast immoral content. Many saw the action as an attempt by the king to weaken the police and its fundamentalist inspiration from Sunnism.