A heated row in the Pakistani parliament over "honor killings" this week underlined the difficulty the government faces in changing attitudes to a crime steeped in tradition and dating back centuries.
The National Assembly's session was suspended after a woman lawmaker denounced the often unpunished practice of murdering someone who brings shame to the family, a statement which drew an angry response from a male deputy who defended the custom.
Kashmala Tariq spoke out in support of love matches, after a couple was threatened with death by relatives incensed over their decision not to agree to arranged marriages.
"How can they stop a couple marrying of their own free will when Islam permits them?" she asked.
But Sardar Salim Jan Mazari, a member from Jacobabad in the southern province of Sindh, appeared to defend "honor killings."
"We should respect cultural traditions of our society before making any laws to check such killings in the country," he said, sparking fury among women and liberals but drawing cheers from members of the conservative Islamic opposition.
While defending his remarks, he said yesterday that he did not mean to condone "honor killings."
"I would never encourage any kind of murder, whether it is an `honor killing' or over land," he said.
"These traditions need to be changed, but how? Through education and public awareness," he said.
But the brutal practice does have a role to play, he said.
"The tribal custom came into being centuries ago to put a check on adultery and to protect the weak against the stronger and wealthy. Do we discourage adultery, or encourage it?"
Hundreds of Pakistani women are murdered for "honor" every year, usually by relatives who argue that love marriages or affairs sully their name.
In many cases, the killer goes free, because local police and prosecutors do not consider it a crime.
In the latest incident, 15-year-old Zakia was hacked to death on Wednesday by two brothers in Punjab when they discovered she was having a relationship with her cousin, Khadim Hussain.
In another recent case, two doctors from the southern province of Sindh who married after falling in love have moved to the capital, Islamabad, to escape rel-atives who vowed to kill them. The vast majority of marriages in Pakistan are arranged.
When the couple visited Prime Minister Chaudhry Hussain last weekend, he repeated government promises to introduce laws to check the practice, but set no date.
Human-rights groups have been sceptical toward the government's seriousness, despite calls by President Pervez Musharraf to promote enlightened moderation in his conservative Muslim state.
"We need better implementation of existing laws, instead of statements saying we will ban honor killings," argued Kamila Hyat, a director at the private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Low-level judicial officials and local policemen needed to be ordered to enforce the law more strictly, she said.
Another proposal in parliament this week to combat "honor killings," or "Karo Kari" (black man, black woman), was to deny murderers the chance to settle a crime out of court by paying off the aggrieved party.
Under Pakistan's Islamic Hudood Ordinance, relatives of a murder victim can set the killer free if he or she meets their compensation demands.
Human-rights activists argue the penal code discriminates against women.
Under another of its provisions, a woman must have four pious male Muslim witnesses to prove a rape, or else face adultery charges herself.
Musharraf wants to amend the laws, but he is opposed by the hardline Islamic opposition in parliament that fears he is trying to Westernize the Muslim country of 150 million people.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the