21 - 27 March 2002
Issue No.578
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 March 2002 Issue No.578 |
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A strike for free speech
TWO JORDANIAN human rights groups on Monday urged the authorities to release Jordan's first female member of parliament as she entered her second day of a hunger strike.
Former MP Tujan Faisal, who served in parliament from 1993 until 1997, was detained on Saturday for a renewable 15-day period on orders of the state security court after she publicly accused the government of corruption, her lawyer said on Sunday.
She stands accused of "spreading stories that attack the state and officials' reputations."
The president of the Arab Organisation of Human Rights in Jordan, Hani Dahle, told a press conference that Faisal was detained "simply for expressing her opinion on the behaviour of some officials." He called for Faisal's immediate release.
Faisal sent an e-mail message addressed to Jordan's King Abdullah II on 6 March in which she accused Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb of "profiting financially" from a government decision to raise taxes on car insurance by 100 per cent.
On Sunday, the state prosecutor also ordered the detention for a 15-day renewable period of the chief editor of the Jordanian weekly Al- Bilad, Hashem Khalidi, who has also accused government officials of corruption in the same case. The government has denied the charges.
Faisal is known for her outspoken criticism of government officials. In recent years, she has become a leading advocate of free speech, has pushed for an end to political detentions and has constantly attacked infringements upon public freedoms.
Tragedy sparks debate
SAUDI King Fahd announced on Monday the formation of a high-level commission to investigate the deaths of 15 young students at a public girls school in the Muslim holy city of Mecca on 14 March.
The commission "will investigate the causes and those responsible will be held accountable," Information Minister Fuad Al-Faresi quoted the king as telling the cabinet during its weekly session.
The monarch offered condolences to the families of the girls, aged between 13 and 17, who died in a stampede when they tried to escape after a fire broke out at their school on 11 March. More than 50 other students were injured.
The tragedy has sparked a rare political debate in conservative Saudi Arabia. The Saudi local press accused top education officials of incompetence and corruption and called for resignations.
Saudi Arabia's religious police also stood accused of preventing the rescue of the girls because an effort to save them would have meant men entering a girls' school or girls leaving without wearing a veil.
Al-Iqtisadiya newspaper quoted a civil defence officer as saying he saw three members of the religious police, or mutawain, beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the obligatory head veil.
At the same time, civil defence guards were blocked from entering the school to aid the girls because it would have violated the policy of separation of the sexes, the daily said.
Amnesty International expressed concern over these reports. "If these reports are true, this is a tragic illustration of how gender discrimination can have lethal consequences," the British-based human rights group said in a statement on Saturday.
Bouteflika besieged
SCORES of people have been injured, at least three seriously, in clashes between police and ethnic Berber anti-government protesters in Algeria's Kabylie region. About 100 people were hurt when clashes erupted on Sunday in several Kabylie towns.
President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika announced on March 12 that the main Berber dialect, Tamazight, would become a national language alongside Arabic and pledged to take action against paramilitary gendarmes found guilty of rights abuses. He also promised to compensate victims of serious rioting last year.
These announcements, however, brought attacks on Bouteflika from all sides. Many representatives of the Berber community, which makes up about one fifth of Algeria's population of some 31 million, considered the statements unsatisfactory. On the other hand, the Islamist Movement for Social Peace Party, which is led by Mahfouz Nehnah and is part of the coalition government, objected to turning the Tamazight into a national language without a referendum. "We refuse over-stepping the Algerian people in deciding such crucial issues," Nehnah said.
Berber activists want the central government in Algiers to rid Kabylie of the gendarmes based there, who they accuse of corruption and abuse of power, as well as the bloody repression of riots that gripped the region last year.
But Bouteflika said it was "inconceivable" that he would withdraw the gendarmerie forces "while the country is still fighting against barbaric terrorism," in a reference to militant Islamist insurgency.
Meanwhile, a bomb exploded on Monday during the afternoon rush hour in central Algiers, injuring at least 15 people, three of them seriously. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
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