Friday, October 31, 2014


Afghan cleric jailed for raping 11-year-old girl at mosque school

KABUL: An Afghan cleric has been jailed for 20 years for raping an 11-year old girl, officials said Sunday, after the child confronted her attacker in court despite fierce family opposition.

Activists said the girl appeared in court after being taken to a women’s shelter for safety from her own family, who had threatened to kill her for bringing “dishonour” on them.

The sentence, passed by a court in Kabul on Saturday, came just weeks after five men were hanged for the gang-rape of four adult women.

Hasina Sarwari, the head in Kunduz province of the Women for Afghan Women (WAW) non-government organisation,  said the student at a mosque school was raped in May by Mohammad Aminullah Barez, who taught the girls religious studies.

She first tried to hide what had happened to her but was later admitted to hospital for bleeding, where doctors discovered the rape. He was arrested by police later.

“We are happy for the court’s decision but we wanted him to be executed,” Sarwari told AFP. Her organisation supported the girl in her case and gave her shelter in Kabul.

“After the rape happened the family of the girl wanted to kill her out of shame, even the nurses were not ready to treat her when she was bleeding in the hospital,” she said.

“They would shout ‘May you die, you brought disgrace to our family!’ and ‘We will kill you and dump your body in the river’.

“We got scared too, but we somehow managed to sneak her out of the hospital and take her to a WAW shelter,” she added.

The girl was later brought to Kabul where she was treated for genital injuries and kept in a women’s shelter before she appeared in court.

Benafsha Efaf Amiri, another member of the WAW, said that although the cleric had admitted having sex with the girl, he tried to persuade the court it was consensual and he should therefore only receive 100 lashes as punishment.

Judge Sulaiman Rasouli rejected that argument because it would entail lashing the girl too and treating her as an adulterer rather than a rape victim.

Amiri hailed the verdict as a victory for Afghan women, who still face violence despite reforms since the fall of the hardline Islamist Taliban in 2001.

“Our assessment from yesterday’s court session has made us optimistic for ensuring justice and for ensuring the rights of women of Afghanistan,” she said.

It was also termed a “just verdict” by the Women’s Affairs ministry in a statement to the media.

Amin’s lawyers are expected to appeal to try to reduce the sentence.

SOURCE






Britain's schools need more resources for 'influx' of immigrant children, chief schools inspector warns

Britain's schools need more support to cope with an "influx" of immigrant children, Osted's chief schools inspector has said.

Sir Michael Wilshaw said it was a "big issue" for Government if schools are being faced with a large number of new pupils from other countries without the resources to deal with them.

Speaking on LBC Radio Sir Michael said: “Schools need the resources to deal with that. When they’re faced with an influx of children from other countries, they need the resources and capacity to deal with it and if those resources aren’t there, that’s a big issue for Government. That’s the first thing and we’ll be producing reports on this quite soon.”

His comments will raise fresh concern that high levels of immigration are putting a strain on the education system.

Last week Michael Fallon, the Defence Minister claimed British towns are being “swamped” by immigrants and their residents are “under siege”, comments he later described as careless.

According to official figures, the number of schoolchildren speaking English as a second language has soared by a third in just five years. The proportion of non-native speakers in primary schools has now reached almost 1-in-5 following a year-on-year increase over the last decade. The number of pupils who speak another language in the home exceeded 1.1 million for the first time this year.

In some parts of London, children with English as a second language now make up as much as three quarters of the school roll, with around half of pupils being classified in towns and cities such as Slough, Luton and Leicester.

This summer a report by the Government''s official advisors on migration said that parts of Britain are "struggling to cope" with high levels of immigration that have put huge pressures on public services such as the NHS, schools and transport.

The major report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said that immigration had caused the "composition of many local area populations to alter rapidly" and that such rapid change could lead to friction.

A separate report by Civitas said that classrooms would come under increased pressure in coming years due to uncontrolled immigration.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “As part of our plan for education we are making every effort to ensure local authorities have the resources and flexibility to provide the school places needed by their communities.

“We are giving councils £5billion to spend on new school places over this parliament — double the amount allocated by the previous government over an equivalent period – and a further £2.35billion to create the places needed by September 2017. This has already led to the creation of more than 260,000 new places.

“School funding is allocated based on pupil need, whether that is special educational needs or where English is not a pupil’s first language and should a school grow in a single year, local authorities can and do top up their funding to reflect that.”

SOURCE





Second Parent: My Child Got Nation of Islam Paper, Too

A second parent has now come forward acknowledging their child received a Nation of Islam “handout” in a third grade class at Harold McCormick Elementary School in Elizabethton, Tennessee – contradicting claims by the school district that the document was not distributed in the classroom.

I first told you about this story on Monday. Parent Sommer Bauer told me her son’s teacher gave him a document that portrayed the presidents on Mount Rushmore as being racists.

School superintendent E.C. Alexander refuted allegations that the Nation of Islam document had been distributed in class. He told me the document was never meant for public distribution and that the child took the sheet of paper from the teacher’s work station without her permission.

“The student (without permission) took the sheet from a “ton” of discarded teacher’s material on that table; then, the student took it home and gave it to the parent,” Alexander wrote in an email to educators after my column was published.

Supt. Alexander also posted a statement on the school district’s website. He hurled all sorts of allegations my way – words like “misleading” and “totally incorrect” and “sensational.”

Yet, he never got around to telling us what was misleading or totally incorrect or sensational. And we still don’t know how that Nation of Islam information found its way into that third grade classroom.

“Our System has been defamed (possibly permanently),” he bemoaned.

“Now, the thought that we as public educators would deliberately distribute such material is absolutely absurd,” he wrote.

He also took great umbrage at my characterization of the Nation of Islam document as a “handout.”

“The sheet in question was not a hand-out sheet distributed to students,” he wrote on the school district’s website. I should point out that he underlined the word “not.”

Instead, he referred to it as a “sheet.” So for the sake of accuracy, the Nation of Islam “handout” will be known as the Nation of Islam “sheet.”

Parents were given a letter on Tuesday stressing that the material contained in the Nation of Islam “sheet ” was not distributed to students, was not shown during or after the lesson and was not used as a reference.

There’s just one problem with the school district’s explanation – a second parent has now come forward corroborating Mrs. Bauer’s story.

“Yes, they were handed out and yes the students did look at them and read them,” the parent told me.

The parent asked not to be identified to protect her child. She told me she came forward because of how the school is treating Mrs. Bauer’s son.

“I don’t want this little boy to be looked at as a liar,” the parent said. “As of right now that’s what all of these adults are making this boy out to be – and that makes me sick to my stomach.”

So what happened inside that third grade classroom at Harold McCormick Elementary School?

According to the parent, the children were separated into four groups. Each group was given two “sheets of paper.”

“The teacher held up each one and said, ‘These do not go home. These are just to use here,” the parent told me.

The Nation of Islam “sheet ” explained that George Washington hailed from Virginia, a “prime breeder of black people.” Of Theodore Roosevelt, it was alleged he called Africans “ape-like.” There were also disparaging comments made about Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

The parent told me that the teacher did not teach students from the Nation of Islam “sheet.” But she did hand it to the students.

Maybe this was just an innocent mistake. It’s possible the teacher may have printed the first thing she Googled without giving it a second glance. It happens. Teachers are busy folks.

But what was not an innocent mistake was a school district trying to portray an eight-year-old boy as the bad guy.

And what is not acceptable is sending out mass emails accusing the child of pilfering a “sheet” from his teacher’s work station.

If I didn’t know better – I’d say that little boy is the victim of grownup bullying.

SOURCE



No comments: