Tag Archives: Women

U.S. Senate backs Arlington burial honor for female pilots

A man pauses at a grave during Memorial Day celebrations at Arlington National Cemetery

ASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted late on Tuesday to allow women pilots from World War Two to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the vast military cemetery just outside Washington.

The unanimous voice vote moved the legislation a step closer to becoming law. It would allow the cremated remains of about 1,000 women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, in the 1940s to be buried there.

The women performed training and transport missions in the United States during the conflict so male pilots could be sent overseas.

Unlike male veterans, however, they cannot be interred at Arlington, the best-known but very crowded U.S. military cemetery, because authorities have insisted their service was not the same as active duty.

The measure must now be sent to the House of Representatives for its approval before it can be sent to the White House for President Barack Obama to sign into law.

It is expected to pass the House easily and it contains only technical differences from legislation the House passed by a vote of 385-0 in March.

The bill was sponsored by Republican Representative Martha McSally, who was the first woman U.S. Air Force pilot to fly combat missions.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, editing by G Crosse)

India working to curb trafficking of women and children

India’s Women and Child Welfare minister Maneka Gandhi, works on a computer before an interview with Reuters at her office in New Delhi, India, October 19, 2015.

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – India is working to find ways to curb the widespread trafficking of women and children in the country, including those from neighboring Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, said Maneka Gandhi, India’s minister for women and children.

South Asia, with India at its center, is the fastest-growing and second-largest region for human trafficking in the world, after East Asia, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime.

Speaking at a conference on child adoption in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya, Gandhi told delegates that the government was in the process of putting in place a series of policies to prevent human trafficking.

“We have discussed this issue in the cabinet. We had called a meeting with these countries last month in which all NGOs working on this and others in Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh came,” she said on Monday.

“We will have another meeting next week in India. We are telling each other what we can do. This month, we are going to see that specific solutions come into being.”

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 5,466 cases of human trafficking registered in 2014, an increase of 90 percent over the past five years.

Activists say this is a gross under-estimation of the scale of the problem, as much of the illicit organized crime is underground.

They claim thousands of people – largely poor, rural women and children – are lured to India’s towns and cities each year by traffickers who promise good jobs but sell them into domestic work or sex work or to industries such as textile workshops.

In many cases, they are not paid or are held in debt bondage. Some go missing, and their families cannot trace them.

Gandhi said India’s remote northeastern states, which include Assam, Sikkim, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, were a key source area for trafficking and called for the appointment of a special female police officer in each village to keep a check on crimes against women and children.

“There is an enormous amount of trafficking of children going on from the northeast. We find them in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and many going to Malaysia and Thailand. It is not fair,” she said.

“The job of special women police is to be vigilant in the village and see that children do not go missing, women are not beaten by husbands, girls are sent to school.”

A comprehensive new anti-trafficking law is also being drafted, say government officials. This will not only unify several existing laws, but also raise penalties for offenders and provide victims with rehabilitation and compensation.

The law, which is expected to be ready by the end of the year, will also provide for the establishment of a central investigative anti-trafficking agency to coordinate and work between states and special courts to hear such cases.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, editing by Alex Whiting. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

ISIS Issues All-Female Manifesto

A new “manifesto” for girls under the rule of ISIS has been issued telling them they can be married to a Jihadist as young as 9 and that they are to remain “hidden and veiled” to “serve their masters”.

The manifesto, “Women in the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study” was uploaded to a Jihadist forum used by ISIS and is written by the all-female Al-Khanssaa Brigade.  The same group is the one that beats and stones women and girls who do not follow strict Sharia Law.

The document focuses on Sharia law and a rebuttal of “western civilization” that includes human rights and equality for women.

“It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of 9. Most pure girls will be married by 16 or 17, while they are still young and active,” it says.

The document tells women to be covered from head to toe at all times, to stay inside their homes to cook, clean and take care of their husbands and that it’s acceptable for women to be locked inside their homes by their husbands.  Western women who join ISIS are encouraged to immediately marry a Jihadist and begin duties as a wife.

ISIS tells the women that it is fundamental women have a sedentary lifestyle and that it is her “divinely appointed right” to stay inside and care for husbands except in “narrowly defined circumstances.”

The document also justifies the enslavement of “infidel” women as sex slaves.

ISIS Auctioning Infants As Sex Slaves

A document has been found bearing the official ISIS seal outlining prices for the sale of women, children and infants who are captured by the terrorist group.

The document says all of the women and children are either Christians or Yazidi and that they are “sex slaves” for use by the terrorists in the organization.

“We have been informed that the market for sale of women had been witnessing a reduction in price which effects the needs for the Islamic State and the funding for the Mujahideen,” the document reads, according to an English translation of the notice obtained by Christian News.  “For this, the commerce department had decided to set a fixed price regarding the sale of women. Therefore, all auctioneers are to abide by this and anyone who breaks the rules will be executed.”

Women over 40 are selling for the equivalent of $43 American dollars, while infants and children are selling for $172 American dollars.  Infants as young as one year old are available to be bought as slaves by the terrorist fighters.

Along with the document, a video surfaced showing terrorists waiting in line for the auction to begin.

“Today is the slave market day. Today is the day where this verse applies: ‘Except with their wives and the [captives] whom their right hands possess, for [then] they are not to be blamed,’” a terrorist in the video says. “Today is distribution day, Allah willing. … By Allah, man, I am looking for one to get me a girl.”

The video has other terrorists talking about how they would inspect the women like cattle, checking to see if they had teeth or were healthy before buying them.

Boko Haram Kidnaps 60 Women

Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has committed another kidnapping of women in Nigeria.

The group kidnapped 60 more girls despite reports they were agreeing to a ceasefire and the release of the last 200 girls still remaining from a raid on a school in Chibok in April.

“The insurgents are still in the area. They slit the throats of three men in Garta and abducted many young women. We also heard from residents of Waga that they killed two men and took 40 women away,” said Tizhe Kwada, a resident of Garta.

The Nigerian government had claimed a cease fire with the group was reached last week.

The BBC reported now Boko Haram is claiming there is no ceasefire and that talks between the extremists and the government will be continuing in neighboring Chad.

“If they are aware and they are in agreement that there is a ceasefire, I don’t think they would continue attacking innocent people and taking over places,” said Bulama Mali Gubio of the Borno Elders Forum.

ISIS Used Virgin Girls As “Rewards”

A security official for ISIS captured by anti-ISIS rebels admitted that when they captured any Yazidi village, they would separate the virgin women to use as rewards for terrorists who carry out successful attacks.

The ISIS official from Raqqa revealed that they are routinely taking Christian and Yazidi women and having them repeatedly raped by terrorist fighters as a way to increase the morale of their fighters.

The ISIS official said the terrorists would “marry” the virgins and then most of the time divorce them after the “wedding night’ so they could be given to other terrorists.

The report says that the leaders within ISIS are taking great efforts to keep the truth of what they’re doing to captured women from the public so it doesn’t bring them negative response from groups sympathetic to their views.

“The inner circle of leaders and security officials, and were careful that this issue should not be known as much as possible to the civilians,” the report stated.

The Islamic State has stated all women who are not Muslim should be used as sex slaves.