South Africans called to arms over raped teenager

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? The chime sounds every four minutes on the radio station, reminding listeners that statistically yet another child or woman in South Africa is being raped.

It's also a call to arms for citizens outraged over the gang-rape of a teenager who was mutilated ? her body carved open from her stomach to her genitals ? and left for dead on a construction site. While India agonizes with its high prevalence of rape because of a fatal attack on a young woman on a bus, South Africans are now becoming galvanized by the attack on the teenager in a small town. Civil society and governments in both countries are saying this must stop.

The injuries to the 17-year-old were so horrific that nurses in the operating theater, where doctors tried in vain to save her life, are undergoing trauma counseling.

The chimes on Talk Radio 702 are part of a campaign urging South Africans to identify perpetrators of rape that has become endemic. One in four females is raped here according to several studies, from months-old babies to 94-year-old grandmothers.

The Citizen newspaper published an editorial calling for citizens to take collective responsibility in the fight against sexual crimes.

"Somehow, somewhere there must be a tipping point where society is so convulsed by a collective anger over rape that we begin to turn the tide against this terrible scourge," the newspaper said. "Each of us needs to ask what we can do to stop this awful trend. And then we must act accordingly. You can help."

The Star newspaper's editor Makhudu Sefara ran a front-page editorial saying "Stand up. Speak out. Help us turn this evil around once and for all."

And at a busy intersection near Johannesburg's Sandton City, dozens of young men and women wearing black and red waved placards saying "Stop rape."

South Africans appear to be inspired by the mass demonstrations in India that protest a culture of sexual violence and revulsion over the gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on a New Delhi bus who died of internal injuries from a metal bar. India, with a population of 1.2 billion people, had 24,206 rapes reported in 2011. South Africa, population 50 million, reported 2.5 times that number of rapes last year.

Opposition politician Lindiwe Mazibuko described "a silent war against the children and women of this country ... We live in a deeply patriarchal and injured society where the rights of women are not respected."

She said she would request a national dialogue on the crisis.

President Jacob Zuma, who was acquitted on charges of raping the daughter of a family friend in 2005, said Thursday "that government would never rest until the perpetrators and all those who rape and abuse women and children, are meted with the maximum justice that the law allows."

For Professor Rachel Jewkes, , a doctor heading the Women's Research Unit of South Africa's Medical Research Council who has studied sexual violence here for 20 years, much more is needed.

"I'm jolly pleased to hear that even Jacob Zuma has belatedly come in, but we need to remember that actually women are raped and actually die from their injuries from rape almost every day in South Africa, and we need to make sure that the very, very profound sense of horror and outrage that people feel now is translated into something concrete."

Shaheda Omar, clinical director of Johannesburg's Teddy Bear Clinic for child victims of abuse, said: "We've had huge outcries in the past then things just fall through the cracks again, but I think there's a stronger sense of solidarity now."

Omar has worked with child victims for 28 years and suffers trauma spasms and headaches as a result. She said the government needs to enact "stringent measures, actions having consequences and perpetrators being brought to book to deter others."

Organizations that have been working with rape survivors plan a mass outdoor meeting next week in Johannesburg, she said.

Some South Africans, imbued with a chauvinism that believes men have a right to sex, do not even understand what constitutes rape, according to some who called in to radio stations.

Jewkes said a study she conducted in 2009 showed 62 percent of surveyed boys over age 11 believed that forcing someone to have sex was not an act of violence. One-third said girls enjoy being raped. Jewkes' study had 37 percent of surveyed men saying they had raped a women or child, and 75 percent admitting they first raped a teenager. All the men came from Gauteng, South Africa's most populated province.

The 17-year-old raped last Saturday in Bredasdorp, a Western Cape town known for its giant protea flowers, lived long enough to identify a former 22-year-old boyfriend as one of her attackers. Police took him into custody. On Thursday they arrested a 21-year-old suspect and on Friday a 23-year-old. All are to appear in court Monday. According to media reports, the teen was attacked by five men.

The maximum sentence for rape in South Africa is life in prison. But official statistics show less than 10 percent of reported sexual crimes result in a successful prosecution, making many reluctant to report rape.

---

On the Net:

Talk Radio 702, www.702.co.za

Teddy Bear Clinic, http://www.ttbc.org.za/whoweare.html

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-africans-called-arms-over-raped-teenager-134228125.html

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Virtual Superpower Experience Increases Helpful Attitude

Click here to listen to this podcast

You're a bird! You're a plane! You're a superhero! Sort of. Because a study finds that experiencing superpowers in a virtual environment can turn you into a do-gooder in real life. The work is in the journal PloS ONE. [Robin S. Rosenberg, Shawnee L. Baughman and Jeremy N. Bailenson, Virtual Superheroes: Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior] Sixty men and women flew over a virtual city, either holding their arms out and controlling their movement like Superman, or as passengers in a virtual helicopter. Afterwards, back in the real world, the experimenter knocked over a cup of pens as if by accident, and waited five seconds so the subject had a chance to help with the mess. When people had spent the simulation as superheroes, they helped clean up more quickly and picked up more pens. Coming to the virtual rescue was not necessary for the follow-up behavior. In the simulation, some subjects merely explored the city while others saved a lost child?but both groups performed basically the same on the pen test. So, feeling like a superhero may inspire the impulse to helpfully leap in. Just don't expect to leap any buildings in a single bound. ?Sophie Bushwick [The above text is a transcript of this podcast.] Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/virtual-superpower-experience-increases-helpful-attitude-040908711.html

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In the new Egypt, the police still hew to their old torturing ways

When Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt, torture of suspects and citizens was commonplace among Egypt's police. Under President Mohamed Morsi, not much has changed.

By Dan Murphy,?Staff writer / February 5, 2013

Egyptian protesters run from tear gas fired by riot police during clashes next to the presidential palace in Cairo, Friday. When Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt, torture of suspects and citizens was commonplace among Egypt's police. Under President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's institutions are pretty much identical to what they were in the Mubarak years.

Khalil Hamra/AP

Enlarge

Over the weekend, the Egyptian state posed a question to the nation about a vicious beating that cops delivered to a man, captured on camera: "Who are you going to believe ? us, or your own lying eyes?"

Skip to next paragraph Dan Murphy

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.?Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

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The police beating of Hamada Saber on Friday was carried live on Egyptian television and has since been rebroadcast dozens of times on the country's lively talk shows. But the sustained attack by a group of about eight cops on Mr. Saber, a middle-aged construction worker, was only unusual for Egypt in one respect: That it was captured on film.

This is a crucial point to keep in mind about Egypt. While the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi is now the president, Egypt's institutions are pretty much identical to what they were in the Mubarak years. Egypt's elites seem comfortable with a police force that often treats average people as cattle, rather than citizens they're sworn to protect. While there is tut-tutting when the occasionally spectacular case like Saber's hits the press, no one in power is fighting for an overhaul of the rotten police service.

The Saber case has followed the standard playbook. The first response of Egypt's Interior Ministry and the government of President Morsi was to suggest that the police had in fact been helping Saber escape from protesters, who the police alleged had attacked him, in front of the presidential palace. Astonishingly cynical? Yes. And completely typical.

The unresisting Saber was stripped of his pants (likely an attempt at sexual humiliation), beaten with fists and batons, dragged roughly off the pavement, and eventually thrown into an armored vehicle, under arrest. Nothing unusual there. That was standard operating procedure for Egyptian cops before the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak and has remained so since.

Light punishments for police

Sexual torture is not uncommonly used in police stations, and punishments are light. In 2007, cops in Cairo filmed themselves beating and sodomizing a bus driver with a stick, to use as leverage to humiliate the driver, who they also had sentenced to three months in jail for "resisting arrest." When the footage leaked onto the Internet, public outrage forced a trial of the police. The two assailants received just three years in jail.

In January 2011, just as the Mubarak regime was entering it's final days, Human Rights Watch detailed Egypt's police torture program in a 100-page report titled "Work on Him Until He Confesses': Impunity for Torture in Egypt".

"Criminal Investigations officers and State Security Investigations (SSI) officers, under the authority of the minister of the interior, are most often responsible for such abuse. This includes beatings, electric shocks, suspension in painful positions, forced standing for long periods, water-boarding, as well as rape and threatening rape to victims and their families," the group wrote.

That Saber was held in a military hospital, and while there appears to have been successfully leaned on to insist it was protesters, not the police, who attacked him, is also pretty standard. A horror of police stations and crossing the police is inculcated in most working class Egyptians, since the intersection of the police and their lives frequently involves paying a bribe or getting abused. He must have been terrified. There is generally impunity for police abuses, and sentences are light when there are convictions.

For instance just two of the police involved in the brutal murder of Khaled Said in 2010 were sentenced for his death. Their prison terms? Seven years. Mr. Said's murder was a key rallying point for the protesters who launched the uprising against Hosni Mubarak in Jan. 2011, with a powerful new set of activists drawn into politics through the "We Are All Khaled Said" Facebook page, which used Said as a symbol for the systematic abuses of the state.

His family believes he was murdered because he was involved in leaking a video taken inside Sidi Gaber that showed policemen dividing up marijuana they'd seized from drug dealers for resale. The beating, on the street in full view of witnesses, left Said's features unrecognizable and his head looking like a caved in melon. Yet just as with the beating of Saber last Friday, the cops tried to claim something else had happened. They said Said had choked to death on drugs he'd tried to swallow to hide from the police.

Saber, has since reversed course, and said that it was in fact the police who attacked and beat him. His fear was perfectly understandable.

In 2007,?I wrote about Nasser Seddit Gadallah, an Egyptian plumber who made the mistake of complaining when he was beaten and robbed by a group of cops on the western outskirts of Cairo. Warned at the police station not to complain again, he persisted. A few days later, a group of about 10 cops showed up at his family's third-story apartment, and threw him headfirst to his death off the balcony, while his wife and 9-year-old son watched in horror. There were never any convictions.

Morsi quiet

President Morsi's relative silence on a crime that has infuriated millions of Egyptians is also right out of the past, as have been suggestions from the presidential office that the attack was an isolated incident. Predatory and brutal police behavior is one constant in Egypt, whether at protests, in police stations, or out on the beat.

Dealing with abuses in a piecemeal fashion, and only when they erupt into the headlines, is the old way of doing things. So far, the Muslim Brotherhood seems just fine with that.

One case to follow will be the apparent murder of Mohamed al-Gendy, a young member of the left-leaning Popular Current, who was abducted from Tahrir Square on Jan. 25. He turned up, unconscious and suffering from heavy internal bleeding, at a hospital in Cairo on Jan. 28 after being hurt in what the Health Ministry claimed was a car accident. Egyptian human rights activists and members of his party say his body showed signs of a serious beating and electric shock torture.

Mr. Gendy passed away on Feb. 4. Unfortunately, his case is far more typical than Saber's: no film.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ut928QaE4iA/In-the-new-Egypt-the-police-still-hew-to-their-old-torturing-ways

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Watch This Video To Remember Everything the Internet Loved Last Year

It's already February of 2013 but who the hell cares. This video is the best summary of 2012 that you can ever find. It splices, chops and combines all the videos we fell in love with on the Internet into an epic tale of ridiculously awesomeness. If someone went to sleep on December 31st, 2011 and woke up a year later on January 1st, 2013, this is the video you would show them. This is like if Picasso, Rembrandt and Monet teamed up to paint one picture. Or if The Beatles and The Stones formed one band. It's the video version of Watch the Throne. It's everything the Internet loved in 2012. How many videos can you recognize? How many videos did you watch? [MiamiViceStyle via The Awesomer] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/fiGkianK-BA/watch-this-video-to-remember-everything-the-internet-loved-last-year

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Boy Scouts board meets amid talk of policy on gays

IRVING, Texas (AP) ? The Boy Scouts of America's policy excluding gay members and leaders could be up for a vote as soon as Wednesday, when the organization's national executive board meets behind closed doors under intense pressure from several sides.

BSA announced last week it was considering allowing troops to decide whether to allow gay membership. That news has placed a spotlight on executive board meetings that began Monday in Irving, Texas, where scouting headquarters is located.

BSA spokesman Deron Smith said last week that the board could take a vote Wednesday or decide to discuss the policy, but the organization would issue a statement either way. Otherwise, the board has remained silent, with reporters barred from the hotel where its meetings are taking place.

At nearby BSA headquarters, a handful of Scouts and leaders delivered petitions Monday in support of letting gay members join. The conservative group Texas Values, meanwhile, says it has organized a Wednesday morning prayer vigil urging the Scouts to keep their policy the same.

President Barack Obama, an opponent of the policy, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an Eagle Scout who supports it, both have weighed in.

"My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life," said Obama, who as U.S. president is the honorary president of BSA, in a Sunday interview with CBS.

Perry, the author of the book "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For," said in a speech Saturday that "to have popular culture impact 100 years of their standards is inappropriate."

The board faces several choices, none of which is likely to quell controversy. Standing pat would go against the public wishes of two high-profile board members ? Ernst & Young CEO James Turley and AT&T Inc. CEO Randall Stephenson ? who run companies with nondiscrimination policies and have said they would work from within to change the Scouts' policy.

Conservatives have warned of mass defections if Scouting allows gay membership to be determined by troops. Local and regional leaders, as well as the leadership of churches that sponsor troops, would be forced to consider their own policies. And policy opponents who delivered four boxes of signatures to BSA headquarters Monday said they wouldn't be satisfied by only a partial acceptance of gay scouts and leaders.

"We don't want to see Scouting gerrymandered into blue and red districts," said Brad Hankins, campaign director of Scouts for Equality.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boy-scouts-board-meets-amid-talk-policy-gays-080645170.html

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93% Amour

All Critics (148) | Top Critics (39) | Fresh (137) | Rotten (11)

In many ways it's the best horror film I've ever seen. At the same time, it's hard to recommend; I believe I will be struggling to forget this film as long as I live. I doubt I'll succeed.

As remarkable as Haneke's films are, not a one has been as transcendently generous as Amour, which is nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best foreign-language film.

"Amour" isn't just a great movie, it's a movie that may actually do you some good.

Shot in long, static takes, Amour stares directly into the indignities of old age and the curse of a slow death.

Each actor draws on a lifetime's worth of experience, performing with grace and rare, uncompromising realism.

Beautifully acted and unflinching, Amour goes where few movies have the courage to

Riva's performance is undeniably magnificent, as she must chart every step of Anne's physical and mental deteriorating with exacting precision.

Sadly effective, with two standout performances.

Death, illness and tragedy transcend demographics, and the characters in "Amour" are all of us in the end.

Moving, touching and beautifully acted. The question: Do audiences want to spend two hours watching an old couple go from sad to sadder to saddest?

It is an inspirational film in the truest sense, and one to see with someone you love.

...this deceptively simple film makes clear that death, real death, the kind we all face and most art refuses to address honestly, is relentless and unsentimental.

This is beautiful film, and a terrible one: devastating to stick out, and yet one of the most remarkable romances ever made...

One of the ten best films of 2012.

Amour may not inspire the kind of emotional epiphany that similar illness-driven dramas tend to, the results are still riveting.

Death is part of love's bargain, and Haneke lays this fact bare.

It is hard to recommend Amour. Austrian director Michael Haneke's film cannot justly be described as entertaining, and it will likely leave you sad and weary. But it is a film you must see.

"Amour" isn't easy to watch, but its rewards are many.

"Amour" isn't a fun time out at the movies, and I kind of doubt I'll ever see it again. But it's an amazingly act, absolutely heartbreaking film.

A viewer may want to watch Amour, because it is a work of art.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/771307454/

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Somali court: Jail for rape victim, reporter

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) ? A Mogadishu court on Tuesday handed down one-year prison sentences to a woman who said she was raped by security forces and a reporter who interviewed her. The judges decided the woman falsely claimed she was raped and had insulted the government.

The judges based their decision on medical evidence that the woman was not raped, said the court's top official, Ahmed Aden Farah. Farah said the woman's prison term would be delayed so she could care for her young child.

Rights groups have decried the case as politically motivated because the woman had accused security forces of the assault. Rape is reported to be rampant in Mogadishu, where tens of thousands of people who fled last year's famine live in poorly protected camps. Government troops are often blamed.

The charges and resulting sentences may result in even fewer victims of sexual assault coming forward to report attacks in conservative Somalia, rights groups fear.

"The court's decision to convict an alleged rape victim and journalist who interviewed her is a terrible miscarriage of justice and sends a chilling signal to victims of sexual assault in Somalia," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The case was built on groundless charges and serious due process violations and should have been thrown out. The government should swiftly move to exonerate and release the defendants."

The alleged rape victim was charged with insulting a government body, inducing false evidence, simulating a criminal offense and making a false accusation. Freelance journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur was charged with insulting a government body and inducing the woman to give false evidence. Three others charged in the case, including the woman's husband, were acquitted Tuesday.

All of the defendants denied the charges in court. Abdinur's lawyer said he would appeal.

Farah, the court official, noted while reading the verdict that Abdinur admitted that he had interviewed the victim. But Abdinur never published a story in relation to the interview. Farah said the court also found the reporter guilty of visiting a man's home without his permission.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep disappointment over the sentences and urged the Somali government "to ensure that all allegations of sexual violence are investigated fully and perpetrators are brought to justice," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

"Above all, it is essential that the rights of the alleged victim and the journalist to a fair and transparent judicial process, including the right of appeal, are fully respected," Nesirky said.

Ban said the United Nations has repeatedly expressed alarm at reports of "pervasive sexual violence" in camps for the displaced in and around Mogadishu, Nesirky said.

These crimes are underreported because of risks to victims, witnesses and family members as well as stigmatization, he said, and "it takes extraordinary courage for survivors to come forward."

The secretary-general urged the Somali government to ensure "respect for human rights, freedom of expression and fair judicial process," Nesirky said.

The United Nations special representative on sexual violence, Zainab Hawa Bangura, said this month that the Somali government's approach to the case "does not serve the interest of justice; it only serves to criminalize victims and undermine freedom of expression for the press."

Rights groups say the arrests were linked to an increase in media attention given to the high levels of rape and other sexual violence in Somalia, including attacks allegedly committed by security forces.

On Jan. 6, Universal TV, a Somali television station, reported that armed men in police uniform had raped a young woman. The same day Al Jazeera published an article which described rape by security forces in camps for internally displaced people in Mogadishu.

Bekele said the case was a politically motivated attempt to blame and silence those who report on "the pervasive problem of sexual violence by Somali security forces."

The husband, another man and another woman were charged with assisting the alleged rape victim to evade investigation and assisting her to secure a profit for the rape allegation, charges that indicated the government believed there was a conspiracy to discredit it and somehow acquire financial gain, Human Rights Watch said previously.

The Somali capital has moved past the violence that engulfed Mogadishu for much of the last two decades. In a sign of its progress, the United States this month officially recognized the country's government for the first time in two decades. The U.S. hadn't recognized a Somali government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Despite the progress, Somali government institutions remain weak and corrupt, and the government relies heavily on the security provided by 17,000 African Union troops in the country.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/somali-court-jail-rape-victim-reporter-112143198.html

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