Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 20: Asian Eurasian Human Right Forum (AEHRF), a Delhi-based NGO with ECOSOC status made two video interventions in the 44th Session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on July 13 and 16.
Speaking on item 3 of the agenda on ‘Human Rights of Women in prisons, Dr’ K. N Pandita, president AEHRF reminded the Council of “United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners” (Nelson Mandela rules) that the essence of these rules is to treat the female prisoners as human beings and not targets of human rage, revenge, or lust. He contended, “The UNHRC is well aware of the brutal and inhuman treatment of women and young girls as young as 9 years old of Yezidi ethnic group during their captivity in the course of horrendous outrages by ISIS barbarians. He said the treatment meted to females accused and imprisoned, mostly wrongly, of blasphemy in a country where the controversial anti-blasphemy law is promulgated, is inhuman and reprehensible. This discrimination based on faith is so horrifying that even the Governor of the province who wanted to treat the victim humanely had to lose his life”, he added.
Dr Pandita said, “Discrimination and deprivation inflicted on women of a religious minority in a region where a variety of radicals and religious extremists have drawn, from the majority group, are perpetrating crimes like kidnapping, rape or gang rape, taking females as hostages and also murdering them in cold blood to wash off the evidence of rape and torture have also come to the notice of human rights activists. The worst is that a neighbouring country offering them asylum on the humanitarian ground is defamed and maligned for being humane”, he added.
AEHRF president said that merely reprimanding the perpetrators of heinous crimes like these is not enough. They have to be dealt with strongly by way of deterrence.
Talking to correspondents, Secretary of AEHRF Dr.Yashodhan Agalgaonkar said the human rights violations of women of religious/ethnic minorities mostly happening in theocratic, autocratic and quasi-military states is a matter of grave concern.
In the second written intervention made on July 16 under item 9 on Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, Xenophobia, Dr Pandita said that his NGO was deeply perturbed by an upward trend in racial discrimination and xenophobia in some parts of the world.
Prof. Pandita asserted that while AEHRF strongly rejects and condemns contemporary forms of racism, it feels it must urge the Council to discourage speakers and representatives from using such terminology as is reprehensible for its racist content.
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