Category: Politics

{Act by Punjab state gives legal protection to women suffering from domestic, psychological, and sexual violence.}

A law giving women protection from violence and abuse in Pakistan has been criticised by a religious body for being incompatible with Islam.

The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last week, gives legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence.

The law also calls for the creation of a free abuse-reporting hotline and the establishment of women’s shelters.

Since its passage in the Punjab assembly, some conservative religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Quran, as well as Pakistan’s constitution.

Fazlur Rehman, the chief of one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam, said the law was in conflict with both Islam and the country’s constitution.

“This law makes a man insecure,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “This law is an attempt to make Pakistan a Western colony again.”

OPINION: Pakistan’s history of rape impunity

“The whole law is wrong,” Muhammad Khan Sherani , the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology said at a news conference, in which he claimed the law was “un-Islamic”.

Jail sentences

The new law establishes district-level panels to investigate reports of abuse, and mandates the use of GPS bracelets to keep track of offenders.

It also sets punishments of up to a year in jail for violators of court orders related to domestic violence, with that period rising to two years for repeat offenders.

In 2013, more than 5,800 cases of violence against women were reported in Punjab alone, the province where Wednesday’s law was passed, according to the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights advocacy group.

Those cases represented 74 percent of the national total that year, the latest for which data is available.

Pakistani women defy threats to run for parliament.

{Berta Caceres, who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, has been shot dead at her home in the town of La Esperanza.}

Honduran environmentalist leader and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize Berta Caceres has been shot dead at her home in the town of La Esperanza.

Caceres was killed early on Thursday by two assailants who broke into her home, a member of her group, the Indian Council of People’s Organizations of Honduras, said.

“Honduras has lost a brave and committed social activist,” fellow activist Tomas Membreno said in a statement.

Caceres, a mother of four, led opposition to a proposed dam on the Gualcarque river, considered sacred by the Lencas.

She had previously complained of receiving death threats from police, soldiers and local landowners because of her work.

Activist Carlos Reyes described the assassination “a political crime by the government”.

“The information from the police is that (attackers) broke into her home from the back and shot her twice, but we all know it’s a lie, that they killed her because of her struggle,” said Reyes.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, wrote that “it is highly probable that her assassination is linked with her work in protecting the human rights of the Lenca indigenous peoples to their lands and territories”.

Security Minister Julian Pacheco said police arrested a security guard at the complex where Caceres lived.

He said police had measures in place to protect Caceres, who recently won a ruling by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granting her special security measures.

Alluding to the death threats, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director for Amnesty International, said in a statement that “the cowardly killing of Berta is a tragedy that was waiting to happen”.

“For years, she had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the rights of indigenous communities,” said Guevara-Rosas.

“Berta’s death will have a devastating impact for many human rights activists and organisations,” she said.

A family member said they were “devastated” by the loss of “fearless Berta”.

“We ask the international community and human rights organisations around the world to put pressure on their leaders to bring about justice. Her murder is an act of cowardice that will only amplify Bertita’s message to bring about change in Honduras and make this a better, more humane world,” the family said in a statement.

{Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump win most states in the biggest day in the race for the presidential nomination.}

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton have moved closer to winning their parties’ nominations with a series of victories in the Super Tuesday elections .

Clinton and Trump each won at least seven of 11 state races as they distanced themselves from party rivals and looked ahead to the November 8 presidential election.

Ted Cruz, a conservative senator, won his home state of Texas, Alaska and Oklahoma as he sought to emerge as Trump’s main rival.

Clinton’s only opponent, Bernie Sanders, also won Oklahoma, as well as his home state of Vermont, Colorado and Minnesota.

Cruz desperately needed the Texas win in order to stay in the race, and was likely to keep campaigning as the only Republican who has been able to defeat Trump in any primary contest.

Still, Trump’s wins in the South were a blow to Cruz, who once saw the region as his opportunity to stake a claim to the nomination.

Instead, he has watched Trump, a brash New York real estate mogul, display surprising strength with the region’s evangelical Christians and social conservatives.

For Marco Rubio, who is also seeking to emerge as the main alternative to Trump, the night was disappointing. While Republican officeholders have rallied around him in recent days, he only managed to score a campaign win in Minnesota.

His long-shot hopes now rest with his home state, Florida, which votes on March 15, but polls show him trailing Trump there.

Trump won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia on Super Tuesday.

Clinton, the former secretary of state and senator, won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

The wins reflected her strength in the South, where black voters are an important part of the Democratic base and overwhelmingly support her.

Voting was continuing in other contests or the races were too close to call.

Trump has stunned the Republican political establishment by emerging as the clear frontrunner, winning three of the four contests preceding Super Tuesday.

He has seized on the anxieties of voters angry at Washington and worried about immigration and an uncertain economy.

Using simple terms, and often coarse language, he has soared to the top of polls with his pledge to “make America great again.

Clinton, once seen as the all-but-inevitable Democratic nominee, has contended with an unexpectedly strong challenge from Sanders, a senator and self-described democratic socialist.

But Clinton, like Trump, had also won three of the first four races.

Signaling her confidence, Clinton set her sights on Trump as she addressed supporters during a victory rally in Miami.

“It’s clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we’re hearing on the other side has never been lower,” said Clinton, who is seeking to become America’s first female president.

Trump, too, had his eye on a general election match-up with Clinton, casting her as part of a political establishment that has failed Americans.

“She’s been there for so long,” Trump told a news conference at his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “If she hasn’t straightened it out by now, she’s not going to straighten it out in the next four years.”

Delegate score

Candidates are trying to win delegates who will vote for them at the parties’ national conventions in July. For Republicans, 595 delegates were at stake, nearly half of the 1,237 needed for the nomination.

Democrats were allocating 865 delegates, more than one-third of the 2,383 needed to become the nominee.

Clinton is now assured of winning at least 334 delegates on Tuesday and Sanders 145. Including superdelegates – party leaders who get to vote for candidates at the convention – Clinton now has at least 882 delegates. Sanders has at least 232.

Trump has won at least 139 of the delegates at stake on Super Tuesday, while Cruz has won at least 52 and Rubio 25. Overall, Trump leads with 221 delegates. Cruz has 69, Rubio has 41, Ohio Governor John Kasich has 19 and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has seven.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Stafford, Texas, said Trump continued to benefit from the split field in the Republican race.

“Ted Cruz believes that if you make this a two-man race he has a change of overhauling Trump, although that wouldn’t seem to be reflected in the results of Super Tuesday,” he added.

“Marco Rubio has also asked the others to drop out and allow him to go head-to-head with Trump. So, while the field is so split, Donald Trump continues to rack up delegates. Of course Rubio and Cruz do as well, but in much smaller numbers.”

Both Cruz and Rubio have launched furious verbal attacks on Trump in recent days, but some in the party establishment fear the anti-Trump campaign has come too late.

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming that his populist appeal with voters would fizzle. Instead, he has appeared to only grow stronger, winning states and drawing support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states voting Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump.

{Hillary Clinton easily won the U.S. Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina on Saturday, cementing her status as front-runner in her party’s race and delivering a key defeat to Bernie Sanders ahead of the crucial Super Tuesday nominating contests.}

Clinton won the backing of almost three-fourths of Democrats who went to the polls in the first Southern state to vote during the presidential candidate nominating season.

The result was never really in doubt. The only question was whether Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, could narrow what was nearly a 30-percentage-point deficit in recent opinion polls.

The Sanders campaign quickly released a statement from the candidate congratulating Clinton on her victory.

“Tomorrow, this campaign goes national,” Clinton told cheering supporters at a primary evening rally here.

Clinton has now won or tied in three of the first four contests in the Democratic nominee selection process and has significant leads in opinion polls in many of the states set to vote next Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at a Minnesota airport, Sanders said, “In politics on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Tonight we lost.” Before addressing a rally in Rochester, Minnesota, where voters will decide between the two Tuesday, Sanders spoke of 11 contests in three days: “We intend to win many, many of them.”

The South Carolina victory was notable in that it suggests Clinton’s popularity remains strong among minorities, said Jim Guth, a political science professor at Furman University in Greenville.

“It certainly means she has solidified her pre-existing support, especially among African-Americans, who are a very large part of the primary constituency here,” Guth said.

Sanders looks ahead

Sanders had all but given up on winning South Carolina and focused instead on states voting Tuesday.

“Let me be clear on one thing tonight. This campaign is just beginning. We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina,” Sanders said in his written statement Saturday evening. “Now it’s on to Super Tuesday.”

Nearly a quarter of the Democratic delegates will be up for grabs in the Super Tuesday voting on March 1. Voters in 11 states will pick delegates for each of the two political party nominating conventions, making Tuesday the most important day for Republicans as well as Democrats.

In her victory speech, Clinton took on front-running Republican Donald Trump, who has said he will make America “great again.”

“America has never stopped being great,” Clinton said, adding that the country needed to be made “whole again.”

Speaking earlier Saturday to a large crowd in Austin, Texas, Sanders also spoke of the Republican billionaire businessman.

“We will defeat Trump,” Sanders said. “The American people do not want a president who insults Mexicans, Muslims, women, African-Americans, veterans, and basically anyone who isn’t just like him.”

Sanders, who draws the bulk of his support from younger voters and whites, now faces an uphill battle, after losing two consecutive states to Clinton.

“He has to do more than break even when it comes to winning delegates from this point on, and that seems unlikely, especially if he can’t increase the size of his electoral constituency,” Guth said.

Low turnout

One bright spot for Sanders was the relatively small number of voters who showed up at polling places Saturday in South Carolina, raising the question of whether Clinton can energize her core supporters.

One of those voters was Columbia resident Evelyn Boyd, who cast a ballot for Clinton.

“She stands up for the rights of the people. She is not afraid of the foreign governments, because she has worked with them,” Boyd said.

Edward Suhy, a waiter and bartender who lives in Columbia, supported Sanders.

“He seems to actually care about people, and I think he has got a really good heart. I am just sick of the status quo every single year,” Suhy said.

Despite the low turnout, Clinton’s campaign has reason to be optimistic, according to David Woodard, who teaches political science at Clemson University.

“I think most everybody will forget all that when she finally has a big win like this in a Southern state,” Woodard said. “I think that all adds up for her.”

Woodard, who is also a Republican political consultant, said Clinton would like to soon focus on her likely Republican opponent in the general election.

“I think she’d rather face Trump, and I think she might,” said Woodard. “I think [Florida Senator Marco] Rubio is a more formidable opponent, but I also think he has a harder way to get there.”

Republican race intensifies

Rubio and Trump spent Saturday exchanging fierce personal insults, underscoring the extent to which the Republican race has turned into a political street fight.

At a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Rubio mocked Trump, saying the ex-reality television star has the “worst spray tan in America.”

“Donald Trump likes to sue people. He should sue whoever did that to his face,” Rubio said, drawing laughs from the crowd.

Trump held a rally in Arkansas with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump this week.

The New York businessman repeatedly belittled Rubio, saying he has a “fresh mouth” and is a “light little nothing.”

“He’s a very nasty guy,” Trump said of Rubio. “I actually thought [Texas Senator] Ted Cruz was a liar, but Rubio is worse.”

Trump is leading the polls in almost all of the 11 states set to vote Tuesday. A major victory in those states would mean he is all but certain to gather enough delegates to clinch the nomination, although Cruz leads among Republicans in his home state of Texas, the largest prize on Super Tuesday.

{Beijing, Pyongyang’s ally, teams up with Washington in a rare move to respond to latest nuclear test and rocket launch.}

The United States and China have presented a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council for stronger sanctions against North Korea in response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test and rocket launch.

Samantha Power, US envoy to the UN, said the draft, which for the first time would subject cargo ships leaving and entering North Korea to mandatory inspections, would significantly increase pressure on Pyongyang.

“It is a major upgrade and there will be, provided it goes forward, pressure on more points, tougher, more comprehensive, more sectors. It’s breaking new ground in a whole host of ways,” Power said, before heading into a closed meeting in which the US planned to circulate the draft to all 15 council members.

The draft is the result of an agreement between the US and China, North Korea’s main ally, whose involvement signals a policy shift with regard to its neighbour. The council is expected to vote on the draft over the weekend.

“We are opposed to any nuclear testing and the launch testing of ballistic missile technology and we hope this resolution will help to prevent further occurrences of this nature,” China’s Ambassador Liu Jieyi said, following the meeting.

However, China did not want to exhort too much pressure because a collapse of the North Korean system could lead to “an expanded South Korea on China’s border with its US allies there as well,” Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said.

“The question is, as always, whether North Korea will get around these sanctions and also the level of enforcement of such sanctions. That has been extremely difficult to pin down on that border between China and North Korea,” he said.

“What is significant though is that we have had reports from the northern side of that border saying that things have changed at least in the short term. North Korean ships not coming into port, Chinese trucks coming back from North Korea empty.”

Troy Stangarone, a senior director for congressional affairs and trade at the Korean Economic Institute, told Al Jazeera that Pyongyang was likely to strike back.

“We should expect North Korea to try to respond with some kind of provocation. Most likely this will be something in terms of cyber warfare or some other area where it is hard to identify North Korea as an actual perpetrator,” he said, speaking from Washington DC.

Draft details

According to Power, the sanctions would prohibit the sale of small arms and other conventional weapons to North Korea, closing a loophole in earlier resolutions.

Power said the sanctions would also limit and in some cases ban exports of coal, iron, gold, titanium and rare earth minerals from North Korea, and would ban countries from supplying aviation fuel, including rocket fuel, to the country.

The resolution also imposes financial sanctions targeting North Korean banks and assets, and bans all dual-use nuclear and missile-related items.

Items such as luxury watches, snowmobiles, recreational water vehicles and lead crystal were also added to a long list of luxury goods that North Korea is not allowed to import.

North Korea started off the new year with what it claims was its first hydrogen bomb test on January 6 and followed that up with the launch of a satellite on a rocket on February 7 that was condemned by much of the world as a test of banned missile technology.

Over the past 20 years, North Korea has conducted four nuclear tests and launched six long-range rockets – all in violation of Security Council resolutions.

{After a crushing victory in Nevada, Trump’s momentum may sweep away main challengers as Super Tuesday approaches.}

There was a lot to amuse when Donald Trump launched his presidential bid. He arrived by slow-moving escalator. His staff allegedly paid people to attend. He spoke without notes and, after what seemed liked a very long time, he summed up with: “In short we are going to do a lot of things very quickly”.

His campaign stops attracted a lot of people. In California in September, I spoke to many who had come to see the man they only knew from the US reality show The Apprentice. Others thought they would vote for someone else, but they wanted to hear what he had to say.

He was the butt of jokes by late-night comedians on US television. Other candidates, with perhaps the exception of Jeb Bush, refused to attack him; worried about drawing his wrath and hoping to secure his support when he dropped out.

The Republican Party establishment thought his campaign would implode. Especially after he insulted Mexicans, war veterans, the disabled‎, women and Muslims. His grand vision seemed short of detail, and that was exposed in the debates. Yet Trump kept getting stronger. His poll numbers haven’t dipped through all the controversies.

Visceral anger

Donald Trump has tapped into a visceral anger in America. People are tired of being taken for granted, of being promised change and never seeing it, of politicians ‎who are so wrapped up in a partisan system and decide policy on what is best for the party, not the people.

And in a rough, unpolished tough guy way, he spoke to that. And he never apologised, never backed down.

The Republican establishment took some pleasure when Trump came second in Iowa. But Ted Cruz had been organising there for more than a year, had spent heavily on research to turn out the vote, and it worked.

Trump’s confidence grows after Nevada caucus win
In New Hampshire, Trump was back on top. With Ted Cruz regarded as another dangerous outsider, the establishment needed a candidate to challenge Trump. Jeb Bush was not doing well enough, John Kasich did not have the organisation, so Marco Rubio seemed most likely. But he stumbled in the northeast.

He recovered in South Carolina, forcing Bush out of the race. And in the days since has picked up money and endorsements. He is now the chosen one, the anti-Trump candidate.

Yet the electoral maths do not stack up for the others.

Trump is getting stronger with each passing contest. A Republican needs 1,237 delegates to secure the nomination. Trump currently has 79. Cruz has 15, Rubio 14. Each primary and caucus allocates delegates.

Until now it’s been done by proportional representation. There are winner-takes-all states coming up and Trump leads in most of them.

Republican establishment

Cruz could drop out. Many in the Republican establishment would like that. It would essentially make it a two horse race. He won’t. At least not ‎until his home state of Texas votes. The first-term senator had a big lead there. But Trump is closing fast.

Even if Rubio emerged as the sole candidate to challenge, there’s no place at the moment where he can obviously win. Not even the senator’s home state of Florida is a given. He is behind Trump in the polls‎. And he cannot keep claiming second places as significant victories.

Twenty-four states hold their nominating contests between now and the middle of March. Trump cannot win the nomination by then – but he could build up such a lead that it would be an almost impossible task to catch him.

And the longer the field remain divided, Trump’s chances just look better and better.