King spoke to Stephen Colbert about what was going through her mind at the moment when R Kelly stood up in the interview and had an outburst.
“I could see him getting more heated, he was upset with me about some of the questions, that’s ok, he was a little irritated, that’s ok,” said King.
“When I see Robert getting really upset and he stands out of his seat, my initial reaction is, oh god please don’t leave, please don’t leave, please don’t leave,” says King. “We’ve seen him storm out of interviews before so I thought he was gonna do that, I was thinking, I’m not done with my questions, what can I do to save this interview?”
King said she thought that if she told him to calm down, it would make the situation worse.
“I thought, if I just sit there quietly, looking at him, he would know I’m not going anywhere and I’ll just wait for you to finish whatever this is and then you’ll sit back down in the seat.”
Governments all over the world are still failing women every single day, and it’s still far too dangerous for women to speak out about issues of discrimination and abuse.
That’s the powerful message in a letter signed by 76 prominent women in business, politics, and arts for International Women’s Day, published in The Guardian.
The 76 co-signers, including actresses Emma Watson, Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Emma Thompson, singer Dua Lipa, and authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Caitlin Moran, call for world leaders to do more to ensure that women’s rights everywhere are upheld, and that women are heard.
Watson shared the piece on Twitter, describing it as a call for governments to “do more to ensure the rights of women everywhere are respected, protected, valued & realised.”
“On International Women’s Day 2019, it’s an astonishing fact that in no country in the world do women enjoy the same rights or opportunities as men. Every day, women and girls face discrimination, poverty and violence just because they are women,” reads the letter.
“As momentum behind the #MeToo movement continues to grow, we are witnessing unprecedented acknowledgment of the challenges women face,” the letter says. “Now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to overcome the systemic oppression that denies women their rights. It’s time to move on from conversations to action.”
The letter also addresses the harassment that many women face when they do part take part in the conversation, and speak out about issues surrounding gender equality. It needs to be safer for women to make their voices heard, the co-signers say.
“Women who speak out are facing all forms of violence and abuse. This has to stop”
“Women are at risk of backlash, censorship and violence wherever they speak out, both online and offline,” the letter says. “Women who speak out are facing all forms of violence and abuse. This has to stop.”
The 76 co-signers of the letter call for world leaders to do more to combat systemic misogyny and make it safer for women who speak up.
“Governments worldwide must do more to protect women who stand up for their rights,” the letter states.
The co-signers signed off with the line: “Together, we can work towards a just world where the rights of women are respected, valued and realised. We look forward to that future.”
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Beane said: “We inquired about Antonio Brown on Tuesday and kept talks open with the Steelers. We had positive discussions, but ultimately it didn’t make sense for either side. As great a player as Antonio Brown is, we have moved on, and our focus is on free agency.”
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported Thursday night the Bills were “closing in” on a deal for Brown, but Brown referred to it as “fake news” in responding to an Instagram post by the NFL.
This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.
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After a six year split, the Jonas Brothers are back together again.
To help mark their reunion, the band took a ride with James Corden for an episode of Carpool Karaoke.
They talked about how the band broke up, and then decided to get back together again because of a documentary they started working on a year ago. Nick Jonas said the band had to endure “forced therapy” to help heal their differences.
“When it ended, it wasn’t the best,” Nick said. “And then in that we started saying, there is a magic in there that we’d like to feel again.”
That’s sweet and all, but just you wait until the very revealing lie detector test.
Welcome toSmall Humans, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2019 and we have the entire internet to contend with.
Legally mandated app usage is officially now a thing.
Say hello to coParenter, an app designed to facilitate the often-fraught dealings of two non-married or separated individuals trying to jointly raise a kid. The app, available for download in the App Store and on Google Play, officially launched Jan. 17 with the promise to both save parents money and keep them out of court.
In those goals, at least according the company, the app succeeds. But that’s not all it does. As the app’s privacy policy notes, coParenter collects reams of data — data that can be turned over to courts — which can include everything from heated text exchanges to you and your ex-partner’s location data. While custody cases regularly feature communication between parents as evidence, coParenter usage requires an opt-in to this expansive data sharing as a starting point. Usage of the app is frequently court-mandated, which provides users with a difficult choice: Give a judge on-demand access to your location and messaging data and pay for a monthly app on top of a data plan, or defy a judge’s order and potentially risk visitation with your children.
CoParenter was created with the input of a retired judge, Sherrill A. Ellsworth – an influence that shows in the app’s promotional language and design. The company even goes so far as to provide a “court kit” for those still in the profession looking to order the app’s usage from the bench.
“[coParenter] sure does put a power in the hands of court officials they never had before.”
“As Presiding Judge of one of the largest California counties, I saw the potential of CourtTech to fill a void,” explains Ellsworth on the company description page. “I retired from the bench to focus on having a greater impact on today’s families by making our courts more accessible, effective, and efficient.”
It is that very legal entanglement which frequently accompanies coParenter that has Jim Dempsey, the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, concerned.
“The biggest issue for me is how this augments the powers of a government agency (the courts in this case), potentially giving them access to a previously unimaginable amount of information,” Dempsey explained over email. “[CoParenter is] not surreptitious (person are told they must use it), but it sure does put a power in the hands of court officials they never had before.”
Dempsey went on to add that he sees this as part of a larger trend toward the forced electronic monitoring of individuals by the courts, though it’s worth remembering that custody disputes are generally not criminal matters. And while Dempsey did find coParenter’s privacy policy to be “clear and quite plainly written,” that doesn’t mean the terms themselves aren’t expansive.
These are not purely academic concerns. Families are using the app. According to Eric Weiss, coParenter COO and co-founder, the app has been installed over 20,000 times (some of those presumably during the app’s pilot period), and boasts approximately 5,000 monthly active users. Other similar apps – such as Coparently and Talking Parents – also exist.
Weiss confirmed to Mashable that approximately 70 percent of the app’s users come from the courts.
“The results were astonishing,” co-founder Jonathan Verk told Fast Company in January. “Judges consistently ordered (or recommended) the platform five times more than we originally anticipated.”
That order comes with a price tag. After a 30-day trail period, users must pay either a $12.99 monthly fee or purchase the yearly $119.99 plan.
An example court document, provided by coParenter for the benefit of judges, mandating the use of the app.
Image: screenshot / coparenter
Part of the reason behind the app’s successwith the judicial system may be that judges appreciate the app’s promise to prevent small disputes from reaching the bench. Ellsworth certainly believes that to be the case.
“Judges have on average 7 minutes to hear each motion, whether that motion is related to whether a co-parent can force their ex to feed their child organic food (typically the answer is no), or whether that motion is to decide where that child should sleep tonight due to a credible allegation of child abuse,” Ellsworth explained to Mashable. “We want to help courts focus on those substantive issue of health and welfare while empowering parents to make parenting decisions.”
And, as explained by Weiss, coParenter really does make things simple for judges.
“By virtue of using the app, coParents agree that their messaging, activity and agreements made on the app can be shared,” noted Weiss.
“An active judge, with both coParents in front of her, could tap into the app during a hearing to see the messaging and activity data,” he told Mashable over email.
Ellsworth and her fellow cofounders are not alone in believing in the power of consumer tech to improve the court process for parents. Laura Wasser, Esq., is both the founder and CEO of “online divorce solution” It’s Over Easy and a lawyer with over 20 years experience in family law. She told Mashable via email that in acting as a legal record of parents’ interactions, coParenter does everyone involved a huge favor.
“It is a net positive for parents and the legal system in that it is an effective portal for communication and allows for accurate and organized compilation of exchanges if necessary,” she wrote. “In the vast majority of situations, coParenter allows for parents to communicate and resolve issues amicably and cost effectively.”
Image: coparenter
And, according to Wasser, this could be genuinely helpful for parents slogging it out in court.
“If one party wants additional custodial time and his/her request is based on the fact that the other parent is frequently late or forgoes his/her custodial time,” she posited, “the information exchanged and recorded on coParenter would be most helpful to submit as evidence.”
But coParenter bills itself as more than just a tool for parental empowerment. As a press release from the company emphasizes, a big selling point is the app’s so-called Intelligent Dispute Resolution (IDR) platform. The platform purportedly uses AI to analyze parents’ conversations and flag potentially abusive behavior.
“One of the most obvious and simple uses [of AI] is with basic language filtering to help co-parents who may be in active conflict with each other to communicate more respectfully,” explained Weiss. “If they are using the odd expletive or four-letter word in their communication, we give them a warning with the option to not drop that f-bomb which may come back and haunt them if they do end-up back in court.”
Image: coparenter
When asked about privacy concerns, especially those relating to users’ location data, Weiss emphasized that the company takes the matter seriously.
“We’re very careful about how GPS data is captured and shared because we only want to accomplish a specific task — to verify that a user was at a specific location at a specific time for a child exchange,” he wrote to Mashable. “So, the Check-in feature is only a snapshot of a user’s location when they push the Check-in button.”
Using almost any app these days comes with some form of privacy trade-off, and avoiding unnecessary legal intervention is a laudable endeavor. But while the goal is for this app to help avoid legal fights, it does so by requiring suspensions of the privacy rights of the individuals using it.
Is it worth it? The makers of coParenter are clearly banking on your answer – or your judge’s answer – to that question being “yes.” But it may not be a choice at all: Co-parents maybe be legally required to use this messaging app for years to come, with the court system able to look over their shoulders the whole time.
It’s been a historic year for women. There are more serving in the U.S. Congress than ever before, and a record number are currently running for president in 2020. But even with these significant gains, women—both in the U.S. and around the world—can still find gender equality elusive.
For International Women’s Day this year, we asked some of the most interesting women we know—including several of those aforementioned lawmakers and presidential candidates—to tell us: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing women in the U.S. today? And what do you think is the biggest challenge facing women internationally today? Here’s what they had to say.
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The lack of women in positions of power Amy Klobuchar is a Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota. She is running for president in 2020.
One of the struggles that underlies all of our policy battles is the continued lack of women in positions of power. From corporate boardrooms, to the courts and political leadership around the world, the lack of women in senior positions continues to stymie progress on issues from pay to humanitarian aid to discrimination in all its forms. The sooner we understand that the lack of women in leadership roles holds back not only women, but all people, the sooner we will be able to advance society as a whole.
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Patriarchy Keisha N. Blain teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh and currently serves as president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). She is the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018) and co-editor of several books, including To Turn The Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (2019).
The biggest challenge facing women in the United States today is patriarchy. This is especially evident in the realm of politics. Regardless of a woman’s experience, education or abilities, the patriarchal nature of U.S. society fosters the perception that women are less qualified and less competent than men. What patriarchy has done is convince people that a strong and intelligent woman represents a problem; a disruption to the social order rather than an integral part of it. Biased media coverage of women politicians—stories that focus on women’s fashion and looks at the expense of their ideas on policy—underscores this point. It is therefore no coincidence that the U.S. is completely out of step with the rest of the world when it comes to electing a woman as president. While women have maintained the highest office of leadership in Liberia, India, the United Kingdom, Dominica and many other nations across the globe, the same cannot be said for the United States.
From a global perspective, one of the biggest challenges facing women is educational inequality. Despite the many gains of modern feminist movements in the Americas, Africa, Asia and beyond, many still believe that women are less worthy of the same educational opportunities afforded to men. While there is no denying that poverty, geography and other factors contribute to huge disparities in education, patriarchy justifies this denial of opportunity. It feeds the message that men should wield the power and women should occupy a subordinate position in all areas of society. This outdated, yet persistent, point of view fuels educational inequality and a host of other disparities along the lines of gender on national and international levels.
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Not enough women at the table Kamala Harris is a Democratic U.S. senator from California. She is running for president in 2020.
I don’t think it’s possible to name just one challenge—from the economy to climate change to criminal justice reform to national security, all issues are women’s issues—but I believe a key to tackling the challenges we face is ensuring women are at the table, making decisions. Something I’ve seen over and over again in my own career is that women in power bring a different perspective, an essential perspective. We made great strides in 2018, with an unprecedented number of women running for office, and over 100 women sworn in to the 116th Congress. But we still have a long way to go; the U.S. ranks 75th out of 193 countries in terms of women’s representation in government. And, this is truly a global issue. If you’re trying to tackle the world’s problems, you should hear from half the world’s population. So, we need to keep speaking up on behalf of every woman’s right to be heard and realize her power. My mother used to tell my sister and me, “You may be the first, but make sure you aren’t the last.” I’ve never forgotten that.
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Sexism, racism and economic inequality Rebecca Traister is a writer-at-large for New York magazine and The Cut.
The extremely potent combination of sexism, racism and economic inequality—this may seem like too broad an answer but it pretty much covers it on both a domestic and global front. All of the individual challenges we may be tempted to rank are symptomatic of these massive systemic power imbalances, working in tandem.
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Trauma-centered feminism Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of several books including Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys. She cohosts The Femsplainers. Follow her @Chsommers.
The threat of harm is a human constant, but by any reasonable measure, American women are among the safest, freest, healthiest, most opportunity-rich women on Earth. In many ways, we are not just doing as well as men, we are surpassing them. But everywhere, especially on college campuses, young women are being taught that they are vulnerable, fragile and in imminent danger. A new trauma-centered feminism has taken hold. Its primary focus is not equality with men—but rather protection from them. This past June, the Reuters Foundation released a survey announcing that the U.S. was one of the top 10 most dangerous countries in the world for women—more dangerous than even Iran or North Korea. The study was ludicrously flawed and turned out to be a survey of “perceptions” of unnamed “experts.” But in the current environment of fear and panic, multiple news organizations reported the absurd findings. This new ethic of fear and fragility is poisonous and debilitating—but it’s gaining ground. American women should resist the urge to pretend the world is rigged against us when it is not.
The picture is different in the developing world. In countries like Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia and Egypt women are contending with practices such as honor killings, genital mutilation, acid burnings, child marriage and gender apartheid. However, there is good news. The number of educated women in these countries has reached critical mass and they are making their presences felt. Wajeha Al-Huwaider has been called the “Rosa Parks of Saudi Arabia.” In 2008, she created an international sensation by posting a video of herself driving a car. Until a few months ago, women were not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Because of women like her, the laws are beginning to change. Dr. Hawa Abdi, a 71-year-old Somalian doctor and lawyer, is said to be “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.” She founded a hospital and refugee camp in rural Somalia that offers a safe space to nearly 100,000 of the world’s most imperiled men, women and children. Under her leadership, the settlement is evolving into a model civil society. The challenges facing women in the developing world are daunting. But for the first time in history, a formidable army of brave and resolute women is on the march.
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Access to equal opportunity Ertharin Cousins is distinguished fellow of Global Food and Agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the former executive director of the United Nations World Food Program.
As the former executive director of the World Food Program I was often humbled by women in conflict or crisis situations who, when asked about their needs, wanted nothing for themselves but asked that we educate their daughters. Education, these mothers believed, would provide their daughters with opportunities they, because of their gender, were denied. Unfortunately, even with adequate education, women here in the United States as well as women across much of the world still lack equal access to opportunity.
Despite decades of notable progress, at home and abroad, a reality in which opportunities are not defined by gender has yet to be universally achieved. Even more disconcerting, in too many places around the globe, women exercising or even seeking their basic rights is interpreted as a direct and destabilizing challenge to existing power structures. Some regimes are now trying to roll-back the hard-won rights of women and girls.For this reason, today I join the voices of women leaders from around the world demanding governments, the private sector and civil society reinvigorate and reinvest in the policies as well as in the legal and social frameworks that will achieve worldwide gender equality and inclusion.
Here in the U.S. we recently elected a record number of new Congressional representatives. In other parts of the world political forces threaten to erode the progress that we have made at both the national level and through landmark global agendas. Whether these forces succeed will depend on whether women leaders and advocates of today and tomorrow, and all who stand with them, recognize the urgency and peril of inaction. Mothers and fathers whether in South Sudan or the Southside of Chicago, are doing their part to demand quality education for their daughters. It is up to women leaders and advocates, including the newly minted Congressional leaders, many who benefit from past collective effort and stand upon the shoulders of so many, to push and hold wide open the doors of opportunity. Ensuring every woman and girl a possibility to lead life to her fullest potential.
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The lack of respect for caregiving Anne-Marie Slaughter is the president and CEO of New America.
Women in the United States who are caregivers—for children, parents, spouses, siblings or extended family members—have two full time jobs while trying to compete with men who have one. And over half of us are the primary breadwinners in our households. The standard response is to convince men to “help” more. But we need a sea-change, one that can only happen with a normative revolution around the value of care. We must come to see care work—the work of investing in others through physical care, teaching, coaching, mentoring, connecting, advising and navigating—as work that is every bit as hard, important and rewarding as the more individualist work that focuses us on investing in ourselves. We must value care monetarily, by paying far more for it through government and private investment, and socially, by raising the prestige of caregiving at home and care careers (which are among the fastest growing job categories and relatively automation proof). In other words, we must come to see traditional “women’s work” as truly equal to traditional “men’s work.”
Women in the world, particularly in developing and middle income countries, face the far more elemental problem of still being considered property. Saudi Arabia’s system, for one, is open about this relationship, requiring women to get the permission of their male “guardian” to enroll in school, travel or take a job. But in many countries, women are still forced to be legally and socially subservient to men, with no means of gaining financial or social independence, much less equal agency. A global women’s movement must thus focus on creating legal and social conditions in which women and men have equal access to nutrition, health care, education, jobs and the ability to control their bodies and choose a mate. We will be making progress when parents around the world greet the birth of a girl with equal pleasure and expectation as the birth of a boy.
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Navigating career and motherhood Margaret Hoover is the host of Firing Line.
As a working mother of two young children, I believe that the big challenge facing working women is navigating career opportunities while maximizing motherhood. The good news is that economic and political freedom for American women of all races and socio-economic backgrounds is the highest it’s ever been. Working moms do have the luxury of “leaning in” to either their careers or motherhood, but rarely both at once. Enabling a mother to re-enter the workforce where she left off should be commonplace. But solving the “on-ramp problem” for talented woman who to choose to pause their careers to prioritize family life still eludes us.
The biggest challenge facing women internationally is the fundamental inequality of political and economic opportunity that the majority of women in the world face, but that Americans take for granted. A 21st century feminism should work to extend the human rights, political freedoms, economic opportunities enjoyed by women in the West to our sisters globally.
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Increasing rates of maternal mortality Daina Ramey Berry is the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the forthcoming, A Black Women’s History of the United States (Beacon, 2020).
One of the greatest challenges women in the U.S. and women throughout the world face today are increasing rates of maternal mortality. According to the World Health Organization, 830 women die every day from “preventable causes related to pregnancy.” These statistics are even more staggering in developing countries and among women of color in the United States. Black women in particular are the most affected, dying at a ratio of 25.1 deaths per 100,000. According to the Journal of Perinatal Education, the rates for black women did not improve between 1980 and 1990, and these rates are not much better today. Some believe such disparities occur because of a racially divided society in which black women experience higher levels of stress and marginalization causing many of their health concerns to go unrecognized. This leads to untimely and preventable deaths.
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A campaign to normalize misogyny Neera Tanden is the president of the Center for American Progress.
The greatest challenge confronting women in America is a campaign to normalize misogyny and take women’s rights backwards. It starts with a president who has a long track record of making disgusting and demeaning statements about women. Perhaps even worse, his administration has translated these attitudes into concrete action. For example, despite the rise of the MeToo movement, the Department of Education has actually introduced measures to provide greater protections for college students accused of committing sexual harassment and assault by undermining Title IX. Trump has also hurt working women and their families by suspending a federal rule designed to close the gender pay gap, introduced significant restrictions on reproductive freedom, and threatened the future of Roe v. Wade by nominating Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
On the global front, perhaps the most important issue for the international community is empowering the voices of women. Right now, women and young girls everywhere face an immense range of challenges—from the inability to access food, education and employment to the threat of gender-based violence. Their perspectives and experiences must help shape our collective future. If we want to forge the best solutions for expanding peace and security moving forward, then we need to give smart, dynamic and strong women a seat at the decision-making table—both here at home and around the world.
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The economy is not working for women Elizabeth Warren is a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts. She is running for president in 2020.
Women are the primary or joint breadwinners for a majority of American households. But right now, this economy and our government is not working for them and their families. Today, a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar a man earns, and the pay gap is even worse for Black and Latina women. Wages are barely budging in this country but the cost of child care has gone up so much that it’s now more expensive than in-state college tuition in most states—making it harder for women and men to work if they want to. Reproductive rights have been under relentless attack even though we know that access to safe abortion services is critical to the health and economic futures of millions of women.
These core economic issues are a huge burden on women and their families. More young women go to college than men, but unequal pay makes it harder for them to pay back student loans. More women are minimum wage workers than men, but the minimum wage no longer keeps a mom and her baby out of poverty. I don’t even want to think about how many women—and men —have been sidelined from a bright future because they couldn’t find a decent child care option for their kid. We’ve got to make this economy work for women and families all across this country.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday blamed “American imperialism” for a prolonged power outage which affected most of the south American country.
The embattled president blamed the blackout on “the electrical war announced and directed by American imperialism against our people,” he said on Twitter.
But US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied the US was behind it. “Power shortages and starvation are the result of the Maduro regime’s incompetence.”
State-owned electricity operator Corpoelec blamed the outage on act of “sabotage” at the Guri Dam, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric stations and the cornerstone of Venezuela’s electrical grid.
Speaking from the capital Caracas, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo described the city as being completely in the dark.
“The government is saying that the opposition and its leader Juan Guaido are behind this attack, as well as the US,” she said, adding that many states remain without electricity.
For his part, Guaido, the self-declared interim leader said early on Friday that all but one of Venezuela’s 23 states had no electricity and that capital Caracas had been without light for “a record” six hours.
“This blackout is evidence of the usurper’s inefficiency,” Guaido said on Twitter, referring to Maduro.
Venezuela’s Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez told state broadcaster Telesur that some 10 states had been affected by the blackout, which he called a “brutal electrical sabotage,” adding that the power was back on in three states and the rest of the country would follow within hours.
“What’s the intention?” he said. “To submit the Venezuelan people to various days without electricity to attack, to mistreat, so that vital areas would be without power.”
Rodriguez also accused US Senator Marco Rubio of being involved in the “sabotage,” claiming that he “predicted” the power outrage before it happened.
“My apologies to [the] people of Venezuela,” Rubio responded on Twitter. “I must have pressed the wrong thing on the ‘electronic attack’ app I downloaded from Apple. My bad.”
Maduro has presided over a massive economic crisis since he succeeded Hugo Chavez as president in 2013. The prolonged crisis has seen large numbers of people facing food and medicine shortages forcing millions to leave the country.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Human rights organisations have criticised Malaysian authorities for detaining four Egyptians critical of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with the intention of returning them to Egypt.
Describing the move as a violation of human rights law and legal procedure, the groups expressed fear the Egyptians will face severe punishment back home.
An official at Malaysia’s foreign ministry confirmed on Friday that four Egyptians had been detained in an operation by Special Branch, the intelligence arm of the country’s police, and the immigration department.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the men were not registered as refugees.
“We can confirm the four have been arrested under SOSMA,” the official said. “They are in the hands of the immigration department and the Egyptian embassy has been informed.”
SOSMA, the Security Offences (Special Measures Act), replaced Malaysia’s Internal Security Act in 2012, and is supposed to be used to fight terrorism. Critics say it is draconian and open to abuse.
Eyewitnesses said one of the men, Mohammed Fathi, had his vehicle stopped and he was taken away by three masked men in Malaysian military uniform, along with several others in civilian clothes.
The wife of Abdullah Hisham Mustafa, another of the men facing deportation, said she had no idea about his fate. She said her husband could face torture or execution if handed over to Egyptian authorities.
Ahmed Azzam, Union of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Islamic World [Al Jazeera]
‘Shameful’
Ahmed Azzam, deputy secretary-general of the Union of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Islamic World, accused Malaysian authorities of attempting to cover-up the deportations.
Calling the move “shameful”, Azzam alleged Malaysian police and Egyptian intelligence may have plotted the renditions without the knowledge of government officials.
He told Al JazeeraMalaysia’s anti-terrorism law authorises the security services and police to act without informing the government.
A researcher at the Institute of Malaysian Studies, who declined to give his name, also said officials may have been kept in the dark about the planned deportations.
Lawyer and human rights activist Latheefa Koya said on Twitter the extraditions endangered the lives of the four Egyptians.
The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, a government-supported body, told Al Jazeera it was not aware of the detentions.
Why being a journalist in Egypt gets more difficult by the day | The Listening Post
Sisi’s crackdown
Sisi led the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013.
The state has since arrested thousands of dissidents, including activists and journalists, as well as Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Egypt has also been accused of arbitrary detention, disappearances and torture, and has silenced most independent media.
Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein was detained in December 2016 after returning to Egypt to visit family. He’s been imprisoned without charge ever since.
Human Rights Watch estimates Egypt has imprisoned as many as 60,000 political activists. In an interview late last year, Sisi denied Egypt was holding any political prisoners.
Beirut, Lebanon – Aziza Chami wipes away tears as she describes the toll Lebanon’s misogynistic citizenship laws have taken on her daughter.
“My daughter graduated three years ago but still can’t find a job,” Chami told Al Jazeera. “I tried to get her work at the hospital where I have been working for 20 years as a cleaning lady, but they refused, claiming she is not Lebanese.”
Chami is a Lebanese citizen. But her daughter was denied that birthright because her father – Chami’s late husband – was Egyptian.
Under a law dating back to 1925, Lebanese women married to foreigners cannot confer nationality on their children and spouses, only the children of Lebanese men are eligible for citizenship.
Lebanon does extend the right to citizenship to children born in Lebanon who cannot claim citizenship elsewhere through birth or affiliation, and children whose parents are either unknown or whose parents have unknown nationality.
But children whose mothers are Lebanese and fathers are foreign are denied citizenship.
The antiquated law has been criticised for placing some children at risk of statelessness. It can also have severe implications on their quality of life.
Children denied Lebanese citizenship under the law cannot work in certain fields or access public healthcare. They also need a residence permit to stay in the country, renewable every three years.
Chami says the institutional discrimination has become too much for her daughter to bear.
“This is the third time my daughter has been hospitalised for stress, but we don’t have enough money to pay for it,” said Chami. “I no longer know what to do.”
Children like Chami’s daughter need a work visa to be legally employed in Lebanon; a hurdle which can make them less attractive to prospective employers.
“My son tried to work in Lebanon but the companies he met with did not want to bother with all the paperwork,” Nadira Nahas, a Lebanese woman married to a US citizen, told Al Jazeera.
Nahas said her son wanted to be a pilot, but when the airline he approached learned he was a US citizen, they said they could not hire him.
“Now, he lives in Dubai,” she said.
Some mothers try to proactively steer their children away from certain jobs to avoid disappointment.
“We are losing our children because of this law,” Hanadi Nasser, a Lebanese married to a Syrian, told Al Jazeera.
“I have already told my children not to consider certain jobs because I know they will not be able to work in these fields, she said. My eldest son has already told me he will leave the country.”
Though there are no firm official estimates, a United Nations study published in 2009 offers some clues about the potential scale of those affected. The UN analysis found that between 1995 and 2008, there were some 18,000 marriages between Lebanese women and non-Lebanese men.
But the problem is not unique to Lebanon. According to an annual report published last year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 25 countries do not grant women equality with men in conferring nationality to their children.
Demographic balance
Efforts to overhaul Lebanon’s citizenship rules have so far proved fruitless. Politicians have argued that amending the law could destabilise the country by upsetting its demographic and sectarian balance.
Some believe it would jeopardise Lebanon’s religious balance and allow the integration of Palestinian and Syrian refugees.
In 2010, former Interior Minister Ziad Baroud made some headway in easing the bureaucratic burden for children born to Lebanese mothers and foreign fathers by spearheading efforts to abolish residency visa renewal fees.
But his attempts to introduce a new draft law to overturn existing rules failed to gain traction.
“It has never been submitted to the council of ministers,” he told Al Jazeera. “There was no way to talk about this subject at that time apparently.”
Some hope the new Lebanese government will be more open to reform. Four women have been appointed to Lebanon’s cabinet in January, including the first woman to serve as interior minister in the Arab world.
Six members of parliament are also female.
Shaar has been campaigning against the nationality law problems [Virginie Le Borgne/Al Jazeera]
Activists who have long campaigned to abolish the discriminatory citizenship law are hopeful change is on the horizon.
Mustafa Shaar founded the NGO My Nationality, My Dignity in 2011 to draw attention to the issue.
In addition to organising sit-ins, marches and workshops, Shaar’s NGO receives dozens of people a day in its offices in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli.
He told Al Jazeera about a 17-year-old man who was prepared to set himself on fire to protest against the citizenship rules.
“He told me ‘I swear to God I will do it, because I am as good as dead right now anyway. I want to die to help the others who are like me’,” said Shaar, who added that his case is far from isolated.
‘Lebanon’s hypocrisy’
Lebanon is often depicted as a relatively progressive country in the region. But activists like Lina Abou Habib believe the misogynistic citizenship law makes a mockery of that image.
“This is the Lebanese hypocrisy,” Abou Habib told Al Jazeera. “We pretend we are modern people while our laws are null and void.”
Abou Habib has been campaigning for nearly two decades to change the law. Her current efforts are focused on a new bill drafted last summer.
“It is a very good one,” said Abou Habib. “We are currently starting to take the necessary steps to the ministers of women and the one of the interior, to push them to consider this draft law. We will soon have a workshop with MPs to talk about it. It will be challenging, but at some point, it will work.”
But bigoted attitudes remain a threat to reform.
Last spring, Gebran Bassil, minister of foreign affairs, sparked an outcry when he said he would propose a new draft bill stating that Lebanese women may pass on their citizenship, but that it would not apply to women who marry men from “neighbouring” countries, which many interpreted to mean Syrians and Palestinians.
Reform efforts are also winding their way through Lebanon’s courts.
In 2009, Judge John Qazzi, president of the first instance court at the time, ruled that the children of Samira Soueidan, a Lebanese married to an Egyptian man, should obtain the Lebanese nationality.
The state appealed Qazzi’s decision. A final ruling is still pending.
“I am an intruder in this system,” Qazzi told Al Jazeera. “I am optimistic about the fact that this law will be amended because more and more voices are being raised on this issue”.
Abou Habib also believes the nation’s progressive instincts will prevail.
“Lebanon has made great progress in terms of political and social debates, on different topics. Violence against women, nationality, LGBTQ rights, personal civil status,” she said.
Meanwhile, mothers such as Nadira Nahas continue to wait for the state to abolish the near century-old law and finally grant citizenship to the children of Lebanese women.
“Laws are like medicines. They have an expiry date,” she said. “We should update our laws.”
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