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	Egypt: Life Sentence for 3-Year-Old by Human Rights Watch   February 23, 2016   (Beirut) – A life sentence apparently handed down by mistake to a 3-year-old boy on February 16, 2016, exemplifies the arbitrariness of Egyptian courts that are used to punish political opponents of the government.   A Cairo military court presiding over a mass trial of 116 defendants, including Ahmed Mansour Qurni Sharara, 3, delivered the sentence after investigators and prosecutors failed to remove Mansour’s name, even though they knew it was included by mistake, a lawyer for the defense team told Human Rights Watch.   “This case exemplifies the banality of repression in Egypt today,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “Police, prosecutors, and judges aren’t even bothering to check basic facts as they rush to pack defendants off to prison.”   All 116 defendants received life sentences, though only 16 were in custody, not including Mansour. The defendants have one opportunity to appeal the verdict, to a military appeals court.   Believing that Mansour was an adult, police went to the family’s home in 2014 to arrest him in connection with a protest, the defense lawyer said. When Mansour’s father, Mansour Qurni Ahmed Ali, told them that the person they wanted was his young son, they did not believe him, so he presented his son, along with a birth certificate viewed by Human Rights Watch. The police arrested the father instead and held him for four months.   In response to media scrutiny, the authorities have offered incomplete explanations.   A spokesman for the armed forces said in a statement posted on Facebook on February 21, that the person listed in the case was not the 3-year-old, but a 16-year-old student whom police had tried to arrest in 2014 but who had fled. The spokesman did not explain why police in 2014 had gone to the 3-year-old’s home or arrested his father.   Major General Abu Bakr Abd al-Karim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said in a phone call during a televised studio interview with the father and son on February 20, that the 16-year-old was the boy’s uncle. But the father said that the uncle was 52 years old. The boy’s mother, who also called in during the televised interview, said that police had come to the family house again that day to arrest the father and son.   The case stemmed from a January 2014 anti-government protest in Fayoum, 65 miles south of Cairo, that authorities blamed on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Security forces dispersed the protesters with teargas and live ammunition, killing a 52-year-old teacher, an 18-year-old student, and a 28-year-old construction worker. Several people were wounded.   Following the incident, National Security officers of the Interior Ministry recommended charges – approved by civilian prosecutors – against a seemingly random assortment of Fayoum residents, including the brothers of two of the dead protesters, a deceased man, and a man who was not in the country at the time, a human rights lawyer who researched the case told Human Rights Watch.   All 116 defendants faced allegations of killing the three slain protesters, attempting to kill eight others, and deliberately destroying government property, according to the charging document seen by Human Rights Watch. The document also accused the defendants of using force and violence against government employees, including the army and police.   Egyptian civilian prosecutors have retroactively transferred thousands of civilians to military trials since October 2014, when President Abdelfattah al-Sisi issued a decree vastly expanding military court jurisdiction. The decree, Law 136 for the Securing and Protection of Public and Vital Facilities, allows military courts to try any crime committed on “public” or “vital” property, including electricity stations, gas pipelines, oil wells, railroads, road networks, bridges, public universities, and any similar state-owned property.   Nearly all of the civilians transferred to military trials since the decree were already facing charges in civilian courts. Their cases were transferred to military courts following a November 2014 decision by the then-prosecutor, General Hisham Barakat, requiring prosecutors throughout the country to “send any cases related to aforementioned crimes, at any stage (of investigations), to military prosecutors whenever asked to do so.”   Article 111 of Egypt’s Child Law (2008) prohibits the sentencing of children to life imprisonment, death, or forced labor; the law also raised the minimum age of criminal responsibility from seven to 12 years. The expert committee that interprets and monitors state compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Egypt is a state party, has urged Egypt to “ensure that children are never brought before and prosecuted under the military justice system and to ensure that any sentence handed down to children by military courts be considered null and void,” in accordance with their rights in juvenile justice.   Egypt’s military courts operate under the authority of the Defense Ministry, not the civilian judicial authorities. The judges are serving military officers. Military court proceedings typically do not protect basic due process rights or satisfy the requirements of independence and impartiality of courts of law. Children can also face charges before military courts, which Human Rights Watch opposes in all circumstances.   Though Egypt’s constitution allows military court trials for civilians, the practice violates international law, including the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Egypt’s parliament ratified in 1984. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has stated that civilians should never face military trial.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/23/egypt-life-sentence-3-year-old http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/13/egypt-reverse-blasphemy-sentences-against-christian-children http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/09/egypt-prosecution-undermines-anti-corruption-efforts Visit the related web page
	PNG domestic violence victims lack safe houses, legal protections, many living in fear by Médecins Sans Frontières Papua New Guinea   International medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says a lack of legal protection and safe houses is increasing the effect of violence against women and children in Papua New Guinea.   The new report “Return to Abuser” details how a dire lack of protection mechanisms, a weak justice system and a culture of impunity endanger the health and lives of patients even if they manage to reach medical care.   The report includes comprehensive data from more than 3,000 survivors of family and sexual violence that MSF treated in 2014-15 in its two projects in both rural Tari, in Hela Province, and the capital, Port Moresby. It reveals the repeated, often escalating, violence women and children endure in the places they should be safe, their homes and communities:   The vast majority of patients treated (94%) were female; The most common form of violence (49%) was at the hands of partners; More than a quarter of these women had been threatened with death; Over half (56%) of sexual violence survivors were children, and one in six of these (17%) were under the age of five; Three in four (76%) survivors of sexual violence knew the perpetrator; One in 10 adult women reported experiencing repeated sexual violence (10%). For children, this increased to two in five (38%).   Despite some improvements to address the issue of family and sexual violence in Papua New Guinea, in many areas of the country survivors are left to suffer in silence without access to the care, justice or protection they require.   “Reform of some crucial policies and laws to assist survivors of violence have been achingly slow, with devastating results, particularly for children,” says MSF Head of Mission Angelika Herb.   “Without an escalated response from authorities, women will remain trapped in violent relationships, unable to remove themselves or their children from harm; vulnerable minors who are raped or beaten in their homes will continue to be returned to their abusers; and medical assistance, while vital, will be relegated to patching survivors up between abuse sessions,” she added.   The report recommends that authorities increase availability of and access to essential medical and psychosocial services across the country. In particular, MSF calls for increased availability of and access to meaningful protection and alternative accommodation, including ‘safe houses’, so survivors of violence are no longer forced to return to their abusers.   “The severity of the physical and psychological injuries inflicted by family and sexual violence reinforces why Papua New Guinea must guarantee access to free, quality and confidential medical treatment to all survivors. Authorities must urgently ensure the provision of services beyond the medical realm required to keep women and children safe” says Ms Herb.   MSF nurse Aiofe Ni Mhurchu said most patients were forced to return to abusive homes because there were no support services or refuges available to them.   "They''re at a loss really about what to do because they have nowhere to go," she said.   "They really feel trapped, they feel fearful for their lives, these women who keep coming back, and we see their injuries escalate with each visit."   MSF said family and sexual violence is "clearly widespread and destructive in Papua New Guinea".   It calls on the PNG Government to open family support centres in every PNG province, to create more specialised police squads to deal with the problem and to implement child welfare laws passed last year.   MSF operations manager Christian Katzer said PNG also needed to open more refuges for family violence victims.   There are only six domestic violence refuges in PNG, five in Port Moresby and one in Lae.   "The survivors are coming back to us repeatedly so therefore we see a great need for safe havens for women and children to flee from the perpetrators," Dr Katzer said.   "In rural areas there is no chance for women and children to break that cycle of violence."   MSF has also called on the PNG Government to implement the new Lukautim Pikinini (Child Welfare) Act and regulations, which would establish an Office of Child and Family Services.   "What we see is a huge gap between laws and regulations on paper and their implementation and the first step forward would be to implement those and allow the survivors to actually file against their perpetrators," Dr Katzer said.   http://www.msf.org/article/papua-new-guinea-new-msf-report-return-abuser-reveals-cycle-abuse-survivors-family-and http://www.hrw.org/report/2015/11/04/bashed/family-violence-papua-new-guinea Visit the related web page
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