Category: Religion

Ugandan court rules against Rolling Stone tabloid; bars outing campaign

UPDATE: A coalition of Ugandan human rights groups just now issued a press release describing the ruling. After the text of the initial post, I have the details and a link to the press release.

I don’t have the details yet but according to Frank Mugisha and commenter  Richard Willmer, a Ugandan court issued a ruling today in favor of the plantiffs in the Rolling Stone case.

In early October, 2010, a Ugandan tabloid calling itself the Rolling Stone began a campaign of outing GLBT people in Uganda complete with pictures and personal information. Some people were attacked as a result and sexual minority advocates went to court to stop the campaign. A Ugandan court issued an initial order to stop the outing pending a hearing. Today’s ruling is the result of that hearing. No word yet whether the Rolling Stone will appeal. According to Rolling Stone editor, Giles Muhame, the tabloid will appeal the ruling.

Watch for details…

UPDATE: Here is the press release issued by the coalition of human rights groups with details of the ruling today from a Ugandan court barring the Rolling Stone from outing LBGT people.

The Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Uganda warmly welcomes and applauds today’s decision by High Court judge, Justice V.F. Kibuuka Musoke in the case of Kasha Jacqueline, Pepe Onziema & David Kato v. Giles Muhame and The Rolling Stone Publications Ltd.

Through its members Kasha Jacqueline, David Kato and Patience Onziema, the Coalition filed a complaint in the High Court against the Rolling Stone. The Court issued an interim order restraining the editors of the newspaper from any further publication of information about anyone alleged to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender until the case could be finally determined.

After an initial postponement, the merits of the case were heard on November, 2010. The final ruling was read today, 3rd January 2011. In considering whether the Rolling Stone’s publication of alleged homosexuals’ names, addresses and preferred social hang-outs constituted a violation of the applicant’s constitutional rights, the Court, ruled that:

1) The motion is not about homosexuality per se, but ‘…it is about fundamental rights and freedoms,’ in particular about whether ‘the publication infringed the rights of the applicants or threatened to do so’.

2) The jurisdiction of Article 50 (1) of the Constitution is dual in nature, in that it extends not just to any person ‘whose fundamental rights or other rights or freedoms have been infringed in the first place,’ but also to ‘persons whose fundamental rights or other rights or freedoms are threatened to be infringed.’

3) Inciting people to hang homosexuals is an attack on the right to dignity of those thus threatened: ‘the call to hang gays in dozens tends to tremendously threaten their right to human dignity.’

4) Homosexuals are as entitled to the right to privacy as any other citizens. Against the ‘objective test’, ‘the exposure of the identities of the persons and homes of the applicants for the purposes of fighting gayism and the activities of gays…threaten the rights of the applicants to privacy of the person and their homes.’

5) Section 145 of the Penal Code Act cannot be used to punish persons who themselves acknowledge being, or who are perceived by others to be homosexual. Court ruled that ‘One has to commit an act prohibited under section 145 in order to be regarded as a criminal.’ Clearly this applies only to a person who has been found guilty by a court of law.

In terms of the relief sought by the applicants, court issued a permanent injunction preventing The Rolling Stone and their managing editor, Mr. Giles Muhame, from ‘any further publications of the identities of the persons and homes of the applicants and homosexuals generally.’ The injunction thus provides broad protection to other Ugandans who are, or who are perceived to be homosexual, and the ruling provides an important precedent should any other media attempt to publish similar information. The court further awarded UGX. 1,500,000/= to each of the applicants, as well as ordering  that the applicant shall recover their costs from the respondents.

Read the rest of the press release here.

Pakistani coalition government fragmenting

It is hard to see how this could be anything positive for the minority Christians and Asia Bibi.

Party Leaves Pakistan’s Ruling Coalition…

With the far right Islamic parties crippling the country with strikes and threats, weakness in the central government does not give the President or Prime Minister much room to pardon Asia. The opposition parties are looking for reasons to undermine the ruling party and appearing too pro-US is probably not a big winner at home.

Pakistan crippled by strike over blasphemy laws

To me this says volumes about the difficulty of advocating for human rights in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan is crippled today by a strike prompted by religious extremists who are threatening the government over potential changes to the nation’s blasphemy laws.

Friday’s strike saw businesses shuttered and transport workers walking out in towns and cities across the country.

There was no public transport in the southern city of Karachi, where demonstrators blocked traffic as part of the industrial action.

The BBC’s Ilyas Khan says bus owners in the Sindh province capital may have feared their vehicles could be torched if put on the road.

Quetta, the capital of the southern province of Balochistan, also ground to a halt.

There was a partial shutdown in the national capital of Islamabad, the north-western city of Peshawar and Lahore, capital of Punjab.

One Sunni cleric in Islamabad warned in his Friday sermon that any change to the blasphemy law would happen “over our dead bodies”.

The strike was held to protest against a private member’s bill submitted to parliament.

It seeks to amend the law by abolishing the death sentence and by strengthening clauses which prevent any chance of a miscarriage of justice.

Fact checking the death panel scare

One thing I have learned in the culture wars is to check the specifics of breathless claims from both left and right. So here is a claim from the Liberty Counsel that is making its way around the echo chamber:

Medicare Regulations Revive “Death Panels” of ObamaCare Bill

Is this true? Is Medicare about to unleash a panel of Dr. Deaths on the nation’s elderly? Not at all. This Wall Street Journal article has it about right, describing what Medicare is about to implement via their rule making process:

Advance care planning lays out the options and allows patients, in consultation with their providers and family members, to ensure that their future treatment is consistent with their wishes and moral values should they become too sick to decide for themselves.

To their credit, Liberty Counsel links to the Federal Register issue containing the new regulation, but unfortunately then misrepresents what it says. As noted by the WSJ, discussing advanced directives is something patients should do.

Called “voluntary advance care planning” in the Medicare regulation, this new rule allows physicians to be reimbursed for this consultation during the annual wellness visit, a service allowed by Medicare which covers all sorts of preventive care. The service is defined in the Federal Register:

Voluntary advance care planning means, for purposes of this section, verbal or written information regarding the following areas:

(i) An individual’s ability to prepare an advance directive in the case where an injury or illness causes the individual to be unable to make health care decisions.

(ii) Whether or not the physician is willing to follow the individual’s wishes as expressed in an advance directive. (p. 73406 & 73614).

No death panel there; just the patient, perhaps family, and the physician. Since the conversation is voluntary, a patient can avoid the whole thing. Physicians are allowed to provide written information about how to construct an advanced directive and what individual physicians will do under certain conditions. Physicians must provide informed consent to care and letting patients know what they will do is good practice. If a patient doesn’t like the approach of that doctor, then another doctor can be pursued. I like this approach much better than just waiting around for something to happen and then trying to figure out what the patient would have wanted.

These are important and necessary conversations, even though they can be emotionally difficult. The Federal Register cites studies which suggest that patients appreciate the opportunity to express their wishes and are not harmed by doing so.  

Back to the current flap. Where WSJ gets a little misty is when they let Sarah Palin and by extension other fear mongers off the hook a bit by saying that Palin really wants to talk about rationing of care when she writes about “death panels” (as she does here – note the title of the column).

Now I have a whole page on this blog devoted to debunking myths about Sarah Palin so I think it is fair to comment when she is stretching things. If you want to talk about rationing of care, then talk about rationing of care. Voluntarily discussing advanced directives with a personal physician is not a “death panel” nor is it of necessity rationing of care.

Lifenews.com is running a headline claiming that pro-life leaders want the new Congress to overturn the regulation. I am pro-life and I hope the new Congress does not overturn the regulation. I believe physicians should be reimbursed for bringing up the difficult topic and making adequate preparations for the inevitable. Conversations about end-of-life care will happen with or without the regulation. The question is: Will they happen with the patient’s wishes known or not?

UPDATE: Here are some Christian and pro-life groups which advocate advance directives. All the Medicare regulation does is include such planning in annual wellness visits if the patient agrees. Medicare patients could use any of these resources in conversation with their physicians.

Focus on the Family

Anglicans for Life

Physicians for Life 

National Right to Life

Aquinas Institute

Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity

This list was generated after about 5 minutes of searching. I suspect there are other groups with similar recommendations. There is nothing in the Medicare regulations which requires patients to accept a physician’s views if at odds with the patient’s views (although some state laws may allow a physician to ignore advanced directives). Nothing I can find in the Medicare regulation prohibits a patient from drawing on faith based resources to inform these conversations.

Added on Jan 3, 2011: I think it is important to note the voluntary element of these conversations from the Medicare regulations. Advanced care planning may be conducted at the initial Medicare visit and at the annual wellness visit, if the patient agrees. Here is how the Medicare regulation includes the procedure in these visits:

Voluntary advance care planning as that term is defined in this section upon agreement with the individual.

Pakistani official claims govt will not change blasphemy law

I am looking for the actual statement but here is a news report of reassurances to the right wing religious elements that the Pakistani government does not intend to support the private member bill of Sherry Rehman. Her bill would amend the blasphemy law to remove the death penalty and require criminal intent for conviction.

Religious Affairs Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah interrupted proceedings in the National Assembly or lower house of Parliament yesterday to make a policy statement that the government has no intention to repeal the blasphemy law enacted during the regime of late military ruler Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s.

Shah also disowned a private bill moved by ruling Pakistan People’s Party lawmaker Sherry Rehman proposing changes in the law to abolish a mandatory death sentence and to guard against its misuse.

The government’s assurance came ahead of a countrywide strike called for December 31 by the Tehrik Tahafooz Namoos-e-Risalat, a grouping of hardline religious groups, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawah.

The groups have also asked the government to explain its stance on the blasphemy law.

“The government considers that its prime responsibility is to protect this law and it will never support any private members’ bill even from the treasury benches in this regard,” said Religious Affairs Minister Shah.

While he may not be speaking for all members of government, this seems like a negative development for Asia Bibi and others who have been jailed for violating this archaic law. As this report notes, even Muslims are at risk:

The blasphemy law has been at the centre of a contentious debate after a lower court in Punjab province sentenced Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian woman, to death last month for insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Asia Bibi has denied the charges and said she was framed following a row with some Muslim women of her village. Rights groups and liberals have complained that the blasphemy law in often misused to settle personal and political scores.

In a recent case, a doctor from a minority Islamic sect was arrested for alleged blasphemy after he threw the visiting card of a sales representative with the first name Muhammad in a dustbin.

In his policy statement, Shah assured Parliament that the government will not allow any wrong to be done to minority communities, who have often complained of false accusations made against them under the blasphemy law.