By @JustinTheLibSoc 

Trigger warning: Graphic pictures of victims of violent attacks and stabbings.

While the world’s media counts the toll of those who died in the Savar tragedy (at time of writing it reached 940), the notion of freedom of speech has been severely under attack by Bangladesh’s Awami League led Government and others.  Last month in April, Hefajat-e Islam, an Islamist protest organisation which campaigns against equal rights for women and against secular education, attempted to shut down the capital Dhaka due to “atheist bloggers” insulting Islam. Hefajat were demanding that the government institutes a new blasphemy law which would make anyone who insults Islam face the death penalty. Some Islamists decided not to wait for legal changes and at least four atheist bloggers have been targeted to be killed. One of them is Asif Mohiuddin who called himself “Militant Atheist Blogger”, in January he was brutally stabbed after the police asked him to stop writing on his blog. This was the latest in a series of attempted and successful murders of atheist and secular proponents in Bangladesh.

Mohiuddin recovered from his horrific injuries pictured below, and continued to blog his views which led him to be subsequently jailed. On 2nd and 3rd of April, the police arrestedAsif Mohiuddin and three other bloggers, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez using a law regarding “hurting religious sentiments” written in 1860. They had all written blog posts criticising the ruling Government’s attempts to appease Hefajat-e Islam. Just over a week later on the 11th April, the police arrested Mahmdur Rahman, a newspaper editor of an opposition paper for his part in an international controversy which revealed a Skype chat between the government and officials in the “International Crime Tribunal”.

Asif shortly after his attack

Asif’s injuries

The backdrop to all of this, is that Hefajat-e Islam is suspected by some Bangladeshi civil right organisations to be in close alliance with or a front for Jamaat-e-Islami, a prominent right-wing Islamist opposition party in Bangladesh. Three of their leading politicians were arrested in 2008 over alleged war crimes that took place during the 1971 liberation war. The arrests and the International Criminal Tribunal prosecution has been criticised by groups like Human Rights Watch and other international observers as being politically motivated, its proceedings as being heavily influenced by the current government and violating fair trial standards. On February 28th of this year, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, the vice president of Jamaat-e-Islami,was sentenced to death for his alleged part in war crimes. In response his party called for a two day strike on 3rd March. This led to clashes which involved indiscriminate shooting of civilians by the police and resulted in 80 deaths with over 2000 people injured in what the BBC reported as “The worst day of political violence in Bangladesh in decades”.  This week, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, assistant secretary-general for Jamaat-e-Islami has also been sentenced to death for war crimes, he would have been 19 when he committed the alleged war crimes. The Government led by the Awami League have put police on high alert as more clashes and protests are expected.

In this power struggle between two reprehensible and corrupt political factions, the Socialist Workers’ Party have decided to against the secularists and side with Jamaat-e-Islami and their supporters in Britain who have formed the Feb28 for Justice campaign group. The group protests against the Awami League because they claim it to be “fundamental secular regime” who want to “De-Islamise” Bangladesh and make it “a purely secular country”. The name “Feb28 for Justice” was a clear allusion to Delwar Hossain Sayedee’s death sentence but that detail perhaps escaped Charlie Kimber, the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) National Secretary, who spoke at their rally with an approving report on their website. What has the British SWP got in common with Bangladeshi Islamist Far-Right?

The SWP’s biggest electoral success was in 2005, when they made a Faustian pact with George Galloway to form the Respect Coalition. Galloway ousted Oona King and became Respect’s first MP, he had the support not only of the SWP but according to Delwar Hussain on Open Democracy, Galloway also had the support with the close East London Mosque affiliate, the Islamic Forum of Europe.

Islamic Forum Europe (IFE), an organisation associated with the mosque, urged voters to vote for Galloway; although it said he was “unlikely to establish khalifah in East London”, and he has “passionately (campaigned) for Muslim political prisoners far more than some of our Muslim community elders who are still living in the days of the subservient maharajas in British India.

The East London Mosque held a reception for Galloway soon after he was elected, and a year later they also invited Sayedee who was then a current Bangladeshi MP to speak as an honoured guest, which sparked great controversy and comment in the right-wing press and national media.  In 2008, Azad Ali, a leading light of the Islamic Forum Europe, campaigned with many others in the “Muslim community” supporting Ken Livingstone’s failed attempt to gain a third term as London’s Mayor. Undimmed in 2012, Azad Ali once again showed his support for Ken. Ironically Azad Ali has argued against democracy “if it means at the expense of not implementing the sharia”. This idea is consistent with the ideology of Jamaat-e Islam and Hefajat, the latter he has recently shown sympathy with. Andrew Gillian suggested that IFE’s support for Livingstone was in gratitude for a £500,000 grant that Livingstone ensured was awarded to extend East London Mosque in 2004, despite the decision being strongly contested by London Development Agency’s senior managers. Ken Livingstone’s accommodation of Islamist ideology was made plain in 2012, when he was filmed making a pitiful plea saying that he would “make London a beacon for Islam”.

The Islamic Forum Europe are electoral and social power brokers in Tower Hamlets, it is no surprise that both the SWP and Ken’s acolytes in Socialist Action have tried to keep them sweet. The SWP’s record their commitment to any notion of democracy leaves little to be desired.

To explain, it will help to reveal some autobiographical history. Some regular readers, may remember that I attempted to stand for the position of Assistant Secretary in the only election Unite Against Fascism has ever held back in 2012. Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is considered one of the UK’s biggest anti-fascist movements, it enjoys over tens of thousands of pounds each year from major unions like National Union of Teachers, PCS and Communication Workers’ Union. The campaign is widely known to be run by the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the history of UAF involves a checkered past. I, perhaps naively, wanted to use the election and if elected the position to re-orient the politics of UAF towards genuine community organising. In the end, I wasn’t allowed to stand due to a mistake made by my union branch and the reluctance by the officers to allow my branch to rectify it before the deadline or the conference. So instead of a contest, Martin Smith was elected unopposed as the Assistant Secretary of UAF.

Martin Smith has since vacated the position and was conspicuously absent from this year’s UAF conference. His position has apparently been replaced by two people: Jude Woodward, a former “culture adviser” to Ken Livingstone and a person called Brian Richardson. Undoubtedly people of such outstanding anti-fascist credentials that UAF’s membership did not need to be troubled this year with the formalities of an election. Retrospectively it was a lucky escape not to be elected into a political organisation that can welcome Khalifah-wishers like Azad Ali as one of its officers. So UAF and the Socialist Workers’ Party that runs the campaign with Socialist Action, clearly has shown contempt for democratic structures within its own organisation. More broadly it has accommodated contempt for democracy in general as it has accepted Martin Smith’s argument which warps no platform for the BNP into “No Freedom of Speech for Fascists”. So basically ditching the principle of Freedom of Speech as it also means freedom of speech for Fascists. Strangely the SWP and UAF by extension have ended up mirroring the very thing they claim to despise.

By Lisa Glass / @lisaaglass

Currently, the value of global gender equality is top of the agenda for many Western governments and organisations such as the UN. The move to empower women and girls on a global scale is obviously in itself a positive step. However, the consequences of Western interventions in the global South need to be properly considered and addressed. In certain situations, the field is opened up for corporations and others with commercial interests to exploit this heightened interest for capitalist gains.

In her talk, “Exporting Girl Power: Nike and the Girl Effect” at the Women’s Library in east London on 18 April 2012, Professor Rosalind Gill, King’s College London, discussed Nike’s “Girl Effect” campaign. The powerful, rhetorical narrative of the campaign is that by educating girls in the global South, they will delay marriage, hence having fewer children, reducing the country’s population and thereby improving the overall economy of their country. The focus on the education and empowerment of young women is a positive message in itself, but at the same time this campaign homogonises and generalises women in the global South. Further, it suggests that the reason for poverty is because women in these countries are oppressed. The real causes of global poverty are clearly much more complex and multi-faceted than that. The role of colonialism and capitalism in causing and perpetuating global poverty are completely overlooked here. The Girl Effect campaign suggests that the need for feminism is displaced to the global South, and that there is no need for it in the West, and furthermore effectively excuses the West from blame for global poverty.

The motivation for Nike and organisations like it is to develop new markets in these countries, Gill suggested. By improving the economies of these countries, they create new markets for their products. Furthermore, certain campaigns such as the UN’s Girl Up encourages girls and women in the West to express their solidarity through acts of consumption by buying branded products. A real feminist solidarity, it can be argued, would operate outside of consumerism and commercialism and would work with women in their own countries, starting from their own priorities, agendas and struggles.

Another issue discussed was the “feminising” of responsibility for survival. Dr Kalpana Wilson, London School of Economics, who also spoke at the Women’s Library event, has worked extensively with women in rural labour movements. She argued that the motivations of certain organisations have little to do with gender equality and that the empowerment of women and girls, and more to do with mobilising the labour of women in the global South, in the interests of global capital. Dr Wilson considered that the promotion of gender equality is linked with broader neoliberal policies. This, she explained, means that women are expected to step in and provide a safety net from poverty by doing more work. Another example of this kind of ethos is the World Bank’s “Gender Equality as Smart Economics” Action Plan, which reconstructs women as entrepreneurs who are able to cope with and overcome poverty. The rhetoric is not about eradicating poverty but teaching the poor to take responsibility and find ways of coping with it.

The message from the session seems to be that, for true equality to be established, it must be contextualised within every country and understood for itself. It cannot be imposed in broad strokes from the outside. Western governments’ and other organisations’ attempts to impose gender equality on the global South is not only misguided but a consequence of the capitalist politics that dominate the Western world.

Lisa Glass is a London-based feminist writer and editor.

The man most feared by Britain's government. Credit: Rosie Hallam

By @justinthelibsoc

Over the last few days there has been outrage amongst the British public whipped up by the Tabloid Press, both Labour and Conservative MPs alike that Abu Qatada, often described as “Bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe” has been freed by British courts and our immigration system refuses to deport him to a country which has tortured him and has associates.

We have the farce in which the Coalition government, while supposedly championing human rights in Europe, clamours eagerly with a backward monarchy to promise on paper at least that they won’t torture Britain’s most dangerous resident, though with no qualms that the regime will continue to torture other citizens.

Dan Hodges in the Telegraph writes that Liberty isn’t deserved to people who despise it and even further on Twitter he claimed

@justinthelibsocIn certain circumstances internment is entirely OK.

— Dan Hodges (@DPJHodges) February 13, 2012

When pressed for justifications he reveals essentially when a foreign person is considered a threat to society, it is right to intern them. The rationale is this: if we give up some civil liberties, we protect our most important rights to life. So in order to ensure that we do not get blown up, we must give the state more power to infringe on the rights of the “bad people”, if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear from the state.

That argument isn’t just illiberal, it is dictatorial, it contravenes the basic human rights that former Soviet countries like Albania, Poland and Latvia recognises but successive British governments have struggle to. During the Blair years and now continued today by Blairites, we are told that there needs to be a balance struck between liberty and security. At first glance, it appears quite sensible to imagine a spectrum with total liberty at one end and total security at the other. Though it is a seductive argument, it is also a fallacious one, the values of liberty and security are not essentially aligned in this way. It is perfectly possible that internment and other suspensions of freedom and justice, both reduces our liberty and our security. We flee from one perceived threat, that of terrorists, only to run into the embrace of another, that of authoritarian state which seeks to control us in a way more pernicious than the former.

It is not only possible but desirable that by upholding democratic principles such as right of assembly and  innocent until proven guilty, can increase both our liberty and security. The idea that you must choose one or the other is the argument of the authoritarian, and it is the authoritarian, we should fear more than irrational preachers of hate. Both autocrats and terrorists use fear to try to control the population, the principle of human rights is to protect us from both coercive forces.

Qatada is the best candidate in which to test Britain’s commitment to democracy, it is precisely these situations which separate liberal democracies from authoritarian forms of government. Democracies do not arbitrarily lock up people for being a perceived threat, but dictators happily do. The attempts to deport him prior to any trial are a despicable attempt to circumvent justice. It is right for Qatada to be free as he has not been convicted of any crime. The question for democrats as asked in the Guardian yesterday is: why not? There are plenty of laws both archaic and Blairite in which there is readily available evidence from speeches that exist in the public domain. It appears that the state fears what Qatada may have to say about our security services in an open court.

Abu Qatada should be free until he is put before a court and convicted of a crime. Internment or 28 days of detention and control orders are stains on the concept of democracy. The Blairites and Conservatives who wish to reinstate them must be resisted. We will not save our democracy by slowly destroying it.

by Adam Ford / @neon_black81

The United States government is aggressively ratcheting-up its drive for global domination, by menacing Syria, Iran and ultimately China. Though on the one hand American politicians speak of hopes for diplomacy, they are preparing for war with all three nations, in a reckless thrust which threatens the future of humanity. But in the minds of imperial planners, the possibility of life’s destruction in a nuclear holocaust is as nothing compared with the need to win on the ‘grand chessboard’.

The US economy has long been in a relative economic decline when compared with the Eurozone and especially the hugely expanding China – a nation frequently labelled “the sweatshop of the world”. For the last fifteen years, the American ruling class has responded with an attempt to use its overwhelming military supremacy to offset its production-based profitability crisis. Wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently Libya have all cut across the material interests of Chinese empire-building. But the global economic turmoil has pushed this imperative into overdrive, creating the strong possibility of a final showdown with China itself, plus Chinese allies such as Russia.

The past couple of months have seen a sustained effort to create a pretext for attacking Syria. The Syrian government – like the Libyan Gaddafi regime before it – is currently undertaking a brutal crackdown on the “rebel” movement which emerged from last year’s ‘Arab spring’. Of course, the same could be said of the Bahraini government for example, but Bahrain is an American ally. So the Obama administration is using its Arab League proxies - each of which receives large foreign aid and military assistance from US imperialism – to give the coming military intervention a regional popularist colouring. In truth however, each regional government is deeply unpopular with broad layers of its population.

The Arab League is reprising its craven role in the run-up to the bloody overthrow of Gaddafi. In particular, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – both of whom are ruled by venal despots – are pushing for a United Nations resolution to lay the basis for a Libya-style military intervention. In such an event, the US would likely be joined by the United Kingdom and France amongst others in bombing the Syrians from the air, allowing the ‘rebel’ forces a clearer path to the capital.

The US and its allies have no particular interest in the natural resources of Syria. Unlike Libya, it is a relatively small player in terms of oil production and reserves. But it is seen as being a friend of Iran - Obama’s ultimate military target for 2012.

The drums of war against Iran have been growing louder again for a couple of years now. On the one hand, this is due to pressure from Israel, which fears a challenge to its regional dominance. But on the other – and more significantly given America’s virtual veto over Israeli policy – the US wants to get its hands on Iran’s oil. Having dramatically failed with a similar adventure in Iraq, the US is playing a deadly game of ‘double or quits’.

For imperial policymakers, China not having Iran’s oil to aid its expansion is almost as important as America having it. Under the Ahmadinejad government, Iran has increased its links to China, and supplies it with a large proportion of its oil.

The Strait of Hormuz is a potential flashpoint

Using the pretext of Iran developing nuclear weapons, which borrows from the Iraq narrative, and which even the US-leaning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has failed to find any supporting evidence for, the US is allowing Israel to lead a propaganda campaign against Ahmadinejad. There is a grim irony in Israel – a non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which illegally maintains a large stockpile of nuclear weaponry – accusing Iran – a signatory which insists its nuclear programme is for civilian use and allows IAEA inspectors in relatively unrestricted. But like Saddam Hussein in 2002/2003, Ahmadinejad is being asked to prove a negative – a theoretical and practical impossibility.

The US is looking to tighten the net on Iran by imposing further sanctions on its oil industry amongst other key economic sectors. In retaliation to this relentless provocation, Iran has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of the world’s oil routinely passes. In response, the US has declared this possibility a “red line”, as if Iran was the primary aggressor. A military buildup is well underway, with thePentagon modifying its bunker-buster bombs for use on Iranian facilities, and there are discussions about kitting out a transport and docking ship as an “afloat forward staging base” for troops and air assaults. In maybe the grimmest irony in human history, the Wall Street Journal straightfacedly reported a tactical debate amongst US military brass over using a nuclear weapon.

From the perspective of the Chinese ruling class, the US cannot be allowed to continue chipping at its influence. Each time they allow the Americans to get away with it, they come to believe they can get away with more. Iran’s oil is of huge strategic importance to two imperial rivals, and without decisive intervention from the international working class, it could conceivably be the prize which beckons a fight to the death of billions.

Originally posted on Infantile Disorder

From Migrant Rights’ Network:

Mihir Bose speaking at TEDxEastEnd:

Several hundreds garment workers have observed a token hunger strike in front of Bangladeshi National Press Club in Dhaka today demanding payment of workers’ dues, including wages arrears and allowances from five garment factories and legal compensation of retrenched workers of four garment factories.

Bangladeshi National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) organised the hunger strike, which was followed by submission of memorandum to the Ministry of Labour, Government of Bangladesh.

Federation President Amirul Haque Amin presided over the hunger strike while Shamyobadi Dal central leader Harun Chowdhury, Coordinator of Bangladesh Garment Workers Unity Council Salauddin Swapan, General Secretary of Bangladesh Garment Trade Union Centre Ruhul Amin and NGWF leaders Ms Safia Parveen, Mohammad Faruk Khan, Mrs Sultana Aktar, Mohammad Kabir and workers’ representatives of the affective factories spoke on the occasion.

Speakers alleged that:

1. Dhaka city but the management did not pay wages and allowances of month August till now.
2. 200 workers work in Bristi Garments (Kazi Fashion) of Tikatuli but the management did not fully paid wages and allowances of month of August.
3. 200 workers work in Jas Fashion (Dab Star group) of Arambagh but management did not pay wages and allowances of month of August.
4. 1000 workers work in Reo Fashion (Dab Star Group) of Arambagh but their wages and allowances of month of August still remained unpaid.
5. 350 workers work in Millennium Garments of Tikatuli but management did not pay wages and allowances of month of August and overtime bills of months of July and August.

Illegally retrenched workers of the four garment factories are 97 workers of Benson Apparels of Tejgaon. They were retrenched on March 22, 2011, 30 workers of Riz Fashion of Matuail. They were retrenched on December 14, 2010. 25 workers of Aditi Apparels of Mirpur, they were retrenched on December 12, 2010 and 45 workers of Bristi Garments and they were retrenched on Sepetember 7, 2011. The Management of all these factories refrained from paying legal dues and compensations to the retrenched workers.

Demanding immediate payment of dues and arrears to the workers of these factories, speakers alleged that the problem was not solved even after submission of grievance petitions and memorandum to the BGMEA.

After the hunger strike program, a five-member delegation led by NGWF General Secretary Ms Safia Parveen submitted a memorandum to the Ministry of Labour, urging the government to take effective action immediately.

High street retailers accused of lack of action to prevent ‘sweatshops’

High street retailers are failing to take enough action to end poverty pay for overseas workers, says a new report being released as the champagne corks pop to celebrate the start of London Fashion Week.

The list, from the campaign group Labour Behind the Label, compares and ranks efforts by retailers to end workers’ poverty. It includes among the worst offenders Debenhams, Fat Face, French Connection, Gap, Hobbs, Jane Norman, La Senza, Paul Smith, Peacocks, Reiss, Republic, River Island, Superdry and Whitestuff.

The group and the authors of the report Let’s Clean Up Fashion say wages across the board are too low to allow workers even basic living standards – the ability to feed, clothe and shelter a family.

The study also condemns 11 other companies for not making enough effort to work towards a decent wage:

Arcadia, Asda/George, Aurora, Burberry, H&M, Levi Strauss, Matalan, New Look, Primark, Sainsbury and Tesco.

Authors were particularly critical of Gap, which received a top grade in the group’s previous Let’s Clean Up Fashion reports. They cite its recent decision to drop plans to work towards a living wage and to monitor payment only of a minimum wage, a figure which leaves workers struggling at the bottom of the poverty scale.

The study reveals that retailers taking more significant action to end poverty pay are Inditex, which owns the brand Zara, Next, Marks & Spencer and Monsoon.

But the group says none of the 29 UK high street brands surveyed yet pays workers a living wage.

Research last December by Labour Behind the Label found Indian workers producing for Debenhams, Next and M&S were paid just £60 a month – below half a living wage of £126 needed to live a decent quality of life.

Authors also point to the trend for firms to take steps to increase wages, but to fail to ensure workers can join trade unions and fight to maintain and improve their pay – a vital step, if work is to be sustainable.

The study is launched today, as activists start a postcard and online campaign to press Gap and H&M to increase wages for workers.

One of the report’s authors, Anna McMullen from Labour Behind the Label, said:

“Many companies fail to admit that their buying practices and the prices they pay to suppliers are to blame for the poverty facing those who make our clothes.

As London Fashion Week is revealed in all its glamour, nowhere is the disparity between retailers’ huge profits and poverty for garment workers overseas more apparent. It is high time fashion giants, such as Gap and H&M, took this seriously and committed to meet the cost.”

Take action and find out more

Cartoon by Satish Acharya (click image for link)

by Vikram Visana

Every crisis presents an opportunity – this has been the Obama administration’s modus operandi. The floods in South Asia have been a rare opportunity for the USA to win the hearts and minds of disillusioned Muslims in Pakistan. Much more than that, it could have sent a message of solidarity and compassion to the wider Muslim world – vindicating President Obama’s idealistic Cairo speech at the beginning of his tenure as leader of the free world. In the UK, a leaked Whitehall paper has recently revealed that the Coalition wants Britain’s overseas aid budget to make “maximum possible contribution” to the UK’s national security. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan features as a state in which aid should focus on peace and state building in an effort to reduce the spread of radical Islam. You could be forgiven, then, for assuming that both governments would have leapt at the chance to come running to Pakistan’s salvation. Yet the US and UK continue to be tentative in their aid efforts. They increased their aid packages to $150 million and £60 million respectively but only after both had been shamed by the size of public contributions. Even these increases seem rather paltry in the face of the sheer scale of the disaster.

The fact of the matter is, that not only is aid insufficient but the way in which it is being offered is woefully irresponsible and myopic. Money and equipment channelled through NGOs, the UN and so on, still leave the Pakistani army alone to do the heavy lifting and ultimately to reap the goodwill of the people. Although it has been assumed in recent years that fundamentalists are the scourges of Pakistan, the true enemy of the people and their quest for a stable state, is and always has been, the army.

Since independence in 1947, the army has been the political and economic backbone of the country. It disenfranchised Pakistan’s minority populations and propped up the Punjabi and Muhajir (Muslim refugees from India) plutocracy, from which it was largely recruited. In the absence of a functioning democratic system, opposition groups and marginalised ethnicities used Islamist networks in order to garner political support. To compound the situation, by the late 1970s, under the dictatorship of General Zia ul Huq, the state and the army also turned to Islam as a source of legitimacy. They were subsidised by both Saudi petro-dollars and American loans in order to facilitate the Mujahideen’s war effort against the USSR. Needless to say, much of this money was not used to defeat the USSR but to operate and develop a narco-economy and arms trafficking outfit across the border with Afghanistan – all run by Pakistan’s main military intelligence agency- the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI, of course, used its illicitly earned profits to actively support the rise to power of the Taliban, who then played host to Osama bin Laden.

Is the West, by making token donations to Pakistan, merely paving the way for the ascendency of the military again, with all the Islamist chaos that comes with that eventuality? Well maybe not in quite the same way. It seems clear that Islamism has become big enough of a problem for Pakistan that even the army is compelled to crack down on it. This is fairly immaterial though. The popular rise of radical Islam in Pakistan is a result of vast sections of the population being shut off from secular means of political and social assertion. It is a result of the people being denied reasonable education and healthcare because governments, in collusion with the military, divert a disproportionate amount of their income to the defence budget. It is because, traditionally, the military-bureaucratic complex has only represented certain ethnic groups and certain classes within those groups – diverting the state’s funds to their own benefit. In such circumstances the freely offered amenities provided by Jama’at-ud-Da’wah (believed to be an alias for banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-taiba) are understandably appealing to the disenfranchised and poor Pakistani. The army is undeniably the problem not the solution.

The recent floods in Pakistan threaten to undo all that has been achieved by the civil administration since 2008. Small, mindless donations will not suffice to haul Pakistan back from the brink of disaster. The World, and the USA in particular, should realise that they must send substantial sums of money in the form of manpower, capital and supplies to Pakistan for a long-term reconstruction effort. There is plenty of evidence on the ground that Pakistanis would welcome a more direct American involvement (perhaps even more so if Predator Drone attacks were to cease!). Equally, it is up to Pakistan’s authorities to allow foreign humanitarian and developmental forces into the country. If such efforts are not made, Pakistan risks degenerating into a praetorian state again, the global implications of which may be felt for decades to come.

At The Multicultural Politic, we applaud all those who were involved in the campaign to save Sakine Mohammadi Ashtani, a 43 year old woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery today, as it appears that the Iranian Government has responded to the international outcry by reviewing her death sentence. Her life has been saved by all those who participated whether on Twitter or old fashioned petitions and letter writing, you are all heroes. We now publish here an Amnesty International appeal for a Nigerian prisoner, Patrick Okoroafor may his campaign also receive similar attention.

Patrick Obinna Okoroafor was 14 when he was arrested in 1995 and has now been in prison for 15 years – half of his lifetime.

Patrick was initially sentenced to death for robbery. In 2001, when a Nigerian High Court judgement declared his death sentence to be illegal, his sentence was changed to one of indefinite detention ‘during the pleasure of the governor’ of Imo State. On 29 May 2009, after campaigning by Amnesty International, Patrick’s sentence was reduced to 10 years imprisonment, starting immediately.

If Patrick completes his sentence he will have spent a total of 24 years in prison – for a crime he says he did not commit. Besides Patrick’s age at the time of arrest, there were many irregularities in his trial and subsequent detention. He also alleges that he was tortured. Amnesty is calling for his immediate release.

Send an appeal to the Nigerian authorities now

View clips and photo galleries of activists campaigning for Patrick on the Protect The Human website