Indonesia's province of Aceh has passed a new law making adultery punishable by stoning to death, a member of the province's parliament has said.

The law also imposes severe sentences for rape, homosexuality, alcohol consumption and gambling.

Opponents had tried to delay the law, saying more debate was needed because it imposes capital punishment.

Sharia law was partially introduced in Aceh in 2001, as part of a government offer to pacify separatist rebels.

A peace deal in 2005 ended the 30-year insurgency, and many of the former rebels have now entered Aceh's government, which enjoys a degree of autonomy from the central government in Jakarta.

Afghanistan passes barbaric law against women's rights
Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands. Guardian

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.

In early April, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the Guardian revealed that the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage, according to the UN. Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains repressive measures and contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country.

Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women's rights groups remain, including this one: "Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient."

The law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some of the country's Shias, which make up around 20% of the population. Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday's election, which is likely to be a close run thing, according to a poll released yesterday.

Human Rights Watch, which has obtained a copy of the final law, called on all candidates to pledge to repeal the law, which it says contradicts Afghanistan's own constitution. The group said that Karzai had "made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election".

Brad Adams, the organisation's Asia director, said: "The rights of Afghan women are being ripped up by powerful men who are using women as pawns in manoeuvres to gain power. "These kinds of barbaric laws were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his official stamp of approval."

Global Elders bring clout to bear on humanitarian issues
The Independent (London)

The Global Elders -- an elite group of leaders including former South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, and Myanmar activist Aung Sun Suu Kyi (in absentia) -- seek to bring attention to humanitarian crises worldwide. However, the efficacy of the group is up for debate: The Global Elders were refused visas from Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe banned them from entering on a recent diplomatic mission.

The World Medical Association's General Assembly met Friday and Saturday in Seoul, South Korea. It passed the following resolution, expanding those of prior years prohibiting physician participation in executions:

RESOLVED, that it is unethical for physicians to participate in capital punishment, in any way, or during any step of the execution process, including its planning and the instruction and/or training of persons to perform executions, The World Medical Association REQUESTS firmly its constituent members to advise all physicians that any participation in capital punishment as stated above is unethical. URGES its constituent members to lobby actively national governments and legislators against any participation of physicians in capital punishment.

This document was adopted by the 34th World Medical Assembly in Lisbon, Portugal, September 28 - October 2, 1981 and amended by the 52nd WMA General Assembly in Edinburgh, Scotland during October 2000. The revised text is proposed by the Association Médicale Française (AMF). During the 179th Council Session, in May 2008, the Council asked the American Medical Association and the AMF to work on new language but after consideration, it was agreed not to pursue any further edits to this version.

The World Medical Association is the independent confederation of national medical associations from more than 80 countries and represents more than eight million physicians. Acting on behalf of patients and physicians, the WMA endeavours to achieve the highest possible standards of medical care, ethics, education and health-related human rights for all people.

Human Rights Report Assails U.S. By ALAN COWELL. NY TIMES

PARIS — Sixty years after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, governments in scores of countries still torture or mistreat their people, Amnesty International said Wednesday in a report that again urged the United States to close down the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

In its annual report, the London-based human rights watchdog said “flashpoints” in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq/ and Myanmar “demand immediate action.”

“World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost,” Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement accompanying the report. “As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses than can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.”

The report singled out for criticism China, the United States, and Russia and accused the European Union of complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects. The European Union, it said, must “set the same bar on human rights for its own members as it does for other countries.”

It urged Washington to close down the Guantánamo facility and other “secret detention centers,” and to “prosecute the detainees under fair trial standards or release them and unequivocally reject the use of torture and ill-treatment.”

The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment on the Amnesty International allegations, which followed an exhaustive report earlier this month by the Justice Department inspector general in Washington. That review provided the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

At that time,the Pentagon noted that a Defense Department investigation in 2005 found no evidence of torture but called some interrogation tactics degrading and abusive. A spokesman for the C.I.A. said its harsh methods were “found lawful by the Department of Justice itself” and “were employed only when traditional means of questioning — things like rapport-building — were ineffective.”

Criticizing other countries, Amnesty International urged China to ‘’live up to the human rights promises it made around the Olympic Games” and said Russia should ‘’show greater tolerance for political dissent, and none for impunity on human rights abuses in Chechnya.”

...

The report assailed the moral leadership of the United States, saying that, as “the world’s most powerful state” it “sets the standard for government behavior globally.” But, Amnesty International said, the United States had “distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law.”

In the past, the State Department has accused Amnesty International of using the United States as “a convenient ideological punching bag.”