Introduction
Privacy concerns are an issue for crime victims throughout the criminal justice process. Fear of harassment or retaliation from offenders who may learn their names and find out where they live through public records or court testimony deters victims from seeking justice. Victims who want to be notified by criminal justice agencies of offenders’ releases and scheduled proceedings may be reluctant to provide the contact information necessary to request notice. Anxiety over who might have access to compensation files, pre-sentence reports, and victim impact statements may result in guarded participation by victims.
Protection of Personal Information in Criminal Justice Records
Victims may have the right to protect the privacy of personal information, such as their name or identity, address, phone number, and place of employment contained in criminal justice documents, compensation records, and court testimony, as well as contact information provided for notification purposes. In some instances, the safety of the victim may be at stake if this personal information is made public. Some states extend this protection to witnesses or the immediate family members of the victim. Certain special victim populations, such as children, victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, or human trafficking, the elderly, and other vulnerable adults may have additional confidentiality rights that address their unique privacy concerns.
In general, statutory protections of a victim’s right to privacy related to information contained in criminal justice records most often take the following forms: 1) prohibition against compelling testimony relating to personal information in open court; 2) exclusion or limited disclosure of victim identifying information in criminal justice records, including law enforcement reports, court materials, and prosecution documents; and 3) protection from release of addresses and/or phone numbers provided for notice purposes.
Victim/Counselor Privilege
Traditionally, many types of communication have been protected from disclosure in court. These include communications between husband and wife, physician and patient, attorney and client, clergy and parishioner, and psychotherapist and patient. More recently, confidential communications generated in the course of a counseling relationship has also been afforded statutory protection from disclosure. In general, victim/counselor privilege laws enable counselors to maintain the confidentiality of information revealed to them, even if they are called to testify as a witness in a trial or another proceeding. In addition to preventing counselors from testifying or being compelled to testify in court, many privilege laws directly extend protection to a counselor’s written records, such as reports, memoranda, and working papers produced during the course of the counseling relationship.
Because of the sensitive nature of sexual assault crimes and the need to protect domestic violence, stalking, and human trafficking victims from future harm, much of the legislation extending testimonial privileges to counselors and victim advocates or service providers has been limited to these victim populations.
Victim/counselor privilege laws generally fall into one of three categories: absolute, semi-absolute, and qualified. Some states have enacted statutes that provide an absolute privilege prohibiting disclosure of confidential counseling records and communications under any circumstances without the victim’s consent. Other states specify exceptions to the victim/counselor privilege within their respective statutes. These states set forth a semi-absolute privilege and authorize disclosure in limited situations when disclosure of information is in the public interest. The most common exceptions involve reporting of abuse or neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, perjured testimony, evidence of the victim’s intent to commit a crime, or malpractice proceedings against the counselor. Although these laws do not provide the unlimited confidentiality of absolute privilege laws, they do provide complete protection from disclosure except under narrowly defined circumstances.
The remaining states have a qualified privilege that authorizes disclosure if a court finds it appropriate given the facts of the case. In making that determination, a court must use a balancing test, weighing the value of the evidence to the defendant against the victim’s need to keep the communication confidential. As a result, the confidentiality of counseling communications is decided on a case-by-case basis, and both parties are given the opportunity to make their arguments for or against disclosure.
Address Confidentiality Programs
In addition, many states have created address confidentiality programs to enable victims of domestic violence, sexual offenses, trafficking, and stalking to substitute an alternative address in place of their actual address in order to keep their whereabouts private. The program provides participants with a means to prevent abusers and potential abusers from locating them through public records by assigning them a legal substitute mailing address, which may be used as a residential, school, and employment address. Often, this substitute address is also used for voter registration purposes.
Right to Protection
Introduction
Many jurisdictions give crime victims the right to protection during the criminal justice process. This right may take the form of a generally stated right to protection, or may include specific protective measures. Most jurisdictions have defined criminal offenses of intimidation of victims or witnesses. Many provide that victims must be informed of protective procedures that are available.
Protective Measures
Measures to protect crime victims take various forms. Some examples include:
Police escorts to and from court;
Secure waiting areas separate from those of the accused and his/her family, witnesses and friends during court proceedings;
Witness protection programs;
Residence relocation; and
Denial of bail or imposition of specific conditions of bail release—such as no contact orders—for defendants found to present a danger to the community or to protect the safety of victims and/or witnesses.
Several jurisdictions have also enacted laws to make it easier for victims to participate in the criminal justice process. Some give victims the right to refuse or limit any interviews with defense attorneys. Others provide for special court arrangements for vulnerable victims, such as young children. These arrangements may include closed-circuit testimony from outside the courtroom, arranging the courtroom so the victim does not see the defendant, or closing the courtroom to the general public.
Employment Protection
Many states also provide a means to protect a victim’s job or economic status during the criminal justice process. This many include requiring the prosecutors’ office to intervene with employers or creditors on request, or prohibiting employers from firing or punishing a victim from taking time off to participate in the criminal justice process.
Right to Restitution
Introduction
The term "restitution" generally refers to restoration of the harm caused by the defendant, most commonly in the form of payment for damages. It can also refer to the return or repair of property stolen or damaged in the course of the crime.
Courts have the authority to order restitution by convicted offenders as part of their sentences. In approximately one-third of states, courts are required to order restitution to victims in cases involving certain types of crimes, typically violent felony offenses. In many other states, if the court fails to order restitution, or orders restitution for only part of the victim’s losses, the court must state its reasons for doing so on the record. Payment of restitution is often a condition of probation or parole as well.
Not only can courts order restitution to the direct victim of a crime, they are often able to order restitution to the state victim compensation board, if that board has paid some of the victim’s expenses, or to a victim service agency that provided assistance to the victim.
Losses Covered
Restitution can cover any out-of-pocket losses directly relating to the crime, including:
medical expenses;
therapy costs;
prescription charges;
counseling costs;
lost wages;
expenses related to participating in the criminal justice process (such as travel costs and child care expenses);
lost or damaged property;
insurance deductibles; and
other expenses that resulted directly from the crime.
Restitution will not cover such things as pain and suffering or emotional distress, but may cover reasonably expected future losses, such as ongoing medical or counseling expenses.
In calculating the restitution owed, a court will look at the victim’s losses. The court may also consider the defendant’s financial resources or other financial obligations, either in setting the total amount of restitution owed or when formulating a payment plan for the defendant.
Collecting Restitution
Courts may order restitution to be paid immediately, or may set a payment plan. Often the court clerk is designated to receive payments, but where restitution is a condition of probation or parole, the probation or parole office may be responsible for collection.
Because a defendant may be ordered to pay various fines and fees, as well as restitution to one or more victims, a jurisdiction may set out a priority of payments. For example, the law may state that each payment received from a defendant is to be split among all the obligations, or that the restitution must be paid first, followed by fines and fees.
Many jurisdictions provide that restitution orders become civil judgments. This expands the ability of victims to collect restitution and also means that the orders can remain in effect for many years, typically 10 to 20 years. In many jurisdictions, civil judgments can be renewed, so they can stay in effect even longer. Depending on the jurisdiction, the civil judgment may be enforceable immediately, or enforceable when the offender defaults on payment, or enforceable only after the criminal justice process is completed and the offender has been released from probation, prison, or parole.
In some states, authorities are entitled to seize offenders' financial assets and property through garnishment and attachment to satisfy restitution orders. This authority may be granted immediately, or only after the defendant fails to pay as ordered.
When payment of restitution is a condition of probation or parole, probation or parole may be revoked if the defendant willfully fails to pay.
In those states with prison work programs, restitution payments are typically collected out of the wages of those programs. Some states collect restitution from state income tax refunds, prisoner accounts, lottery winnings, or damage awards from lawsuits against the prison.
Offender profits from crime
Many jurisdictions have laws that prohibit convicted offenders from making a profit from their crime. These are often called “notoriety-for-profit” laws. Under these laws, the offender is typically required to notify a state agency when he or she enters into a contract related to the crime. The state agency then freezes or holds the profit and notifies the victim. The victim has a certain amount of time to bring a civil suit against the offender.
Right to Return of Property
A victim of crime may suffer the loss of property in two ways: by theft or when property is seized and held as evidence.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws outlining procedures for the return of stolen or personal property seized for evidentiary purposes in subsequent criminal proceedings.
In most states, property may be returned to its owner when it is no longer needed as evidence in a criminal prosecution. Since this often means the victim is deprived of his or her property for months or even years while the case is appealed or retried, some states have attempted to impose specific time requirements for the return of property.
A number of states have attempted to promote the prompt return of property needed as evidence by authorizing a photograph of the item to be serve as evidence.
Right to A Speedy Trial
A number of jurisdictions give crime victims the right to “a speedy trial” or “disposition of the case free from unreasonable delay.”
In practical effect, and often in the law, the right to a speedy trial takes the form of a limitation on continuances. “Continuances” are court-ordered delays of court proceedings. Many jurisdictions require that, in ruling on a continuance requested by a party, the court must also consider the impact of the delay on the victim.
In addition, several jurisdictions give priority to certain types of cases. They may require that cases involving children, or vulnerable elderly victims, be given preference in setting the court docket.
Right to Enforcement/Remedies of Victims
Introduction
Since crime victims have been afforded legal rights in every state, they also need ways to ensure that those rights are enforced.
Enforcement Mechanisms
A jurisdiction may promote the enforcement of victims’ rights through court proceedings. In a few jurisdictions, victims have “legal standing” to assert their rights. Because a crime victim is not a “party” to the case—that status is limited to the defendant and the prosecuting jurisdiction (such as the state)—legal standing for victims is not automatic but must be provided by statute or court ruling. In some jurisdictions, the victim does not have standing, but the prosecutor or some other official has the authority to seek court enforcement of the victim’s rights.
Aside from general “standing” to assert rights, some jurisdictions have other limited court options for enforcement. They may permit a victim to seek a writ of mandamus, a court order directed to an agency to comply with the law, or allow other limited actions.
Several states have created a designated entity to receive, investigate, and attempt to resolve crime victim complaints. In some states, this may be an ombudsman or state victim advocate; in others, it may be a committee or board. Experience in those states has shown that the majority of calls from crime victims are resolved by providing information or referrals. However, many go on to the formal complaint and investigation stages. Some states also give the investigatory agency the ability to impose consequences on offending agencies or officials found to have violated a victim’s rights.
Limitations on Enforcement
Many victims’ bills of rights state that violation of a right does not create a civil cause of action against any government agency or official. Also, most specifically provide that a failure to provide a right to a victim cannot be raised by a defendant as a ground for appeal.
Disclaimer
This information is provided as a general overview of crime victims’ rights, which vary in scope and strength across the state, tribal, and federal criminal justice systems. It is not intended to serve as legal advice or statutory interpretation for any given jurisdiction.
Wednesday 18 January 2017
HUMANITY AND RIGHTS FOR SOMALIA
(Nairobi) – The Somali government and the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab placed civilians at excessive risk from conflict-related and other abuses during 2015.
There were clashes over the creation of federal states by the government with the backing of the international partners. Displaced populations remained vulnerable to sexual violence and forced evictions. And Al-Shabaab carried out unlawful, indiscriminate, and targeted attacks against civilians.
“Three years since coming to power, Somalia’s government hasn’t been able to provide basic security for the civilian population in areas under its control,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These problems are compounded by Al-Shabaab’s indiscriminate attacks and interference with humanitarian aid.”
In the 659-page World Report 2016, its 26th edition, Human Rights Watch revient hasn’t been able to provide basic security for the civilian population in areas under its control,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These problems are compounded by Al-Shabaab’s indiscriminate attacks and interference with humanitarian aid.”
Al-Shabaab, which remained in control of significant swathes of the country, attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure and carried out numerous targeted killings and executions. Warring parties, including government forces, allied militia, opposition armed groups, and the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and other foreign forces committed violations of the laws of war, resulting in numerous civilian casualties.
Tensions over the creation of a new interim regional administration in central Somalia led to open conflict, resulting in abuses against civilians. In February, fighting in the central Somali town of Guri’el between government forces and a Sufi militia resulted in civilian deaths and massive displacement.
In late 2015, repeated clashes between forces from Puntland and the newly formed Galmudug regional administration in the contested town of Galkayo resulted in at least nine civilian deaths, and dozens of civilians were injured. According to the United Nations, the fighting displaced at least 90,000 people.
The government failed to protect the capital’s hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people from serious abuses, including sexual violence, and did not adhere to its own new displacement policies by forcibly – and at times violently – evicting displaced people from informal settlements. During the first eight months of 2015, more than 116,000 people were forcibly evicted, the UN reported. In March, government forces forcibly evicted more than 21,000 people in Mogadishu during one operation, beat evictees, destroyed shelters, and left them without water, food, or other assistance.
In Somaliland, the authorities on occasion arbitrarily arrested journalists and critics of the government. They also failed to sufficiently protect people with psychosocial disabilities from involuntary confinement and medication, chaining, and beatings in public and private institutions.
“In the name of political expediency, key reforms and actions needed to curtail Somalia’s ongoing rights crisis were brushed aside in 2015,” Lefkow said. “Moving forward, Somalia’s government and its international partners should rein in abusive forces and make accountability a priority.”
There were clashes over the creation of federal states by the government with the backing of the international partners. Displaced populations remained vulnerable to sexual violence and forced evictions. And Al-Shabaab carried out unlawful, indiscriminate, and targeted attacks against civilians.
“Three years since coming to power, Somalia’s government hasn’t been able to provide basic security for the civilian population in areas under its control,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These problems are compounded by Al-Shabaab’s indiscriminate attacks and interference with humanitarian aid.”
In the 659-page World Report 2016, its 26th edition, Human Rights Watch revient hasn’t been able to provide basic security for the civilian population in areas under its control,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These problems are compounded by Al-Shabaab’s indiscriminate attacks and interference with humanitarian aid.”
Al-Shabaab, which remained in control of significant swathes of the country, attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure and carried out numerous targeted killings and executions. Warring parties, including government forces, allied militia, opposition armed groups, and the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and other foreign forces committed violations of the laws of war, resulting in numerous civilian casualties.
Tensions over the creation of a new interim regional administration in central Somalia led to open conflict, resulting in abuses against civilians. In February, fighting in the central Somali town of Guri’el between government forces and a Sufi militia resulted in civilian deaths and massive displacement.
In late 2015, repeated clashes between forces from Puntland and the newly formed Galmudug regional administration in the contested town of Galkayo resulted in at least nine civilian deaths, and dozens of civilians were injured. According to the United Nations, the fighting displaced at least 90,000 people.
The government failed to protect the capital’s hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people from serious abuses, including sexual violence, and did not adhere to its own new displacement policies by forcibly – and at times violently – evicting displaced people from informal settlements. During the first eight months of 2015, more than 116,000 people were forcibly evicted, the UN reported. In March, government forces forcibly evicted more than 21,000 people in Mogadishu during one operation, beat evictees, destroyed shelters, and left them without water, food, or other assistance.
In Somaliland, the authorities on occasion arbitrarily arrested journalists and critics of the government. They also failed to sufficiently protect people with psychosocial disabilities from involuntary confinement and medication, chaining, and beatings in public and private institutions.
“In the name of political expediency, key reforms and actions needed to curtail Somalia’s ongoing rights crisis were brushed aside in 2015,” Lefkow said. “Moving forward, Somalia’s government and its international partners should rein in abusive forces and make accountability a priority.”
RETHINKING THE WAR ON DRUG - THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE
Ending the War on Drugs: A Rights Perspective
For more than fifty years the world has pursued a so-called War on Drugs. Its goal—a world free of illicit use of drugs—has proven elusive: Despite billions of dollars spent, illicit drug use is up and illicit drugs today are cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Moreover, the War on Drugs has had disastrous unintended consequences, fueling the spread of violence, human rights abuses and infectious disease in much of the world. In 2013, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, some of the countries hardest hit, called for a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on drugs arguing that “revising the approach on drugs…can no longer be postponed.” This session will be held in April 2016. In the run-up, Human Rights Watch will be publishing a series of articles that will highlight the consequences for respect and protection of human rights of the War on Drugs.
That’s the vexing question United Nations member states have been grappling with over the past 10 weeks, as they have engaged in intense negotiations over the future of the international response to drugs, in preparation for a UN General Assembly special session in April.
Confronted with the fact that policies pursued over the last 50 years have failed to “eliminate or significantly reduce” illicit drugs, countries are drawing wildly differing conclusions. For some, it is time to try something new; for others, it’s to double down on the criminal law enforcement approach. On opposite sides of this debate are countries like Uruguay – open to legalization and regulation of marijuana – and Russia, which opposes even references to a previously agreed – and spectacularly missed – global goal to reduce drug-related HIV transmission.
Health and human rights are at the center of this polarized debate. The UN drug control conventions were established, along with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Narcotics Control Board, out of concern for the harms drugs can do to the “health and welfare of mankind.” But with a growing body of evidence highlighting the negative impacts on health and human rights of an over reliance on a criminal law enforcement-based response to drugs a critical question has arisen: What does more harm – drugs themselves or the response to them?
In the run-up to the April meeting, Human Rights Watch will publish a series of articles examining the range of serious human rights abuses – from torture and killings in the name of drug control to disproportionate and arbitrary imprisonment of drug users to denying cancer patients access to morphine for pain – the War on Drugs has caused. Ending these abuses need to be at the center of the deliberations at the UN General Assembly session on drugs.
The biggest United Nations summit on drugs in almost 20 years is over, and while there are signs many countries are stepping back from the destructive “war on drugs” approach to drugs, it’s hard not to conclude that overall the meeting was a missed opportunity.
Three years ago, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico called the meeting, arguing that the cost of the “War on Drugs” had become too high and a new approach was urgently needed. Unfortunately, the document the UN General Assembly approved on Tuesday does not represent a real break with the past but rather business-as-usual, with some shifts in emphasis.
The increased focus on health and human rights in the document is welcome, but as long as the dominantly courts-and-cops approach to fighting drugs continues, the toll from the fight will far outweigh the damage from the drugs themselves. There is little doubt that tens of thousands of people will continue to suffer from drug-related violence and human rights abuses in the coming years; that drug users and those involved in minor trafficking will continue to fill our jails; and that HIV and hepatitis C will continue to wreak havoc among people who inject drugs.
The glass-half-full view is seeing the summit as a key step in the long, complicated process of changing the way the world sees drugs. Importantly, the once-unshakable global consensus on the War on Drugs has been shattered. Much to the chagrin of countries that sought to protect the status quo, led by Russia, a critical mass of reform-minded countries powerfully challenged long-standing orthodoxies on drugs and forced open a debate that had been notoriously insular. Decriminalization of personal use and possession – the key to ending widespread abuses against drug users – is now a mainstream issue. Discussion of the benefits and risks of legalization and regulation of marijuana, unimaginable just a few short years ago, is now firmly part of the debate. While falling far short of what was needed, the summit did unleash winds of change that are gathering force.
So what happens next?
In all likelihood, we will see a further fracturing of the approach to drugs around the world. Some countries will continue down the path of reform – legalizing (medical) cannabis, decriminalizing drug use, and favoring effective health over criminal justice interventions – while others will double down on harsh law enforcement approaches. But ultimately the reformers are likely to have the advantage. Their approach is based in science rather than ideology, and the evidence suggests strongly that they will attain the better public health outcomes.
In 2019, the current global drug strategy will expire. The key question is how many countries will by then be willing to follow the evidence even if it necessitates politically inconvenient steps. The human rights of tens of thousands of people depend on the answer.
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APRIL 21, 2016
7:59 AM EST
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Drug Users Face Abuse in Russia’s Private Treatment Facilities
Tanya Cooper
Tanya Cooper
Researcher, Ukraine and Belarus
tanyacooper_
Experts estimate that three to six million people use illicit drugs in Russia with the number of heroin users topping a million, according to official estimates. Drug users are stigmatized and jailed frequently for possession of very small amounts of drugs. The hardnosed approach by police prompts drug users in Russia to avoid health services for fear of arrest and harassment.
Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency, speaks during a news conference in Moscow October 7, 2009.
EXPAND Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency, speaks during a news conference in Moscow October 7, 2009.
© 2009 Reuters
The Russian government stubbornly refuses to provide drug treatments like opiate substitution that have proven effective. Even funding for treatment that doesn’t involve the use of substitute drugs – an approach the government prefers – is limited. Only a few Russian regions offer state-provided rehabilitation treatment. As a result, treatment is often left in the hands of private companies or organizations.
The government has a duty to regulate these privately-owned facilities to ensure they do not endanger or abuse patients. The Russian government has failed to do this – with predictable consequences. Over the last few years, there have been numerous reports of abuse in these facilities: People are sedated, taken from their homes by force to remote facilities, usually in the countryside, and forced to stay there for months, often without their consent (which family members give for them instead). Some of the “treatment” methods used at such centers are more reminiscent of torture than medical care. According to press reports, drug users at one center were put in a hole in the ground filled with icy water and forced to stay for up to an hour, even in winter. Other methods included physical violence, electroshock, verbal abuse and public humiliation. The media have even reported that people have died in such centers.
To its credit, the government has prosecuted some of the worst cases. But most cases of abuse likely never come to light. The government should take immediate steps to adequately regulate private rehabilitation facilities. If they engage in kidnappings and abuse, they should be shut down. The government should also ensure people with drug dependence have access to a range of treatments - including drug substitution – that are based on evidence. Only then, will Russia be able to start to address the problem of drug dependence.
IN MEXICO
MEXICO CITY — Two days after Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadán was kidnapped by a criminal gang, the Mexican Army raided the remote ranch where he was a prisoner and killed him. As he instinctively raised his hands in defense, the soldiers fired over and over at point-blank range.
A brief army communiqué about the event asserted that soldiers had returned fire and killed three hit men at the El Puerto ranch on April 26, 2010.
But Mr. Parral had fired no weapon.
He was a government employee, the supervisor of a bridge crossing into Texas, when he and a customs agent were abducted, according to a 2013 investigation by the National Human Rights Commission. The case, which is still open, has volleyed among prosecutors, yet his parents persist, determined that someone be held accountable.
“Tell me if this looks like the face of a killer to you,” said Alicia Rabadán Sánchez, Mr. Parral’s mother, pulling a photograph of a happy young man from a plastic folder.
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In the years since the Mexican government began an intense military campaign against drug gangs, many stories like Mr. Parral’s have surfaced — accounts of people caught at the intersection of organized crime, security forces and a failing justice system.
They are killed at military checkpoints, vanish inside navy facilities or are tortured by federal police officers. Seldom are their cases investigated. A trial and conviction are even more rare.
But are these cases just regrettable accidents in the course of a decade-long government battle against drug violence? A new report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, which works on criminal justice reforms around the world, argues that they are not. Instead, the study says, they point to a pattern of indiscriminate force and impunity that is an integral part of the state’s policy.
And in the framework of international law, the study argues, the killings, forced disappearances and torture constitute crimes against humanity.
The evidence is “overwhelming,” said James A. Goldston, the executive director of the New York-based Justice Initiative, which will release the report on Tuesday. “In case after case, army actors and federal police have been implicated.”
But in all but a few cases, the allegations languish, are dismissed or are reclassified. “The impunity is a loud signal that crimes against humanity are being committed,” Mr. Goldston said.
The Justice Initiative report is the first time an international group has made a public legal argument that the pattern of abuses amounts to crimes against humanity. The finding is significant, Mr. Goldston said, because under the lens of international law, an investigation would seek to determine the chain of command behind the policy.
The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto rejected the conclusions.
“Based on international law, crimes against humanity are generalized or systematic attacks against a civilian population which are committed in accordance with a state policy,” the government said in a statement. “In Mexico the immense majority of violent crimes have been committed by criminal organizations.”
The report does not dispute that last point. Its analysis, which covers the six-year administration of former President Felipe Calderón and the first three years of Mr. Peña Nieto’s government, also looks at the Zetas, the most violent of Mexico’s drug gangs. Their brutal actions constitute crimes against humanity as well, the report concludes.
The government said that in the “exceptional cases” in which public officials have been shown to be involved in the use of excessive force, human rights abuses or torture, they have been tried and sentenced.
But human rights and international organizations have argued for years that these cases are not exceptional.
Rather than ask the International Criminal Court to begin an investigation, the Justice Initiative proposes that the crimes be investigated at home.
Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadán in 1997. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
“One of the things that we have learned is that Mexico is rich in financial resources and human capital in these issues,” Mr. Goldston said. The Justice Initiative has been working in Mexico for more than a decade.
But the investigations “simply haven’t happened because in our view the political will is not there,” Mr. Goldston said.
The report “explains how we have reached this state of impunity,” said José Antonio Guevara, the director of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. The government’s “understanding at the highest level is that what they’re doing is the right thing to weaken organized crime,” he said.
For more than fifty years the world has pursued a so-called War on Drugs. Its goal—a world free of illicit use of drugs—has proven elusive: Despite billions of dollars spent, illicit drug use is up and illicit drugs today are cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Moreover, the War on Drugs has had disastrous unintended consequences, fueling the spread of violence, human rights abuses and infectious disease in much of the world. In 2013, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, some of the countries hardest hit, called for a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on drugs arguing that “revising the approach on drugs…can no longer be postponed.” This session will be held in April 2016. In the run-up, Human Rights Watch will be publishing a series of articles that will highlight the consequences for respect and protection of human rights of the War on Drugs.
That’s the vexing question United Nations member states have been grappling with over the past 10 weeks, as they have engaged in intense negotiations over the future of the international response to drugs, in preparation for a UN General Assembly special session in April.
Confronted with the fact that policies pursued over the last 50 years have failed to “eliminate or significantly reduce” illicit drugs, countries are drawing wildly differing conclusions. For some, it is time to try something new; for others, it’s to double down on the criminal law enforcement approach. On opposite sides of this debate are countries like Uruguay – open to legalization and regulation of marijuana – and Russia, which opposes even references to a previously agreed – and spectacularly missed – global goal to reduce drug-related HIV transmission.
Health and human rights are at the center of this polarized debate. The UN drug control conventions were established, along with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Narcotics Control Board, out of concern for the harms drugs can do to the “health and welfare of mankind.” But with a growing body of evidence highlighting the negative impacts on health and human rights of an over reliance on a criminal law enforcement-based response to drugs a critical question has arisen: What does more harm – drugs themselves or the response to them?
In the run-up to the April meeting, Human Rights Watch will publish a series of articles examining the range of serious human rights abuses – from torture and killings in the name of drug control to disproportionate and arbitrary imprisonment of drug users to denying cancer patients access to morphine for pain – the War on Drugs has caused. Ending these abuses need to be at the center of the deliberations at the UN General Assembly session on drugs.
The biggest United Nations summit on drugs in almost 20 years is over, and while there are signs many countries are stepping back from the destructive “war on drugs” approach to drugs, it’s hard not to conclude that overall the meeting was a missed opportunity.
Three years ago, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico called the meeting, arguing that the cost of the “War on Drugs” had become too high and a new approach was urgently needed. Unfortunately, the document the UN General Assembly approved on Tuesday does not represent a real break with the past but rather business-as-usual, with some shifts in emphasis.
The increased focus on health and human rights in the document is welcome, but as long as the dominantly courts-and-cops approach to fighting drugs continues, the toll from the fight will far outweigh the damage from the drugs themselves. There is little doubt that tens of thousands of people will continue to suffer from drug-related violence and human rights abuses in the coming years; that drug users and those involved in minor trafficking will continue to fill our jails; and that HIV and hepatitis C will continue to wreak havoc among people who inject drugs.
The glass-half-full view is seeing the summit as a key step in the long, complicated process of changing the way the world sees drugs. Importantly, the once-unshakable global consensus on the War on Drugs has been shattered. Much to the chagrin of countries that sought to protect the status quo, led by Russia, a critical mass of reform-minded countries powerfully challenged long-standing orthodoxies on drugs and forced open a debate that had been notoriously insular. Decriminalization of personal use and possession – the key to ending widespread abuses against drug users – is now a mainstream issue. Discussion of the benefits and risks of legalization and regulation of marijuana, unimaginable just a few short years ago, is now firmly part of the debate. While falling far short of what was needed, the summit did unleash winds of change that are gathering force.
So what happens next?
In all likelihood, we will see a further fracturing of the approach to drugs around the world. Some countries will continue down the path of reform – legalizing (medical) cannabis, decriminalizing drug use, and favoring effective health over criminal justice interventions – while others will double down on harsh law enforcement approaches. But ultimately the reformers are likely to have the advantage. Their approach is based in science rather than ideology, and the evidence suggests strongly that they will attain the better public health outcomes.
In 2019, the current global drug strategy will expire. The key question is how many countries will by then be willing to follow the evidence even if it necessitates politically inconvenient steps. The human rights of tens of thousands of people depend on the answer.
BACK TO TOP
APRIL 21, 2016
7:59 AM EST
Show More Services
Drug Users Face Abuse in Russia’s Private Treatment Facilities
Tanya Cooper
Tanya Cooper
Researcher, Ukraine and Belarus
tanyacooper_
Experts estimate that three to six million people use illicit drugs in Russia with the number of heroin users topping a million, according to official estimates. Drug users are stigmatized and jailed frequently for possession of very small amounts of drugs. The hardnosed approach by police prompts drug users in Russia to avoid health services for fear of arrest and harassment.
Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency, speaks during a news conference in Moscow October 7, 2009.
EXPAND Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency, speaks during a news conference in Moscow October 7, 2009.
© 2009 Reuters
The Russian government stubbornly refuses to provide drug treatments like opiate substitution that have proven effective. Even funding for treatment that doesn’t involve the use of substitute drugs – an approach the government prefers – is limited. Only a few Russian regions offer state-provided rehabilitation treatment. As a result, treatment is often left in the hands of private companies or organizations.
The government has a duty to regulate these privately-owned facilities to ensure they do not endanger or abuse patients. The Russian government has failed to do this – with predictable consequences. Over the last few years, there have been numerous reports of abuse in these facilities: People are sedated, taken from their homes by force to remote facilities, usually in the countryside, and forced to stay there for months, often without their consent (which family members give for them instead). Some of the “treatment” methods used at such centers are more reminiscent of torture than medical care. According to press reports, drug users at one center were put in a hole in the ground filled with icy water and forced to stay for up to an hour, even in winter. Other methods included physical violence, electroshock, verbal abuse and public humiliation. The media have even reported that people have died in such centers.
To its credit, the government has prosecuted some of the worst cases. But most cases of abuse likely never come to light. The government should take immediate steps to adequately regulate private rehabilitation facilities. If they engage in kidnappings and abuse, they should be shut down. The government should also ensure people with drug dependence have access to a range of treatments - including drug substitution – that are based on evidence. Only then, will Russia be able to start to address the problem of drug dependence.
IN MEXICO
MEXICO CITY — Two days after Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadán was kidnapped by a criminal gang, the Mexican Army raided the remote ranch where he was a prisoner and killed him. As he instinctively raised his hands in defense, the soldiers fired over and over at point-blank range.
A brief army communiqué about the event asserted that soldiers had returned fire and killed three hit men at the El Puerto ranch on April 26, 2010.
But Mr. Parral had fired no weapon.
He was a government employee, the supervisor of a bridge crossing into Texas, when he and a customs agent were abducted, according to a 2013 investigation by the National Human Rights Commission. The case, which is still open, has volleyed among prosecutors, yet his parents persist, determined that someone be held accountable.
“Tell me if this looks like the face of a killer to you,” said Alicia Rabadán Sánchez, Mr. Parral’s mother, pulling a photograph of a happy young man from a plastic folder.
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In the years since the Mexican government began an intense military campaign against drug gangs, many stories like Mr. Parral’s have surfaced — accounts of people caught at the intersection of organized crime, security forces and a failing justice system.
They are killed at military checkpoints, vanish inside navy facilities or are tortured by federal police officers. Seldom are their cases investigated. A trial and conviction are even more rare.
But are these cases just regrettable accidents in the course of a decade-long government battle against drug violence? A new report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, which works on criminal justice reforms around the world, argues that they are not. Instead, the study says, they point to a pattern of indiscriminate force and impunity that is an integral part of the state’s policy.
And in the framework of international law, the study argues, the killings, forced disappearances and torture constitute crimes against humanity.
The evidence is “overwhelming,” said James A. Goldston, the executive director of the New York-based Justice Initiative, which will release the report on Tuesday. “In case after case, army actors and federal police have been implicated.”
But in all but a few cases, the allegations languish, are dismissed or are reclassified. “The impunity is a loud signal that crimes against humanity are being committed,” Mr. Goldston said.
The Justice Initiative report is the first time an international group has made a public legal argument that the pattern of abuses amounts to crimes against humanity. The finding is significant, Mr. Goldston said, because under the lens of international law, an investigation would seek to determine the chain of command behind the policy.
The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto rejected the conclusions.
“Based on international law, crimes against humanity are generalized or systematic attacks against a civilian population which are committed in accordance with a state policy,” the government said in a statement. “In Mexico the immense majority of violent crimes have been committed by criminal organizations.”
The report does not dispute that last point. Its analysis, which covers the six-year administration of former President Felipe Calderón and the first three years of Mr. Peña Nieto’s government, also looks at the Zetas, the most violent of Mexico’s drug gangs. Their brutal actions constitute crimes against humanity as well, the report concludes.
The government said that in the “exceptional cases” in which public officials have been shown to be involved in the use of excessive force, human rights abuses or torture, they have been tried and sentenced.
But human rights and international organizations have argued for years that these cases are not exceptional.
Rather than ask the International Criminal Court to begin an investigation, the Justice Initiative proposes that the crimes be investigated at home.
Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadán in 1997. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
“One of the things that we have learned is that Mexico is rich in financial resources and human capital in these issues,” Mr. Goldston said. The Justice Initiative has been working in Mexico for more than a decade.
But the investigations “simply haven’t happened because in our view the political will is not there,” Mr. Goldston said.
The report “explains how we have reached this state of impunity,” said José Antonio Guevara, the director of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. The government’s “understanding at the highest level is that what they’re doing is the right thing to weaken organized crime,” he said.
POLITIC WAR IN USA
No military or counter-terrorism analyst believes that the military force applied in Iraq and Syria has even the slightest chance of defeating IS
The US war on the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’ or ISIL, also known as Islamic State of IS - the single biggest development in US foreign policy during 2014 - continues to puzzle those looking for its strategic logic. But the solution to the puzzle lies in considerations that have nothing to do with a rational response to realities on the ground.
In fact, it is all about domestic political and bureaucratic interests.
Ostensibly the US-led military effort is aimed at “dismantling” the “Islamic State” as a threat to the stability of the Middle East and to US security. But no independent military or counter-terrorism analyst believes that the military force that is being applied in Iraq and Syria has even the slightest chance of achieving that objective.
As US diplomats freely acknowledged to journalist Reese Ehrlich, the airstrikes that the Obama administration is carrying out will not defeat the IS terrorists. And as Ehrlich elaborates, the United States has no allies who could conceivably take over the considerable territory IS now controls. The Pentagon has given up on the one Syrian military organisation once considered to be a candidate for US support – the Free Syrian Army.
Last August, counter-terrorism analyst, Brian Fishman wrote that no one had “offered a plausible strategy to defeat [IS] that doesn’t involve a major US commitment on the ground….” But Fishman went further, pointing out that [IS] actually needs the war the United States is providing, because: “[W]ar makes the jihadist movement stronger, even in the face of major tactical and operational defeats.”
Furthermore, IS itself must be understood as the consequence of the worst of the succession of US military campaigns since the 9/11 era - the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The US war in Iraq was primarily responsible for created the conditions for foreign Islamic extremists to flourish in that country. Furthermore, the groups that coalesced ultimately around IS learned how to create “adaptive organisations” from a decade of fighting US troops, as then Defence Intelligence Director, Michael Flynn has observed. And finally, the US made IS the formidable military force that it is today, by turning over billions of dollars of equipment to a corrupt and incompetent Iraqi army that has now collapsed and turned over much of its weaponry to the jihadist terrorists.
After thirteen years in which administration and national security bureaucracies have pursued policies across the Middle East that are self-evidently disastrous in rational security and stability terms, a new paradigm is needed to understand the real motivations underlying the launching of new initiatives like the war on IS. James Risen’s masterful new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, shows that the key factor in one absurdly self-defeating national security initiative after another since 9/11 has been the vast opportunities that bureaucrats have been given to build up their own power and status.
In addition, historical evidence reveals a pattern of presidents pursuing military adventures and other policies because of the waves of public opinion or the fear that their national security advisers would accuse them being soft on the enemy or national security in general. In the case of Obama, both factors played a role in the creation of the war on IS.
The Obama administration viewed IS forces’ June takeover of a series of cities in the Tigris Valley in Iraq as primarily a political threat to the administration itself. The norms of the US political system required that no president can afford to look weak in responding to external events that create strong public reactions.
His last interview before retiring as Defence Intelligence Agency Chief – published the very day the bombing of IS targets began on 7 August - General Michael Flynn commented: “Even the President, I believe, sometimes feels compelled to just do something without first saying, ‘Wait! How did this happen?’”
Then, in retaliation for US airstrikes, IS carried out the beheadings of American journalist James Foley and American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, raising the political cost of not taking stronger military action against the new villains of popular media. Even after the first gruesome IS video, however, Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes told reporters on 25 August that Obama was focused on protecting American lives and facilities and the humanitarian crisis, “containing” IS where they are and supporting advances by Iraqi and Kurdish forces.
Rhodes also emphasised that IS was a “deeply-rooted organisation”, and that military force could not “evict them from the communities where they operate”. That caution suggests that Obama was wary of an open-ended commitment that would leave him vulnerable to being manipulated by the military and other bureaucracies.
Barely a week after the second beheading, however, Obama committed the United States to cooperate with “friends and allies” to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as [IS]”. Instead of mission creep, it was a breath-taking “mission leap” from the administration’s policy of limited strikes less than three weeks earlier. Obama raised the highly imaginative justification that a long-term military effort against IS was necessary to prevent a threat to the United States itself. The supposed rationale was that terrorists would train large numbers of Europeans and Americans who were flocking to Iraq and Syria to return to carry out “deadly attacks”.
Significantly Obama insisted in the statement on calling it a "comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy” - but not a war. Calling it a war would make it more difficult to control mission creep by giving new military roles to various bureaucracies, as well as to finally bring the operation to a halt.
But the military services and the counter-terrorism bureaucracies in the CIA, NSA and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) viewed a major, multi-faceted military operation against ISIL as a central interest. Before ISIL’s spectacular moves in 2014, the Pentagon and military services faced the prospect of declining defence budgets in the wake of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now the Army, Air Force and Special Operations Command saw the possibility of carving out new military roles in fighting ISIL. The Special Operations Command, which had been Obama’s “preferred tool” for fighting Islamic extremists, was going to suffer its first flat budget year after 13 years of continuous funding increases. It was reported to be “frustrated” by being relegated to the role enabling US airstrikes and eager to take on ISIL directly.
On 12 September, both Secretary of State, John Kerry and National Security Adviser, Susan Rice were still calling the airstrikes a “counterterrorism operation”, while acknowledging that some in the administration wanted to call it a “war”. But the pressure from the Pentagon and its counter-terrorism partners to upgrade the operation to a “war” was so effective that it took only one day to accomplish the shift.
The following morning, military spokesman, Admiral John Kirby told reporters: “Make no mistake, we know we are at war with [IS] in the same way we are at war, and continue to be at war, with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.” Later that day, White House press secretary, Josh Ernst used that same language.
Under the circumstances that exist in Iraq and Syria, the most rational response to IS’s military successes would have been to avoid US military action altogether. But Obama had powerful incentives to adopt a military campaign that it could sell to key political constituencies. It makes no sense strategically, but avoids the perils that really matter to American politicians.
The US war on the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’ or ISIL, also known as Islamic State of IS - the single biggest development in US foreign policy during 2014 - continues to puzzle those looking for its strategic logic. But the solution to the puzzle lies in considerations that have nothing to do with a rational response to realities on the ground.
In fact, it is all about domestic political and bureaucratic interests.
Ostensibly the US-led military effort is aimed at “dismantling” the “Islamic State” as a threat to the stability of the Middle East and to US security. But no independent military or counter-terrorism analyst believes that the military force that is being applied in Iraq and Syria has even the slightest chance of achieving that objective.
As US diplomats freely acknowledged to journalist Reese Ehrlich, the airstrikes that the Obama administration is carrying out will not defeat the IS terrorists. And as Ehrlich elaborates, the United States has no allies who could conceivably take over the considerable territory IS now controls. The Pentagon has given up on the one Syrian military organisation once considered to be a candidate for US support – the Free Syrian Army.
Last August, counter-terrorism analyst, Brian Fishman wrote that no one had “offered a plausible strategy to defeat [IS] that doesn’t involve a major US commitment on the ground….” But Fishman went further, pointing out that [IS] actually needs the war the United States is providing, because: “[W]ar makes the jihadist movement stronger, even in the face of major tactical and operational defeats.”
Furthermore, IS itself must be understood as the consequence of the worst of the succession of US military campaigns since the 9/11 era - the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The US war in Iraq was primarily responsible for created the conditions for foreign Islamic extremists to flourish in that country. Furthermore, the groups that coalesced ultimately around IS learned how to create “adaptive organisations” from a decade of fighting US troops, as then Defence Intelligence Director, Michael Flynn has observed. And finally, the US made IS the formidable military force that it is today, by turning over billions of dollars of equipment to a corrupt and incompetent Iraqi army that has now collapsed and turned over much of its weaponry to the jihadist terrorists.
After thirteen years in which administration and national security bureaucracies have pursued policies across the Middle East that are self-evidently disastrous in rational security and stability terms, a new paradigm is needed to understand the real motivations underlying the launching of new initiatives like the war on IS. James Risen’s masterful new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, shows that the key factor in one absurdly self-defeating national security initiative after another since 9/11 has been the vast opportunities that bureaucrats have been given to build up their own power and status.
In addition, historical evidence reveals a pattern of presidents pursuing military adventures and other policies because of the waves of public opinion or the fear that their national security advisers would accuse them being soft on the enemy or national security in general. In the case of Obama, both factors played a role in the creation of the war on IS.
The Obama administration viewed IS forces’ June takeover of a series of cities in the Tigris Valley in Iraq as primarily a political threat to the administration itself. The norms of the US political system required that no president can afford to look weak in responding to external events that create strong public reactions.
His last interview before retiring as Defence Intelligence Agency Chief – published the very day the bombing of IS targets began on 7 August - General Michael Flynn commented: “Even the President, I believe, sometimes feels compelled to just do something without first saying, ‘Wait! How did this happen?’”
Then, in retaliation for US airstrikes, IS carried out the beheadings of American journalist James Foley and American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, raising the political cost of not taking stronger military action against the new villains of popular media. Even after the first gruesome IS video, however, Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes told reporters on 25 August that Obama was focused on protecting American lives and facilities and the humanitarian crisis, “containing” IS where they are and supporting advances by Iraqi and Kurdish forces.
Rhodes also emphasised that IS was a “deeply-rooted organisation”, and that military force could not “evict them from the communities where they operate”. That caution suggests that Obama was wary of an open-ended commitment that would leave him vulnerable to being manipulated by the military and other bureaucracies.
Barely a week after the second beheading, however, Obama committed the United States to cooperate with “friends and allies” to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as [IS]”. Instead of mission creep, it was a breath-taking “mission leap” from the administration’s policy of limited strikes less than three weeks earlier. Obama raised the highly imaginative justification that a long-term military effort against IS was necessary to prevent a threat to the United States itself. The supposed rationale was that terrorists would train large numbers of Europeans and Americans who were flocking to Iraq and Syria to return to carry out “deadly attacks”.
Significantly Obama insisted in the statement on calling it a "comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy” - but not a war. Calling it a war would make it more difficult to control mission creep by giving new military roles to various bureaucracies, as well as to finally bring the operation to a halt.
But the military services and the counter-terrorism bureaucracies in the CIA, NSA and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) viewed a major, multi-faceted military operation against ISIL as a central interest. Before ISIL’s spectacular moves in 2014, the Pentagon and military services faced the prospect of declining defence budgets in the wake of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now the Army, Air Force and Special Operations Command saw the possibility of carving out new military roles in fighting ISIL. The Special Operations Command, which had been Obama’s “preferred tool” for fighting Islamic extremists, was going to suffer its first flat budget year after 13 years of continuous funding increases. It was reported to be “frustrated” by being relegated to the role enabling US airstrikes and eager to take on ISIL directly.
On 12 September, both Secretary of State, John Kerry and National Security Adviser, Susan Rice were still calling the airstrikes a “counterterrorism operation”, while acknowledging that some in the administration wanted to call it a “war”. But the pressure from the Pentagon and its counter-terrorism partners to upgrade the operation to a “war” was so effective that it took only one day to accomplish the shift.
The following morning, military spokesman, Admiral John Kirby told reporters: “Make no mistake, we know we are at war with [IS] in the same way we are at war, and continue to be at war, with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.” Later that day, White House press secretary, Josh Ernst used that same language.
Under the circumstances that exist in Iraq and Syria, the most rational response to IS’s military successes would have been to avoid US military action altogether. But Obama had powerful incentives to adopt a military campaign that it could sell to key political constituencies. It makes no sense strategically, but avoids the perils that really matter to American politicians.
HAK PESAKIT AWAM DI HOSPITAL
Hak-Hak Pesakit
Setiap individu mempunyai hak untuk mendapat rawatan kecemasan dengan segera di Hospital Pitas (KBMC).
Setiap pesakit akan dirawat dengan penuh kesopanan dan ketertiban.
Setiap pesakit perlu dirawat dengan penuh perhatian, bertimbang rasa, adil, penuh hormat dan kemuliaan.
Setiap individu mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan kerahsiaan semasa sesi soal jawab, pemeriksaan dan rawatan oleh staf perubatan.
Pesakit perlu memberikan kerjasama semasa sebarang pemeriksaan fizikal atau rawatan dijalankan.
Setiap kanak-kanak yang dimasukkan ke wad mempunyai hak, bilamana diperlukan, ditemani oleh ibu atau bapa atau penjaganya pada setiap masa.
Pesakit mempunyai hak untuk memilih pakar perunding sendiri sekiranya diperlukan.
Pesakit mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan pendapat kedua bila diminta.
Pesakit mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan maklumat berserta penjelasan tentang keadaan dirinya, hasil penyiasatan, dan keputusan pemeriksaan yang telah dijalankan ke atas beliau.
Pesakit perlu disediakan dengan maklumat tentang anggaran kos rawatan, penyiasatan dan prosedur yang bakal dijalankan ke atas beliau.
Pesakit yang telah mendapat maklumat lengkap tentang keadaan dirinya mempunyai hak sepenuhnya untuk menerima atau menolak rawatan sebagaimana yang dicadangkan kepada beliau.
Pesakit mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan penjelasan dalam istilah biasa secara jelas, ringkas dan padat untuk sebarang rawatan atau prosedur yang dicadangkan serta alternatifnya. Maklumat perlu disertakan dengan risiko yang berkemungkinan berlaku, kesan sampingan dan kemungkinan kegagalan.
Keizinan pesakit perlu diperolehi sebelum mana-mana prosedur dapat dijalankan. Bagi kes minor, keizinan perlu diperolehi daripada ibu atau bapa atau penjaga yang sah.
Semua maklumat pesakit perlu dianggap rahsia dan tidak dibincangkan secara persendirian dengan orang lain selain daripada golongan professional yang terlibat.
Pesakit mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan penjagaan kesihatan (nursing care) yang selamat, cekap dan pantas sepanjang berada di hospital ini.
Sebarang rungutan/ aduan dari setiap Pesakit wajib didengari dan diambil perhatian dan tindakan yang sewajarnya.
Pesakit dan waris wajar diberi khidmat nasihat yang berkaitan dengan keadaan kesihatan beliau, di samping pendidikan dan kaunseling tentang penjagaan diri, pengambilan ubat, termasuk kesan sampingan yang mungkin ada dan langkah keselamatan yang mungkin diperlukan semasa di hospital dan sebelum keluar wad.
Pesakit mempunyai hak kepada persekitaran yang bersih, selamat dan kondusif di hospital ini.
Pesakit berhak untuk mendapatkan bil perubatan yang jelas dan terperinci dan sebarang penjelasan mengenai bil tersebut perlu diberikan jika diminta.
Pesakit akan disediakan dengan laporan perubatan dalam masa yang munasabah jika diminta oleh pesakit pada kadar bayaran yang berpatutan.
Hak-Hak Pesakit dan Keluarga
Adalah dengan ini diperakui bahawa tuan/puan sebagai pesakit di Hospital ini berhak untuk:-
Mendapat perkhidmatan perubatan yang selamat tanpa mengira agama dan bangsa.
Mendapat perkhidmatan perubatan yang berpatutan dan menghormati hak asasi manusia.
Mengenali identiti doktor atau penjawat awam yang memberi perkhidmatan rawatan perubatan.
Mendapat perkhidmatan yang berterusan dan berpatutan serta mengetahui maklumat tentang penyakit yang dihidapi.
Turut serta dalam membuat keputusan mengenai kesihatan diri anda termasuk hak menolak cadangan perubatan, mendapat pandangan kedua, serta hak meninggalkan hospital walaupun bertentangan dengan nasihat perubatan.
Mengetahui maklumat peraturan hospital yang berkaitan dengan anda.
Menerima bil terperinci untuk semua bayaran rawatan (berdasarkan permintaan anda).
Memberi cadangan bagi menambahbaikan perkhidmatan hospital melalui peti cadangan yang disediakan.
Tanggungjawab anda semasa berada di Hospital:-
Memberi kerjasama semasa menerima rawatan dan nasihat doktor anda.
Menanggung risiko jika sekiranya anda memilih untuk tidak meneruskan rawatan.
Menepati temujanji anda, memberi maklumat yang tepat dan lengkap mengenai sejarah kesihatan, ubat-ubatan yang diambil serta sebarang perubatan kesihatan diri anda.
Memahami penyakit yang dihidapi serta rawatan dan penjagaan diri selepas keluar dari hospital serta memberitahu doktor sekiranya anda tidak faham tentang sebarang aspek penjagaan kesihatan.
Bagi kemasukan ke wad:-
Membawa barang keperluan peribadi dan pakaian yang perlu sahaja ke hospital.
Bagi kecemasan:-
Menyerahkan hak penjagaan barangan berharga kepada anggota keluarga / waris atau peti simpanan hospital.
Mematuhi peraturan hospital termasuk bertimbangrasa terhadap hak peribadi rakan pesakit, menghormati waktu dan peraturan melawat serta peraturan-peraturan hospital yang lain.
Mematuhi peraturan bahawa kanak-kanak berumur di bawah 12 tahun, terutama bayi tidak dibenarkan melawat kecuali mendapat kebenaran dari pihak pengurusan wad. Ini kerana mereka mudah terdedah kepada jangkitan kuman disebabkan daya tahan badan yang rendah.
Mengetahui maklumat mengenai apa yang bakal ditempuhi sebelum, semasa dan selepas prosedur dijalankan serta sokongan yang akan diberikan untuk menghadapi situasi tersebut.
Penyertaan keluarga dalam membuat keputusan yang melibatkan rawatan perubatan anda serta penglibatan penjaga / waris secara berpatutan dalam memantau rawatan secara berterusan terhadap pesakit.
Tanggungjawab Pihak Hospital:-
Pihak hospital bertanggungjawab untuk melindungi pesakit daripada kecederaan yang berpunca langsung daripada pelawat, pesakit-pesakit lain atau kakitangan hospital sendiri.
Kanak-kanak, individu-individu cacat, warga tua atau mana-mana golongan yang berisiko patut mendapat perlindungan yang sewajarnya.
Pihak hospital hendaklah menghormati kehendak pesakit dan keluarga untuk menggunakan alat bantuan hayat.
Pihak hospital hendaklah menyokong hak pesakit untuk mendapat penghormatan dan rawatan sewajarnya di akhir hayatnya.
DISCRIMINATION ISLAM IN AUSTRALIA
European governments must do more to challenge the negative stereotypes and prejudices against Muslims fuelling discrimination especially in education and employment, a new report by Amnesty International reveals today.“Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf. Men can be dismissed for wearing beards associated with Islam,” said Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination. “Rather than countering these prejudices, political parties and public officials are all too often pandering to them in their quest for votes.”The report Choice and prejudice: discrimination against Muslims in Europe, exposes the impact of discrimination on the ground of religion or belief on Muslims in several aspects of their lives, including employment and education. It focuses on Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland where Amnesty International has already raised issues such as restrictions on the establishment of places of worship and prohibitions on full-face veils. The report documents numerous individual cases of discrimination across the countries covered.“Wearing religious and cultural symbols and dress is part of the right of freedom of expression. It is part of the right to freedom of religion or belief – and these rights must be enjoyed by all faiths equally.” said Marco Perolini. “While everyone has the right to express their cultural, traditional or religious background by wearing a specific form of dress no one should be pressurized or coerced to do so.
General bans on particular forms of dress that violate the rights of those freely choosing to dress in a particular way are not the way to do this.”The report highlights that legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment has not been appropriately implemented in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Employers have been allowed to discriminate on the grounds that religious or cultural symbols will jar with clients or colleagues or that a clash exists with a company’s corporate image or its ‘neutrality’. This is in direct conflict with European Union (EU) anti-discrimination legislation which allows variations of treatment in employment only if specifically required by the nature of the occupation. “EU legislation prohibiting discrimination on the ground of religion or belief in the area of employment seems to be toothless across Europe, as we observe a higher rate of unemployment among Muslims, and especially Muslim women of foreign origin,” said Marco Perolini.In the last decade, pupils have been forbidden to wear the headscarf or other religious and traditional dress at school in many countries including Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. “Any restriction on the wearing of religious and cultural symbols and dress in schools must be based on assessment of the needs in each individual case. General bans risk adversely Muslims girls’ access to education and violating their rights to freedom of expression and to manifest their beliefs.” Marco Perolini said. The right to establish places of worship is a key component of the right to freedom of religion or belief which is being restricted in some European countries, despite state obligations to protect, respect and fulfil this right. Since 2010, the Swiss Constitution has specifically targeted Muslims with the prohibition of the construction of minarets, embedding anti-Islam stereotypes and violating international obligations that Switzerland is bound to respect. In Catalonia (Spain), Muslims have to pray in outdoor spaces because existing prayer rooms are too small to accommodate all the worshippers and requests to build mosques are being disputed as incompatible with the respect of Catalan traditions and culture. This goes against freedom of religion which includes the right to worship collectively in adequate places. “There is a groundswell of opinion in many European countries that Islam is alright and Muslims are ok so long as they are not too visible. This attitude is generating human rights violations and needs to be challenged,” said Marco Perolini.
Introduction
There is currently a great deal of interest in, and misunderstanding about, Australia s Muslim communities. Muslim Australians are not a homogenous group as some media reports might lead us to believe, but make up a small, culturally diverse section of Australian society.
Over a third (36 per cent) of Muslim Australians are Australian-born, while those who have arrived here as immigrants come from all over the world from Lebanon and Turkey to Bangladesh and Fiji. Some come from countries where women wear a burqa or a veil, most do not. And despite concerns expressed by some, many others argue that the vast majority of Muslim Australians see no conflict of loyalty between Islam and Australian citizenship.
This electronic brief is a guide to some of the recent research, statistics and information on Australian Muslims which highlights those issues and provides a more accurate overview of Australia s Muslim communities.
How many Muslim Australians are there?
A statistical snapshot on Muslim Australians is available from a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) fact sheet that includes unpublished 2001 Census data on birthplace, ancestry, sex and geographic distribution in Australia. The fact sheet shows that Australian residents who identify themselves as Muslim (281 578 individuals), make up approximately 1.5 per cent of the population and that 36 per cent of all Muslims in Australia were born here. Almost 50 per cent of Australian Muslims are aged 24 and under.
The HREOC report Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, includes further statistical data on Arab and Muslim Australians in its appendices. According to this report, of the 102 566 Australian-born Muslims around 30 per cent claim Lebanese ancestry, 18 per cent claim Turkish ancestry and 3 per cent claim broadly defined Arab ancestry.
Major countries of birth of Muslim Australians
Australia 36 per cent
Lebanon 10 per cent
Turkey 8 per cent
Afghanistan 3.5 per cent
Bosnia-Herzegovina 3.5 per cent
Pakistan 3.2 per cent
Indonesia 2.9 per cent
Iraq 2.8 per cent
Bangladesh 2.7 per cent
Iran 2.3 per cent
Fiji 2.0 per cent
(Source: HREOC fact sheet, ABS unpublished 2001 Census data)
Another statistical snapshot from the Conference of Australian Imams held in September 2006, includes age profiles of Australian Muslims.
Other more detailed statistical information is available from a 2004 report, Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions. This very comprehensive report was produced under the government s Living in Harmony initiative by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) and written by Professor Abdullah Saheed from the University of Melbourne in association with the Australian Multicultural Foundation.
The report, plus two others on religious and cultural diversity are available from the Australian Multicultural Foundation website. The three reports are; Religion, cultural diversity and safeguarding Australia, Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions and Constructing a multi-faith network.
Citizenship
At the time of the 2001 Census there were 16.5 million Australian citizens, 3 million of whom were born overseas. For more detail on citizenship statistics by country of origin visit the government s citizenship website.
Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions includes citizenship data. It states that the majority of Muslims in Australia (79 per cent) have obtained Australian citizenship (221 856 out of a total of 281 578).
The citizenship take-up rate is even higher for immigrants from some Middle East countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, although not all immigrants from these countries would necessarily be Muslim:
Australian citizenship rates for select birthplace groups, 2001
Country of birth
% of ethnic group who are Australian citizens
Egypt
91.6 %
Lebanon
91.3 %
Syria
86.2%
Somalia
70.1%
Iraq
68.1%
Other Middle East
75.9%
Other N Africa
70.2%
All Overseas-born people
74.0%
Source: HREOC, Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, Appendix 2, ABS unpublished 2001 Census data.
English language proficiency
The majority of Australia s Muslims are proficient in English according to Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions. Those aged 21 39 are the most proficient in English, while the least proficient group is aged over 60. Almost 50 per cent of Australian Muslims are aged 24 and under.
The three main languages spoken at home by Australian Muslims are Arabic, Turkish and English. Most Australian Muslims (87 per cent) speak English in addition to another language such as Arabic, Turkish, Persian (Farsi), Bosnian, Indonesian, Bengali, Malay, Dari, Albanian, Hindi, Kurdish, and Pashto. Approximately 11 per cent of Australian Muslims speak only English (Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, Appendix 3).
Another DIMIA publication, Statistical Focus: 2001 Classification of Countries into English Proficiency Groups, 2003, gives detailed proficiency data for immigrants by geographic regions, including the Middle East.
Religious affiliation
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Year Book 2006, between 1996 and 2001 there were just over half a million new arrivals to Australia. Although Christianity is the most commonly reported religious affiliation for the majority of immigrants, followers of other religions have shown the largest proportional increases since the 1996 Census. The number of persons affiliated with Buddhism increased by 79 per cent, with Hinduism by 42 per cent, Islam 40 per cent and Judaism 5 per cent. Of all people affiliating with Hinduism in 2001, 82 per cent were born overseas, with 34 per cent born in India and 11 per cent in Sri Lanka. Similarly, nearly three-quarters of all those affiliating with Buddhism were born overseas 26 per cent in Vietnam and 8 per cent in China. Of persons of all ages affiliating with Islam in 2001, 62 per cent were overseas born, with almost 11 per cent born in Lebanon and 9 per cent in Turkey.
Another ABS publication, Australia s most recent immigrants, by Professor Graeme Hugo, contains information on the religion of both recent and longstanding migrants. Hugo argues that one of the most dramatic changes in Australian post-war society has been the massive increase in the diversity of religions practiced in Australia. He states that each of the last five post-war censuses has seen an increase in the amount of diversity of Australian religions and that immigrants arriving in Australia during 1996 2001 were more diverse with respect to religious adherence than either the Australian-born population or migrants of longer standing in Australia, (with non-Christian groups more representative among recent arrivals). Muslims made up 8.8 per cent of recent immigrants, but only 3.2 per cent of their longstanding counterparts and more than one-fifth of Australia s 281 578 Muslims in 2001 had arrived in Australia in 1996 2001 or were children born in Australia to those immigrants.
For a background on Islam, plus lists of the major Mosques, Islamic organisations and Islamic schools in Australia see Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions, or the Islamic schools and Mosques pages on the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils website.
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Employment
According to Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, overseas-born Muslims are more likely to be unemployed than Muslims born in Australia. Immigrants who come to Australia from the Middle East, Africa and Vietnam also have rates of unemployment much higher than other overseas-born immigrants. See High unemployment at a time of low unemployment (T. Kryger, Parliamentary Library, Research Note, 2005). This trend is mirrored internationally in Europe, for example, Muslims face high unemployment in many countries.
For Australian Muslims in the labour force, earnings are not comparable with the Australian average. According to the 2001 Census, 43 per cent of Australian Muslims make less than $200 per week compared with 27 per cent of all Australians. Only 5 per cent of Australian Muslims have income of more than $1000 per week compared with 11 per cent of all Australians. For more detail on employment and occupation status see Appendix 3 of the HREOC report Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians.
For more detail on unemployment and possible solutions see the Muslim Community Reference Group report released in September 2006 Building on social cohesion, harmony and security: an action plan by the Muslim Community Reference Group.
Muslim women
Concerns are often raised that Muslim women may be oppressed by their families and their communities. The custom of the wearing of a veil and reports of the treatment of Muslim women in some Middle East countries contribute to this. However, both within Muslim communities and the community at large, different views and opinions exist about this complex issue:
Nadia Jamal, There is more to Muslim women than a head scarf, (Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October, 2006)
John Stapleton, I m not fresh meat: Muslim women hit back, (The Australian, 30 October, 2006)
Waleed Aly, The Hilali row has fuelled a siege mentality, (The Age, 7 November, 2006)
Irfan Yusaf, Muslims must speak out or be condemned for their silence, (Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April, 2005)
Fatima Shah, There s enough room under the burqa for personal choice, (The Age, 8 January, 2004)
Randa Abdel-Fattah, Muslim women are not idiots, (The Age, 6 December, 2001).
It could be argued that Muslim women face more challenges in Australia than their male counterparts. As some of the media accounts above show, many women find themselves facing obstacles and discrimination from both their own communities and non-Muslims as they struggle to find a place in Australian society. Conflict issues for Muslim youth and young women are outlined in the communique from the Muslim Youth Summit held in December 2005.
Newly arrived Muslim immigrants and particularly Muslim women refugees can face even greater challenges, as reported in Breaking the isolation cycle: the experience of Muslim refugee women in Australia, (Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, vol. 15 no. 2, 2006).
For examples of international discussion on Muslim women and their role in Islamic society from a variety of viewpoints see:
Amina Wadud, Inside the gender jihad: women s reform and Islam, 2006 and A ishah s legacy, included in a collection of articles Islam: resistance and reform , New Internationalist, May 2002.
Ayan Hirsi Ali, Breaking through the Islamic curtain, an extract from Ali s The caged virgin: an emancipation proclamation for women and Islam, 2006.
Fatema Mernissi, Beyond the veil: male-female dynamics in a modern Muslim society, Saqi Books, UK, 2003.
Leila Ahmad, Women and Gender in Islam: the Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Yale University Press, 1992.
Nawal El Saadawi, A feminist in the Arab world, Women and Therapy, vol. 7 no. 3 4, 1995.
The Committee to Defend Women s Rights website.
The Islamic Women s Welfare Council of Victoria s media guide for general information on Islam and women.
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Discrimination
According to consultations conducted by HREOC and reported in Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, Muslim Australians commonly experience discrimination, racial vilification, threats of violence and actual violence. Others reported a general insensitivity towards Muslim cultural practices such as a refusal to allow prayer breaks or negative comments about Muslim names or dress.
In August 2007, researchers at Edith Cowan University released preliminary results from a National Fear Survey funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) 'Safeguarding Australia' grant. One of the major findings of this survey was that fear is isolating many Muslim Australians. Where non-Muslim Australians reported generalised fears of such things as travelling in planes, Muslim Australians reported specific fears for their personal safety in public places and a mistrust of our society. See ‘Muslims feel cut off, left isolated by fear’ (C. Levett, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 August 2007).
Muslim Australians are highly likely to experience discrimination along the following three main themes:
that Muslim Australians are potential terrorists
that there is no place in Australia for Muslims
that Muslims should abandon their cultural practices and assimilate
Muslim women and children are particularly vulnerable and reported feeling afraid of attack or abuse in public places and even at home. Women reported being physically and verbally abused on a regular basis with threats such as 'I am going to rip that scarf of your head and smash your bag over the top of head, smash it in', as described in When cultures collide: planning for the public spatial needs of Muslim women in Sydney, (paper from the State of Australian Cities Conference 2005).
Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians gives detailed accounts of children experiencing bullying and intimidation at school, with many parents saying that they feel that they are forced to send their children to Islamic schools, not necessarily for the education, but for their safety. Young Muslims reported feeling a high level of fear, anger and stress: A lot of young people are struggling and parents are saying 'We have our culture, but how can we pass it on to our children without them having to go through such a huge struggle?' We are creating a very angry generation who will eventually end up with psychological repercussions. I don't believe that anyone can endure this kind of pressure and come out feeling ok. See the communique from the Muslim Youth Summit, held in December 2005, outlining other conflict issues for Muslim youth.
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The Muslim problem and the multiculturalism debate
There has been significant public debate on multiculturalism, Islam and Australian society in the past few years, particularly since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001. In Australia, concern has heightened since the Bali bombings and the attention given to the controversial sermons given in Sydney by Sheiks Taj el-Din al Hilali and Feiz Mohammed. Some commentators speak about the Muslim problem and the need for Muslim Australians to assimilate, while others argue that Australian society should continue to embrace multiculturalism. There are many examples online and in the media offering different views:
Arthur Saniotis, Embodying Ambivalence: Muslim Australians as 'Other', Journal of Australian Studies, issue 82, 2004
John Stone, The Muslim problem and what to do about it, Quadrant, vol. 50 no. 9, September 2006
Paul Stenhouse, Standing up to the Islamists, Quadrant, vol. 50 no. 9, September 2006
Robert Manne, Islamism, Islamaphobia and Australia, The Monthly, August 2006
Geraldine Doogue, Islam and the West, Sydney Papers, Winter/Spring 2005
Nahid Kabir, Muslims in Australia: the new disadvantaged, Brisbane Line, 11 November 2003
Peter Coleman, The good Australian and the lure of Islam, Quadrant, vol. 50 no. 5, May 2006
Samina Yasmeen, Dealing with Islam in Australia: after the London bombings, Sydney Papers, Winter/Spring 2005
Scott Poynting, Living with racism: the experience and reporting by Arab and Muslim Australians of discrimination, abuse and violence since 11 September 2001, report to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, April 2004
Simon Penn and Ben Spencer, Back to White Australia, says Muslim [Fears of return to White Australia policy], West Australian, 25 February 2006
Tom Calma, Responding to Cronulla: rethinking multiculturalism, HREOC Race Discrimination Commissioner, speech by Race Discrimination Commissioner at a national symposium organised by Griffith University and the University of Queensland, 21 February 2006
Initiatives and dialogue
Since the establishment of Australia s first Department of Immigration in 1945, around 6.5 million migrants and refugees have settled in the country. Source countries have shifted in that time from the UK to Northern and Southern Europe, to the Middle East and Asia. Today, 24 per cent of Australia s population is overseas-born, and 40 per cent has one or both parents born overseas. Australia s population is drawn from about 185 countries and over 200 languages are spoken at home. While some may find the concept of such cultural diversity confronting, many argue that the majority of Australians are not unduly threatened by it. See, for example, If there is prejudice, there is also tolerance, (Andrew Norton, The Australian, 22 December 2005) and Immigration and public opinion: understanding the shift, (Katherine Betts, People and Place, vol. 10 no. 4, 2002).
In September 2005, the Muslim Community Reference Group was established for a one year term to advise the government on Muslim community issues. Speeches and media releases from this group are available on the website. On 14 July 2006, the Ministerial Council on Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (MCIMA) endorsed the development and implementation of a National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security (NAP). This endorsement was followed in September 2006 by the release of the Muslim Community Reference Group report, Building on social cohesion, harmony and security: an action plan by the Muslim Community Reference Group. This report offers recommendations on ways forward and community building in such areas as education, employment and youth support. A list of government media releases, speeches and initiatives for Muslim Australians is available on the Muslim Community Reference Group website
In January 2007, the Minister for Education Science and Training, the Hon. Julie Bishop, announced that the University of Melbourne, Griffith University and the University of Western Sydney will host a National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies to advance knowledge and understanding of Islam. The federal government has committed $8 million to establish the centre as part of its National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security.
Other initiatives include a Muslim Youth Summit held in December 2005, which released a communique outlining conflict issues for Muslim youth suggesting solutions, and in September 2006, a Conference of Australian Imams was held.The idea for the conference came from members of the Muslim community and was put forward at a meeting of the Muslim Community Reference Group. The conference website includes a brief report and a communique condemning terrorism and promoting tolerance. Many other initiatives such as the Unlocking Doors: Muslim communities and police tackling racial and religious discrimination and abuse project, funded by the federal government, aim to facilitate racial tolerance and understanding at the local level.
Chapters 4 and 5 of Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians outline some of the many strategies that have been initiated in recent years at the state, federal and community levels to promote tolerance. The federal government s Living in Harmony initiative, for example, included the 'Towards a Better Understanding of Islam and the Muslim Community in Australia' project with the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils in 2002, and in 2004 produced the report Constructing a multi-faith network in conjunction with World Conference on Religion and Peace. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils is also involved with other religious groups such as the National Council of Churches of Australia, World Conference on Religion and Peace and the Uniting Church in establishing interfaith dialogues.
While Australians might continue to be concerned about new arrivals fitting in , there appears to be a general optimism in the community about the positive contribution that immigrants bring to Australia and the capacity for our multicultural society to accommodate these new arrivals. There is evidence that many of our immigrants view Australia as a tolerant country. An opinion poll, Living in Diversity, conducted by SBS in 2002, found that while only 40 per cent of the national population considers Australia a tolerant or very tolerant society, all five NESB samples gave much higher marks to Australia s tolerance levels, ranging from 47 per cent of Lebanese to 63 per cent of Somalis and 67 per cent of Vietnamese.
Since this survey was conducted, the world has experienced the Bali and London bombings and other incidences of violence. Many Muslim and non-Muslim Australians are now concerned that the negative consequences of these incidents may impair or delay our future development as a culturally diverse nation.
General bans on particular forms of dress that violate the rights of those freely choosing to dress in a particular way are not the way to do this.”The report highlights that legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment has not been appropriately implemented in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Employers have been allowed to discriminate on the grounds that religious or cultural symbols will jar with clients or colleagues or that a clash exists with a company’s corporate image or its ‘neutrality’. This is in direct conflict with European Union (EU) anti-discrimination legislation which allows variations of treatment in employment only if specifically required by the nature of the occupation. “EU legislation prohibiting discrimination on the ground of religion or belief in the area of employment seems to be toothless across Europe, as we observe a higher rate of unemployment among Muslims, and especially Muslim women of foreign origin,” said Marco Perolini.In the last decade, pupils have been forbidden to wear the headscarf or other religious and traditional dress at school in many countries including Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. “Any restriction on the wearing of religious and cultural symbols and dress in schools must be based on assessment of the needs in each individual case. General bans risk adversely Muslims girls’ access to education and violating their rights to freedom of expression and to manifest their beliefs.” Marco Perolini said. The right to establish places of worship is a key component of the right to freedom of religion or belief which is being restricted in some European countries, despite state obligations to protect, respect and fulfil this right. Since 2010, the Swiss Constitution has specifically targeted Muslims with the prohibition of the construction of minarets, embedding anti-Islam stereotypes and violating international obligations that Switzerland is bound to respect. In Catalonia (Spain), Muslims have to pray in outdoor spaces because existing prayer rooms are too small to accommodate all the worshippers and requests to build mosques are being disputed as incompatible with the respect of Catalan traditions and culture. This goes against freedom of religion which includes the right to worship collectively in adequate places. “There is a groundswell of opinion in many European countries that Islam is alright and Muslims are ok so long as they are not too visible. This attitude is generating human rights violations and needs to be challenged,” said Marco Perolini.
Introduction
There is currently a great deal of interest in, and misunderstanding about, Australia s Muslim communities. Muslim Australians are not a homogenous group as some media reports might lead us to believe, but make up a small, culturally diverse section of Australian society.
Over a third (36 per cent) of Muslim Australians are Australian-born, while those who have arrived here as immigrants come from all over the world from Lebanon and Turkey to Bangladesh and Fiji. Some come from countries where women wear a burqa or a veil, most do not. And despite concerns expressed by some, many others argue that the vast majority of Muslim Australians see no conflict of loyalty between Islam and Australian citizenship.
This electronic brief is a guide to some of the recent research, statistics and information on Australian Muslims which highlights those issues and provides a more accurate overview of Australia s Muslim communities.
How many Muslim Australians are there?
A statistical snapshot on Muslim Australians is available from a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) fact sheet that includes unpublished 2001 Census data on birthplace, ancestry, sex and geographic distribution in Australia. The fact sheet shows that Australian residents who identify themselves as Muslim (281 578 individuals), make up approximately 1.5 per cent of the population and that 36 per cent of all Muslims in Australia were born here. Almost 50 per cent of Australian Muslims are aged 24 and under.
The HREOC report Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, includes further statistical data on Arab and Muslim Australians in its appendices. According to this report, of the 102 566 Australian-born Muslims around 30 per cent claim Lebanese ancestry, 18 per cent claim Turkish ancestry and 3 per cent claim broadly defined Arab ancestry.
Major countries of birth of Muslim Australians
Australia 36 per cent
Lebanon 10 per cent
Turkey 8 per cent
Afghanistan 3.5 per cent
Bosnia-Herzegovina 3.5 per cent
Pakistan 3.2 per cent
Indonesia 2.9 per cent
Iraq 2.8 per cent
Bangladesh 2.7 per cent
Iran 2.3 per cent
Fiji 2.0 per cent
(Source: HREOC fact sheet, ABS unpublished 2001 Census data)
Another statistical snapshot from the Conference of Australian Imams held in September 2006, includes age profiles of Australian Muslims.
Other more detailed statistical information is available from a 2004 report, Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions. This very comprehensive report was produced under the government s Living in Harmony initiative by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) and written by Professor Abdullah Saheed from the University of Melbourne in association with the Australian Multicultural Foundation.
The report, plus two others on religious and cultural diversity are available from the Australian Multicultural Foundation website. The three reports are; Religion, cultural diversity and safeguarding Australia, Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions and Constructing a multi-faith network.
Citizenship
At the time of the 2001 Census there were 16.5 million Australian citizens, 3 million of whom were born overseas. For more detail on citizenship statistics by country of origin visit the government s citizenship website.
Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions includes citizenship data. It states that the majority of Muslims in Australia (79 per cent) have obtained Australian citizenship (221 856 out of a total of 281 578).
The citizenship take-up rate is even higher for immigrants from some Middle East countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, although not all immigrants from these countries would necessarily be Muslim:
Australian citizenship rates for select birthplace groups, 2001
Country of birth
% of ethnic group who are Australian citizens
Egypt
91.6 %
Lebanon
91.3 %
Syria
86.2%
Somalia
70.1%
Iraq
68.1%
Other Middle East
75.9%
Other N Africa
70.2%
All Overseas-born people
74.0%
Source: HREOC, Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, Appendix 2, ABS unpublished 2001 Census data.
English language proficiency
The majority of Australia s Muslims are proficient in English according to Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions. Those aged 21 39 are the most proficient in English, while the least proficient group is aged over 60. Almost 50 per cent of Australian Muslims are aged 24 and under.
The three main languages spoken at home by Australian Muslims are Arabic, Turkish and English. Most Australian Muslims (87 per cent) speak English in addition to another language such as Arabic, Turkish, Persian (Farsi), Bosnian, Indonesian, Bengali, Malay, Dari, Albanian, Hindi, Kurdish, and Pashto. Approximately 11 per cent of Australian Muslims speak only English (Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, Appendix 3).
Another DIMIA publication, Statistical Focus: 2001 Classification of Countries into English Proficiency Groups, 2003, gives detailed proficiency data for immigrants by geographic regions, including the Middle East.
Religious affiliation
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Year Book 2006, between 1996 and 2001 there were just over half a million new arrivals to Australia. Although Christianity is the most commonly reported religious affiliation for the majority of immigrants, followers of other religions have shown the largest proportional increases since the 1996 Census. The number of persons affiliated with Buddhism increased by 79 per cent, with Hinduism by 42 per cent, Islam 40 per cent and Judaism 5 per cent. Of all people affiliating with Hinduism in 2001, 82 per cent were born overseas, with 34 per cent born in India and 11 per cent in Sri Lanka. Similarly, nearly three-quarters of all those affiliating with Buddhism were born overseas 26 per cent in Vietnam and 8 per cent in China. Of persons of all ages affiliating with Islam in 2001, 62 per cent were overseas born, with almost 11 per cent born in Lebanon and 9 per cent in Turkey.
Another ABS publication, Australia s most recent immigrants, by Professor Graeme Hugo, contains information on the religion of both recent and longstanding migrants. Hugo argues that one of the most dramatic changes in Australian post-war society has been the massive increase in the diversity of religions practiced in Australia. He states that each of the last five post-war censuses has seen an increase in the amount of diversity of Australian religions and that immigrants arriving in Australia during 1996 2001 were more diverse with respect to religious adherence than either the Australian-born population or migrants of longer standing in Australia, (with non-Christian groups more representative among recent arrivals). Muslims made up 8.8 per cent of recent immigrants, but only 3.2 per cent of their longstanding counterparts and more than one-fifth of Australia s 281 578 Muslims in 2001 had arrived in Australia in 1996 2001 or were children born in Australia to those immigrants.
For a background on Islam, plus lists of the major Mosques, Islamic organisations and Islamic schools in Australia see Muslim Australians: their beliefs, practices and institutions, or the Islamic schools and Mosques pages on the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils website.
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Employment
According to Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, overseas-born Muslims are more likely to be unemployed than Muslims born in Australia. Immigrants who come to Australia from the Middle East, Africa and Vietnam also have rates of unemployment much higher than other overseas-born immigrants. See High unemployment at a time of low unemployment (T. Kryger, Parliamentary Library, Research Note, 2005). This trend is mirrored internationally in Europe, for example, Muslims face high unemployment in many countries.
For Australian Muslims in the labour force, earnings are not comparable with the Australian average. According to the 2001 Census, 43 per cent of Australian Muslims make less than $200 per week compared with 27 per cent of all Australians. Only 5 per cent of Australian Muslims have income of more than $1000 per week compared with 11 per cent of all Australians. For more detail on employment and occupation status see Appendix 3 of the HREOC report Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians.
For more detail on unemployment and possible solutions see the Muslim Community Reference Group report released in September 2006 Building on social cohesion, harmony and security: an action plan by the Muslim Community Reference Group.
Muslim women
Concerns are often raised that Muslim women may be oppressed by their families and their communities. The custom of the wearing of a veil and reports of the treatment of Muslim women in some Middle East countries contribute to this. However, both within Muslim communities and the community at large, different views and opinions exist about this complex issue:
Nadia Jamal, There is more to Muslim women than a head scarf, (Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October, 2006)
John Stapleton, I m not fresh meat: Muslim women hit back, (The Australian, 30 October, 2006)
Waleed Aly, The Hilali row has fuelled a siege mentality, (The Age, 7 November, 2006)
Irfan Yusaf, Muslims must speak out or be condemned for their silence, (Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April, 2005)
Fatima Shah, There s enough room under the burqa for personal choice, (The Age, 8 January, 2004)
Randa Abdel-Fattah, Muslim women are not idiots, (The Age, 6 December, 2001).
It could be argued that Muslim women face more challenges in Australia than their male counterparts. As some of the media accounts above show, many women find themselves facing obstacles and discrimination from both their own communities and non-Muslims as they struggle to find a place in Australian society. Conflict issues for Muslim youth and young women are outlined in the communique from the Muslim Youth Summit held in December 2005.
Newly arrived Muslim immigrants and particularly Muslim women refugees can face even greater challenges, as reported in Breaking the isolation cycle: the experience of Muslim refugee women in Australia, (Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, vol. 15 no. 2, 2006).
For examples of international discussion on Muslim women and their role in Islamic society from a variety of viewpoints see:
Amina Wadud, Inside the gender jihad: women s reform and Islam, 2006 and A ishah s legacy, included in a collection of articles Islam: resistance and reform , New Internationalist, May 2002.
Ayan Hirsi Ali, Breaking through the Islamic curtain, an extract from Ali s The caged virgin: an emancipation proclamation for women and Islam, 2006.
Fatema Mernissi, Beyond the veil: male-female dynamics in a modern Muslim society, Saqi Books, UK, 2003.
Leila Ahmad, Women and Gender in Islam: the Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Yale University Press, 1992.
Nawal El Saadawi, A feminist in the Arab world, Women and Therapy, vol. 7 no. 3 4, 1995.
The Committee to Defend Women s Rights website.
The Islamic Women s Welfare Council of Victoria s media guide for general information on Islam and women.
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Discrimination
According to consultations conducted by HREOC and reported in Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians, Muslim Australians commonly experience discrimination, racial vilification, threats of violence and actual violence. Others reported a general insensitivity towards Muslim cultural practices such as a refusal to allow prayer breaks or negative comments about Muslim names or dress.
In August 2007, researchers at Edith Cowan University released preliminary results from a National Fear Survey funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) 'Safeguarding Australia' grant. One of the major findings of this survey was that fear is isolating many Muslim Australians. Where non-Muslim Australians reported generalised fears of such things as travelling in planes, Muslim Australians reported specific fears for their personal safety in public places and a mistrust of our society. See ‘Muslims feel cut off, left isolated by fear’ (C. Levett, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 August 2007).
Muslim Australians are highly likely to experience discrimination along the following three main themes:
that Muslim Australians are potential terrorists
that there is no place in Australia for Muslims
that Muslims should abandon their cultural practices and assimilate
Muslim women and children are particularly vulnerable and reported feeling afraid of attack or abuse in public places and even at home. Women reported being physically and verbally abused on a regular basis with threats such as 'I am going to rip that scarf of your head and smash your bag over the top of head, smash it in', as described in When cultures collide: planning for the public spatial needs of Muslim women in Sydney, (paper from the State of Australian Cities Conference 2005).
Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians gives detailed accounts of children experiencing bullying and intimidation at school, with many parents saying that they feel that they are forced to send their children to Islamic schools, not necessarily for the education, but for their safety. Young Muslims reported feeling a high level of fear, anger and stress: A lot of young people are struggling and parents are saying 'We have our culture, but how can we pass it on to our children without them having to go through such a huge struggle?' We are creating a very angry generation who will eventually end up with psychological repercussions. I don't believe that anyone can endure this kind of pressure and come out feeling ok. See the communique from the Muslim Youth Summit, held in December 2005, outlining other conflict issues for Muslim youth.
Back to top
The Muslim problem and the multiculturalism debate
There has been significant public debate on multiculturalism, Islam and Australian society in the past few years, particularly since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001. In Australia, concern has heightened since the Bali bombings and the attention given to the controversial sermons given in Sydney by Sheiks Taj el-Din al Hilali and Feiz Mohammed. Some commentators speak about the Muslim problem and the need for Muslim Australians to assimilate, while others argue that Australian society should continue to embrace multiculturalism. There are many examples online and in the media offering different views:
Arthur Saniotis, Embodying Ambivalence: Muslim Australians as 'Other', Journal of Australian Studies, issue 82, 2004
John Stone, The Muslim problem and what to do about it, Quadrant, vol. 50 no. 9, September 2006
Paul Stenhouse, Standing up to the Islamists, Quadrant, vol. 50 no. 9, September 2006
Robert Manne, Islamism, Islamaphobia and Australia, The Monthly, August 2006
Geraldine Doogue, Islam and the West, Sydney Papers, Winter/Spring 2005
Nahid Kabir, Muslims in Australia: the new disadvantaged, Brisbane Line, 11 November 2003
Peter Coleman, The good Australian and the lure of Islam, Quadrant, vol. 50 no. 5, May 2006
Samina Yasmeen, Dealing with Islam in Australia: after the London bombings, Sydney Papers, Winter/Spring 2005
Scott Poynting, Living with racism: the experience and reporting by Arab and Muslim Australians of discrimination, abuse and violence since 11 September 2001, report to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, April 2004
Simon Penn and Ben Spencer, Back to White Australia, says Muslim [Fears of return to White Australia policy], West Australian, 25 February 2006
Tom Calma, Responding to Cronulla: rethinking multiculturalism, HREOC Race Discrimination Commissioner, speech by Race Discrimination Commissioner at a national symposium organised by Griffith University and the University of Queensland, 21 February 2006
Initiatives and dialogue
Since the establishment of Australia s first Department of Immigration in 1945, around 6.5 million migrants and refugees have settled in the country. Source countries have shifted in that time from the UK to Northern and Southern Europe, to the Middle East and Asia. Today, 24 per cent of Australia s population is overseas-born, and 40 per cent has one or both parents born overseas. Australia s population is drawn from about 185 countries and over 200 languages are spoken at home. While some may find the concept of such cultural diversity confronting, many argue that the majority of Australians are not unduly threatened by it. See, for example, If there is prejudice, there is also tolerance, (Andrew Norton, The Australian, 22 December 2005) and Immigration and public opinion: understanding the shift, (Katherine Betts, People and Place, vol. 10 no. 4, 2002).
In September 2005, the Muslim Community Reference Group was established for a one year term to advise the government on Muslim community issues. Speeches and media releases from this group are available on the website. On 14 July 2006, the Ministerial Council on Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (MCIMA) endorsed the development and implementation of a National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security (NAP). This endorsement was followed in September 2006 by the release of the Muslim Community Reference Group report, Building on social cohesion, harmony and security: an action plan by the Muslim Community Reference Group. This report offers recommendations on ways forward and community building in such areas as education, employment and youth support. A list of government media releases, speeches and initiatives for Muslim Australians is available on the Muslim Community Reference Group website
In January 2007, the Minister for Education Science and Training, the Hon. Julie Bishop, announced that the University of Melbourne, Griffith University and the University of Western Sydney will host a National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies to advance knowledge and understanding of Islam. The federal government has committed $8 million to establish the centre as part of its National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security.
Other initiatives include a Muslim Youth Summit held in December 2005, which released a communique outlining conflict issues for Muslim youth suggesting solutions, and in September 2006, a Conference of Australian Imams was held.The idea for the conference came from members of the Muslim community and was put forward at a meeting of the Muslim Community Reference Group. The conference website includes a brief report and a communique condemning terrorism and promoting tolerance. Many other initiatives such as the Unlocking Doors: Muslim communities and police tackling racial and religious discrimination and abuse project, funded by the federal government, aim to facilitate racial tolerance and understanding at the local level.
Chapters 4 and 5 of Ismaع Listen: National consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians outline some of the many strategies that have been initiated in recent years at the state, federal and community levels to promote tolerance. The federal government s Living in Harmony initiative, for example, included the 'Towards a Better Understanding of Islam and the Muslim Community in Australia' project with the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils in 2002, and in 2004 produced the report Constructing a multi-faith network in conjunction with World Conference on Religion and Peace. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils is also involved with other religious groups such as the National Council of Churches of Australia, World Conference on Religion and Peace and the Uniting Church in establishing interfaith dialogues.
While Australians might continue to be concerned about new arrivals fitting in , there appears to be a general optimism in the community about the positive contribution that immigrants bring to Australia and the capacity for our multicultural society to accommodate these new arrivals. There is evidence that many of our immigrants view Australia as a tolerant country. An opinion poll, Living in Diversity, conducted by SBS in 2002, found that while only 40 per cent of the national population considers Australia a tolerant or very tolerant society, all five NESB samples gave much higher marks to Australia s tolerance levels, ranging from 47 per cent of Lebanese to 63 per cent of Somalis and 67 per cent of Vietnamese.
Since this survey was conducted, the world has experienced the Bali and London bombings and other incidences of violence. Many Muslim and non-Muslim Australians are now concerned that the negative consequences of these incidents may impair or delay our future development as a culturally diverse nation.
KEBEBASAN BERAGAMA
Kebebasan beragama di Malaysia adalah tertakluk kepada Perlembagaan Malaysia. Ia merupakan satu prinsip yang mana memberikan kebebasan kepada individu atau komuniti untuk menganut dan mengamalkan agama masing-masing. Kebebasan beragama ini dikira sebagai salah satu hak asasi yang fundamental kepada manusia sejagat. Di Malaysia, biarpun Islam diiktiraf sebagai agama Persekutuan menurut Perkara 3(1) Perlembagaan Persekutuan, penganut-penganut agama lain masih lagi bebas untuk menganut dan mengamalkan agama mereka. Hal kebebasan beragama ini diperuntukkan dalam "Perkara 11 Perlembagaan Persekutuan".
Agama
Agama bermaksud kepercayaan kepada tuhan, atau sesuatu kuasa yang ghaib dan sakti seperti dewa, dan juga amalan dan institusi yang berkait dengan kepercayaan tersebut.
Tempat Beribadah
Tempat-tempat ibadah turut dibina untuk mereka menjalankan aktiviti ibadah.
Namun, pembangunan pembinaan tempat-tempat ibadah ini dikawal oleh kerajaan negeri.
Kerajaan turut menyadiakan bantuan khas kewangan untuk mendirikan pusat-pusat ibadah agama lain.
Kebebasan Beragama
Kebebasan beragama ialah yang menyokong kebebasan individu atau masyarakat, untuk mengamalkan agama atau kepercayaan dalam ruang peribadi atau umum, kebebasan beragama termasuk kebebasan untuk menukar agama dan tidak mengikut mana-mana agama. dalam negara yang mengamalkan kebebasan beragama, agama-agama lain mesti diamalkan dan ia tidak menghukum atau menindas perngikut kepercayaan yang lain daripada agama rasmi.
Implikasi Konsep Kebebasan Beragama
•Hari ahad merupakan hari cuti tradisional Kristian adalah hari cuti rasmi akhir di Wilayah Persekutuan
•Pengecualian adalah negeri bahagian Kedah, Kelantan, dan Terengganu, serta Johor di mana akhir cuti jatuh pada hari jumaat dan sabtu.
•Pengecualian beberapa agama diiktiraf sabagai hari cuti rasmi, termasuk Hari Raya Puasa,Hari Raya Haji, Ulang tahun Nabi, Hari Wesak, Deepavali, Thaipusam, Krismas, dalam Sabah Sarawak, Jumaat Agung(Good Friday).
Malaysia adalah sebuah negara yang dibina dalam jaringan kepelbagaian rupa bangsa dan negara. hidup dalam sebuah negara bermasyarakat majmuk memerlukan sikap toleransi tinggi dan nilai hidup bersama yang kukuh. Inilah uniknya Malaysia sejak dulu dibina secara bersama berteraskan prinsip perlembagaan dan falsafah rukun negara. Jadi, berlandaskan kesepaduan jitu itu negara mampu memancu kejayaan yang mencetus rasa cemburu negara lain. Ini kerana walaupun kita hidup dalam masyarakat pelbagai kaum yang mengamalkan budaya hidup dan anutan agama yang berbeza, kita saling memahami dan tidak ekstrim apabila berhadapan sesuatu isu sensitif.
Pun begitu, sejak kebelakalangan ini, timbul jga kocakan krisis yang menyentuh isu sensitif khususnya agama. Namun, kita seluruh rakyat Malaysia tidak mudah melatah menghadapi sesuatu kerana mereka semakin matang dan bijak dalam bertindak .ini elemen yang mengakarumbi di kalangan rakyat Malaysia selama ini dan mesti diperkukuhkan lagi agar misi dan visi negara menjana pembangunan tidak terancat dalam krisis agama.
" Untuk membina sesuatu agama yang bersepadu, rakyat perlu mempumyai visi yang sama mengenai negara yang hendak dibentuk. Matlamat kita ialah mewujud satu bangsa yang bukan sahaja taat dan setia kepada negara, tetapi mempunyai masa depan yang sama. Ke arah mencapaiu matlamat ini, kita perlu meningkatkan usaha menyatu padukan rakyat disamping menghapuskan perasaan syak wasangka dan prejudis diantara satu sama yang lain" - Bekas Perdana Menteri, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Perkara 18 dalam Kovenan Antarabangsa PBB tentang Hak-Hak Sivil dan Politik menyataka dasar yang menafikan kebebasan seseorang untuk mengamalkan agamanya merupakan satu kezaliman rohaniah. Kebebasanberagama merupakan satu konsep perundangan yang berkaitan, tetapi tidakserupa dengan, toleransi agama,pemisahan di antara agama dan negara,atau negara sekular. Perisytiharan Hak Asasi Manusia Sejagatyang diterima oleh 50anggota Perhimpunan Agung PBB pada 10 Disember 1948, dengan lapanberkecuali, di Paris, mentakrifkan kebebasan beragama sebagai: "Setiaporang berhak kepada kebebasan berfikir, berkeyakinan dan beragama; hak-hak ini termasuk kebebasan untuk menukar agama atau kepercayaan, dankebebasan, sama ada sendirian atau dalam masyarakat bersama orang laindan dalam ruang awam atau peribadi, untuk menzahirkan agama ataukepercayaannya dalam pengajaran, amalan, penyembahan dan pengamalanagama."Kebebasan adalah sebahagian daripada hak‐hak manusia yang bersifatasasi. Semua agama, tradisi, negara, tamadun dan perlembagaanmengiktiraf kenyataan ini.
Kebebasan Beragama Di Malaysia Di Bawah Perlembagaan Persekutuan
Perlembagaan
*Perlembagaan ialah suatu kumpulan undang-undang yang tertinggi untuk menentukan bagaimana pemerintahan sebuah negara itu mesti dijalankan.
*Perlembagaan sesebuah negara menerangkan dan memperuntukkan kuasa-kuasa yang dimiliki oleh pelbagai anggota negara itu.
Perkara 11. KEBEBASAN UGAMA
1. Tiap-tiap orang berhak menganuti dan mengamalkan ugamanya dan tertakluk pada fasal (4), mengembangkannya
2. Tida sesiapapun boleh dipaksa membayar apa-apa cukai jika pendapatan dari cukai itu adalah diumtukkan khas sama ada kesemuanya atau sebahagiannya bagi maksud-maksud suatu ugama yang lain daripada ugamanya sendiri.
3. Tiap-tiap kumpulan agama adalah berhak :
a. Mengurus hal ehwal agama sendiri.
b. Menubuh dan menyenggara yayasan-yayasan bagi maksud-maksud agama atau khairat;
c. Memperoleh dan mempunyai harta serta memegang dan mentadbirkan mengikut undang-undang
4. Undang-undang Negeri dan mengenai dengan wilayah-wilayah persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, dan Putrajaya, undang-undang persekutuan boleh mengawal atau menyekat pengembangan apa-apa iktikad atau kepercayaan agama antara orang-orang yang menganuti agama islam.
5. Perkara ini tidaklah menbenarkan perbuatan yang berlawanan dengan mana-mana undang-undang am yang berhubungan dengan mana-mana ketenteraman awam, kesihtan awam atau akhlak.
maka, kerajaan-kerajaan negeri sejak 30 tahun yang lalu telah meluluskan
undang-undang untuk mengawal pengembangan agama bukan Islam kepada orang Islam, sebagaimana berikutnya:-
a)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama bukan Islam) Terengganu, 1980 (Enakmen no. 1/1980)
b)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Kelantan, 1981 (Enakmen no. 11/1981)
c)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Kedah, 1988.
d)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Melaka, 1988 (Enakmen no. 1/1988)
e)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Perak, 1988 (Enakmen no. 10/1988)
f)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Selangor, 1988 (Enakmen no. 1/1988)
g) Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Pahang, 1989 ( Enakmen no.5/1989)
h) Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Negeri Sembilan, 1991
i)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Johor, 1991 (Enakmen no.12/1991)
Perlembagaan membenarkan kebebasan beragama. Perkara 11 menyatakan "Tiap tiap orang berhak menganuti dan mengamalkan agamanya." tetapi, perkara ini juga memberi kuasa kepada kerajaan kerajaan negeri dan persekutuan untuk " mengawal dan menyekat pengembangan apa-apa doktrin agama Islam " Perkara 3 dalam pengembangan islam menyatakan bahawa " Islam adalah agama bagi persekutuan" dan " parlimen boleh melalui undang-undang membuat peruntukan bagi mengawal selia hal ehwal agama islam". perkara 160 dalam perlembagaan mentakrifkan orang melayu bagi seseorang yang menganuti agama islam. Mahkamah Sivil biasanya menyerah kuasa kepada mahkamah syariah bagi kes-kes berkaitan keluar daripada agama islam, dan mahkamah syariah pula enggan membenarkan sesiapa keluar daripada agama islam. Undang-undang dan dasar lain mengenakan beberapa sekatan terhadap kebebasan beragama.
Perkara 3: Agama Bagi Persekutuan
1.Agama Islam adalah agama persekutuan, tetapi agama-agama lain boleh diamalkan dengan aman dan damai di mana-mana bahagian persekutuan.
2.Dalam tiap-tiap negeri melainkan negeri-negeri yang tidak mempunyai Raja, kedudukan Raja sebagai ketua agama Islam.
3.Perlembagaan-perlembagaan bagi negeri-negeri Melaka, pulau pinang,sabah dan sarawak hendaklah masing-masing membuat peruntukan bagi memberi Yang di-pertuan Negeri kedudukan sebagai ketua Agama Islam dalam negeri itu.
Agama Rasmi Di Malaysia
1.Pada 29 September 2001, perdana menteri ketika itu, Tun Dr.Mahathir Mohamad menyatakan bahawa negara Malaysia adalah Negara Islam.
2.Perkara 8 menjelaskan bahawa semua orang adalah sama rata di sisi undang-undang dan berhak mendapat perlindungan yang sama tanpa tiada perbezaan agama, kaum, keturunan dan sebagainya.
3.Perkara 150 (6A), jelas memelihara hal ehwal Islam walaupun dalam keadaan darurat yang memberi kuasa kepada pihak eksekutif untuk membuat undang-undang.
4.Peranan Yang di-pertuan Agong juga dimasukkan dalam ruang lingkup Islam dalam perlembagaan
Perkara 11 : Kebebasan Beragama
1.Perkara 11 menerangkan mengenai kebebasan beragama dalam peruntukan perlembagaan Malaysia.
2.Seluruh rakyat berhak memilih agama yang ingin dianuti tetapi untuk kaum Melayu, mereka wajib menganut agama Islam.
3.Terdapat beberapa klausa dalam perlembagaan yang menerangkan konsep sebenar kebebasan beragama yang dibenarkan di negara ini.
4.Memberi kuasa kepada kerajaan negeri atau kerajaan persekutuan untuk menggubal undang-undang bagi mengawal atau menyekat penganut agama bukan Islam menyebarkan atau mengembangkan ajaran atau kepercayaan mereka kepada orang-orang Islam.
5.Kebebasan yang diberikan untuk mengamalkan agama masing-masing ini juga tidaklah sehingga membenarkan apa-apa perbuatan yang bertentangan dengan undang-undang, mendatangkan masalah kepada kesihatan awam dan akhlak individu yang lain.
6.Perkara ini diperuntukkan dalam perkara 11 (5) perlembagaan.
7.Perlembagaan Malaysia memperuntukkan kebebasan beragama dalam persekutuan.
8.Seluruh rakyat mempunyai hak untuk beragama dan memilih agama sendiri tetapi bagi kaum Melayu,mereka wajib menganut agama Islam.
9.Walaupun konsep kebebasan beragama di amalkan tetapi terdapat pengecualian tertentu terhadap kebebasan tersebut.
10.Penyebaran agama bukan Islam di negara dihalang dan tidak dibenarkan sama sekali dan sesiapa yang terlibat menyebarkan agama bukan Islam dan disabit kesalahan akan di denda di bawah akta-akta yang telah ditetapkan.
Status Kebebasan Beragama
1.Perkara 11 menjelaskan bahawa setiap orang berhak menganuti dan mengamalkan agama masing-masing serta menguruskan hal ehwal agamanya sendiri.
2.Kerajaan secara umumnya menyokong agama Islam sebagai agama rasmi negara.
3.Dari segi pendidikan, kanak-kanak Islam diberi pendidikan agama yang sesuai degan kurikulum.
4.Kanak- kanak penganut lain juga tiada sekatan diberikan dalam pendidikan agama.
PERBANDINGAN ANTARA PERLEMBAGAAN MALAYSIA DAN
PERUNDANGAN AGAMA ISLAM
*ISLAM
“ Sesiapa yang menukar agamanya, maka bunuhlah ia”.
(Riwayat Bukhari).
*PERLEMBAGAAN
Perkara 11 (1) perlembagaan persekutuan telah meyatakan setiap individu itu bebas untuk menganut
apa-apa agama.
PENYEBARAN DAKWAH MELALUI MEDIA CETAK DAN MEDIA ELEKTRONIK
*Islam tidak menghalang penganutnya untuk berkarya dan melahirkan ekspresi diri mereka.
*Tetapi, Islam melarang penganutnya untuk menyentuh isu-isu atau perkara-perkara yang sensitif dengan Islam dan agama lain.
*Undang- undang Malaysia melarang sebarang ajaran daripada agama kristian mahupun Hindu kepada mereka yang beragama Islam.
*Namun undang-undang Malaysia tidak melarang ajaran Islam dari menular kepada mereka yang bukan beragama Islam.
*Ketidakadilan yang seringkali disebut ini, seringkali digunakan oleh mereka yang bukan beragama Islam bagi menghentam undang-undang Malaysia yang memberikan kelebihan kepada agama Islam.
KESIMPULAN
*Status kebebasan beragama di Malaysia adalah merupakan salah satu masalah kontroversi.
*Dalam beberapa kali, ada sejumlah isu-isu dan peristiwa yang telah menguji hubungan antara bangsa-bangsa yang berbeza di Malaysia.
*Di Sabah dan Sarawak, mereka tiada isu dalam hubungan antara kaum.
*Masing-masing mempraktiskan kepercayaan masing-masing dan pada masa yang sama menghormati kepercayaan pihak lain.
*Akan tetapi , kekebalan undang-undang yang terdapat dalam perlembagaan merupakan benteng dalam menangani isu-isu kebebasan beragama di Malaysia dalam mewujudkan suasana yang aman dan harmoni.
Agama
Agama bermaksud kepercayaan kepada tuhan, atau sesuatu kuasa yang ghaib dan sakti seperti dewa, dan juga amalan dan institusi yang berkait dengan kepercayaan tersebut.
Tempat Beribadah
Tempat-tempat ibadah turut dibina untuk mereka menjalankan aktiviti ibadah.
Namun, pembangunan pembinaan tempat-tempat ibadah ini dikawal oleh kerajaan negeri.
Kerajaan turut menyadiakan bantuan khas kewangan untuk mendirikan pusat-pusat ibadah agama lain.
Kebebasan Beragama
Kebebasan beragama ialah yang menyokong kebebasan individu atau masyarakat, untuk mengamalkan agama atau kepercayaan dalam ruang peribadi atau umum, kebebasan beragama termasuk kebebasan untuk menukar agama dan tidak mengikut mana-mana agama. dalam negara yang mengamalkan kebebasan beragama, agama-agama lain mesti diamalkan dan ia tidak menghukum atau menindas perngikut kepercayaan yang lain daripada agama rasmi.
Implikasi Konsep Kebebasan Beragama
•Hari ahad merupakan hari cuti tradisional Kristian adalah hari cuti rasmi akhir di Wilayah Persekutuan
•Pengecualian adalah negeri bahagian Kedah, Kelantan, dan Terengganu, serta Johor di mana akhir cuti jatuh pada hari jumaat dan sabtu.
•Pengecualian beberapa agama diiktiraf sabagai hari cuti rasmi, termasuk Hari Raya Puasa,Hari Raya Haji, Ulang tahun Nabi, Hari Wesak, Deepavali, Thaipusam, Krismas, dalam Sabah Sarawak, Jumaat Agung(Good Friday).
Malaysia adalah sebuah negara yang dibina dalam jaringan kepelbagaian rupa bangsa dan negara. hidup dalam sebuah negara bermasyarakat majmuk memerlukan sikap toleransi tinggi dan nilai hidup bersama yang kukuh. Inilah uniknya Malaysia sejak dulu dibina secara bersama berteraskan prinsip perlembagaan dan falsafah rukun negara. Jadi, berlandaskan kesepaduan jitu itu negara mampu memancu kejayaan yang mencetus rasa cemburu negara lain. Ini kerana walaupun kita hidup dalam masyarakat pelbagai kaum yang mengamalkan budaya hidup dan anutan agama yang berbeza, kita saling memahami dan tidak ekstrim apabila berhadapan sesuatu isu sensitif.
Pun begitu, sejak kebelakalangan ini, timbul jga kocakan krisis yang menyentuh isu sensitif khususnya agama. Namun, kita seluruh rakyat Malaysia tidak mudah melatah menghadapi sesuatu kerana mereka semakin matang dan bijak dalam bertindak .ini elemen yang mengakarumbi di kalangan rakyat Malaysia selama ini dan mesti diperkukuhkan lagi agar misi dan visi negara menjana pembangunan tidak terancat dalam krisis agama.
" Untuk membina sesuatu agama yang bersepadu, rakyat perlu mempumyai visi yang sama mengenai negara yang hendak dibentuk. Matlamat kita ialah mewujud satu bangsa yang bukan sahaja taat dan setia kepada negara, tetapi mempunyai masa depan yang sama. Ke arah mencapaiu matlamat ini, kita perlu meningkatkan usaha menyatu padukan rakyat disamping menghapuskan perasaan syak wasangka dan prejudis diantara satu sama yang lain" - Bekas Perdana Menteri, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Perkara 18 dalam Kovenan Antarabangsa PBB tentang Hak-Hak Sivil dan Politik menyataka dasar yang menafikan kebebasan seseorang untuk mengamalkan agamanya merupakan satu kezaliman rohaniah. Kebebasanberagama merupakan satu konsep perundangan yang berkaitan, tetapi tidakserupa dengan, toleransi agama,pemisahan di antara agama dan negara,atau negara sekular. Perisytiharan Hak Asasi Manusia Sejagatyang diterima oleh 50anggota Perhimpunan Agung PBB pada 10 Disember 1948, dengan lapanberkecuali, di Paris, mentakrifkan kebebasan beragama sebagai: "Setiaporang berhak kepada kebebasan berfikir, berkeyakinan dan beragama; hak-hak ini termasuk kebebasan untuk menukar agama atau kepercayaan, dankebebasan, sama ada sendirian atau dalam masyarakat bersama orang laindan dalam ruang awam atau peribadi, untuk menzahirkan agama ataukepercayaannya dalam pengajaran, amalan, penyembahan dan pengamalanagama."Kebebasan adalah sebahagian daripada hak‐hak manusia yang bersifatasasi. Semua agama, tradisi, negara, tamadun dan perlembagaanmengiktiraf kenyataan ini.
Kebebasan Beragama Di Malaysia Di Bawah Perlembagaan Persekutuan
Perlembagaan
*Perlembagaan ialah suatu kumpulan undang-undang yang tertinggi untuk menentukan bagaimana pemerintahan sebuah negara itu mesti dijalankan.
*Perlembagaan sesebuah negara menerangkan dan memperuntukkan kuasa-kuasa yang dimiliki oleh pelbagai anggota negara itu.
Perkara 11. KEBEBASAN UGAMA
1. Tiap-tiap orang berhak menganuti dan mengamalkan ugamanya dan tertakluk pada fasal (4), mengembangkannya
2. Tida sesiapapun boleh dipaksa membayar apa-apa cukai jika pendapatan dari cukai itu adalah diumtukkan khas sama ada kesemuanya atau sebahagiannya bagi maksud-maksud suatu ugama yang lain daripada ugamanya sendiri.
3. Tiap-tiap kumpulan agama adalah berhak :
a. Mengurus hal ehwal agama sendiri.
b. Menubuh dan menyenggara yayasan-yayasan bagi maksud-maksud agama atau khairat;
c. Memperoleh dan mempunyai harta serta memegang dan mentadbirkan mengikut undang-undang
4. Undang-undang Negeri dan mengenai dengan wilayah-wilayah persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, dan Putrajaya, undang-undang persekutuan boleh mengawal atau menyekat pengembangan apa-apa iktikad atau kepercayaan agama antara orang-orang yang menganuti agama islam.
5. Perkara ini tidaklah menbenarkan perbuatan yang berlawanan dengan mana-mana undang-undang am yang berhubungan dengan mana-mana ketenteraman awam, kesihtan awam atau akhlak.
maka, kerajaan-kerajaan negeri sejak 30 tahun yang lalu telah meluluskan
undang-undang untuk mengawal pengembangan agama bukan Islam kepada orang Islam, sebagaimana berikutnya:-
a)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama bukan Islam) Terengganu, 1980 (Enakmen no. 1/1980)
b)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Kelantan, 1981 (Enakmen no. 11/1981)
c)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Kedah, 1988.
d)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Melaka, 1988 (Enakmen no. 1/1988)
e)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Perak, 1988 (Enakmen no. 10/1988)
f)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Selangor, 1988 (Enakmen no. 1/1988)
g) Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Pahang, 1989 ( Enakmen no.5/1989)
h) Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Negeri Sembilan, 1991
i)Enakmen kawalan dan sekatan (pengembangan agama
bukan Islam) Johor, 1991 (Enakmen no.12/1991)
Perlembagaan membenarkan kebebasan beragama. Perkara 11 menyatakan "Tiap tiap orang berhak menganuti dan mengamalkan agamanya." tetapi, perkara ini juga memberi kuasa kepada kerajaan kerajaan negeri dan persekutuan untuk " mengawal dan menyekat pengembangan apa-apa doktrin agama Islam " Perkara 3 dalam pengembangan islam menyatakan bahawa " Islam adalah agama bagi persekutuan" dan " parlimen boleh melalui undang-undang membuat peruntukan bagi mengawal selia hal ehwal agama islam". perkara 160 dalam perlembagaan mentakrifkan orang melayu bagi seseorang yang menganuti agama islam. Mahkamah Sivil biasanya menyerah kuasa kepada mahkamah syariah bagi kes-kes berkaitan keluar daripada agama islam, dan mahkamah syariah pula enggan membenarkan sesiapa keluar daripada agama islam. Undang-undang dan dasar lain mengenakan beberapa sekatan terhadap kebebasan beragama.
Perkara 3: Agama Bagi Persekutuan
1.Agama Islam adalah agama persekutuan, tetapi agama-agama lain boleh diamalkan dengan aman dan damai di mana-mana bahagian persekutuan.
2.Dalam tiap-tiap negeri melainkan negeri-negeri yang tidak mempunyai Raja, kedudukan Raja sebagai ketua agama Islam.
3.Perlembagaan-perlembagaan bagi negeri-negeri Melaka, pulau pinang,sabah dan sarawak hendaklah masing-masing membuat peruntukan bagi memberi Yang di-pertuan Negeri kedudukan sebagai ketua Agama Islam dalam negeri itu.
Agama Rasmi Di Malaysia
1.Pada 29 September 2001, perdana menteri ketika itu, Tun Dr.Mahathir Mohamad menyatakan bahawa negara Malaysia adalah Negara Islam.
2.Perkara 8 menjelaskan bahawa semua orang adalah sama rata di sisi undang-undang dan berhak mendapat perlindungan yang sama tanpa tiada perbezaan agama, kaum, keturunan dan sebagainya.
3.Perkara 150 (6A), jelas memelihara hal ehwal Islam walaupun dalam keadaan darurat yang memberi kuasa kepada pihak eksekutif untuk membuat undang-undang.
4.Peranan Yang di-pertuan Agong juga dimasukkan dalam ruang lingkup Islam dalam perlembagaan
Perkara 11 : Kebebasan Beragama
1.Perkara 11 menerangkan mengenai kebebasan beragama dalam peruntukan perlembagaan Malaysia.
2.Seluruh rakyat berhak memilih agama yang ingin dianuti tetapi untuk kaum Melayu, mereka wajib menganut agama Islam.
3.Terdapat beberapa klausa dalam perlembagaan yang menerangkan konsep sebenar kebebasan beragama yang dibenarkan di negara ini.
4.Memberi kuasa kepada kerajaan negeri atau kerajaan persekutuan untuk menggubal undang-undang bagi mengawal atau menyekat penganut agama bukan Islam menyebarkan atau mengembangkan ajaran atau kepercayaan mereka kepada orang-orang Islam.
5.Kebebasan yang diberikan untuk mengamalkan agama masing-masing ini juga tidaklah sehingga membenarkan apa-apa perbuatan yang bertentangan dengan undang-undang, mendatangkan masalah kepada kesihatan awam dan akhlak individu yang lain.
6.Perkara ini diperuntukkan dalam perkara 11 (5) perlembagaan.
7.Perlembagaan Malaysia memperuntukkan kebebasan beragama dalam persekutuan.
8.Seluruh rakyat mempunyai hak untuk beragama dan memilih agama sendiri tetapi bagi kaum Melayu,mereka wajib menganut agama Islam.
9.Walaupun konsep kebebasan beragama di amalkan tetapi terdapat pengecualian tertentu terhadap kebebasan tersebut.
10.Penyebaran agama bukan Islam di negara dihalang dan tidak dibenarkan sama sekali dan sesiapa yang terlibat menyebarkan agama bukan Islam dan disabit kesalahan akan di denda di bawah akta-akta yang telah ditetapkan.
Status Kebebasan Beragama
1.Perkara 11 menjelaskan bahawa setiap orang berhak menganuti dan mengamalkan agama masing-masing serta menguruskan hal ehwal agamanya sendiri.
2.Kerajaan secara umumnya menyokong agama Islam sebagai agama rasmi negara.
3.Dari segi pendidikan, kanak-kanak Islam diberi pendidikan agama yang sesuai degan kurikulum.
4.Kanak- kanak penganut lain juga tiada sekatan diberikan dalam pendidikan agama.
PERBANDINGAN ANTARA PERLEMBAGAAN MALAYSIA DAN
PERUNDANGAN AGAMA ISLAM
*ISLAM
“ Sesiapa yang menukar agamanya, maka bunuhlah ia”.
(Riwayat Bukhari).
*PERLEMBAGAAN
Perkara 11 (1) perlembagaan persekutuan telah meyatakan setiap individu itu bebas untuk menganut
apa-apa agama.
PENYEBARAN DAKWAH MELALUI MEDIA CETAK DAN MEDIA ELEKTRONIK
*Islam tidak menghalang penganutnya untuk berkarya dan melahirkan ekspresi diri mereka.
*Tetapi, Islam melarang penganutnya untuk menyentuh isu-isu atau perkara-perkara yang sensitif dengan Islam dan agama lain.
*Undang- undang Malaysia melarang sebarang ajaran daripada agama kristian mahupun Hindu kepada mereka yang beragama Islam.
*Namun undang-undang Malaysia tidak melarang ajaran Islam dari menular kepada mereka yang bukan beragama Islam.
*Ketidakadilan yang seringkali disebut ini, seringkali digunakan oleh mereka yang bukan beragama Islam bagi menghentam undang-undang Malaysia yang memberikan kelebihan kepada agama Islam.
KESIMPULAN
*Status kebebasan beragama di Malaysia adalah merupakan salah satu masalah kontroversi.
*Dalam beberapa kali, ada sejumlah isu-isu dan peristiwa yang telah menguji hubungan antara bangsa-bangsa yang berbeza di Malaysia.
*Di Sabah dan Sarawak, mereka tiada isu dalam hubungan antara kaum.
*Masing-masing mempraktiskan kepercayaan masing-masing dan pada masa yang sama menghormati kepercayaan pihak lain.
*Akan tetapi , kekebalan undang-undang yang terdapat dalam perlembagaan merupakan benteng dalam menangani isu-isu kebebasan beragama di Malaysia dalam mewujudkan suasana yang aman dan harmoni.
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