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| Africa Horn |
| South Sudan arrests 20 women for wearing pants, short skirts |
| 2008-10-08 |
| A Southern Sudan Cabinet minister said on Tuesday that more than 20 women were arrested and beaten for allegedly dressing inappropriately under a new edict against "bad behavior." "Between 20 and 30 girls were picked up from different points, hurled into police lorries, arrested and taken to the police station and some of them were beaten," said Mary Kiden Kimbo, the gender, social welfare and religious affairs minister in the semi-autonomous southern government. "This is absolutely not acceptable: it is not the job of police to judge what is and what is not a correct way to dress in such a manner of blanket punishment," she said. The police crackdown on young women wearing trousers or short skirts follows an order from the commissioner of Juba county, the capital of Southern Sudan. Most of the women, said to be in their late teens and 20s, were rounded up as they left Catholic mass in Juba on Sunday, Kimbo said. Others were picked up in market places. The order bans "all bad behaviors, activities and imported illicit cultures," according to a copy seen by AFP, signed by Juba's commissioner, Albert Pitia Redantore. Inappropriate behavior may include wearing tight trousers, short skirts or skimpy tops considered "Western" attire. The order, dated October 2, said that it aimed to "preserve the cultural values, dignity and achievements of the people of southern Sudan, checking out the intrusion of foreign cultures into our societies, for the sake of bringing up [a] good generation." Those deemed in contravention of the order are liable to three months imprisonment. Those convicted for a second time face another three-month sentence and a fine of 600 Sudanese pounds ($300). Traditional values are important in largely Christian and animist Southern Sudan, which is recovering from decades of war against the mainly Muslim north. It was the imposition of Sharia law by the north that helped spark the southern rebellion, which was rooted in complaints of marginalization. |
| Posted by:Fred |