Afghanistan Female Footballers Fight For Seat At FIFA Table
New Age Islam News Bureau
29 December 2024
• Afghanistan Female Footballers Fight For Seat At FIFA Table
• Cambodia Pardons Jailed Surrogate Philippine Mothers
• Asma Al-Assad, a British Passport Holder, Barred From UK To Seek Cancer Treatment
• Israeli Forces ‘Sexually Assaulted, Beat And Insulted Women’ During Gaza Hospital Raid
• Missing Girl's Skeletal Remains Identified as Mary Sue Fink, Nearly 60 Years After Her Death
• Women In Diaspora Contribute To Iran’s Charitable School Construction
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/afghanistan-female-footballers-fifa/d/134177
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Afghanistan Female Footballers Fight For Seat At FIFA Table
Shabnam and Mariam Ruhin are trying to provide opportunities in football to Afghan women
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Thomas Klein
Dec 29, 2024
Mariam and Shabnam Ruhin carefully prepare the football pitch in a district of Hamburg, in northern Germany. They have balls, small cones and colored jerseys with them and training is due to start in a few minutes. The two sisters founded the "Spielmacherinnen" ("playmakers") project in 2021 and use it to support young girls who need help at school or are interested in playing football.
"When we were children, we were interested in football," Shabnam recalled in an interview with DW. However, it was difficult to find a team to join, the 33-year-old added. "That's why we try to give girls the opportunity to play football." And for the sisters, it's about more than just recreation.
Through sport, they want to help the children, who mostly come from socially disadvantaged areas in Hamburg, to become more self-confident and independent. They also support young people with small workshops to help them find jobs and internships.
Shabnam and Mariam were both born in Hamburg after their parents fled to Germany from Afghanistan in the 1990s. The two decided to play football at an early age. "For me, football is a feeling of freedom," said Shabnam.
Their combination of talent and enthusiasm attracted the attention of the small Hamburg football club Einigkeit Wilhelmsburg and they were soon spotted by scouts from the Afghan national football team in 2011. A short time later, a dream came true for the sisters when they were allowed to take to the turf for their parents' homeland for the first time.
"It was something very special to be able to represent our country," said Mariam. And her sister adds: "I am very proud of it. Especially because we played for a country where women's football was not common. That felt very good."
Despite their joy at reaching the international stage, dark clouds were never too far away. "Not everyone was happy and accepted that we played football. On social media, many people wrote bad things about us and said that women were not allowed to play football," Shabnam said.
"Back then, I felt like I wasn't doing the right thing. But now that I've grown up, I know that as women we have the right to play football and pursue our dreams."
Those women who play sport become symbols of resistance as well as role models in Afghanistan, as they have to swim against the prevailing societal expectations. This became even more acute when the sisters joined former captain turned advocate Khalida Popal in exposing an abuse scandal in Afghan football in 2018.
"Bad things happened in Afghanistan because girls were abused by coaches and members of the football association," Shabnam told DW. Among others, the then AFF president KeramuddinKeram was accused of raping female players. After much hesitation, the world football association FIFA banned Keram for life. The Ruhin sisters also took action and resigned from the national team.
"We said that as women we cannot tolerate this. So we left the national team," said Shabnam. "We wanted to send a message that you cannot do this to an Afghan woman."
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, conditions for women in Afghanistan have continued to deteriorate. Female athletes in particular live in fear for their lives and are often persecuted.
"I saw the wild Taliban everywhere," Afghanistan football international Shamsia Amiri told German public broadcaster ZDF in 2023. "They beat people, shoot around them, spread fear and terror."
Most international players have fled abroad, with the help of Popal and the Ruhin sisters. The majority of them now live in exile in Australia and have been playing for the Melbourne Victory FC AWT, also known as the "Afghan Women's Team," in the Australian league system since 2022.
Together with Popal, the Ruhin sisters founded the organization Girl Power in 2014 to support young women. Since 2021, they have also used their association to help former teammates. "We try to build bridges and create a network to support each other," said Mariam.
The women have been demanding that FIFA recognize the Afghan women's national football team for several years. But the governors of world football have remained silent.
"That is our biggest problem. We are trying to convince the association to recognize the national team," said Shabnam. "FIFA must help us."
The national team can only play international matches after getting this recognition. Without it, the players are increasingly pushed into the background. To counteract this, Shabnam and Mariam have repeatedly attempted to move the spotlight back on those players.
"My voice represents the girls in Afghanistan. As long as I remain silent, the women will not be heard either," said Mariam. "We want to show the Taliban that they have not succeeded in suppressing us, that we still play football and are still a community. The situation in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly difficult. Women are losing more and more rights and are becoming invisible," she said.
Her sister still believes in a chance of a positive future. "I hope that girls in Afghanistan will one day get their rights. I hope that they have the same rights that we have here in Germany. That they can make decisions for themselves, that they can do sports, go to school and leave the house," she said, before addressing the women and girls in Afghanistan directly.
Source: Www.Dw.Com
https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-female-footballers-fight-for-seat-at-fifa-table/a-71171323
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Cambodia Pardons Jailed Surrogate Philippine Mothers
Cambodia has pardoned 13 Filipino women who were jailed over a scheme to become surrogate mothers for foreigners. (AAP: April Fonti)
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Dec 29, 2024
MANILA: Cambodia has pardoned and sent home 13 Philippine women who were jailed over a scheme to become surrogate mothers, an outlawed practice, the Philippine government said on Sunday.
They were among 24 foreign women detained by Cambodian police in September and convicted and sentenced to four years in prison on December 2 for attempted cross-border human trafficking.
The women "and three of their babies" were sent home to Manila early Sunday and taken to a government shelter for trafficking victims, the social welfare department said in a statement."All 13 (women) departed Phnom Penh and arrived safely in Manila following the grant of royal pardon by His Majesty Preah Bat SamdechPreahBoromneath Norodom Sihamoni," the Philippine foreign ministry said in a separate statement.
The Cambodian court ruling had said it had strong evidence showing that the 13 had "the intention... to have babies to sell to a third person in exchange for money, which is an act of human trafficking".
The Philippine foreign department statement warned "surrogacy is banned in Cambodia and any violation thereof is punishable under Cambodian laws".
The social welfare ministry statement said "there is no law prohibiting or allowing surrogacy in the Philippines, providing a legal grey area prone to abuse".
In 2016, Cambodia issued a snap ban on commercial surrogacy after neighbouring Thailand pulled the plug on the trade the previous year, putting an abrupt end to a thriving industry for hopeful parents, many from Australia and the United States.
But demand for commercial surrogacy remains high after China eased its one-child policy and agencies in Cambodia continue to offer the service.
Sources in the kingdom have previously told AFP that couples, mostly from China, are willing to pay between $40,000 to $100,000 to surrogacy agents to find a Cambodian woman who can carry their child.
Source: Times Of India.Com
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Asma Al-Assad, a British Passport Holder, Barred From UK To Seek Cancer Treatment
Arab News
December 29, 2024
LONDON: Asma Al-Assad is effectively barred from returning to the UK after her British passport expired, The Times newspaper reported.
The wife of former Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad will not be able to return to her birthplace, London, despite reports that she is critically ill with leukemia.
The 49-year-old has been given a 50-50 chance of surviving the illness, according to sources.
The news comes as her father, FawazAkhras, a renowned cardiologist, left his work at the privately run Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, west London, to care for his daughter in Moscow, where the Assad family was granted asylum this month.
Asma Assad’s British passport expired in September 2020, and it is unclear whether UK ministers have blocked renewal or if the former first lady simply allowed the document’s validity to lapse.
Yvette Cooper, the UK home secretary, said that Assad will be prevented from entering the UK to seek treatment.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that the former investment banker is “not welcome” in Britain.
Asma Assad became Syria’s first lady in 2000 after marrying the country’s new president.
Leaked emails show that she ordered luxury goods in London and Paris during the civil war in her country, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
She played a key role in supporting her husband’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Asma Assad reportedly fled to Moscow weeks before her husband this month during a lighting offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
Her three children, Hafez, 23, Zein, 21, and Karim, 19, are also in Moscow, where the family own luxury properties.
Sources told The Telegraph last week that the former first lady was being kept in isolation during medical treatment.
“Asma is dying. She can’t be in the same room as anyone,” one source said.
Her father and his wife, Sahar, 75, were placed under US sanctions along with Asma’s younger brothers in 2020, although none of her family has been blacklisted by the UK.
Source: Www.arabnews.Com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2584638/middle-east
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Israeli forces ‘sexually assaulted, beat and insulted women’ during Gaza hospital raid
29 December 2024
Israeli forces sexually assaulted Palestinian women and executed unarmed civilians during the Friday raid on Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, witnesses have said in a new report.
The violence against women included stripping off their clothes, touching them under the threat of violence, beating them and hurling sexual insults at them.
According to the report, dozens of women and girls detained during the raid received degrading abuse that amounts to sexual violence.
Recalling a different incident, an unnamed woman said: “A soldier forced a nurse to take off her trousers, then placed his hand on her. When she tried to resist, he struck her hard across the face, causing her nose to bleed.”
A hospital staff member told the monitor: “The soldiers ordered us to remove our hijabs, but we refused. They then turned to the girls under 20 years old and demanded they remove their hijabs, but they also refused.
"The soldiers decided to punish us by taking two women at a time and forcing them to lift their clothes and lower their trousers under threats and coercion.”
According to the Euro-Mediterranean monitor, eyewitnesses described other crimes by Israeli forces, such as executing patients and unarmed detainees, as well as detonating booby-trapped robots near homes.
When he was detained alongside around 300 other men, they were taken to an open area near a cemetery and forced to strip down to their underwear for hours despite the cold.
“When a child with a psychological disorder stepped out, he ran towards an Israeli tank. I called out to him, but he didn’t respond. They shot him dead immediately,” he recalled.
“There was an armoured personnel carrier and a tank in the area. A soldier ordered us to gather at a specific spot. Among us were five injured individuals who were forced to walk in front of the tank. Suddenly, they were shot dead without any questioning,” he added.
The incursion was preceded by nearly three months of a blockade preventing the entry of aid, medicine and food, as well as heavy bombardment in the hospital’s complex and vicinity.
During the raid, Israeli forces burnt different departments, killing patients and medical workers inside, according to health officials.
'Among us were five injured individuals who were forced to walk in front of the tank. Suddenly, they were shot dead without any questioning'
It is part of the Israeli offensive on northern Gaza, launched on 5 October, which followed the presentation of a controversial proposal named the "Generals' Plan" to the Israeli government.
The plan calls for ethnically cleansing areas north of the "Netzarim corridor", which divides Gaza in two, so Israel would be able to establish a "closed military zone".
“The occupation is delivering the final blow to the remaining healthcare system in northern Gaza today,” the health ministry said on Friday, following the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Source: Www.Middleeasteye.Net
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Missing Girl's Skeletal Remains Identified mas Mary Sue Fink, Nearly 60 Years After Her Death
Dec 29, 2024
A missing girl's skeletal remains, found in Hawaii in June 2014, have finally been identified, thanks to advanced DNA testing after a decade. According to a New York Post report, the girl has been identified as Mary Sue Fink, who was born on April 29, 1959, and was between 2 and 6 years old when she died.
The skeletal remains of Mary Sue Fink, a girl estimated to have been between 2 and 6 years old when she died, were discovered in Hawaii in June 2014, nearly 60 years after her death, as reported by KHON Honolulu.
In August 2024, Othram Labs received Fink’s remains from Honolulu, Hawaii. Scientists built a DNA profile and identified a potential relative, leading to a match. After this relative provided a DNA sample, comparison confirmed the remains belonged to Fink. She was born on April 29, 1959, and would have turned 65 years old today, according to the New York Post report.
“That one piece of the puzzle that was sent in is responsible in part for the resolution and identification of this Jane Doe baby,” said Dr Robert Mann, Professor of Anatomy & Pathology at the University of Hawaii Medical School, as quoted by the New York Post. He added, “What could not be done 50 years ago was being done 30 years ago, and what wasn’t being done 30 years ago is being done now. And so this really shows us that a cold case does not have to remain cold forever.”
This case was solved through Othram’s Project 525, which aims to resolve 525 missing juvenile cases. Othram said its forensic-grade genome sequencing technology, used in Fink's case, has solved more forensic genetic genealogy cases than any other method.
This is the second case in Hawaii using Othram’s technology to publicly identify remains. The lab noted its technology has helped solve numerous cases nationally and internationally. According to Othram, roughly a quarter of the 24,400 active missing persons cases in the national system are minors.
Source: Times Of India.Com
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshowprint/116758698.cms
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Women in diaspora contribute to Iran’s charitable school construction
Dec 28, 2024
Hashemi was speaking with IRNA on Saturday on the sidelines of the first national seminar on school construction, which was held in the city of Torbat-e Heidariyeh, Razavi Khorasan Province in northeast Iran.
That assembly held a seminar in the UAE two years ago, which was attended by Iranian donors residing in different countries including Germany and Italy, Hashemi explained.
She said that some of the Iranian donors participate in charitable school construction inside Iran without coming to the country.
Source: En.Irna.Ir
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/afghanistan-female-footballers-fifa/d/134177