Judge spares journalist flogging

A Quran

A woman journalist who was facing the possibility of a flogging for wearing pants – and who had invited her friends to be in attendance for the Islamic punishment – has been spared the physical penalty, but has been ordered to pay a fine of about $200, according to reports.

The Daily Mail reported Lubna Hussein was found guilty of indecency for wearing trousers in public in Sudan and was ordered by a judge to pay a fine. She has responded by refusing to pay, which raises the possibility she will be jailed instead, the report said.

WND reported earlier when Hussein posted an invitation to her friends and supporters to attend her flogging, a penalty that routinely is applied in Sudan for infractions of such Islamic rules.

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The Middle East Media Research Institute had reported Hussein's invitation and the reasons for it. WND also has reported on the situation in which Christian women are being arrested, convicted and punished for wearing trousers.

She could have been given up to 40 lashes but instead was fined 500 Sudanese pounds, the Daily Mail said today.

While Sudanese law follows Islam, the London-based Amnesty International had asked Sudan to withdraw the count against Hussein and condemned the law as state-authorized torture, the report said.

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Yasser Arman, of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, told the newspaper Hussein "is not guilty," despite her judicial verdict.

She was among about a dozen women arrested in July at a Khartoum café, and 10 of the defendants were fined and flogged two days later. Hussein challenged the arrest.

The MEMRI report said Hussein hopes her situation "will shed light on Clause 152 of Sudan's 1991 criminal law."

"This is not a matter of a personal attack against me as a journalist, nor of preserving my personal dignity. Far from it … The issue has taken on a different character, [and I call] on the public to be [my] witness and [to judge for themselves whether this incident] is a disgrace for me or for the public order police. You will decide after hearing the charges and the prosecution witnesses, rather than [only] my side of the story," said Hussein's Internet invitation to the "flogging," according to MEMRI.

"My case is the same as that of 10 young women flogged that day, as well as of dozens, hundreds, and maybe thousands others flogged in the public order courts because of their dress, day after day, month after month, and year after year," she wrote. "They emerge from there dejected, because society does not believe them – indeed, it will never believe that a girl can be flogged only because of the way she dresses.

"The result [of this punishment] is [society's] death sentence against the girl's family; for her parents it means an attack of diabetes, hypertension, or heart failure. [Just think of] the girl's emotional state, and the disgrace that will follow her for the rest of her life – and all because [she wore] trousers. The number [of victims] will keep growing, because society refuses to believe that a girl or woman can be flogged because of what she wears," MEMRI reported.

Meanwhile, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information condemned Hussein's arrest and called it an act of revenge for publishing articles critical of the Sudanese government, MEMRI reported.

"Sudan's public order laws are among the most discriminatory against Sudanese women. They violate several basic freedoms that should be the right of every citizen. These laws, directed against working women and female students, were enacted expressly to persecute them, humiliate them, and deprive them of freedom, and to distance them from public life. And now, the police have devised a way to use these laws against an oppositionist journalist," MEMRI said the organization stated.

WND reported earlier when the situation initially developed.

"Flogging women for wearing pants is both outrageous and against the dignity of the women," said Jonathan Racho, regional manager for Africa and the Middle East for International Christian Concern, in a statement at the time.

The Sudan Tribune reported Hussein was one of several women taken by the Islamic nation's Public Order Police from a ballroom near the capital, Khartoum.

The women were in violation of the law, they were told, for wearing trousers.

Some of the women arrested were non-Muslims under 18, who were given 10 lashes and a fine.

The ICC said by subjecting the girls to inhumane and degrading treatment, the Sudanese officials violated international human right standards as well as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 by the Islamic government of Sudan and the mainly Christian and animist southern Sudanese.

The ICC said the agreement documented that Islamic laws are "not applicable to non-Muslims."

David Choat, the congregational affairs officer of the mission of the government of South Sudan to the U.S., told ICC, "The flogging is an imposition of Islamic values on Christians and it's also a violation of religious freedom. This is telling us (the Sudanese people) that there are certain religions that are more important than the rest."