Babies' brains damaged by pollution, Unicef says

Babies' brains damaged by pollution, Unicef says

Seventeen million babies under the age of one are breathing toxic air, putting their brain development at risk, the UN children's agency has warned.

Babies in South Asia were worst affected, with more than 12 million living in areas with pollution six times higher than safe levels.

A further four million were at risk in East Asia and the Pacific.

Unicef said breathing particulate air pollution could damage brain tissue and undermine cognitive development.

Its report said there was a link to "verbal and non-verbal IQ and memory, reduced test scores, grade point averages among schoolchildren, as well as other neurological behavioural problems".

The effects lasted a lifetime, it said.

Delhi's air pollution is triggering a health crisis

"As more and more of the world urbanises, and without adequate protection and pollution reduction measures, more children will be at risk in the years to come," Unicef said.

It called for wider use of face masks and air filtering systems, and for children not to travel during spikes in pollution.

Media captionSmog reduced visibility in Delhi to a few metres

Last month hazardous smog began blanketing the Indian capital Delhi, prompting the Indian capital's chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to say the city had become a "gas chamber".

Some schools in the city were closed but there was criticism when they re-opened, with parents accusing the authorities of disregarding their children's health.

Indian and Sri Lankan cricketers playing in Delhi vomited on the pitch during high levels of pollution.

Media captionChina's Shijiazhuang "can be completely dark", one man said

In northern China, air pollution is estimated to cut life expectancy by about three years and the government has imposed tougher emissions rules on companies, although state media have reported that these are routinely flouted.

'Young and old' hit by China smog

Satellite imagery used to compile the data also revealed that the issue was growing in African cities, Unicef said.

Meanwhile a separate study by scientists at hospitals in London found that the British city's polluted air was leading to lower birth weights, linked to higher infant mortality and disease later in life.

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Criminalising triple talaq: BJP appears to be more interested in playing politics than helping Muslim women

                   

There is triple talaq, and then there is the politics of triple talaq. The first concerns Muslim women's empowerment, the second is the politics – or public relations and propaganda – to drive votes to the Bharatiya Janata Party. In 2017, the BJP figured out that not fielding a Muslim candidate or talking about triple talaq unites Hindu voters; the leadership is not quite interested in the welfare of Muslims.

The central government has drafted a bill which seeks to imprison a Muslim husband for three years and fine him for using the instant triple talaq. It has sent the bill to states for their views. In the world's largest democracy, the elected government does not consider it necessary to release the bill for public discussion, nor does it think it useful to consult with women's rights groups on the issue. A clique of ministers can decide the fate of this nation without consultation.

There are three forms of triple talaq: Talaq-e-ahsan, talaq-e-hasan and talaq-e-biddat. Talaq-e-Ahsan is the best form of divorce whereby a Muslim husband delivers one talaq and waits for it to become valid after three months. Talaq-e-Hasan is the second-best form of divorce, authorised by the Quran, whereby a husband delivers one talaq each month for three months. Both these forms of triple talaq are valid in India. Talaq-e-Biddat, also known as instant triple talaq whereby a husband can utter three talaqs in one sitting, was banned by the Supreme Court on 22 August.

But, the entire strategy is focused on talaq-e-biddat, which is already banned – not on the other two forms of talaq, which too are unilaterally delivered by a Muslim husband. Only the talaq-e-biddat, the instant triple talaq, helps galvanise Hindu voters. So, the Modi government speaks on triple talaq especially at the times of elections. And there are more of them coming soon in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The draft bill is about the instant triple talaq, not about the other two types of unilateral divorce. If the BJP were not on the other side of electoral honesty, the bill would have considered all unilateral talaqs.

Unfortunately, the doors of India's judiciary are closed to the Muslim husband. He cannot go to courts to seek divorce.

So, in the cases of marital breakdown, the Muslim husband is left to either go to Islamic clerics or to draft his own do-it-yourself divorce. Under the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act 1939, Muslim women can go to courts in India for divorce. But the Muslim husband has no option but to send a talaq by letter, email, phone, SMS or other means – all of which are as of now legally valid. If the Modi government was serious about reform, it would draft a Muslim family reforms bill, enabling a Muslim husband to seek divorce in court.

Journalists have asked the government whether the Muslim husband will face simple or rigorous imprisonment. There is no answer. The draft is not open for discussion. It's enough that the prime minister and his cabinet have seen it. To my knowledge, there is no country in which marriage and divorce are part of the criminal justice system. By announcing that the husband will be imprisoned for three years, the government is harassing Muslim husbands for electoral purposes. One can support fines in the cases of civil matters, but one fails to understand how criminalising divorce benefits anyone. Laws on rape are part of criminal law, but they have failed to stem the rise of rapes right in the capital of India where the king's ministers sit and decide, for the party, not for the nation.

There are issues in the implementation of laws. If the Modi government's intention is to treat triple talaq as a case of domestic violence and thereby punish the husband, India already has laws on this subject. Under India's social ethos, divorce is seen as unacceptable. Therefore, divorced Muslim women are already using both the Domestic Violence Act and the 498A law on dowry harassment to settle scores against husbands. It has been seen that both in the case of talaq-e-ahsan and talaq-e-hasan, Muslim women have filed 498A cases. Now, instead of addressing the issue at hand, the Modi government wants to bring in another domestic violence law on the instant triple talaq.

The issue is not the instant triple talaq. The real issue is that a Muslim husband is barred from seeking divorce through courts. Once this is addressed, the instant triple talaq, or even a quadruple talaq, doesn't matter if the same is delivered by a Muslim husband in court after approval from a judge. If the government is not electorally motivated on this issue, it should introduce a Muslim family reform bill which should outlaw all forms of unilateral divorce, halala, mehr ('dowry' given to the bride), and address issues such as maintenance to divorced wives and child custody. Or, it can stop playing Hindu-Muslim politics by enacting a Uniform Civil Code. For now, the Modi government is engaged solely in propaganda and electoral politics on the triple talaq issue.

Taner Kilic

Taner Kilic 'terrorism' trial: Indian government must help tackle Turkey's suppression of human rights activists

I am writing this from Istanbul, where I am attending a terrorism trial in court as an observer. The trial is that of the chair and director of Amnesty International Turkey. Some readers may know that I am also part the global movement, and am the executive director of Amnesty India. My colleagues Idil Aser and Taner Kilic are part of a group of people standing trial on charges of being members of a terrorist organisation.

Idil was given bail a few weeks earlier and I met her outside the court, but Taner is still in prison in Izmir, which is around 500 kilometres from Istanbul. He joined the trial by video link. He has been in jail since June.

The activists were charged after a workshop on digital security that was held in a hotel. The government claims, absurdly, that this was a secret meeting that was organised to spy and participate in a coup. Two foreign nationals, a German and a Swede, are also on trial in the matter but out on bail. The case is thin on substance and the main accusation against Taner is that he had downloaded an app on his phone.

This app, called Bylock, is used for encrypted communication, like WhatsApp. The Turkish government claims that Bylock was used by supporters to communicate secretly before a coup attempt last year. The claim about Taner is without foundation. Amnesty conducted two forensic examinations of Taner's phone, including one by the international technology firm SecureWorks, and found zero trace of the ByLock app on the phone. This was confirmed by an expert in the court hearing at which I was present at and I'll give some more details about that.

File image of Taner Kilic. Image courtesy: Amnesty InternationalFile image of Taner Kilic. Image courtesy: Amnesty International

We began the day in the morning, when a group of us organised a protest outside the Justice Palace (as it is called) — a large and modern circular building with many courtrooms. The protest was well-attended by different civil society groups and individuals despite the fact that it was bitterly cold and windy. The foreign observers included the Amnesty chairs of Brazil and the UK, and also diplomats from the European Union and the United States.

A statement was read out in support of the human rights defenders. Taner’s 19-year-old daughter Gulnihal was with us and we were in good spirits.

The court could hold around 120 people in it, besides the lawyers and other officials. Every seat was taken and there were people outside who could not get in. The court had three judges — two men and a woman — in black robes with an upturned red collar. They sat on a raised platform, as judges do in India. Interestingly, the prosecutor also sat with them, to one side. I heard this man speak once and briefly during the entire hearing that went on for more than six hours.

Most of this time was taken up by the defence of Taner. The defence had an expert witness who spoke at length on the issue of the app Bylock. Taner’s phone had been returned to him by the police after they had made a copy of the software on it. The expert concluded that there was no chance that he had ever downloaded Bylock. In his witness statement, Taner said he had not even heard of the Bylock app until after the coup attempt.

Despite this, during the first hearing, he had not been granted bail. After that hearing, my colleague John Dalhuisen said that "it took the prosecutor more than three months to come up with nothing. It should not take the judge more than half an hour to dismiss the case against them". The case was not dismissed, and continued into the second hearing that I am describing. The senior judge, who sat in the centre, had a few questions of the expert, and it seemed to us that the day had decisively gone in favour of the truth.

The trial was conducted entirely in Turkish, with the exception of a very few English words (like "IP address" and of course "Bylock", but it was not difficult to gauge the impact the expert’s testimony had made). Taner made a direct and unemotional plea to be released on bail, given that there was no evidence against him. The prosecutor spoke the one line I heard him speak the entire day. He said the State opposed bail.

At the end of the six-or-so hours, the courtroom was emptied of all but the lawyers and the accused. We were asked to wait outside. We were informed later that bail had been denied, and the news hit all of us, but it devastated young Gulnihal.

I have been a court reporter for many years and have not seen such blatant suppression of those who are fighting for human rights, suppression of freedom of expression, and linking it to terrorism. I wish the Indian government had sent a representative also to the trial and I hope it does it for the next hearing. This is an issue we must take up with Turkey.

As an Indian and as a student of history, I was disappointed by what I saw in Turkey. We have close cultural ties with the Turkic people, from before that time that the Turks actually came to Turkey around 1,000 years ago. Most of the Islamic rulers of India were actually Turkish. Mahmud Ghazni was of Turkish origin, Babur was a Chaghatai Turk and Tipu of Mysore called himself 'Sultan' because he also claimed Turkish ancestry.

I wish the government representing such a great and storied group of people had conducted itself better in the matter of the trial of my colleagues, who are working for the rights and the betterment of the Turkish people.