A feature from yesterday’s Toronto Star, entitled “Plight of Sudanese journalist shines spotlight on dwindling club of countries who flog their citizens”, expands on the case of the Sudanese women arrested for wearing trousers in breach of local laws:

Tomorrow, al-Hussein will stand trial in the Sudanese capital for violating Section 152 of her country’s 1991 criminal code, which bars individuals from wearing clothes “that are indecent or would breach public morality.” If convicted, she stands to suffer 40 lashes by a leather whip.
As a country that condones the penal flogging of its citizens, Sudan belongs to a small and dwindling club, but it is hardly alone.

Whippings or canings remain a feature of law enforcement in Brunei, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, among other countries. Here in Canada, flogging was a legally sanctioned punishment in federal prisons until 1972, when it was outlawed by Parliament…

Al-Hussein’s punishment, if it takes place, will proceed in public before an audience numbering anywhere from three to 1,000, according to one account of flogging techniques under Islamic law.

“Flogging should be inflicted with a leather whip which is neither totally new nor very old,” the account commands. “Flogging with a stick is not allowed. Flogging should be on the fleshy part of the body only, affecting the skin and avoiding the head and the sensitive areas. Flogging has to spread over and should not be done in one place so as to make the flesh come out. A man is flogged in a standing position, while a woman should be flogged in a sitting position.”

Ten of the young women arrested with al-Hussein have already been flogged, in part because they were unable to arrange legal representation… Sudanese courts regularly impose flogging as a punishment for crimes that mostly involve issues of public morality…

Here in Canada, during much of the 20th century, corporal punishment was usually administered upon a prisoner’s bare buttocks by means of a leather strap. W. T. McGrath, in his 1965 volume, Crime and its Treatment in Canada, noted there was “no limit” to the number of strokes any given sentence might include, as long as they were administered under the supervision of a licensed medical officer.

Britain, which abolished state-sanctioned flogging in 1948, was for many centuries an imperial powerhouse of corporal punishment, and it is likely no coincidence that many of the countries that continue to sanction flogging are former British colonies.

Flogging was long employed by many countries as a means of disciplining soldiers or sailors, and it often caused excruciating pain, not to mention permanent injury and sometimes death. Beatings were typically administered with the infamous cat o’ nine tails, a device consisting of a stiff handle and nine separate cords, often interspersed with knots for the infliction of greater pain.

During the Napoleonic wars, British military authorities set a limit of 1,200 lashes as punishment for any single offence. Severe sentences typically had to be delivered in instalments over a course of weeks or months, a practice that preserved the victim from death while also giving him time to recover in hospital until he was well enough to go back beneath the whip. Corporal punishment was finally abolished in most of the world during the century just past, and for two main reasons: it is inhumane, and it doesn’t work.

“We have been unable to find any body of facts or figures showing that the introduction of a power of flogging has produced a decrease in the number of the offences for which it may be ordered,” reported a British panel, the so-called Cadogan Committee, in a report delivered in February 1938.

Philip Clark, a British expert on Sharia law at the University of Oxford, says the use of physical punishment as a legal sanction is controversial nowadays even among Sudanese Muslims. “There’s been quite a vociferous internal debate in Sudan about corporal punishment and the role of Sharia law,” he said. “This is a very grey zone.”

When they imagine a public flogging in an Islamic state, Westerners tend to be guided by their worst suspicions – lurid images of brutal or lethal punishments inflicted upon African slaves, British mutineers, or Brazilian army deserters in centuries past. In fact, however, the contemporary practice tends to be considerably milder, at least in some Muslim countries where floggings or canings are intended more to cause shame than to inflict intense physical suffering.

“Sharia is a very fluid system that is very difficult to predict,” said Clark. “It will be up to whoever carries out the punishment to determine how severe it is.”

Taken from this free spanking gallery

Sunday’s Malaysian Star reports the latest in the on-going caning story:

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has “cleared” the Prisons Department to cane part-time model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno. He said department director-general Datuk Zulkifli Omar and a woman officer came to his office last week to conduct a caning demonstration for him.

“She tapped the back of a chair with the cane. There was little force involved and it was not going to inflict pain, not even like the caning carried out in schools in those days. I am now satisfied that the caning can be carried out by the department if the court decides to proceed and enforce the sentence,” he said in an interview.

Hishammuddin had recently said the ministry needed to study the proper procedures before caning the woman according to Syariah law, adding that he would not allow the department to execute the caning sentence if it did not have the knowledge and expertise to do it.

Kartika, a 32-year-old mother-of-two, was fined RM5,000 and ordered to be whipped six times for drinking beer in a hotel in Cherating last year. Her sentence has been deferred until after Ramadan. Several parties, such as the Bar Council, have called for the sentence to be annulled.Hishammuddin said that although he was now satisfied that the department was able to conduct the caning, he still felt it had no experience to do so.

“This is because the woman (Kartika) will be the first to be caned (under Syariah laws applicable to Muslims)…”

On the merits of Kartika’s caning sentence, the minister said he had told the department not to get “embroiled in this.” “That is not their purview. It is the judicial process which decides that. If the caning sentence is to be imposed, it is their duty to carry it out fairly.”

Kartika’s father, Shukarno Mutalib, when contacted, said the family was happy to hear that the department was able to handle the caning. “Alhamdullillah (praise be upon Allah). Kartika wants it over and done with,” he said.

News of strange goings-on in Lagos from Vanguard, a Nigerian newspaper, on 4 September:

The church, christened Christian Bible Ministry (CBM), is located in an obscure area on Dunamis Street behind Apakun Saw Mill,  along Murtala Mohammed Airport Road, Mafoluku, Oshodi…

There is no banner nor signboard as is common with most churches today to depict that a church is located in there.  Reports said the church, which started over 20 years ago in a village in Imo State and was founded by one Reverend Barnabas who had since been allegedly edged out by other pastors who served under him for his alleged hardline stand and is now fully enmeshed in absurdities…

Saturday Vanguard scooped that one Pastor Emeka Okafor who succeeded Reverend Barnabas died shortly afterwards following an alleged curse laid on him by the said aggrieved Reverend Barnabas. However, a twist was said to have been introduced into doctrines of the church after the wife of the late Pastor Emeka, Prophetess Felicia Okafor, formed a separate ministry under the same church and named it “Ministry of Sacrifice”…

This, she did,  after she reportedly returned from a fasting and praying exercise on an unnamed mountain of God… The prophetess was said to have called  members of her ministry to tell them that God revealed to her that what could not be achieved by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden would be fulfilled in her. She was reported to have told the congregation that members were now brothers and sisters and therefore, there was nothing to hide from each other. To buttress her claims, she allegedly stripped herself naked before the congregation and instructed each member to follow suit.  The implication was that all of them are now one.  

In addition,  a married female member from that day on was barred from having anything to do with her husband sexually.  She is subsequently ‘assigned’ to a brother in the Ministry. If perceived to be having sexual relationship with her legitimate husband,  she would be termed to have committed adultery.  The punishment is 14 strokes of an armoured cable and grinded pepper in her private part. ..

A sister named Chinyere was reportedly beaten… and candle stick inserted into her private part allegedly on the instruction of the Prophetess for reportedly committing fornication with a male member of the church…

Another sister, Mrs Stella Goodnews whose husband is a Pastor in the church also suffered similar fate. She was allegedly stripped naked as is the custom, flogged severally and grinded pepper poured into her private part for confessing that she fornicated with her husband…

But when Saturday Vanguard was able to locate the church on Sunday August 30, 2009 at about 4.30pm after a painstaking search and met Pastor Uzuegbu, he described the allegations as “lies, greed and quest for position.”  The fair complexioned well built and handsome Pastor who was leaning close to his Hummer Jeep which has its plate number customised and marked Okenna 1 (meaning strong father or Share from God the Father in Igbo translation), exclaimed and said, “My brother, God bless you for coming to know the truth. I know those who gave you the story because they are those we sent away from this church because of their promiscuity.  All they have told you are lies borne out of greed and unguided ambition for position…”

Continuing, Pastor Uzuegbu said,   “Prophetess Felicia is one woman of God that is so blessed and filled with the holy spirit of God…” [Pastor Friday, who had raised complaints] “was responsible for flogging erring members… So, if they say we strip naked and all that, I leave them to God to judge.  The case is before the police and I am sure the truth will prevail.”

At the SCID Panti, the Officer- in- Charge (OC),  Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Solomon Arase said the matter was still with his X-Squad Department, “I have asked the IPO to do a thorough investigation of the matter. The allegations raised are very sensitive.  The police will not allow itself to be used to achieve a selfish end.  But if the allegations come out true, then the law will take its due course.”