STOCKHOLM JOINS PARIS, LONDON, LA, ATHENS, SEATTLE AND THE WORLD IN REVOLT

Disturbances of this sort are nearly unknown in Sweden, and certainly are on this scale. What began as rock throwing at police in the Husby area, where the shooting occurred has escalated. More than a hundred cars being set alight and then even a number of state buildings including two schools. A police station in the suburb of Jakosberg area was also attacked. Rioting has spread to more than a dozen Stockholm neighborhoods.

Rebellion spread across the Swedish capital for a fourth night, as large numbers of young people churned through the suburbs, throwing stones, breaking windows and destroying cars. A  police station was set on fire in Stockholm's southern suburb of Rågsved, where several people were also detained. No one was hurt.

The disturbances, the worst since similar uprisings four years ago, began in the Husby suburb.

There are lots of articles and posts about the uprising, rebellion (or riots) happening in the Stockholm immigrant suburbs, but not much useful  information.

Still, let's see when youthful immigrants rebel like this in a spontaneous and combustable manner it seems to me there is usually talk of unemployment, racism, police brutality, housing and a general loss of hope.

Selcuk Ceken, who works at a local youth activity centre in Hagsatra, Sweden was quoted by numerous news sources,  

"It's difficult to say why they're doing this.  Maybe it's anger at the law and order forces, maybe it's anger at their own personal situation, such as unemployment or having nowhere to live."

Yeah, maybe.

Rami Al-khamisi, co-founder of Megafonen, a group that works for social change in the suburbs told the media, 

"We see a society that is becoming increasingly divided and where the gaps, both socially and economically, are becoming larger.  And the people out here are being hit the hardest ... We have institutional racism."

 Rouzbeh Djalaie, editor of the local Norra Sidan newspaper, which covers Husby (the center of the uprising) adds,

"The reason is very simple. Unemployment, the housing situation, disrespect from police.  It just takes something to start a riot, and that was the shooting."

Incidentally, the shooting of a sixty nine year old mentally ill man by police was the spark that started the fire burning.   


A local source speaking to state-owned Radio Sweden said residents had been protesting since the shooting incident, demanding an investigation. However, they felt their actions had been left unanswered by authorities, the source added.  So some took to the streets a bit more forcefully.  

Sweden's The Local reported:

"The police are steadily increasing their presence in our neighbourhoods... We are also worried that the police are steadily becoming more aggressive and more prone to violence in their work," Megafonen said in a statement in the run-up to the incident. 

Megafonen went on to accuse the police of spreading "disinformation" and demanded an inquiry. The police later modified its official version of the incident.

Djalaie said the shooting likely contributed to the worsening mood among residents in Husby, a district in north-west Stockholm consisting primarily of multi-storey apartment buildings built in the late 1960s as part of Sweden's "Million Programme" housing construction project.

"Social tension needs a spark, but it's not the cause," he said.

Cops calling immigrants "monkeys" and using other racial slurs isn't going to just go over anymore.  People just aren't going to take this sort of thing and move on...even in Sweden.

What follows is a comment on libcom from someone on the scene:

I'm super short on time but will attempt a bit of a background. Bear in mind that I'm also new to Stockholm and I live on the other side where the suburbs/satellite towns haven't seen the same developments yet.

Stockholm is massively segregated along ethnic and economic lines. The inner city is a reservation for rich people bound by water and green areas. Outside this satellite towns or suburbs built mainly according to modernist principles house the working class and large (2nd, 3rd etc generation) immigrant populations.

Recent years have seen the sale of flats and town centers to private owners to below market rates. A recent report suggested 50 000 000 000 sek had been handed over to private hands in this process. This is the equivalent to the cost of running all Stockholms schools for two years.
Venture capitalists have taken over the "town centres" and failed to maintain them while raising rents. Slum lords have bought up housing stock in the suburbs.

The housing and urban situation is Stockholm is extremely tense. Cars have been burning regularly. Adding to this the REVA police operation which is was basically having internal border checks stopping foreign looking people asking for their "papers". People are often stopped under the pretext of fare dodging, cycling without lights etc. etc.

The riots have centered on Husby which has seen a lot of local initiative and resistance to the selling off and transformation of the suburbs. Amongs other things they successfully prevented a massive tranformation where the current modernist traffic separation by pedestrian bridges would be changed to provide traditional streets with cars street frontages and pavements. The people of Husby liked being able o let their childred run about without risking being run over by cars and had to mount a serious campaign to stop the removal of the bridges.

Another comment read:

 The police/security have been getting worried recently about "radicalisation" in the suburbs. More recently there has been REVA targetting people without papers which as you can imagine mainly just meant stopping and harassing people of colour. There was a lot of public outrage against this and recently more debate around structural racism.There was also before that the "instagram riots" in Gothenburg, which touched at deeper frustrations too. 

Are you starting to get the picture.

This is one more example of the multitude rising up, unorganized, unled, not exactly sure where it is going, but angry with the world the Empire has build for them to live in.  We've seen it happen everywhere from LA to Paris, to London, to Athens, to Seattle, to.....

It isn't going to stop in Sweden.



Truthdig reports:

 As unemployment has risen in Sweden, some people have pointed to immigration as the problem, a trend evinced by the rise in the polls of the anti-immigrant party Sweden Democrats ahead of a general election next year.

Out of a total 103,000 immigrants to Sweden last year, 43,900 were refugees from war zones, almost a 50 percent increase from 2011. Nearly half of these were survivors of the fighting in Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia, and will get at least temporary residency.

Sweden ranks fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers out of 44 industrialized countries, and second relative to its population, the U.N. reports.

 Since the murder of Olof Palme Sweden has moved from an advanced welfare state to a much more savage example of capital.  While still retaining an overall high standard of life for Europe, the outlook for youth and for immigrants has been trending rapidly downward.

 The following is from the May 20th  RT. 

Rioters in Sweden protest alleged brutality, racism after police shoot elderly man

Rioters took to the streets of a Stockholm neighborhood on Sunday, torching cars and throwing stones at police. Officers reportedly called residents “monkeys” and other derogatory terms as they protested against a recent police shooting.

G

Between 60 to 100 people – most of them young men – took part in the riots which began around 10pm local time in the Stockholm district of Husby.

Police turned up at the scene after a car was set on fire. Upon arrival, officers were met with stone-throwing protesters, Police Chief Daniel Mattsson said, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

One policeman was attacked by youths kicking him and two others were injured by rocks, police officer Jorgen Karlsson told AP.

Rioters torched cars in a local parking garage. Around 50 vehicles were damaged in the fire, which forced the evacuation of a nearby building. Windows were smashed at two schools and several local businesses.

Mattson said there were 18 criminal incidents reported and that the unrest lasted for four hours.

Allegations of police misconduct

Witnesses say that police officers reportedly called rioters and residents “monkeys” on Sunday night, discriminating against their race.

Rouzbeh Djalai, editor-in-chief of local newspaper The North Side, told The Local that she spoke to a youth leader and some of teenagers after the riots. The group reportedly approached police asking if they could help.

The youth leader told her that he was called a “nigger” by police, while the boys were called “monkeys.” They also said the police attacked them with batons.

"If the police don't want to cooperate, they should just say it; they don't have to call people names and hit them with batons," Djalaie said.

Residents of Husby are angry that police are increasing their presence in the neighborhood, instead of focusing on long-term solutions to the area’s problems.

"There's frustration in Husby and it risks spiralling out of control; people want long-term solutions to social problems instead of an increased police presence," Djalai said.

"It's a neighborhood where one third of junior high school graduates leave school without adequate grades; they step straight out into unemployment. It's obvious what the consequences are," she added.

Seeking justice

The riots were in response to the fatal shooting of an elderly man last week. The man was shot and killed by police after officers responded to a call that a person was roaming Husby with a knife.

Once officers arrived, the man disappeared into an apartment, police spokesman Lars Byström told TT news agency. He then stepped onto a balcony and threatened officers.

"He screamed at police from the balcony that he wanted to kill them," a neighbor told the Expressen newspaper.

Negotiators were called to the scene and police learned that a woman was also in the apartment. After failed attempts at negotiating, police broke down the apartment door in an effort to secure the woman’s safety.

But things took a turn for the worse once officers arrived inside the residence.

"Then the person in question appeared holding a machete. Officers felt cornered and threw a flash grenade so they could overpower the man. That didn't work either and they then felt forced to open fire," said Byström.

Police faces youths rioting in northern Stockholm on Sunday night and early morning Monday on May 20, 2013. (AFP Photo / Johan Nilsson)

It is unclear how many officers fired shots and how many shots were fired, but witnesses say police fired five or six shots in total.

"We saw the flashes when they shot. Even if you'd never seen an actual shooting before, you knew what it was," a witness said.

Police say the 69-year-old man was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds.

However, local youth organization Megafonen reported on May 15th that neighbors said there was never an ambulance. Instead, they say a hearse turned up to cart away the body at 2am.

The woman inside the apartment escaped with no injuries, according to police. Her relationship with the man remains unknown.

Megafonen arranged a protest against the alleged police brutality last week, in response to the fatal shooting. The group - a community-based organization aimed at organizing residents to fight for social justice - demanded an independent investigation and public apology.

"Last week, the police shot an old man who was holding a knife. How can they do this without taking responsibility? I can understand the reaction (riots)," Megafonen founder Rami al-Khamisi said.

Prosecutors from the Swedish National Police Crimes Unit are currently investigating the shooting.

"MORALS CRIMES" AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS CLASH IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan is where increasing numbers of women are being arrested and essentially tortured for "morals crimes."   Remember how all this shit was supposed to end with the Taliban being ousted.  Yeah, you remember.  Hah!  

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found a 50% increase in such arrests in an eighteen month period.

Morals crimes usually involve “flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina, sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution.”

Women Under Siege reports:

...the country’s broken justice system allows rapists to claim that the sex was consensual, in effect making the victim just as guilty as the rapist in the eyes of the law. Many prosecutors and judges accept “a mere counter-allegation of consensual sex” to dismiss complaints of rape, according to the report. This has created a situation in which not only are very few rape cases actually investigated, but the trauma of being criminalinalized for being a victim makes it more unlikely for women to seek justice for being sexually violated, or even being forced into prostitution.

and continues,

Many in Afghanistan's conservative society are unwilling to even accept that sexualized violence against women is a legitimate problem let alone criticize the way the government is addressing it. Some are angry at HRW for releasing its “I Had to Run Away” report, claiming it encouraged moral decadence and supported the poor morals of women who ran away from home.

What is really sad here is conditions for women really are BETTER then they were under the Taliban while remaining  amongst the WORST in the world.

Back in March when HRW released its report at a conference hall in Afghanistan local reporters weren't shocked by the news.  They were shocked that anyone thought it was a problem.  What they found most worrisome was the report itself.  The Christian Science Monitor reported at the time:

One local reporter asked, “If this is not considered a crime and it becomes rampant in the society and everyone does it, don’t you think that in a society like Afghanistan it will lead to a kind of anarchism here and everything will get out of control? What will be the consequences?”

Several questions later, another local reporter closed his question saying, “I think that to prosecute running away with strangers, it helps families to be more organized and it fortifies the family relationships in Afghanistan, so I think it is better for Afghanistan to prosecute this crime.”

Wednesday in Afghanistan found hard line Islamist students protesting in Kabul  demanding the repeal of a presidential decree for women's rights.  They say it is un-Islamic. The protest came just  days after conservative lawmakers’ vehement Opposition blocked an attempt to cement the decree’s provisions in legislation.  The decree itself is three years old.  Niti Central reports:

More than 200 male students protested in front of Kabul University on Wednesday against the decree on Elimination of Violence Against Women, which includes a ban on child marriage and forced marriage, makes domestic violence a crime and says rape victims cannot be prosecuted for adultery. It also outlaws “ba’ad,” a traditional practice of exchanging women or girls to settle disputes or debts.

Protester Fazel Hadi, 25, said the decree was ‘imposed by foreigners’ and violates Islamic Shariah law.

Mawladad Jalali, the mullah of the university mosque and one of the organisers of the protest, led chants decrying democracy in general and the women’s law specifically.

“Our main demand is that this law should be repealed in the parliament,” he said before leading a brief march while police who cordoned off the area looked on.

The three year old decree,  The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women, was brought before parliament now because Fawzia Kofi, lawmaker and women's rights activist wanted to cement it with a parliamentary vote to prevent future presidents from just repealing it.

AgoraDialogue further reports:

Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada, a conservative lawmaker for Herat province, said the legislation was withdrawn shortly after being introduced in parliament because of an uproar by religious parties who said parts of the law are un-Islamic.

“Whatever is against Islamic law, we don’t even need to speak about it,” Shaheedzada said.

 There has been spotty enforcement of the law as it stands. A United Nations analysis in late 2011 found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women were pursued by the Afghan government. Between March 2010 and March 2011 – the first full Afghan year the decree was in effect – prosecutors filed criminal charges in only 155 cases, or 7 percent of the total number of crimes reported. 

 The child marriage ban and the idea of protecting female rape victims from prosecution were particularly heated subjects in Saturday’s parliamentary debate, said Nasirullah Sadiqizada Neli, a conservative lawmaker from Daykundi province.

Neli suggested that removing the custom – common in Afghanistan – of prosecuting raped women for adultery would lead to social chaos, with women freely engaging in extramarital sex safe in the knowledge they could claim rape if caught.

Another lawmaker, Mandavi Abdul Rahmani of Barlkh province, also opposed the law’s rape provision.

“Adultery itself is a crime in Islam, whether it is by force or not,” Rahmani said.

He said the Quran also makes clear that a husband has a right to beat a disobedient wife as a last resort, as long as she is not permanently harmed. “But in this law,” he said, “It says if a man beats his wife at all, he should be jailed for three months to three years.”

Lawmaker Shaheedzada also claimed that the law might encourage disobedience among girls and women, saying it reflected Western values not applicable in Afghanistan.

“Even now in Afghanistan, women are running from their husbands. Girls are running from home,” Shaheedzada said. “Such laws give them these ideas.”

I'm sorry folks, please spare me some post modernist, "...gee, its all part of the culture, so it's somehow okay."

It isn't  okay.

It is awful.

The following is from Human Rights Watch yesterday.

Afghanistan: Surge in Women Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’

Prosecute Abusers, Not Women Fleeing Abuse

 (Kabul) – The Afghan government should take urgent steps to halt an alarming increase in women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes,” Human Rights Watch said today.  Commitments by senior government officials to end such abuses have had little practical impact.

Statistics from Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry indicate that the number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan had risen to about 600 in May 2013 from 400 in October 2011 – a 50 percent increase in a year and a half. Since October 2011, there has been an almost 30 percent increase overall in the number of women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan’s prisons and juvenile detention facilities.

“Four years after the adoption of a law on violence against women and twelve years after Taliban rule, women are still imprisoned for being victims of forced marriage, domestic violence, and rape,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The Afghan government needs to get tough on abusers of women, and stop blaming women who are crime victims.”

In a March 2012 report, “‘I Had to Run Away’: The Imprisonment of Women and Girls for ‘Moral Crimes’ in Afghanistan,” Human Rights Watch documented that some 95 percent of girls and 50 percent of women imprisoned in Afghanistan were accused of the “moral crimes” of “running away” from home or zina (sex outside of marriage).

These “moral crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriages or domestic violence. Women and girls imprisoned on “moral crimes” charges who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch described abuses including forced and underage marriage below age 16, beatings, stabbings, burnings, rapes, forced prostitution, kidnapping, and threats of “honor killing.” Virtually none of the cases had led even to an investigation of the abuse, let alone prosecution or punishment.

“Running away,” or fleeing home without permission, is not a crime under the Afghan criminal code, but the Afghan Supreme Court has instructed its judges to treat women and girls who flee as criminals. Zina is a crime under Afghan law, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina after being raped or forced into prostitution. Prosecution of women who are survivors of gender-based violence has continued, and many abusers of women have continued to go free in spite of Afghanistan’s 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW Law), which created new criminal penalties for abuse of women.

While several high-level Afghan government officials, including from the police and Justice Ministry, have in the past year publicly confirmed that “running away” is not a crime under Afghan law, such statements have yet to translate into policy, Human Rights Watch said. Some legal experts have suggested that a growing view that women and girls should not be charged with “running away” has merely resulted in a shift toward charging them with attempted zina. A charge of attempted zina unjustifiably assumes that women outside of the supervision of their male relatives must have attempted to have sex.

Women and girls accused of “moral crimes” are routinely subjected to “virginity tests” that courts rely on for the purpose of determining virginity and whether a woman or girl engaged in recent sexual intercourse. These exams can be ordered by any police official, and some women are subjected to multiple vaginal exams without informed consent for no justifiable reason. Use of such examinations is not limited to rape cases, and examinations do not focus on documenting medical injuries or collecting physical evidence to support an allegation of sexual assault. Although medical examinations can be a legitimate form of investigation in cases of alleged sexual assault, gynecological exams that purport to determine “virginity” have no medical accuracy. Use of such tests constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.

“Coerced ‘virginity’ examinations are a form of sexual assault,” Adams said. “Afghan police, without any scientific basis, are routinely forcing these unspeakable examinations on women and girls.”

Some women and girls who flee violence at home are able to access help – rather than being arrested – through shelters. The number of women’s shelters in Afghanistan has increased from 14 in 2011 to 18 in 2013. However, the capacity of the shelters is far too limited for the number of women who require assistance, and fewer than half of the country’s 34 provinces have even a single shelter. There are no shelters in the more conservative southern half of the country.

These shelters may not be sustainable as they are entirely funded by international donors, and donor assistance is dropping rapidly as the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of international combat forces from Afghanistan approaches. The Afghan government has shown no interest in funding shelters through the government budget and has at times taken actions detrimental to the shelters, including a 2011 effort to take over the shelters and 2012 statements by the justice minister accusing shelters of “moral corruption.”

“Afghanistan’s donors have a crucial role to play in supporting shelters that are literally life-saving for many women,” Adams said. “They should not only help ensure the survival of the shelters that exist, but support expansion of the shelter system including in southern Afghanistan.”  
Human Rights Watch called on the Afghan government and its international partners to take the following urgent steps:

• President Hamid Karzai should issue an administrative decree that “running away” should not be treated as a crime under Afghan law and that charges of attempted zina should not be brought. He should exonerate or pardon everyone convicted for “running away;”

• The Ministry of Interior should instruct all police of their obligation to convey immediately information pertaining to all incidents of violence against women or possible crimes under the EVAW Law to the prosecutor;

• The Attorney General should issue instructions requiring prosecutors to formally investigate all allegations of crimes against women under the EVAW Law and other laws, bring charges as the evidence warrants, and fully investigate whether women accused of crimes were acting in response to abuse; and

• International donors should make implementation of the EVAW Law, abolition of the crime of “running away,” revisions to the zina and family laws, and reforms to other laws that discriminate against women key issues in political engagement with the Afghan government.

“Moral Crimes” and Women’s Rights in Afghanistan: Recent Developments

The number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan has increased by 50 percent in the period from October 2011 to May 2013. This troubling increase has occurred during a period in which there have been some new efforts by the Afghan government to protect women. In spite of these efforts, however, there has been a failure to take successful action to end wrongful imprisonment of women.

The Afghan government and its international partners have made some progress in addressing wrongful imprisonment of women and girls for “moral crimes” since 2012. Key officials have spoken out, at least on the illegality of “running away” prosecutions. Specialized units within the Attorney General’s Office have made some progress in increasing enforcement of the Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW Law). There has been a small increase in the number of shelters for women fleeing violence, and there seems to be a growing awareness by police that many cases should be referred to family court for resolution through marriage or divorce rather than being sent to prosecutors. Some women’s rights activists report that the government, from President Hamid Karzai to the level of individual police and prosecutors, has shown increased openness to hearing concerns about violence against women and working with activists, including in individual cases.

Less encouraging, however, is the continued abusive use of coerced gynecological examinations, and a lack of progress in the recruitment of female police officers. Family court, where women can seek a divorce and custody of their children, exists only in Kabul. Even the slightly expanded number of shelters is nowhere near adequate to meet the need and women in the majority of provinces and the entire southern half of the country have no access to shelters. As long as the number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” continues to increase – as it has done by 50 percent in the last year and a half – it is clear that the Afghan government needs to do much more to end abusive prosecutions of women and girls.

Below is a timeline of major “moral crimes”– related developments since March 2012:

• April 11, 2012: The Attorney Generals’ Office issued a directive stating that “running away” is not a crime under Afghan law and should not be prosecuted:

A circulation must be prepared and shared with all relevant prosecution offices in the center and provinces and the prosecutors should be instructed not to prepare unjustifiable case files regarding running away cases that have not been criminalized under Afghanistan laws and cannot be heard by courts and refrain from conducting baseless investigations. Other circumstances where people run away to commit any other crime are not covered by this instruction. The issue is being communicated to you so that you can take action in accordance with instruction of the High Council of Attorney General Office of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

• September 16, 2012: Justice Minister Habibullah Ghalib, Women’s Affairs Minister Husn Banu Ghazanfar, and Deputy Interior Minister Mirza Mohammad Yarmand each strongly condemned wrongful imprisonment of women and girls on charges of “running away.” Ghalib said that police and prosecutors should never send cases of “running away” to the courts. Yarmand pledged his commitment to ending abuses by the police, saying that all police had been instructed that running away is not a crime. Ghazanfar said that women and girls accused of running away are not criminals, but generally crime victims who flee to escape violence committed against them.

• September 16, 2012: Fawzia Koofi, director of the lower house parliamentary committee on women’s affairs, and her counterpart, Siddiqa Balkhi, the director of the upper house parliamentary committee on women's affairs, called for the government to immediately free women and girls charged with running away under Afghanistan’s ambiguous and arbitrary “moral crimes” law.

• October 2012: Criminal charges of “disrespect of police” are brought against Batool Muradi, after she becomes the first Afghan woman to challenge accusations by her husband of “infidelity” through DNA testing of their children.

• Late 2012: The Attorney General announced plans to establish specialized units responsible for bringing prosecutions under the EVAW Law in all of the country’s 34 provinces from the current 8. While the number of cases brought under the EVAW law remains very low even in provinces with these specialized units, activists consider the specialized units, funded by international donors, to be a step in the right direction.

• February 2013: Gulnaz, a young woman released by presidential pardon in December 2011 after serving two and a half years of a 12-year sentence for zina after she was raped, married her rapist. Her case, which received wide coverage in the international and Afghan media, highlighted not only the frequency with which rape victims are imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan, but also the lack of options for such women following release. Gulnaz spent over a year in a women’s shelter before social and family pressures led her to marry the man who raped her as the best available option for her and the daughter she gave birth to in prison as a result of the rape.

• May 2013: A parliamentary proposal to amend the EVAW Law risks limiting further the ability of women to flee violence or seek prosecution of their abusers.

Insufficient recruitment of female police officers

Female police officers have a crucial role to play in enforcing Afghanistan’s EVAW Law. In Afghanistan’s deeply gender segregated society, many women have difficulty even leaving their homes, and would find it impossible to report a crime, especially one involving sensitive issues of sexual assault or domestic violence, to a male police officer. In the absence of female officers, reporting crimes may even be unsafe: one woman told Human Rights Watch that when she went to a police station to report being raped, she was raped again by an officer in the station.

The percentage of women in the Afghan police has remained at about 1 percent over the last few years. A Human Rights Watch statement highlighted some of the challenges that make it difficult to recruit and retain women in the police force, including abuse and sometimes assault by male colleague in the police and a lack of the most basic toilet and changing room facilities. In spite of multiple reports of incidents of sexual harassment and rape of female police officers by male police officers, there have been no cases of successful prosecution of male police officers for these abuses and the Ministry of Interior has denied that abuses against women officers are a problem.

Continued abusive use of vaginal examinations

Afghan women accused of “moral crimes” are routinely ordered to undergo gynecological examinations that purport to provide information about whether the woman or girl is a “virgin” and whether she has engaged in recent sexual intercourse. This practice continues despite the fact that gynecological examinations that purport to determine virginity have no medical validity, and constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international human rights law. A modified gynecological examination that is rid of so-called virginity tests can be legitimately used for therapeutic purposes and evidence collection in rape cases, but should not be used otherwise, and should never be used without the informed consent of the woman or girl.

A senior police official told Human Rights Watch in May 2013 that these examinations can be ordered by any local police officer –“whoever sees the case first.” Another senior government official said that women are often without any justification subjected to multiple examinations. Human Rights Watch found that senior Afghan government officials seem unprepared to accept that there is no scientific validity to these examinations.

Desperate need for more shelters

In 2001, Afghanistan had no shelters for women and girls fleeing violence. The 18 shelters that exist today have demonstrated that they provide an option for women that not only can keep them from being wrongfully imprisoned, but can also literally save their lives in the many cases where “honor killing” is threatened. The success of existing shelters should lead to creation of new shelters sufficient to ensure that women in every province have access to a shelter. Unfortunately, the total dependency of these shelters on international donors, combined with the often unsupportive attitude of the Afghan government toward shelters, creates real uncertainty about the long–term sustainability of shelters. The overall decline in donor support to Afghanistan reduces the likelihood that there will be any major expansion of urgently needed shelter services.

HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY CEO'S DOING JUST FINE

Dr. George Yancopoulus President and chief scientific officer, Regeneron Laboratories, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Tarrytown, N.Y.

Salary: $850,000 Total compensation: $81,551,448 Company revenue: $1.38 billlion Company net income: $750.3 million (All data for 2012)

YOU'D BE SMILING, TOO, IF YOU WERE GEORGE

Dr. George Yancopoulus
President and chief scientific officer, Regeneron Laboratories,
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals,
Tarrytown, N.Y.

Salary: $850,000
Total compensation: $81,551,448
Company revenue: $1.38 billlion
Company net income: $750.3 million
(All data for 2012)

A little over one week ago I did this article about the difference between CEO compensation and the wages of those who work for them.  Now, let's take a look at how CEO's in the healtcare industry are doing.  Readers of Scission will not be surprised when reading the post below to learn that they are making out like theives.  Maybe you, or you mom, or your sister, or your neighbor, or your pal can't afford healthcare, but that sure isn't stopping those in charge of the industry that can't help you from getting their "fair" share of the cut.

Of course, capitalists are capitalists so what is the surprise.

Another "of course."  These CEOs will tell you of all their good work their institutions, corporations, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, research operations do...and truth is many do good work.  I am not here to deny that - other workers down below certainly do.  Of course, the institutions, corporations, hospitals, research operations themselves are making good money, more often then not, for their good work, so let's not start feeling like we owe them some applause.  We do owe some applause to many of the workers in the healthcare industry, be they nurses, techs, aids, housekeepers, food service, researchers, lab workers, assistants, etc. etc.  I applaud them.  I know lots of them and they work hard and are not overpaid.

But something is very wrong with the picture below and you can figure it out for yourself.

The following is from Modern Healthcare.

   

CEO jackpot

Industry executives continue to see big payouts despite spending declines and cost-cutting

By Melanie Evans

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, founded a quarter-century ago by a Cornell University professor, had a breakthrough year in 2012. The price of the company's stock tripled. Sales of its new macular degeneration-fighting drug, Eylea, approached $1 billion blockbuster status. And its colon cancer drug won regulatory approval.


The result: Regeneron closed the year with its first-ever profit, the company boasted to investors in April. And no one benefited more than Dr. George Yancopoulos, the company's top scientist. Regeneron's board of directors voted Yancopoulos a total payout of salary, bonus, stock options and other benefits totaling $81.6 million. It threw in 500,000 shares of restricted stock, which he can't claim until 2017.


No matter that the company's macular degeneration and cancer drugs, whose success put Yancopoulos atop Modern Healthcare's list of the industry's highest-paid executives in 2012, were me-too drugs that added little to physicians' armamentarium for fighting disease. Indeed, the company's cancer drug, Zaltrap, was pulled from the formulary of one of the nation's leading cancer-treatment centers because oncologists there said it wasn't worth the price.

Yancopoulos' compensation easily surpassed that of the most richly rewarded executives in healthcare's other sectors. The jackpot increased his total compensation by a multiple of seven compared with the $10 million he received the year before.


Healthcare chief executives at for-profit firms did well across-the-board in 2012. Drugmakers led the parade, garnering 14 of the top 25 spots among highest-paid executives with a median increase in compensation of 16% for 13 executives. These gains came even though the latest reports showed spending on pharmaceuticals declined 3.5% last year to $325.8 billion, the first decline in decades as fewer patients visited doctors and hospitals and a number of patents on best-selling medicines expired, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.


But CEOs and top officials in other segments of the healthcare industry did well, too, even as their firms have been under unprecedented pressures to cut costs and become more efficient. Sluggish demand strained operations at hospitals, in particular, that are grappling with recent and proposed Medicare cuts from healthcare reform and federal budget negotiations. Yet four top hospital chain executives ranked among the nation's top paid executives, with HCA employing three of the four highest-paid hospital executives. The fourth, Community Health Systems' Wayne Smith, was the only one to see his total compensation decline last year.


Hospital giant HCA awarded its chief executive, Richard Bracken, total compensation of $46.4 million, up from $5.7 million in 2011. That made him the top-paid hospital executive in the U.S. Bracken's pay boost largely stemmed from roughly $22 million from distributions paid on vested stock options in 2012 and $11.8 million in stock options and so-called stock appreciation rights, which are payments made for the difference in stock price during a set time period.


Kent Thiry, the chairman and CEO for dialysis provider DaVita HealthCare Partners, took home $26.8 million last year even as Medicare moved to a bundled-payment system designed to cut costs. Thiry saw a roughly 50% increase in compensation, largely driven by about $8 million in restricted stock awards and another $1.25 million incentive payout. DaVita, which operates the nation's largest chain of dialysis clinics, last November acquired HealthCare Partners, a medical group and physician network company. Skip Thurman, a spokesman for DaVita, said in an e-mail that patient outcomes factor into compensation for the company's chief executive.

At insurer WellPoint, the combined severance and total compensation paid to departed chief executive Angela Braly, who left abruptly last August, reached $20.6 million. But the high payouts will continue. The insurer's newly appointed CEO, Joseph Swedish, will earn
$14.4 million in compensation after being recruited from Trinity Health, a not-for-profit health system based in Livonia, Mich.


At least one top officer in a sector—distributor McKesson Corp.'s John Hammergren—saw a pay decline. But it was from already lofty heights. The CEO of the diversified firm earned $39.7 million last year, a decline of 16% from the $45.6 million payout in 2011.


Peter Dworkin, a spokesman for Regeneron, said Yancopoulos' rising fortunes were tied to the company's climbing stock because so much of his payout is equity. Yancopoulos received only $850,000 in salary and a $2 million bonus. His stock awards, on the other hand, totaled $57.3 million and options amounted to another $21.4 million.


His 500,000 shares in restricted stock “is a so-called retention grant that recognizes his past value, but especially what we expect to be his future value to the company,” the spokesman said. “It was under his watch that all of our scientific, clinical and medical progress has been made, so he's really been integral to the success of Regeneron.”


Regeneron stockholders have little to complain about. The company's stock price more than tripled last year and is now trading at five times its January 2012 price.

John Core, an MIT Sloan School of Management accounting professor who studies executive compensation and governance, said drugmakers encourage risk in pursuit of high rewards. Their executive compensation packages are weighted with equity that deliver big payouts when the company succeeds. “I don't think that the shareholders are going to be unhappy for paying for a year like that,” he said.


Healthcare payers may not feel the same way, though. Regeneron's surging stock price and Yancopoulos' compensation were fueled by its bringing to market me-too drugs that have figured centrally in public criticism by ophthalmologists and oncologists over the rising price of new drugs.


Regeneron's Eylea, a macular degeneration treatment, entered the market as a rival to Genentech's Lucentis, both of which sell at a hefty premium to Genentech's equally effective Avastin, which can sell for as little as $50 a dose when used off-label to produce the monthly shots required to fend off the blinding eye disease. Zaltrap, which is similar to Avastin in the way its combats blood vessel formation in solid tumors, was sharply criticized by oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, after it was priced above the alternative already on the market. Neither drug prolonged life for very long in advanced cancer patients.


Regeneron has since lowered the price. Dr. Randall Stafford, a professor of medicine and director of the program on prevention outcomes and practices at Stanford University, said new me-too drugs have the potential to lower drug spending by creating competition. But when all the competition remains on patent, the new competitors often increase drug spending because they enter the market with heavy advertising.

Grant Comer, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual science at the University of Michigan, said the entry of Regeneron's Eylea into the macular degeneration market did not prompt Lucentis to lower its price. “I keep expecting them to cut their price and it just hasn't happened, as far as I know,” he said. “I really don't know the reason they haven't. I keep hoping they will, for our patients' sake. But they haven't done it.”


Comer doesn't dispute the drugs' value. Doctors previously could slow the progression of macular degeneration, but could not stop it. Patients went blind. The new class of drugs can preserve eyesight. “They are phenomenal drugs.”


But the brand name drugs are costly. Comer said Eylea's price is slightly less than the roughly $1,900 per monthly dose for Lucentis, though after the first three injections, it can be administered half as often. The Ann Arbor-based physician continues to reach first for Avastin since its cost—$50 to $75 a dose—is a fraction of the on-label drugs. “I favor the one that's going to benefit the medical system,” he said. 

Follow Melanie Evans on Twitter: @MHmevans