It might be a pardon, but they still believe she is guilty

Saudi king pardons gang-rape victim | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

At last the Saudi king has taken action for the sake of the welfare of the Qatif girl. King Abdullah has issued a pardon for the girl so that she will not have her sentence of 200 lashes carried out. This is good news, however, there is a catch. The justice ministry believes that she was treated fairly by the courts and that she was in fact guilty of the alleged crime.

Amongst the allegations dragged up against this girl is that she was dressed improperly. I guess that means she was not wearing a burqa, that most ridiculous get up that is destroying the health of Muslim women. She was also accused of being an adulteress, even though her husband has stood firmly by her side and has never accused her of such a thing.

Now for the first time I read that the girl's brother, when he heard about the rape had tried to kill the girl and she had tried to take her own life. Poor girl, what horrible treatment at the hands of a system that is so mysoginic that women who are raped are either killed by male relatives, commit suicide, or they are tried for a "crime" that they did not in fact commit.

Amongst the more sickening details of this story is the fact that the rapists took a mobile phone video of the attack, yet the judges in the case claimed that they could not find evidence of the kidnap, assault and rape. Really!!

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Rudd sends home illegal immigrants from Indonesia

Rudd sends home 16 asylum seekers - National - the age.com.au
In a very clear cut case the Rudd government has acted properly in my view by sending home the asylum seeker to Indonesia. For the very first time this is a clear cut case of economic refugees, since they have stated that they had to flee their homes because they could not earn a living after they had been caught illegally fishing in Australian territorial waters.

The issue here is border security, and for this reason these Indonesians should be sent home. They are not in fear of their lives because of war, and they are not fleeing a one child policy. Neither are they facing persecution as Christians, Buddhists or Hindus as a result of Muslim intolerance.

There have been times when I have been clearly on the other side in this particular debate. I do believe that it was wrong to send the Chinese woman who was pregnant with her second child back to China. She was forced to undergo a late term abortion and then faced further punishment. Australia had a duty to protect her and her family from this kind of behaviour by the Chinese government because it was genuine persecution. I am only citing one case where I have believed that the refugees should have been allowed to stay and that the application of "economic refugee" has been incorrectly applied in the past. However, this is clearly not the case with these individuals.

It is for this reason that I stand against David Manne of the Refugee and Immigration Centre because he is talking about these illegals as not having the opportunity to put there case. Sorry, but where there is no war there is no case, and where there is clearly an economic motivation there is no case. These illegal immigrants were already guilty of entering Australian waters to fish illegally, why should they be allowed to remain in Australia as illegal immigrants. We need to take a tough stance, otherwise our borders will remain porous.