Islamic police in Indonesia’s Aceh province have been issued with 20,000 long skirts and ordered to cover up women deemed to have broken Muslim dress codes, an official said on Tuesday.
The province on northern Sumatra Island has banned Muslim women from wearing figure-hugging clothing such as tight trousers, under Islamic by-laws that have outraged less conservative parts of the mainly Muslim archipelago.
Vice and virtue officers in West Aceh district have been told that from tomorrow they should ask women wearing the wrong clothes to put on the government-issue skirts on the spot.
“Starting Wednesday morning, I will hand over some 20,000 skirts to the Sharia police in West Aceh,” West Aceh district chief Ramli Mansur said. “Female offenders can then immediately change their tight pants to the long, loose skirts if the Sharia police catch them.” Mr Mansur said that one day he would have to answer to God about what he did to enforce Sharia.
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Pak govt will not reopen Zardari case
Rezaul H. Laskar
Islamabad
May 25: Pakistan government on Tuesday stuck to its decision that it would not reopen graft cases against President Asif Ali Zardari in Switzerland and told the Supreme Court that reports about his alleged involvement in laundering of $60 million were “exaggerated.” Law minister Babar Awan, who was summoned by the apex court to explain the government’s failure to fully implement a verdict striking down a controversial graft amnesty, told a five-judge bench that his ministry’s records stated there was no case against Mr Zardari in Switzerland and no legal proceedings were currently underway in that country. When the bench asked Mr Awan about steps being taken by the government to bring back to Pakistan the $60 million that were allegedly laundered by Mr Zardari through Swiss bank acco-unts, the minister said reports in this regard were “exaggerated” and were not based on facts.
Asked by the judges as to who controlled the accounts containing millions of dollars that were frozen by Swiss authorities, Mr Awan replied he had no information in this regard. Mr Awan told the court he intended to travel abroad in coming days and sought more time to present the go-vernment’s viewpoint.
—PTI