After the Red Cross conducted a census of sex workers in an effort to curb the spread of HIV, authorities Bauchi, NIgeria identified 320 women from the study and started to arrest them.
Our correspondent says the Sharia commission seems to have been prompted to act by the perception that it was unable to enforce a ban on commercial sex workers in the state.The Sharia commission normally liaises with the police, he says, but this time they acted directly, using their own security force to arrest the sex workers.
It is not clear how many of the women have already been arrested.
They could face flogging or prison terms.
Following the arrests, the Red Cross has halted its census.
Horrifying that an attempt to improve women's health could be turned around and used to punish them. What I want to know is how they got a hold of the census?
Thanks to Matt for the link.
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So officials punish extremely vulnerable people for being extremely vulnerable. I, too, wish to know how they acquired that list.
I missed this post when it first came up and this kind of thing drives me crazy. The Red Cross workers should be taken out and shot. No one who has ever worked in the Islamic regions of Africa can be so clueless as to not realize that they were assembling a hit list for the Sharia commission. There is also no real way they could have kept the information from the commission because the commission can legally request it at any time or get it through other means.
I hate to use Nazi analogies, but this is comparable to preparing a list of hidden Jews that need food shipments in the occupied territories. What did they think the Sharia commission was going to do? Let them help people that the commission feels should be stoned. Incredibly shortsighted and irresponsible of the Red Cross folks. Once they put a list together the Sharia commissionis going to feel compelled to act. This truly represents poor judgement and an appalling lack of understanding of human nature.