Chilean Vigilantes Have Sense of Humor

Mob justice ruled Santiago, Chile Wednesday as a thief was seized, stripped and trussed up by residents of the capital.

The young male was in the process of robbing an elderly man at knifepoint when nearby Santiagueños intervened and took a peculiar form of revenge.

In scenes recalling the public stocks of old, social media was abuzz with pictures of the unfortunate robber, branded “flaite” (“white trash”) by Twitter users. Stripped near-naked, he was tied to a lamppost and exposed to the mockery of passersby.

“This ‘flaite’ assaulted and put a knife to an old man’s neck. He struggled, but a group of men grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground,” one witness told press.

“They took the knife off him, slashed his clothes and tied him to a pole with plastic,” she added.

A crowd soon assembled and tweeted triumphant photos and jibes, with the Carabineros — Chile’s uniformed police — taking over 20 minutes to arrive on the scene.

“I feel proud of people today,” tweeted one witness. “The ‘flaite’ of Banderas and Agustinas was pretty well-bruised.”

Just in time for the US holiday of Thanksgiving, social media users were also treated to pictures of the would-be thief’s plastic-wrapped rear end, oddly reminiscent of a prize turkey.

Citizens may have good reason to deal out rough justice by themselves. Although levels of public confidence in the Carabineros, at 56 percent, far outstrip their trust in Chile’s political class, recent police figures reveal that some 93 percent of robberies in the first half of 2014 — some 166,000 cases in total — went without any resulting arrests.

Pakistani Christian Couple Burnt Alive Because They Wanted to Quit

From Pamela Geller

The horror. Beaten to within an inch of their lives and then burnt alive in an oven. Think of it — all in the name of Islam. The bloodthirsty mob was “led by clerics” (remember that when Islamic supremacists and their apologists tell you that Islam is like Christianity and Judaism):

‘A mob attacked a Christian couple after accusing them of desecration of the holy Koran and later burnt their bodies at a brick kiln where they worked,’ local police station official Bin-Yameen told AFP. - This is the sharia — “blasphemy.” And when you speak of these monstrous atrocities, you are clubbed with “Islam is peace” or charges of “islamophobia.”

The brutal laws of the sharia are used to exact revenge against religious minorities. This is such a case — a false charge of blasphemy was leveled at a Christian couple in what was really a money dispute. Muslims exact revenge on non-Muslims by leveling false charges, and the punishments are savage.

Christian protest, unrelated to yesterday's events

PakistanChristians

Dawn reports:  “Secondly, when one of them is accused, the entire community is made to suffer, as illustrated by the mob violence in Joseph Colony, Gojra, etc or in lesser known cases where communities have been intimidated into moving en masse out of the locality. In fact, the desire to grab land or settle personal scores often underlies blasphemy allegations. That is all the more reason the law needs to be revisited.”

LAHORE: In a gruesome incident, a Christian couple was on Tuesday thrashed and burned alive by a group of angry Muslims in Pakistan’s Punjab province for allegedly desecrating the Quran.

The horrific crime was reported from the villages of Kot Radha Kishan of Kasur district, some 50 kilometres from here.

A large number of police personnel were deployed in the villages to provide security to the minority community.

Emaneul Sarfraz, a relative of the deceased couple, said that his cousins, Shahzad Masih, 35, and his wife Shamah, 31, had been working in the kiln of Muhammad Yousuf Gujjar for sometime near Chak (village) 59.

“The couple along with their four children wanted to leave the kiln as Yousuf was not paying their remuneration. He demanded Rs 5,00,000 from them, if they wanted to quit. That must be Islamic math. When people quit in any other country in the world, they get paid what is owed them, rather than losing what's owed them and having to pay your boss to leave. 

“Two days ago, after an exchange of words Yousuf locked the couple along with their children in a room,” Emaneul said.

He further said that an announcement was made today from two mosques of Chak 59 that Shahzad Masih and his wife had committed blasphemy by burning the pages of Quran.

“A large number of Muslims led by area clerics reached the kiln and dragged the couple out of the room after breaking into it.

They first tortured them and then threw them in the kiln.

No one from the crowd listened to the couple, who were pleading that they were innocent as Yousuf had levelled false allegation of blasphemy against them to settle money dispute,” Emanuel said adding, “Thank God they did not burn the couple’s children”.

He alleged that police from the nearby post had reached there on time but did not intervene seeing the charged mob.

“We have taken some 50 people into custody in connection with the killings and raids were underway to arrest more including the kiln owner,” Jawad Qamar, police chief of Kasur district, said.

Qamar also denied the incident had taken place in police presence.

Human Liberation Commission Pakistan chairman Aslam Sahotra said he visited the district headquarters hospital in Kasur and saw the remains of couple.

“It was all ashes and some bones of the couple which is left to bury,” he said.

More Mass Graves in Mexico but Still No Sign of 43 Missing Students

Vigilante groups have been joining in the search for the students in Guerrero state

People searching for 43 missing Mexican students say they have found new burial pits.

The 43 have been missing since they clashed with police almost three weeks ago in the town of Iguala.

Vigilantes who joined the search said they had found six new burial pits, at least two of which contained what they believe are human remains.

The search had been stepped up after forensic tests showed bodies found on 4 October were not those of the students.

The latest burial pits were found by members of a group of vigilantes who had travelled to Iguala to help with the search.

Student hangs up posters reading "They took them alive, we want them back alive"
at the fence of the Attorney General's Office

They said they had found six pits, two of which looked freshly dug but had not been used yet.

They searched three of the remaining four and said they found what looked like human remains, clothes and hair in two of them.

If confirmed, this would bring the total number of mass graves found around Iguala since the students' disappearance to 19.

So far, forensic experts have only concluded tests on 28 bodies found on 4 October. They could not be matched with the DNA provided by the relatives of the students, raising questions as to who was in the mass grave.

It is also not clear how long ago the grave may have been dug and by whom.

About 50 people have been arrested in connection with the students' disappearance, with the vast majority being local police officers.

The officers are believed to have been working for a drugs gang, known as the Guerreros Unidos.

The missing students all attended a teacher training college in Iguala, about 200km (125 miles) south of Mexico City.

The college has a history of left-wing activism but it is not clear whether the students were targeted for their political beliefs.

They disappeared after clashes with the police on 26 September in which six people died. Eyewitnesses reported seeing them being bundled into police vans.

Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers

A fascinating story from the LA Times:

MEXICO CITY — Like a character from a graphic novel, she dresses in black, has unusually blond hair — and kills bus drivers who sexually assault women.

In a place like Ciudad Juarez, known for its years of brutal killings of women, the story has inexorable appeal. But how much of it is true?

Authorities are taking the reports seriously enough to investigate and have posted undercover cops on buses.

Women’s advocates say they wouldn't be surprised if someone finally had taken long-denied justice into her own hands.

Two bus drivers were slain in the last week, and over the weekend an electronic message claiming responsibility was sent to several news outlets.

“You think because we are women we are weak, and maybe we are,” the message says. “But only to a certain point.... We can no longer remain quiet over these acts that fill us with rage.
And so, I am an instrument who will take vengeance.”

Signed: Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers.

The message says women who work the night shifts in Juarez’s enormous maquiladora industry repeatedly fall prey to the bus drivers on whom they must rely to get home in the dark.

For now, at least, there is no way to verify the veracity of the message, whether it was written by the actual killer or killers of the bus drivers, whether Diana the Huntress really exists, or even whether she is a she.

What is clear is that for the last two decades, hundreds of women, many of them maquiladora workers, have been killed or have gone missing in Ciudad Juarez. Some disappeared after boarding buses, their raped and tortured bodies later found dumped in the desert. Few of the cases are ever resolved, and families have endlessly protested the lack of justice for their daughters, sisters and mothers.

“We cannot be sure that the email corresponds exactly to those who committed the killings” of the bus drivers, said Juarez human rights activist Gustavo de la Rosa, “but in the city’s imagination, that is definitely what’s happening.”

The bus drivers were slain on consecutive days last week, Wednesday and Thursday, at almost the same hour and on the same route. Witnesses told Ciudad Juarez’s El Diario newspaper that, in both cases, a woman dressed in black with blond hair, dyed or possibly a wig, stopped the bus and started to board, pulled out a pistol and shot the driver dead.

Two bullets to the head, in both cases.

Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the state of Chihuahua, where Juarez is located, said investigators were focusing on revenge as a likely motive.

“We have undercover police, dressed in civilian clothes, riding the buses in hopes of preventing another such murder and also to try to find this woman,” Sandoval said in a telephone interview from Ciudad Juarez.

As far-fetched as the idea of a black-clad female Mexican avenger might seem, human rights activists in Ciudad Juarez said they wished authorities would work as hard investigating rapes on buses as they were trying to find Diana the Huntress.

“I have no way of knowing if this is true,” Imelda Marrufo, coordinator of a network of women’s organizations, said in a telephone interview from Ciudad Juarez.

“But if it is confirmed, remember, we are talking about a victim, someone who was raped and has probably lived with such a lack of justice that she has no hope that whoever did that to her will ever pay for the crime.

“Like so many women in Ciudad Juarez.”

It's amazing how quickly the police had undercover officers on buses after the murders. But did they ever plant a female officer on late night buses? While vigilante justice is very frightening, is it better than no justice at all?