Albino sisters granted asylum to attend school in US
fastest way, the way to guarantee that there is a vote in the parliament on gay marriage in this [term of] parliament, is to support the plebiscite,’’ Turnbull said.
Marriage equality advocate Rodney Croome, who opposes holding a plebiscite sure to be divisive and hateful, says if the prime minister really wants the change, he needs a backup plan in case the Senate blocks it.
Labor is also worried about the plebiscite’s success with Turnbull handling the national vote, saying he ‘‘stuffed up’’ the republic referendum, the NBN and senate reforms.
The opposition’s leadership team has discussed whether to allow the plebiscite legislation to pass, but didn’t reach a decision and may yet go to a caucus meeting.
The Greens have announced they will oppose the plebiscite and the government is unlikely to be able to convince enough crossbenchers of its merits to pass it without Labor’s help.
Turnbull still believed Labor would allow the plebiscite to happen.
Arguing that it shouldn’t because the no vote might win was ‘‘the most anti-democratic argument’’.
‘‘The Labor Party must want to delay same-sex marriage for a very long time, if they are briefing that.’’
The Australian Christian Lobby says it’s disappointing that those advocating to allow same-sex marriage don’t seem to trust people to have their say.
‘‘This is an issue that has been prosecuted by fatiguing members of parliament over many years,’’ director Lyle Shelton said.
‘‘It is only right that the issue now goes to the people to decide what is a very big change with big consequences.’’ The sisters tried to stay strong all those years of being taunted as ‘‘ghosts’’ for the colour of their skin, of being beaten by their teachers – of an attack that almost killed one of them.
There was a dream, after all, at the end of the torturous road that began in their tiny African village: getting an education.
Born albinos, Bibi and Tindi Mashamba missed so much school in their native Tanzania after an attack left Bibi without a leg and two fingers. Some people believed their rare genetic condition was related to witchcraft, or that their limbs and other body parts carried magical powers, and therefore could be sold.
‘‘We always worried about wasting time. We always wanted more school,’’ Bibi, 17, recalled, sharing her wish as soon as they arrived in California on medical visas last year, thanks to aid from the African Millennium Foundation and the Orthopaedic Institute for Children in Los Angeles.
The institute’s chief executive, Tony Scaduto, had offered to replace the artificial limb Bibi had outgrown.
‘‘Imagine – if we could study, someday, we could help educate those in our country about accepting everyone. It doesn’t matter what you look like,’’ said Tindi, 16.
The sisters have taken a step toward making that dream a reality.
With help from students at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, they were granted asylum to stay in the US.
Malena Ruth, who oversees the foundation and who is the siblings’ sponsor, reached out to different legal groups, emailing the immigration center at the law school before the girls’ visas expired.
‘‘We had to find a way to keep them here. They are in grave danger, going home where the government cannot or would not protect them,’’ Ruth said. ‘‘How do you leave two girls to face threats to their physical and emotional lives every day?’’ Amy Stern, the first law student assigned to their case, remembers sifting through the details of their lives in order to compile a narrative of everything they had gone through.
‘‘I hadn’t heard any of these albino myths and it was horrifying to learn of their abuses,’’ she said.
Children threw rocks or spit at the sisters. Because they were vulnerable to attack – including from people who might want to kill them to sell their limbs — their parents usually kept the girls out of school.
Six years ago, with their mother already dead, the girls’ father succumbed to AIDS. On the day after his funeral, intruders attacked Bibi.
Stern connected with Alshaymaa John Kwegyir, Tanzania’s first albino member of parliament who had adopted the orphans before they left their homeland. Kwegyir jumped at the chance to send the children overseas, saying that Tanzania was not a ‘‘safe society’’ and that even she avoids going out alone.
Stern spent about 80 pro bono hours on the case before she graduated in May, transferring the work to a classmate who prepped the sisters for their asylum interview on July 7.
‘‘They are adults in kids’ bodies,’’ she said of Bibi and Tindi. ‘‘I admire their strength, and even more, their desire to take back what they learn to fight the violence against children in their country.’’ Bibi is weighing a career in media to expose brutality ‘‘against the innocent,’’ she said. Tindi hopes to become a lawyer for the same reason.
The sisters enrolled in the Montessori School of Ojai, eager to immerse in books that will get them ready for high school-level courses. They will start in a combined class of sixth-, seventhand eighth-graders, challenging themselves to finish the workload quickly, said Ruth, who is still raising funds for their academic fees.
‘‘I’m going to do all these grades in one year, they tell me. I tell them: It’s good to have goals, but don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself,’’ she said. ‘‘Experience each day as a new day.’’ France’s top administrative court on Saturday overturned a ban on burkinis in a Mediterranean beach resort, effectively meaning towns can no longer issue bans on the swimsuits that have divided the country and brought world attention to its fraught relationship with Muslims.
The ruling by the Council of State specifically concerns a ban on the Muslim garment in the Riviera town of Villeneuve-Loubet, but the binding decision is expected to impact all the 30 or so French resort municipalities that have issued similar decrees.
The bans grew increasingly controversial as images circulated online of some Muslim women being ordered to remove bodyconcealing garments on French Riviera beaches.
Lawyers for a human rights group and a Muslim collective challenged the legality of the ban to the top court, saying the orders infringe on basic freedoms and that mayors have overstepped their powers by telling women what to wear on beaches.
Despite the court victory, the debate was unlikely to go away. Prime Minister Manual Valls, who supported the bans, called the debate ‘‘fundamental’’ for secular France, where religious displays are unwelcome in the public space.
Valls wrote on his Facebook page that denouncing the burkini ‘‘in no way puts into question individual freedom’’ and is really about denouncing ‘‘fatal, retrograde Islamism’’. The burkini, he wrote, ‘‘is the affirmation of political Islam in the public space’’.
Mayors had cited multiple reasons for the bans, including security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks, risk to public order, and France’s strict rules on secularism in public life.
The Council of State ruled that, ‘‘The emotion and concerns arising from the terrorist attacks, notably the one perpetrated in Nice on July 14, cannot suffice to justify in law the contested prohibition measure.’’
It ruled that the mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet overstepped his powers by enacting measures that are not justified by ‘‘proven risks of disruptions to public order nor, moreover, on reasons of hygiene or decency’’.
‘‘The contested decree has thus brought a serious and manifestly illegal infringement on basic freedoms such as freedom to come and go, freedom of conscience and personal freedom,’’ the ruling read.
Lawyer Patrice Spinosi, representing the Human Rights League, said that women who have already received fines can protest them based on Saturday’s decision. He said the group plans to ask all French mayors who banned burkinis to withdraw their orders and, if they refuse to do so, he will systematically take each case to court.
‘‘It is a decision that is meant to set legal precedent,’’ Spinosi said. ‘‘Today all the ordinances taken should conform to the decision of the Council of State. Logically the mayors should withdraw these ordinances. If not, legal actions could be taken.’’
The head of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, the other group that appealed to the top court, hailed the decision but lamented that the crackdown ‘‘will remain engraved in the history of our country’’.
‘‘One cannot take back the harm which was caused, humiliations that were provoked,’’ Marwan Muhammad said outside the court.
The bans have become a symbol of tensions around the place of Islam in secular France and the heated debate has brought about divisions even among cabinet ministers.