In Spain millions march for dignity

March 23, 2014 by 12 Comments

Belèn Calvo

“I came because I have dignity.”

As many as two million demonstrators converged on Madrid this weekend to reject austerity and support individual and collective dignity. For the past month, eight columns have been on the move, and Saturday, they met, as the Marches for Dignity flooded the streets and captured the imagination of the Spanish people.

Marchers and supporters have demanded no more payment of the debt; no more cuts; no more Troika; and bread, work, shelter (and roses) for all. While they have specific policy demands, such as a law establishing a basic income and an end to all evictions, the heart of the mobilization has been to demand an end to State terror and a concerted effort to build dignity. To march, and to work, for dignity is to reject the politics of fear and terror.

The marchers’ manifesto demanded equal rights for women, migrants, people of color, members of LGBTIQ communities, elders, the poor, workers, dissidents, and more. More to the point, they have demanded an end to the assaults and a beginning to real democracy and real dignity.

Women have been prominent across the sectors. Women have led the anti-eviction movement, and they have led and populated all other movements as well, from mining communities to farm communities to urban communities, from factories to schools to clinics. Women like anti-eviction activist Mamen Ruiz argued that women had been pushed to the brink, and beyond, and that now is the time. Women like Virginia, a government employee, marched to protest the astronomically rising tax rates and the new, stringent anti-abortion laws. Women like teacher Belén Calvo came because, in her words, “I have dignity.”

Women marched to secure an end to sexual violence and exploitation. They argued that women had long struggled with and organized to secure the right to live without male violence and the right to family planning. Under the Troika’s constant assault on women, and almost everyone, violence against women has intensified. Violence has intensified against women of color, immigrant and migrant women, women workers, women students, women seeking medical assistance, and the list goes on.

Outside of Spain and the usual suspects, the Western media has barely covered the largest protest in recent Spanish history, except to note that they ended with some clashes between police and a very small number of demonstrators. Whether police or protesters began those clashes remains debatable. What is clear is that the only `news fit to print’ is violence, however incidental.

For the international news media, austerity is the new normal. Meanwhile, anti-austerity resistance is gaining ground in Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal, Spain. Much of the prison resistance organizing in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia is anti-austerity at its core. Much of the protests about public service in South Africa are as much about the State’s austerity development program as the shoddy service. In each instance, women are at the core of organizing. In each instance, women echo Belén Calvo: “I come because I have dignity.”

The message is clear. End the reign of terror and torture that passes for austerity. Remember, we each and all came because we have dignity.

 

(Photo Credit: El Pais / J.J.G.)

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Nowhere to go: Women and migrants fight for their rights

February 24, 2014 by 9 Comments

Recently, the Spanish government made headlines when it tried to sharply curtail women’s reproductive rights. Now, another set of human and civil rights is in shambles: the right to be, the right to seek safer grounds.

The European Union has two main points of entry on African land, Ceuta and Melilla. These two cities are Spanish territories on the coast of Morocco. Their existence is linked to the complex history of invasions and establishment of protectorates on Mediterranean shores. The EU has been walling up some of its borders in the South against migrants. In 2005 the EU financed the raising of a double iron curtain 6 meters high around these two Spanish enclaves. The Rajoy government had cutting blades installed on the top of the fence. The EU has also built a 12.5 kilometers wall between Turkey and Greece. Bulgaria is building its own iron curtain.

On February 6, 2013, 200 migrants tried to enter Ceuta. Fourteen died at sea as they tried to get around the fence. After some denial, the Spanish Guardia Civil finally admitted that they had used rubber bullets and tear gas against the migrants. The Minister of Interior Jorge Fernandez Diaz has been vague about these incidents that killed desperate migrants. At first, he denied any involvement or responsibility of the Guardia Civil. Then he recognized the use of riot gear only as a deterrent. Shooting at fragile craft with people onboard who don’t know how to swim is not a deterrent. Remember that, on the other side of the border, Moroccan forces are busily cudgeling migrants.

Ten days later, another 300 migrants forced the gate of the city of Melilla. About 50 were able to go in. They were then sent to temporary camps, where eight died.

In Spain, people were outraged. Within a week, demonstrations to denounce these disguised murders were organized in numerous Spanish cities. Various slogans were shouted: “Natives or foreigners, we’re all the same working class”; “No one is illegal”; and, alluding to the government’s anti abortion stand, “Where are the pro lifers?” The assault on women’s rights and the sealing of the borders are intimately linked.

In these times of global deterritorialization, with climate and economic insecurity, people migrate to escape armed conflict, starvation and misery. The non-negotiable rights to life are easily forgotten.

In the United States, immigration rights and women’s rights have been compromised, even more so recently.

In Greece, with the “debt crisis”, politically motivated violence against women and the increasingly restricted reproductive rights leaving many women without safe delivery or abortion services links with the extreme violence that migrants face at the hands of the police and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn. These various issues developed with the austerity measures brutally imposed by the Troika (the European financial power), and only now finally questioned. They have deeply destabilized every sector of the Greek society, except for the rich and powerful. In Greece, as in Spain, people are demonstrating for human rights, and against fascism.

Economic austerity measures have allowed a state of emergency to administer cruel treatments onto displaced populations. The migrant population that lands on Greek soil escapes one set of dangers only to face another. Despite the EU official commitment to human rights, there is no protection for them, and so they are abandoned in the streets of Athens and eventually attacked by Golden Dawn squads. They are the hidden casualties of the austerity measures.

The common thread that joins these stories is the elusive reliance on a neoliberal vision of the world order that displaces, isolates, impoverishes populations, and in particular women. Migrant rights and women rights are the first victims. If we don’t fight for these rights, we would have nowhere to go.

 

(Image Credit: http://www.4ojos.com)

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Mujeres unidas, jamás serán vencidas!

February 12, 2014 by 13 Comments

From Madrid to Paris, from London to Berlin and all over Europe, women and men went to the streets to demand respect for women’s rights, including the right to decide to continue or end a pregnancy. These massive demonstrations were a response to the attempt from the Spanish government to curtail women’s rights with an outrageous bill.

In Spain women and men rode the “train of freedom,” to reach the capital. The older participants remembered the time before the first laws in the 80s when women risked their lives for not pursuing an unwanted pregnancy. The younger were afraid for the future of their lives. Men expressed worries for their partners, their daughters. Many were afraid of the moral and social setbacks and the threat of the extreme right rule. After all, the time of Franco dictatorship left its marks on the Spanish population.

Sizeable demonstrations took place in 32 cities in France. Thirteen women politicians from the left to the right, who also recently supported LGBT rights, launched an appeal to the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. They noted that Spain has often led Europe in passing progressive laws that made headway in defense of women’s rights, especially targeting sexual and sexist violence. Spanish law inspired other countries like France in shaping better anti sexist laws to address violence against women.

People who joined or supported the demonstrations know that what is happening in Spain is just one side of a multifaceted battle against women’s rights and public services that is raging across Europe. These rights are social rights.

Annie Ernaux who wrote an iconic book on her experience with abortion when it was illegal, asks, “Is it really unfathomable to imagine a return to clandestine abortion? I have always been convinced that nothing is ever definitely won for women.” What happened to women when their reproductive rights were not respected? “We would see women dying of hemorrhage, septicemia, or losing their uterus” recalled Martine Hatchnel a gynecologist who started working before the Veil abortion law.

As the neoliberal crisis has extended its grip on populations through austerity measures, Europe has experienced a certain hardening on human rights issues and the rise of far right power. However, the Spanish government’s attack on women’s rights has galvanized a stronger opposition than expected. 81 % of Spanish people oppose the bill; throughout Europe support for reproductive rights is increasing. In France these rights have been reinforced in law, social organization, and public support, which is large.

There is a movement that demands that these rights be recognized as nonnegotiable in the EU. For example, Portuguese European deputy Edite Estrela has tried to have sexual and reproductive rights recognized through a vote on her Report on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, which had already been altered with the removal of LGBT sexual rights.  Her report was defeated by only 7 votes, largely because a translation error led to some thirty votes being misdirected. Estrela is appealing the decision. This Report would have broadened the commitment to sexual and reproductive rights within the EU, especially directed toward Ireland, Poland, Spain, Malta and Italy.

Revolt and indignation are brewing across Europe, according to Isabelle Louis, of Paris Planning Familial and one of the organizers of the Paris demonstration. Visibly pregnant, she read the declaration of the French Family Planning in support of sexual and reproductive rights. She said that there was something very important taking place during this demonstration as she observed the varied crowd, men, women and definitely with a trans-European coloration. She saw older women too old to march showing their support from their windows and balconies.

Isabelle Louis concluded that the battle continues and this time she’d like to believe that it could be won!

 

(Photo Credit: L’Humanité)

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Who killed Samba Martine? We all did

January 29, 2014 by 27 Comments

Samba Martine died, or was killed, on December 19, 2011, in the Aluche immigrant detention center in Madrid. This week, a Spanish court ordered her case to be reopened, stating that Martine’s death “could have been avoided.” That’s putting a fine point on it. Samba Martine was killed. She was killed by the Spanish government. She was killed by a global immigration detention gulag that has little to no rules, even less enforcement of the few rules it has, almost no accountability, and so little transparency as to be opaque. Except to the prisoners who continue to die … avoidably.

Here’s one version of Samba Martine’s story, as presented last year to a European Parliament Commission: “On 19 December 2011, a Congolese citizen, Samba Martine, died at the Aluche immigrant detention centre in Madrid. According to the Spanish Ombudsman’s 2012 annual report, her death was due to a lack of communication between institutions, which meant that she was not given the right treatment as someone with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The immigrant held at Aluche had been diagnosed as HIV-positive at the Melilla temporary detention centre for immigrants but was transferred to the Aluche immigrant detention centre in Madrid without the latter centre being given any information whatsoever about her health status. This meant that at Aluche she was diagnosed with different illnesses and the centre’s doctors treated her on the basis of the different diagnoses without realising that she was HIV-positive, which consequently led to her death … The case of Samba Martine shows that the lack of coordination between the Aluche immigrant detention centre and the Melilla temporary detention centre for immigrants led to a diagnostic error which meant that she was not given the essential treatment for her illness, which indirectly caused her death. In addition to this case, there is the case of Idrissa Diallo and many other immigrants who have lost their lives in immigrant detention centres in Spain, suggesting that human rights … are being systematically violated.”

Samba Martine did not die of a `lack of coordination’. She was killed. She was killed by a program that targets immigrant women, and especially African women.

Samba Martine was held at Aluche for 38 days. From the day she arrived to the day she died, she complained of severe headaches, perineal irritation, stomach pains, and more. She went to the on-site medical facility, such as it is, and was given little to no treatment. Finally, the pain was so severe, they decided to send her to the hospital, only after debating whether to send her in a police car or ambulance. Hours later, Samba Martine died, alone, in pain.

Who died that night? 3106. A number, not a person. Cause? Cryptococcal infection … the second most common AIDS-defining illness in Africa. What crime did she commit? None. `Officially’, Aluche isn’t a prison. In fact, it’s worse. Next to Aluche, standard Spanish prisons look almost decent.

Samba Martine is not an exception. The notorious CIE, the Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros, is filled with Sambas. Women, and especially African women, suffer particular indignities and violence. A litany of `failures’ and `omissions’ will now ensue. The prison clinic is private. The prisons don’t communicate with one another. The prison staff is inadequately trained. None of these describe what happened.

Samba Martine was not failed by anyone. She was killed. She was killed by the State, in this instance Spain, and she was killed by the world that sustains black holes, militarized borders on every corner, and dispensable surplus populations.

On June 2, 2012, six months after she died, Samba Martine was buried in a cemetery in Madrid. Her mother, Clementine, came from Canada. She knew her daughter’s death was neither accident nor failure. It was murder. She knew. We all killed Samba Martine.

 

(Photo Credit: elpais.com)

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In Spain, the neoliberal State attacks women to `protect’ them

January 7, 2014 by 18 Comments

 

Austerity measures help neither the republic nor the democracy. They usher violence and injustice into the civil society. For women, austerity measures mean something dreadful.

In 2011, Spain elected populist conservative Mariano Rajoy from the People Party (PP), with the support of fascist groups and the ultraconservative branch of the Catholic Church. He campaigned as a strong believer in neo liberal values, particularly pushing austerity as the basis for economic policies. No matter that the so-called public debt originated from a complex association of debt and profit making through outrageous interest rates to private banks and investors.  As in the United States, the message and the methods involve the religious right and the control of women’s bodies and the most vulnerable.

Once again women’s rights, immigrants’ rights, labor rights are at stake.

“Today, it is going to be impossible for women to have abortions. We expected a bad law, but this is the worst we could have imagined,” said Francisca Garcia, president of ACAI, La Asociación de Clínicas Acreditadas para la Interrupción Voluntaria del Embarazo. This worst law imaginable has overturned previous reproductive laws, and in particular the 2010 law passed under the socialist government of Zapatero, one of the most comprehensive defenses of women’ss right to control their bodies. The new law will make abortion impossible unless pregnancy threatens the woman’s life or if the pregnancy is the result of a sexual assault.

Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, who designed the antiabortion bill, explained: “Women are victims of abortion.” His comment shows his utter contempt for women’s intelligence and capacity to understand their bodies and their needs. He pretends that the morality of this bill rests on the defense of the unborn yet conceived child and on an economic necessity. Actually, countries, like France, that have progressive abortion laws and public services to support mothers have among the highest birth rates in the industrial world. Moreover, it goes against the European Union views on abortion rights with twenty of the twenty-eight members guaranteeing women’s right  to freely decide on their pregnancy. Six EU countries have conditions on abortion but allow it. Only Malta and Ireland prohibit abortion.  According to Le Monde, the Rajoy government and its campaign against abortion received funding and support from the ultraconservative Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, based in the United States with representation in Spain.

Undocumented immigrants are also targeted by Spain’s so-called reform of the health care system. They are now denied any kind of coverage under the public health care system. Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have protested these measures. As with abortion rights, there is no rationale or morals that can justify these measures, since health is recognized as a basic human right and covering a population is both more humane and cost efficient. These bills have been designed to show the muscles of this government and its commitment to punitive public policies. By reducing public services to the bare minimum, neoliberal policies overpower human rights.

Simultaneously, Gallardon wants to `reform’ the penal system and create a life-without-parole sentence. Following the United States, he is advocating for a Patriot Act-type of security law with more restrictions applied to unions and the right to strike.

Meanwhile, demonstrations multiplied in Spain and across Europe.  In Spain the police responded violently to women demonstrating for their rights. They pushed groups of women to the ground, which was filmed and triggered more protests.

Almost 25 years ago, Jacques Derrida noted, “Today the police are no longer content to enforce the law, and thus to conserve it; they invent it.” Today, the Rajoy government, no longer content, invents the law to exercise violence against women while showing a cynical contempt for the Spanish people.

To fight for these rights is to fight for the people of Spain and elsewhere against the oppressive globalized neoliberal order that, with mechanical precision, disassembles human society and turns profit-making into a State religion.

 

(Photo Credit: Fernando Alvarado/EFE)

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Amnesty has never meant freedom

December 23, 2013 by 18 Comments

Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, members of Pussy Riot, walked out of prison today. This is good news, but it’s not freedom. Freedom does not exist where whole populations live in fear of State mandated, sponsored, or instigated terror. Gay and lesbian individuals and populations, from Moscow to Kampala, know this all too well. Ask Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera about life in Uganda, and she will not talk about “freedom.” She will talk about the struggle for freedom, the long hard walk to a freedom dreamt of but not in sight. Ask those, like Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova, who suddenly leave prison if they feel “free.” They may feel joyful and relieved to be on the outside, however precariously, but they do not feel free. They remember too much.

President Obama recently “pardoned” and “commuted” a few sentences. He talked a little about the unfairness of some aspects of the so-called War on Drugs. He didn’t mention that he has the lowest pardon rate of any President in recent history. He didn’t mention the bodies piling up in prisons and jails across the country.

He certainly didn’t mention Karen Sandoval, originally from Honduras, who lives in constant fear and terror. He didn’t mention the terror of a rigid “immigration enforcement policy” that rips families and communities apart, that rends hearts and souls and sometimes minds, and, not incidentally, that targets women – as undocumented individuals, as those left to clean up and care for those, and in particular the children, `left behind’, and, when incarcerated, as those most vulnerable to sexual abuse and violence from staff.

In Spain, the conditions in immigration detention centers, in the notorious centros de internamiento de extranjeros, or CIEs, are infamously toxic. What’s the anwer? Build more! Put one on every corner. In Italy, the vicious conditions of immigration detention centers are so bad they have inspired prisoners to sew their lips shut, in protest. They say these are worse than prisons “or any other place”. In these prisons, “people … are treated like animals.”

None of this is new. We have seen the sewn lips before, and we have turned away. We have each time taken an oath to forget. That’s what amnesty is, that’s what amnesty was at its origin. Once a year, those who committed violence in the name of preservation of the democratic State, would gather, each year at the same time in the same place, and would take an oath to forget. That is why the State, from its earliest, feared the mothers in mourning, the mothers who refused to forget, who howled their remembrances in words and deeds.

Amnesty has never meant freedom. Ask those who remember.

 

(Photo Credit: CalvertJournal.com)

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What happens in immigration detention stays in immigration detention

December 19, 2013 by 7 Comments

This is a story of whistleblowers in the land where there are no whistles and ears are forbidden. That land is called “immigration detention”. In different places, it goes by different names. Yarl’s Wood in England. Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros, or CIE, in Spain. The names change, but the structures and situations are the same. “Immigration detention” is a country, and it’s global.

In September, there was yet another story about systematic sexual predation at Yarl’s Wood. This time it was Tanja’s story, an account that only made it to the public because of the tenacity, perseverance and creativity of Tanja, who just kept on pushing. Yarl’s Wood is a designed community in which staff preys upon the most vulnerable, typically young women fleeing sexual violence. Remember, the Yarl’s Wood prison population is almost 90% women, while men make up almost half the staff. The police yet again said they would conduct an investigation. The real story here is the story of the story, the fact that Tanja could get the story out at all. And that story continues.

Since Tanja’s story broke, all hell has broken loose, and by hell is meant silence. First it was Sirah Jeng, a 59-year-old Gambian, who said she could corroborate Tanja’s story. Her reward? In November she was informed, with barely any notice, that she should get ready for imminent deportation … hours before her scheduled appointment with investigating police. That was November.

This month, Afolashade Lamidi, 40-year-old Nigerian, also confirmed parts of Tanja’s accounts, and then some. And she received the same treatment as Sirah Jeng. She was promised the opportunity of forced return to Nigeria.

This is in so many ways a common story. In Spain this month, Aramis Manukyan, known by his friends and now the world as Alik, was “found dead in his cell.” Alik was a 42-year-old Armenian, a father of a 7-year-old daughter. Found dead in his cell was immediately translated into suicide, despite various testimonies to the contrary. Prisoners reported from different floors that they could her Alik’s cries, but no matter. He committed suicide.

After much pressure from the usual suspects like SOS Racismo, Cerramos los CIE (Close the CIE) and Migra Studium, the police, yet again, say they would conduct an investigation. And that’s when the two key witnesses were deported.

For every Tanja and every Alik there are tens, hundreds, thousands of neighbors and friends, prisoners all. There are witnesses in prison, and they are not the kings or queens in the land of the blind. They are the witnesses in the land of the blinded. They are the whistleblowers in the land where whistles are prohibited and hearing is a crime. Remember, what happens in immigration detention stays, or dies, in immigration detention.

 

(Photo Credit: Guy Corbishley / Demotix / Corbis / The Guardian)

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Spain’s women of coal are singing, rising up and sitting down

June 29, 2012 by 2 Comments

The women of Asturias are singing En el pozo Maria Luisa.

For centuries, Asturias has relied on coal mining. For centuries, mostly men have gone down into the earth to pull out coal. They have been injured and killed by the lethal working conditions. For centuries, their families and communities have struggled and organized. For centuries, the men have sung a song of resistance, called En el pozo Maria Luisa, a song to Santa Bárbara Bendita, the patron saint of miners. They sang this song during miners’ uprisings and strikes, such as those in 1934 that rocked Spain, and they sang this song during the Civil War.

The song tells the story of an explosion in the infamous Maria Luisa mine. A miner comes home from a mine blast in which four miners were killed. He is covered in their blood, and in his own, his head split wide. And he calls to his wife, Maruxina, and has one request: “mirái.” “Look.”

“mirái, mirái Maruxina, mirái / mirái como vengo yo”.

Look. Look Maruxina, look. Look at how I am.

This is a song traditionally sung by men, but times are changing.

Last month, the Spanish government announced it would cut subsidies to the coal mining industry by 63%. That would mean the end of coal mining in Spain. And that would mean the end of the mining provinces: Asturias, Castile and León. The miners engaged in local actions, and then declared a general strike. They have organized a Black March, which should arrive in Madrid on July 11, when the Prime Minister will report on the bank bailout and the economy.

Though a distinct minority, there are women miners now in Asturias. Women such as Ana Sánchez, who is on the Black March. She marches for herself, for her comrades, for her community, for her daughter and granddaughters. Somewhere right now she is singing the words to En el pozo Maria Luisa: “mirái, mirái Maruxina, mirái / mirái como vengo yo”.

Before the miners started walking, another group leapt into action, the women of coal, las mujeres del carbon. On June 18, some 400 showed up at the Senate in Madrid, at the discussion of the budget. 110 were allowed into the chambers, and they raised a ruckus. They chanted, they roared, they thundered, “Aquí están, estas son, las mujeres del carbon”. “Here they are, and they are … women of coal.” And they stopped the proceedings, while they sang the words to En el pozo Maria Luisa.

They continued in the streets, and they continue to this day. Today, the Black March arrived in León. This morning, two hundred women went to the national highway that cuts through town, and they sat down. And they stopped traffic, all traffic, for two hours. And they sang: Look, look how I am.

A specter haunts Spain. Look: “Aquí están, estas son, las mujeres del carbon”. Look. They’re everywhere.

 

(Photo Credit: YouTube.com) (Video Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2FjKa7Bhwk)

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