Across Europe women campaign against the Dictatorship of the Debt

June 15, 2015 by Leave a Comment

In March the European Forum for Alternatives met. With austerity measures imposed over the populations of Europe under the fabricated argument of the need to repay a fictitious public debt, the solidarity among Europeans is growing more organized, especially with the rise of major feminist and feminine voices in Greece and Spain.

Among the many speakers, Zoe Konstantopoulou, recently elected Speaker of the Vouli (Greek Parliament), presented the stakes for Europe as her country has been the theater of the most odious experimentation of European Structural Adjustment Programs, symbolized by austerity. As she said, the neoliberal order reigns in the EU and has created its own destructive weapon with the Troika. It wants to neutralize all opposition and diffuse its power based on debt anxiety.

The forum’s many workshops brought the voices of women who have fought for their rights, including Giorgia Ekonomou, one of the Greek Finance Ministry cleaners; the representatives of the hair cutters of the 57 bvd Sebastopol in Paris; and the hotel chambermaids who won recognition for their workers’ rights.

In her speech about the audit of the Greek debt, a true European issue, Zoe Konstantopoulou acknowledged these feminist battles as well as the brutal destruction of human rights that came as the result of the Troika memoranda. The battle against austerity measures is also a transnational feminist battle.

Regrettably, Zoe Konstantopoulou is the only woman that has a prominent position in Greece since the election of Syriza. Still, as Yorgos Mitralias of the Greek Committee Against the Debt told me, she was not supposed to exist and so is a gift fallen from heaven. She is the voice of reason for many. She wants to shatter corruption, especially financial corruption, while not losing the purpose of political representation as the means of defending the civil society with all its members. “In Greece, we have a systematic infringement on human rights, social rights, worker’s rights on democratic rule of law, on the welfare state,” declared Zoe Konstantopoulou when she was first elected to the parliament in 2012.

Last April in Rome, Zoe Konstantopoulou was keynote speaker at the conference of the European Union parliaments. She began by questioning the title of the session, “A discussion about the Continent of Fundamental Rights. A Europe of Freedom, Solidarity, and Security.” She said, “Is it a discussion about the past, the present, or the future? Is it a discussion about Europe as it used to be, as it is or as it should be? Is it a discussion about the whole of Europe or about part of it?” She remarked that Europe as expressed by its executives, banking and financial sectors, seems to have lost its way during the five last years. She questioned the emphasis on numerical and economic estimation that have been proven to be gross miscalculations, and she ranked competitiveness way below human rights in the European hierarchy.

Her speech addressed the dictatorship of debt: she explained that State debt, as a new European epidemic, is being used as a pretext but also as a tool to retreat the State from its responsibility vis-à-vis human rights and democratic rights. She sees State debt as an extortion mechanism and reminded her audience of the extraordinary trail of misery and death that austerity policies provoked.

Konstantopoulou also reaffirmed the importance of an uncorrupt parliament, a place where no forceful interventions should occur. Since 2005 the Greek parliament has been the theater of all kinds of violence with 800 pages of laws pushed by the Troika, targeting basic human rights, public services, and shielding financial crimes and tax evasion. Just recently a stand off with the Minister of the Interior Panoussis took place with the intrusion of police forces in the parliament that she condemned.

With her anticorruption stand, Zoe Konstantopoulou has become the target of all sorts of attacks including from members of her own government. According to Yorgos Mitralia, But the campaign against her is reaching a new level punctuated with sexist slurs. So far the support to Syriza and Alexis Tsipras’ government is strong with 65-70% approval rate. Although it is a critical moment with the audit of the debt in progress and the hard negotiations with the Eurogroup, Zoe’s initiatives are well supported by the people of Greece and even beyond Greece’s borders

Meawhile, in Spain, three prominent political positions have been won by progressive women in the last elections with the success of Manuela Carmena, the new mayor of Madrid, of Ada Colau in Barcelona, and of Monica Oltra in the Valencia region. All three got their votes for their strong stand against financial corruption, and for defending social consciousness, the only way to reduce the impact of neoliberal totalitarian austerity promises, begetting inequalities, the plague of women’s lives. The movement is growing and a new solidarity is forming in which women are playing a key role.

Zoe Konstantopoulou

(Lead Photo Credit: http://kaosenlared.net) (Photo Credit: http://www.european-left.org)

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In Paris, Ghada Hatem builds a house for women

May 22, 2015 by 5 Comments

The Paris suburb Seine-Saint-Denis, also called the 93, is home to a large immigrant population, and it’s there that a Women’s House will be built on the last vacant lot of the Delafontaine Hospital. This project took shape when Ghada Hatem, the hospital’s head of OBGYN, decided she had create a place for women who had been mutilated, chased and had experienced violence during and after the journey that led them to Seine-Saint-Denis. Ghada Hatem found a space on the hospital grounds. With the support of local elected officials and institutions, she was able to secure the major part of financing for this project.

The maternity hospital of Delafontaine registers about 4200 births every year. The majority of the women come from all sorts of precarious situations and origins. Ghada Hatem explains that many just arrived, are undocumented, and without social protection. Her department provides emergency social protection, which is possible in France and called “pass peri-natal”. It guarantees free coverage immediately to pregnant women, regardless of status.

Because of its particular social and geographical situation, the department is composed of surgeons, psychologists, sexologists, social workers and nurses that are formed to run support groups where women who have already been through so much violence can start to reconstruct their lives.

Moreover, 15% to 16% of the women who give birth there have undergone FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), which makes delivery more difficult. The department sent their surgeons to attend training with Doctor Pierre Foldes who has developed the surgical technique to rebuild the missing clitoris. More than rebuilding, he also understood that the reconstruction must be psychological as well. Women like Waris Dirie say FGM means torture and a crime, and should not be dignified as a cultural, or religious tradition. These women are in great need of attention and information.

The department also provides guidance and support to women who face unwanted pregnancy, domestic violence, forced marriage, as well as excision. Because of the sometimes unattainable demands, Ghada Hatem conceived of the Women’s House in this area.

She believes that there is a need for a space outside the hospital that will provide the warmth and welcoming to counterbalance the harshness and violence that has impacted the lives of these women. She understands that women are not going to liberate their voices in a hospital waiting room. The department has translators in Turkish, Tamil, Chinese, and personnel fluent in other languages. She herself can give assistance with Arabic (her own language). They are also equipped with translation services through phones. All this will be enhanced in the Women’s House. The Women’s House will be open only during the day. Her regret is not to be able to provide over night shelter.

Ghada Hatem’s department also performs over 1000 abortions every year and offers contraception consultation to women. Previously, Ghada Hatem worked in a military hospital in Saint Mandé, in the eastern suburbs of Paris. Despite numerous threats and insults, she created an abortion clinic inside the military hospital. Today, this service to women continues and no one would question the presence of this clinic anymore.

She was recently interviewed about her engagement and her project. When asked about abortion rights, Hatem said she regretted the lack of activism among young doctors, reproaching them for having “a more technical approach and a less militant vision of this matter”. Nonetheless, she welcomed the action of the government with the FRIDA plan (Facilitating the Reduction of Inequalities in Access to Abortion) as well as the effort to keep abortion centers open during the vacation month of August, when everything closes in France.

Her project is ambitious but based on understanding “what is lived by women”, ce que vivent les femmes.

Meanwhile, the flux of refugees is growing and increasingly desperate. Médecins sans Frontières has reported that never before had they observed such high levels of conflict and crisis. They estimate that about 51 million people have had to leave their home countries to escape crisis and/or conflicts.

Instead of financing costly militaristic systems of surveillance and control, the EU should be offering the last Euros necessary to bring this project centered on women and their needs to completion. At a time of instability due to capitalist neoliberal thinking, the European Union should learn from women like Ghada Hatem.

 

(Photo Credit: Elle / Mathieu Zazzo)

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Racism has produced the Mediterranean `refugee crisis”

May 17, 2015 by 2 Comments

Today, thousands of people escaping violence are killed or die because of the color of their skin, their origins, and because there are too many of “them” to fit into the neoliberal order of exploitation and competition. At the same time, the disequilibrium of the climate originated in the global North and has had a devastating impact on the global South.

The European Union had no qualms when it defunded and thus forced the Mare Nostrum Italian program to be abandoned and then moved to the Frontex program, based on nationalist (here European) security and militarization. Mare Nostrum saved 150 000 people, while Frontex, not designed to save people, has already killed thousands with more deaths to come.

This move seemed innocuous from the United States where the militarization of civil society has already been normalized.

After the events of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, went on air to establish that, thanks to the police and the military, the city was back in order, adding that Baltimore was resilient. Resilience rhymes with silence, and, as Audre Lorde taught, “silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness”.

The indifference to the ordeal of millions in the Global South is a racial issue that is used to promote and allow an absurd, but for a few profitable, bio-economic order that needs racism to impose so-called free trade markets and their dehumanization through militaristic means. Organizations as respected as Amnesty International or Medecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors without Borders), whose President once opposed the Western military actions in Libya, present in their latest reports evidence of this racist indifference and its consequences for real human beings. Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France, continues to defend his government’s decision to involve France in the bombing of Libya. At least, another French president refused to participate to the destruction of Iraq but that was then.

Amnesty interviewed refugees to document the reality of the very long journey to the Mediterranean Sea shores. Libya is often the destination. People risk abduction and extortion by smugglers and police. Women face the additional risk of sexual violence, and all in the context of growing racial and religious intolerance. The next goal is to escape Libya where the rights of allegiance to local powers prevail over human rights. With the complicity of many, the smugglers have developed a new crude business in this zone of no rights.

The smugglers are merely taking advantage of a situation that has it source somewhere else. As Loris De Filipi, MSF President explained, “A mass grave is being created in the Mediterranean Sea and European policies are responsible.” Both Amnesty and MSF are demanding a change of European policies.

The European Commission has proposed to create a quota system to distribute the migrant population among European countries according to their size and economy, “share the burden.” Thus far, only six countries out of the twenty-eight countries have agreed to participate to this program. British Home Secretary Theresa May has rejected participating in any EU migrant resettlement proposal. Her conservative counterparts in the EU have agreed with her. Instead, they have offered a military intervention to destroy the smuggling business in Libya.

The formula of “nothing for refugees and everything for the military” comes from a radically racialized world vision. The “refugee crisis” is is not a question of choice or opportunity, to use neoliberal language. People just want to escape the impossibility of life.

With about 19 000 km of walls built in the world, the message is violent and the violence it creates. We should instead look at opening the borders and learn about the racialization of humanity. Only by freeing the movement of people can the world start a desegregation process that is necessary if we want to survive. Every serious geographer agrees people thrive when they can move and not be fixed in place.

We have been told the markets should be free because they can regulate themselves. It’s not so. Having no real existence, markets, can never be free. Only the people can regulate, and only the people can know freedom.

 

(Photo Credit: MSF / Ikram N’gadi)

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If the people who died were White, the entire planet would be shaken

April 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

 

From my adoptive hometown of Baltimore the racialized surveillance of movement of people appears clear and loaded with violence and discrimination.

Monday was the funeral of Freddie Gray who died in police custody of unnatural causes, adding to the long list of people of color who died in police encounters. He was beaten up evidently. His fault was to run away from police for no other reason than not trusting them. The police chased him. The police do not need probable cause to arrest in high crime area. Baltimore is a high crime area all by itself and also a “Black city.” In this racially discriminatory and oppressive context, a young Black man does not want to be close to police. The latter is not there to protect him. The same is true for Black women. The city has paid over $ 5.7 million in settlement for the wrongdoing of the police since 2011. There is harassment, humiliation and constant scrutiny of movement for the African Americans in the street of Baltimore. Still, the police authorities accuse the poor and the destitute to be the threat, while the city is cutting social, public housing programs and school budget including financial support for organizations that provide support to the population while many actors with power just organize the demise of their community.

Worldwide, movement is not easy for the poor or the destitute. While the United States is the showroom of pure racism, the Mediterranean Sea is the theater of the policy of laissez-faire, let them die. As Senegalese author Fatou Diome declared, this racialized laissez-die has shaped the European Union’s dissuading policies against migration.

Since the beginning of 2015, over 39 000 people have attempted the crossing to Europe. 1776 have died just to escape the violence in Libya, Syria, Iraq or other battled countries. This means one death every two hours since the first of January. This is the highest rate ever recorded. According to the UN Commissioner of Refugees, only 10% of people running away from violence migrate to the EU but that’s enough to rekindle the conservative and nationalist spirit of this rich continent.

On April 19th, a rotten trawler with 700 migrants packed on board capsized. All 28 survivors had been on the upper level. As is often the case, women and children were locked up down in the hold. And so they all died.

This happened after 400 migrants died in the Sicily. These latest incidents shook the consciousness of some in Europe. In Italy the population came to the rescue helping the migrants in a solidarity spirit that should be the norm. But the policies of asylum don’t carry this humanistic solidarity spirit. They penalize populations coming from the South. The Dublin II Accord signed by 32 European States has stated that demand for asylum can only be filed in the first entry country. Today these countries are typically Greece, Italy, Spain and Malta.

At a recent summit EU Ministers of Foreign and Interior Affairs, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi demanded that the rest of Europe participate in rescuing and receiving this flux of migrants.

After the drama of Lampedusa that left almost 280 dead, chanting “Never again”, the EU leaders eliminated the Italian program “Mare Nostrum” that ambitiously had the ability to search and rescue in international and European waters the migrants. Mare Nostrum was replaced by the “Triton” program which is not a search-and-rescue operation and operates only on European waters. It is also less expensive. As Paolo Gentiloni, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs noted, the UE, is the biggest economic power of our time, somehow can’t 3 million additional Euros per month to aid migrants.

Ten measures that resembled pious hope more than coherent actions were proposed. European leaders agreed to return most of the refugees to their war-torn countries, consenting to only 5 000 permits. These decisions are marked by the neoliberal austerity mindset that imposes discrimination and misery for those left out of the political and economic order.

The leaders also agreed to increase the funds for Triton within the program of surveillance of borders called Frontex. They also affirmed that they would fight the traffickers. As the socialist group of the European Parliament argued, these actions merely add another layer of military violence to areas already ravaged by conflict.

There is an obvious discrepancy between the dramas taking place in the Mediterranean waters and the streets of Baltimore or other US cities, and the application of the right to move freely or migrate to seek safer land, safer lives.

Fatou Diome put it clearly, “If the people who died were White, the entire planet would be shaken.” She added that the people who depart for survival already consider that their lives have no value and therefore are not afraid of losing it. The disaster has been already organized for them through imperialist wars and deprivation.

After the funeral, the riot in the streets of Baltimore shed light on the balance of power. Freddie Gray could not run away from arbitrary arrest and humiliation, and lost his life. The young rioters in Baltimore had a similar perception of their position. It is not enough to condemn violence, as Martin Luther King declared without “condemning the contingent intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention … Riot is the language of the unheard.”

These are large issues. Another type of dialogue and solidarity has to be formed if we are to restore a humanistic dialogue and discourse and free the movements of the oppressed.

(Portrait of Freddie Gray: Kim Sarabia / Colorlines)

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In Paris, a victory for migrant workers and for labor rights!

April 10, 2015 by 2 Comments

In Paris, this week 18 women and men, 14 of them undocumented immigrants, won an eight months battle for labor rights and human dignity. They are known as the workers of the “57” named after the address of the Afro Salon “New York fashion” 57 boulevard de Strasbourg in the heart of Paris.

They escaped their countries for various reasons. They are from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Guinea or China. Fatou left Ivory Coast because her life was threatened, she says that she wants to work and to pay her taxes to be part of the society. Alphonse from Burkina Faso had a visa to Turkey and then went to Greece where there was no work, and then came to Paris. He says that he had a lot of illusions, and then he saw how the bosses were merciless. His dream is to be finally happy. They each have a story rooted in intolerance and exploitation. They landed in Paris. Not all of them speak French. They all needed to work.

Many hair salons directed at migrant clients have settled in this district of Paris. Over time, a traffic involving the owners and managers targeted vulnerable and isolated migrants who needed work and dreamed about a safer more stable life. The managers recruited the workers of the 57 in the streets, enticing them with conditions of work and wages, which they never delivered. Instead, the workers had to work six days a week from 9AM to 11PM without interruption. The conditions were awful and harmful. The products they were asked to use contain carcinogenic agents, and they were used in rooms without ventilation increasing their toxicity. Their wages were extremely low from 300 to 400 Euros and irregularly paid.

Initially they had no work contracts. They first went on strike when they had not been paid in two months. Their bosses threatened to denounce them to the police, but they stood up for themselves. They reach out to the Union “CGT” for support after the managers and owners conveniently declared bankruptcy and disappeared, but not before shouting at them real threats against their lives. Their disappearance meant no possibility to regularize their immigration status.

As the general secretary of CGT Paris declared, this is modern slavery. They may not be physically shackled but the chains are now administrative and used by employers who exploit them. These chains are still heavy and violent. Still the techniques of slavery remained. The workers were separated according to language so they would not be able to communicate between each other.

But the workers responded with an extreme sense of solidarity. They endured threats. They disrupted the status quo with the authorities that allowed this worker trafficking to exist. Their courage and determination attracted attention. A group of film-makers made a little film to alert public opinion. Then, council members of the district and the deputy mayor of Paris multiplied the injunctions to the Minister of the Interior to obtain state protection, as required by law, for the workers. The union CGT pressed charges for human trafficking. Under French law, if an undocumented immigrant files an official complaint, the latter should receive a temporary residence permit. Regardless, the authorities were slow to move. While the workers were not going to be deported, their rights to work and to dignity were not restored. Artists mobilized and show their solidarity. Paris counselors of the leftist majority and the Mayor of Paris voted a text of support for the workers declaring that the non-protection of these employees will implicitly show support for these practices that imply exploitation of workers.

Finally, this week the Minister of the Interior regularized the 18 workers, providing then adequate documentation and the support of the state after eight months of hard struggle. Moreover, this victory is a good sign for many, especially those workers in this area who experience harsh conditions of life and work with abusive employers.

We should note that labor rights and laws to support them are being constantly questioned as human rights are again being defined according to origins and class. Their defense is crucial. At a time of merciless neoliberal control with climate and social destabilization, migration takes another dimension as asylum seekers are incarcerated or kept in unsafe situations threatening their lives. Cities like Paris should be involved in the protection of the most vulnerable residents and workers. Nothing is possible without strong solidarity between national, documented and undocumented humanity.

(Photo Credit: Africultures)

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The death penalty is violent, unjust and should be abolished

March 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Last week, with almost no debate, the Utah State Senate adopted a bill, 18 – 10, that will allow the use of the firing squad, if drugs were to be unavailable 30 days before scheduled execution. Utah used the firing squad in 2010 to execute one person. Wyoming is examining a similar legislation. The 32 states that still have the death penalty are now looking at this method of the past to continue executing people currently on death row.

In the spirit of innovation, the lethal injection was introduced to remedy the question of suffering in the application of the death penalty, ignoring all kinds of emotional suffering. With the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, lethal injection was developed after the veterinarian techniques of euthanasia and was first experimented in Texas in 1984. This method carried the promise of modernity with the help of medical-technology imagery, making the death penalty appear different than in China, Iran or Saudi Arabia, some of the other major countries using the death penalty.

In the United States the delusional belief that there is a method of killing that could be “humane” with no suffering is reinforced by the populist imperialist discourse. Supporters of lethal injection pretended that it was humane because of the anesthetic that is injected first. This reflects a limited view on what suffering means. Nonetheless, a study published in The Lancet recognized that the procedure for killing inmates was less rigorous than those recommended by the Veterinary Medical Association. The concentration of anesthesia received by the condemned during the lethal injection was lower than required for surgery in 88% of the cases. In 43% the level was so low that the inmates must have had awareness of the asphyxiation, burning and the massive muscle cramping which are the three episodes that the products used for lethal injection entail. With the blockage of delivery of some of these drugs by European laboratories on humanitarian grounds, States began playing the sorcerer’s apprentice at the expense of respect for human dignity.

In 2014 the number and intensity of botched executions attracted more national and international attention. In Arizona, Joseph Wood was pronounced dead one hour and fifty-seven minutes after the beginning of the process. In Oklahoma, Michael Wilson screamed that his body was burning. As a result many states passed “secrecy laws” to allow themselves not to disclose the nature or sources of the drugs they were going to use.

And now a number of states are considering and passing laws to allow former methods that used to be considered barbaric, from the firing squad and the gas chamber to the electric chair. All these methods demonstrate that there is a distance between justice and the death penalty, as the executioner and the penal system are removed from the actual death of the prisoner.

Last spring, the American Academy of Sciences published a study showing that 4.1% of the people on death row are innocent. Consider the recent killing of Troy Davis whose prosecution consisted of incoherence and inconsistency. Nevertheless, the State asserted its dominating power, using the racially vindicating desire of vengeance of the family of the victim as Troy Davis was African American and the victim was white. As with Kelly Gissendaner whose execution is still pending, Davis’ sentence demonstrated that the state is not concerned with a true notion of justice or rehabilitation but rather is the diehard instrument of populist domination within an increasingly inegalitarian society.

Some states have freed themselves from the death penalty. The death penalty should simply be outlawed at the federal level, instead of leaving populist assemblies free to chose more heinous instruments of death. As Cesare Beccharia wrote in Of Crimes and Punishments in 1764, “If I prove that this sentence is neither useful nor necessary, I would have caused the triumph of humanity”.

(Image Credit: The Atlantic / ycaradec / Flickr)

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Tell Georgia not to kill Kelly Gissendaner!

March 9, 2015 by 2 Comments

 

Kelly Gissendaner at her 2011 graduation at Arrendale State Prison

In Georgia, Kelly Gissendaner was going to be the 16th woman to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973. Six women have been put to death in Texas. All the executions have occurred in Southern states. While California boasts the highest rate of death sentence for women, thus far none have been executed.

Kelly Gissendaner could have been the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945.

She was accused of killing her husband in 1997. She didn’t actually kill her husband; she asked her boyfriend at the time to do it. He was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after 25 years. She was convicted of “malice murder” in 1998 and sentenced to death.

Both judge and media presented her as a greedy witch who had masterminded the murder. The plea bargain deal made with her boyfriend in exchange for his testimony against her did not bother too many people.

This case confirms that the death penalty carries the images of sin offerings.

Gissendaner’s first scheduled execution was postponed because of a winter storm on February 25th. The execution was rescheduled for Monday evening, and this time the executioner realized that the drug for the lethal injection was not going to work “quickly and properly” as it appeared cloudy. The recent agony of prisoners in Oklahoma after botched executions had brought international attention, shedding light on the brutality of the penal system of the United States. Nobody wanted to have more publicity added to this already disturbing judicial proceeding.

During the almost 17 years of waiting for a possible execution, Kelly Gissendaner went to school and completed a theology degree. More importantly, she changed her vision on life and expressed sincere remorse. She became a teacher who helped fellow inmates and was qualified as a role model by former wardens. Twenty-four people along with her three children begged for clemency to no avail. Her appeals were all denied. After the first attempt to kill her, more people took action to spare her life. Four hundred clergy sent letters. On February 27, the New York Times published an article, with moving testimony on her favor of a renowned theologian.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of an eye for an eye, the attorney for her husband’s family declared that the death sentence was appropriate for the crime. What she has done since is not worth considering.

These declarations and delays remind us of the demonic dimension of the death penalty; why not kill the condemned immediately if redemption is unattainable. If the vengeance in the death sentence includes that the victim of this revenge must dig her own grave year after year, it just confirms the impossibility of this sentence in a human society. Thus, her execution should be judged as malice murder.

Gender plays a particular role in this case. Kelly Gissendaner appeared as a monster because she transgressed the heterosexual role of the wife and the mother. The 16 women who have been executed since 1973 also transgressed this invisibly present boundary, making their crimes even more appealing for the execution of a death sentence.

The violent pulse of this case demonstrates that there is no equality in sentencing. All this works as a ritual that dehumanizes the condemned. It bans all emotions and allows every one that is involved in the death penalty process to ignore his or her own responsibility in the death of a human being, explains Denis Salas in The Will to Punish. The saga of the chronicle of Kelly Gissendaner’s sadistic delayed execution does not serve justice. It adds to the trivialization of populist moralistic biased judgments with no shame for putting to death a fellow woman.

The only way to remedy this cruel and barbarous punishment is to demand “pure and simple abolition of the death penalty.” as Victor Hugo argued in 1848. But first, Kelly Gissendaner must not be killed!

 

(Image Credit: United Methodist Church / Ann Borden)

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In France, sex and power go to trial, and DSK takes a walk

March 2, 2015 by 1 Comment

Last weekend in Lille, in northern France, a media sensitive trial ended. The trial came after 4 years of investigation by trial judges. Thirteen people faced charges of “aggravated procuring.” The accused were the usual suspects, pimps, cops, notables, businessmen, and Dominique Strauss Kahn aka DSK.

The trial is now finished; convictions and sentencing will be made public in June. While the pimp and his entourage will certainly be convicted, DSK left the court assured of being cleared, at least from the legal point of view.

The trial incriminated the managers of the Carlton Hotel in Lille who organized business reward sex orgies with the help of pimps, from Belgium, the local bourgeoisie and business men. They admitted that the raison d’être for these parties was DSK, knowing that it was a good way to create a friendly bond with this powerful man. DSK also opened his apartments to these orgies in Paris and in Washington when he was at the IMF.

The civil suit was composed of two former prostitutes, referred to as M and Jade. They sued for the violence they underwent, though the official charge was based on the orgies being paid for. Another former prostitute did not join the civil party although the same story happened to her. She was shipped to Washington in 2010 to please DSK. She was visibly scared and never joined the civil suit.

In France, prostitution is not forbidden but the notion of prostitution is legally blurred, and the status of the prostitute or sex worker is not legally well defined. Procuring is a crime (possible sentence up to five years) as is soliciting passively and actively (possible sentence up to 2 months). Having sex for money with a minor or a qualified “vulnerable” person, such as handicapped people, is forbidden. There is a notion of contract between the client and the prostitute that is tacitly accepted as long as the prostitute is not subordinated as the law says.

These shadowy laws have underserved the women. In Belgium, brothels are permitted. Since Lille is near Brussels, the prostitutes came from a brothel near Brussels run by one of the accused and his wife. The trial exposed the elusive character of the laws in France as well as the hypocritical situation in Belgium and how the accused took advantage of both legislations to plot these parties with minimum legal risks.

While DSK and his friends presented themselves as modern libertines with all the prerogatives that they should enjoy due to their social rank, the pimps were ready to take the brunt for their friend DSK. DSK claimed he had no idea that the women he mistreated were prostitutes. Nobody believed him, and the women said that they knew he knew.

Six prostitutes testified. The preliminary investigation established their degrading conditions of life in the brothel close to Brussels and used the term “carnage” to describe the type of sex that DSK and his friends would demand. The arrogance of DSK and his companions was exemplified by the words they used to describe their activities; they commonly talked about pleasure, pleasant détente, festive parties, and great massages. Their text messages, made public for the trial, alluded to the sex workers as livestock or equipment.

The women told a different story. They talked about their shameful work conditions and the violence that entailed suffering, pain and tears. Jade declared that there is no price that justifies imposing such suffering. She also reflected on how women enter this unwanted “job,” “The common point I observed among all of my companions in misfortune is that they all have been mistreated…. This body has been mistreated as a result we keep this stigma about ourselves…then we come to prostitute ourselves.” The notion of forceful mistreatment was at the center of their testimonies. All of them explained even if they were forced to accept these practices, they still accepted them, which made the case for rape legally feeble.

DSK’s lawyers asserted that their client was a victim of, voyeurism and moral lynching. In their closing arguments, they attacked those in the civil suit, accused them of being manipulated and of reinventing the facts. They trivialized the use of violent sex as part of the libertine life. One defense lawyers described the pain inflicted on his client. He even saw some tears!

At the end the prosecutor, who overtly opposed the work of the trial judges since the beginning, transformed his indictment of DSK into a speech for his defense, thanks to DSK’s large circle of influence.

After three weeks of trial, the Sofitel affair in New York became clearer to many and voices of support for Nafissatou Diallo, the Sofitel Maid who accused DSK of rape, grew louder.

The trial also shed light on the collusion between finance/power and sex.

In Sexus Economicus, the historian Yvonnick Denoel delineates the relationship among politics, business and prostitution/sex around the globalized world. He reveals the code of silence that accompanies financial manipulations of the profit driven market covers up the use of women as business and political contracts’ bonus. Their treatment and well being are the least of everyone’s concerns.

Meanwhile, some from DSK’s political party declared that they should erect a statue to Nafissatou Diallo for her strength and determination. Thanks to her, he did not become President, while she used his money to do good, opening a restaurant where she welcomes immigrants and workers.

From New York, Washington, Paris to Lille, the DSK saga magnifies the story of violence against women that epitomizes the power of patriarchal capitalism over women’s bodies.

 

(Image Credit: Benoît Peyrucq. AFP / Libération)

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A new beginning for Greece and for Europe starts today!

February 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment

 

In Greece, the new government is bringing optimism to many. I talked with Sofia Tzitzikou the vice president of UNICEF Greece and a dedicated activist for health rights. As a pharmacist she became one of the key volunteers to run a community clinic in Athens that has served the population made destitute after the scandal of the speculative coup on Greece. The Troika was sent with no legitimacy to implement neoliberal structural adjustment program renamed austerity measures.

Sofia first said that the election of Syriza gave her a sentiment of optimism, although she was aware of external and internal powerful pressures from Capital, represented by investors and speculators of all sorts who participated to the destruction of Greece.

She described the reaction in Athens after the election as full of emotion rather than pure joy. “They could not believe what happened,” she said. The evening of the election some in the streets asked, “Is it a dream?” The crowd was not jubilant as for a soccer game. Instead of honking, there was a great lucidity that there will be no magic to recovery. Sofia senses that a new solidarity has been formed through the suffering of the past years. Actually today, 70% of Greeks are convinced that the new prime minister and his team will succeed.

Certainly the women cleaners of the finance minister were aware of this new solidarity. They resisted the pressure of the establishment and challenged the previous government of Antonis Samaras that envisioned privatization and complete removal of labor protection as the future for Greece. The Supreme Court was supposed to decide their case. Instead the new government of Alexis Tsipras re-employed them immediately. It also reestablished electricity to the 300 000 households who could not afford it and raised the minimum wage to the level it was before.

People have been unified in the darkness of unemployment and attacks against unions. In this context the health care system erased about 40 % of the population from the system, immediately depriving them of medical care. Women were not guaranteed any sexual or reproductive health. To the scandal of some, women not able to deliver their babies in a safe manner.

According to Sofia, the country is in ruins and needs to rebuild.

The new government’s first symbolic action was to remove the anti riot barricades that were placed in front of the parliament to block the anti austerity demonstrators. Another immediate measure was to stop the privatization of the public domains such as the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki and the electricity services. They also eliminated the co-pay in public hospitals. Then, the new government declared the end of “Xenia Zeus” a program reported by Human Rights Watch as an abusive crack down on migrants. These symbolic and people-oriented decisions brought confidence needed in order to continue the necessary changes.

Sofia’s only regret is that women don’t hold any of the key ministries of new government: “That is a handicap, I don’t want to be against but it would have been more positive.” Still, Tasia Christodoulopoulou, the new Migration Minister, wants to grant Greek citizenship to all children born in Greece to end this state of no rights for migrants’ children born in Greece.

Sofia recognized that to see Zoé Konstantopoulou becoming the youngest president of the parliament elected with the greatest number of votes in the history of Greece compensated a little for the minimal women’s representation in the government. Zoé Konstantopoulou has been active on every front since her first election at the parliament. She testified in the documentary “Canaries in the Coal Mine.”

As the president of the parliament she pledged to combat corruption. She wants to reopen judicial affairs that have been unlawfully forgotten. This would end the privileges that have degraded parliament over the past years. One example of this degradation is the armaments scandal, involving German companies, occurring while pension and salaries were being amputated. Konstantopoulou is calling for transparency and participation of the social actors and the removal of the formal elite that hold no parliamentary positions. She also will reconstitute the commission on the Nazi war reparations and German debt to Greece. Her program is ambitious but she has proven in the past that she pursues what she believes to be the best for the country.

Sofia expressed confidence but warned, “The feminist movement has even more responsibility now that it can organize. It is the right time to present propositions based on solidarity.” She recognized that solidarity in Europe is crucial against neoliberal powers. Greece is showing the rest of Europe that civil society is still alive and democratic and there is an alternative to the austerity measures and the rule of the market and its oligarchs.

Sofia explained that the urgency is the questions of women’s rights and protection as they have been the first victims of the austerity measures. This is why they are joining the European Caravan of the World March of Women that is “working to build a feminist, solidarity-based economy, one that alters existing patterns of production and reproduction, distribution and consumption”. Sofia Tzitzikou concluded, “Ca commence maintenant” (“It starts today!”)

 

(Photo Credit: Lefteris Piatarakis/AP)

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For Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, we cannot stop marching!

February 2, 2015 by 3 Comments

 

Shaimaa al-Sabbagh

On January 24th, in Cairo, Egypt, Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, a 32 years old secular socialist activist, was assassinated by the police along with 20 other demonstrators. She was peacefully handing flowers to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the revolution of 2011. Shaimaa had demonstrated against Mubarak, and organized workers to defend their rights. She opposed the dictatorial Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) government and then was assassinated by the police of the current government of Abdel Fatah al Sisi.

Photos and videos captured her murder as she collapsed in her partner’s arms. Around Egypt and around the world, many have watched in horror. Despite the images that show masked policemen shooting her, the Sisi government has accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind this murder. The police obstructed anyone who came to give her medical assistance. Maher Nassar, present at the scene, identified himself as a doctor and was promptly pushed away. Her companions who came to help were arrested and shoved into an armored vehicle. Azza Soliman, who was seated at a café nearby, witnessed the murder. When she went to court to give testimony, she was arrested. She later declared, “The regime has decided to shut up all voices even those who say the truth through a testimony.”

After this tragedy, women in Egypt took the streets chanting, “ Police are thugs” and “Down with every president so long as blood is cheap.” Women in Tunis joined the march. They protested in front the Egyptian embassy against the repressive Egyptian regime in support of freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate peacefully.

In Alexandria, where Shaimaa al-Sabbagh was from, factory workers deployed a banner with her picture to remind people what she stood for.

Women are still marching against the impunity of state violence that also killed a woman from the Muslim Brotherhood days before this tragedy. Women are often the target of these acts of violence and political intimidation.

In this harsh neoliberal order, accents of totalitarianism emerge to “Shut up all voices” and crack down on dissent with no shame. On January 11, over 4 million of people marched against violence and for freedom of expression in France. The leaders of the world came to Paris supposedly to support the same things. The Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs along with other representatives of governments known for their forceful way to control the truth were in Paris for the march. They only walked a very short 100 meters/yards. The demonstrators who continued to march tried to show them the power of dignity, but that was not enough, and less than two weeks later, Shaimaa al-Sabbagh was killed.

We can’t stop marching to defend these fragile civil rights to free expression, to speech itself, as states increasingly organize new, and old, discriminatory security apparatuses to suffocate the civil consciousness that has allowed dissent.

 

(Photo Credit 1: Egypt Independent) (Photo Credit 2: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA)

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