Femicide, and it still is news

January 19, 2024 by Leave a Comment

 

2024 begins as so many previous years have, with reports of and reflections concerning femicides. Here are just a few headlines from the past few days, each followed by the country or countries involved:  “Femicides up in Argentina as Milei seeks to weaken protections” (Argentina); “The femicide of Julieta Hernández, a Venezuelan migrant in Brazil, sparks outrage across South America” (Brazil); “SJC Urges Government to Strengthen Preventive Measures Against Femicide” (Georgia); “Pregnant Woman’s Brutal Killing Fuels Femicide Debate in Greece” (Greece); “Kenya femicide: A woman’s murder exposes the country’s toxic online misogyny” (Kenya); “Femicide in Kenya a national crisis, say rights groups” (Kenya); “Exigen justicia para Mafer, víctima de feminicidio en Morelos” (Mexico). In France, early this month, the Minister of Justice announced that, with “only” 94 femicides in 2023, the French government had achieved success. Feminist and women’s organization, using a different method, a method previously used by the French government, found the number to be higher. Even if the number was 94, what kind of “success” is that? Yet again, we are facing a “global femicide epidemic”.

Near the end of last year, the United Nations released its second Femicide Report, Gender-Related Killings of Women and Girls (Femicide/Feminicide): Global estimates of female intimate partner/family related homicides in 2022. The study found that while homicide numbers had fallen, femicide numbers remained the same or rose. Most of the killings were gender-related and committed by intimate partners or other family relations. “The risks of gender-based violence and femicide are only rising as our world is engulfed in conflict, humanitarian emergencies, environmental and economic crises and displacement.” That was in 2022. What does one imagine 2023 and 2024 will look like? Finally, “women and girls in all regions across the world are affected by this type of gender-based violence.” What else is there to say?

Quite a bit, actually. “While the overwhelming majority of male homicides occur outside the home, for women and girls the most dangerous place is the home.” For women and girls, the most dangerous place is the home. During the pandemic, in every part of the world without any exceptions, the number and rate of femicides increased. Well, the pandemic is over, but the number and rate of femicides continue to increase, or, at the very least, remain at the elevated levels. Why? The causes are many, but one overarching reason, along with patriarchy, is government indifference. For example. Italy passed laws ten years ago and invested considerably large amounts of money, and yet the number and rate of femicides remained relatively stable. Why? According to a recent report, the Italian government put all of its money in attending to victims and survivors of femicide, and little on prevention. The title of that report is “PREVENZIONE SOTTOCOSTO: La miopia della politica italiana nella lotta alla violenza maschile contro le donne”. Low-cost prevention: The myopia of Italian politics in the struggle against male violence against women.” Myopia is a form of blindness, but this `short-sightedness’ is willful.

Until domestic violence is seen as a priority, femicides, in raw numbers and rates of commission, will continue to rise, while governments will find new methods of counting and declare success, if not victory. Around the world, this year will see a storm of national elections. Watch to see where domestic violence, violence against women and girls, and femicide figure in the various campaigns. Remember, ten or one hundred or one thousand fewer is not good enough. #NotOneMore #NiUnaMas #NiUnaMenos

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: “Una Ogni Tre Giorni” by Laila / Wanted in Rome)

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In England, austerity killed close to 60,000 additional people in four years as it targeted women

October 18, 2021 by 3 Comments

The current government of England and Wales has announced its intention to implement yet another austerity program. Last week, a research report came out that documented that England’s four year experiment with austerity, 2010 to 2014, resulted in an additional 57,550 deaths. The report opens: “The rate of improvement in life expectancy in England and Wales has slowed markedly since 2010. This decline has been most marked for women aged over 85 years and these people tend to be the most physically frail and/or disadvantaged.” Women. Later in the week, a second research study was published that documented that in the poorest urban areas of England, life expectancy since 2010 had dropped, while it had improved in the wealthier areas. After a granular reading of the data from almost 7000 middle-layer super output areas, MSOAs, or postal code areas, the researchers conclude, “The decline … began around 2010 in women in some MSOAs, has spread and accelerated since 2014 …. The decline in life expectancy was more widespread in women than in men.”

In 2008, the Secretary of State for Health asked Michael Marmot to chair an independent review to address health inequities in the United Kingdom. The Marmot Review was published February 2010. Last year, Michael Marmot released a ten-year review, which opens: “Among women, particularly, life expectancy declined in the more deprived areas of the country.”

For ten years, and more, it has been evidence-based public knowledge that austerity kills the poor, workers, people of color, immigrants, those living with disabilities, women. Study after study has demonstrated the impact of cutting social and public services on entire communities. Writ small, austerity is genocide, because its purpose is to wipe out entire local communities. Writ large, austerity is femicide, because, as a policy, austerity always reduces women’s life span and life expectancy as it increases the number of women’s deaths. To hell with austerity!

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Artscamp / The Relitics)

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Blackness, Gender Violence, and Colonialism in Puerto Rico’s Feminicidios

May 16, 2021 by 2 Comments

After Hurricane María, the number of femicides in Puerto Rico started increasing at an alarming rate. Disappearances and femicides of women are ongoing issues in Puerto Rico, which has one of the highest femicide rates in the Western Hemisphere. But it was not until two years later, in 2019, that this was brought to public attention (in the continental United States). Gender-based violence calls to attention the consequences and history that colonialism, transphobia, racism, and sexism have on the island. Currently, women and feminists’ group like La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción have repeated their demand for a declaration of a State of Emergency against gender violence on the island but the Puerto Rican government has only recently acted on these demands, yet these efforts have not been sufficient; killings and disappearances of women on the island keep increasing and becoming common.

History is important and can be an act of resistance, but it is also about power; how it upholds the victories of the colonizer, not the colonized. Within the social contexts of Puerto Rico, heteronormativity is colonized by religious principles and gender-based perceptions that in recent years have caused an escalation of violence against transgender women and reports of anti-transgender violence, especially femicides. Along with the temporal displacement of Blackness and Black bodies that is closely connected to State modernizing agendas, Puerto Rico’s police has a history of marginalizing Black people without any consequences within the law, especially when it comes to racial profiling and recent police killings of Black (including LGBTQ+) Boricuas.

The history of colonization in Puerto Rico is not as buried as some are led to believe. By being aware of the history and current ways in which colonization is incorporated, there is resistance and a foundation for radical freedom on the island. Conversations about race and gender, however, need more work. Ethnicity and nationality are focal point in conversations about race, therefore causing erasure. Consequently, as a way to not talk about race, Latin America pushes its citizens to think of themselves in terms of their ethnicity and nationality. Puerto Rican’s acknowledge their history of Blackness; however, it is along admitting their Spaniard and Indigenous roots first, and Blackness last. Awareness about the danger trans women faced during the femicides is there, but no discussion as to why or how transphobia plays a part in it. Instead, trans women are placed into a generalized “all women in Puerto Rico are in danger” category, equating their fear and likelihood to femicide to cis women, which is highly problematic. 

And the government needs to be held accountable. As of January of 2021, the Puerto Rican government has issued a State of Emergency due to gender violence, yet these efforts have not been sufficient; killings and disappearances of women on the island keep increasing and becoming common. In order to take accountability, the government should provide more resources (including legal protection, housing, and financial support) to survivors of femicide, domestic violence, and any form of gender violence. A relationship and conversation between the State, survivors, community organizers, and the people of Puerto Rico must be formed in order to hold the Puerto Rican government accountable and responsible.

 

(By Glorimar Mariño)

(Image Credit: Michelle Dersdepanian / TodasPR)

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Mots Écrits: déterrer les mots des femmes, archives de femmes, histoire de femmes: les féminicides (2)

October 16, 2019 by Leave a Comment

La poétesse Pramila Venkateswaran écrit des poèmes féministes qui avec humour et rigueur parlent de la vie des femmes et de leurs batailles pour leur émancipation et leurs droits. Pour elle son travail n’aurait que peu de sens si elle ne pouvait pas le lire à voix haute ce qui lui permet d’entrainer son audience dans l’expérience du poème en faisant vivre le texte.

Pour Mots Écrits il importe de donner vie aux archives de femmes, histoire des femmes qui étaient emprisonnées dans des cartons d’archives. Le son des voix donne à ce texte venu d’outre-tombe une vie sans filtre tel qu’il est. Sophie Bourel explique «on tire le bouchon de la lampe du génie et d’un coup il y a quelque chose qui surgit; c’est ce parfum-là, cette vie-là, cette trace et c’est cette trace qui va réveiller l’imaginaire des spectateurs qui ne font qu’écouter ce que la personne lit. Les archives deviennent vivantes!» 

Mais avant de pouvoir lire à haute voix, il faut constituer le corpus de textes. Quand nous l’avions rencontré un matin, c’était une belle journée pour elle, elle venait de recevoir des documents d’un département français. Elle nous accueillit avec un bonjour de joie comme si elle venait de découvrir un trésor. 

Ce qui l’avait réjoui était l’arrivée d’une archive anonymisée comme elles doivent l’être lorsqu’elles viennent de fonds d’archive de moins de 75 ans. Il s’agissait d’un crime sur une femme survenu après des années d’alertes et comme encore aujourd’hui une femme qui se retrouve seule devant son agresseur qu’elle ne connait que trop bien. Le 16 septembre 2019, la 105ème victime de féminicide de l’année, a été frappée par son ex conjoint de 14 coups de couteau, au Havre en plein jour dans un supermarché devant ses enfants de 2, 4 et 6 ans. Elle s’appelait Johanna. Elle avait déjà déposé deux plaintes dont la dernière en aout 2019 toutes deux classées sans suite. 

Les femmes victimes de féminicide ont prévenu, appelé à l’aide, et elles sont restées seules, elles sont mortes, abattues avec un fusil de chasse, une arme à feu, poignardées, étranglées, battues à mort. 

Au début de son travail Sophie Bourel voulait mettre en relation toutes les femmes tuées de façon similaire à travers les temps. Elle avait créé une liste de tombeaux, comme elle l’avait appelée, de femmes tuées, il y en avait 78 puis 80 et cela ne s’arrêtait pas. L’idée était de former une sorte d’écho, entre la femme tuée il y a cinquante ans ou avant et la femme décédée de la même manière en 2019, elle voulait les relier dans la mort par le mode opératoire, par le lieu où elles avaient été trouvées, etc. Et puis son projet a évolué. Sans renoncement, elle l’a transformé en raison de l’inévitabilité des meurtres de femmes, du caractère inexorable du décompte des corps tombés sous les coups des hommes. L’artiste constate que la liste des femmes féminicidées en 2019 ne s’arrête jamais.

En poursuivant sa recherche dans les archives, elle s’est aperçue que les assassinats de femmes au 19ème siècle étaient si nombreux que les mises en relation entre femmes féminicidées auraient été incommodes et « de toute façon cette liste n’a ni commencement ni fin» précise-t-elle.

La composition du corpus est la vraie difficulté du projet; il faut une diversité d’archives, de matériaux, pour que 50 minutes de performance de lecture à voix haute ouvrent les consciences, les réflexions sur l’omerta qui a si longtemps régnée sur la vie des femmes, leurs histoires invisibles. 

De ce travail de puzzle elle veut montrer que les morts sont chargées de signaux sociétaux qui en disent long sur le silence entourant la subjectivation des femmes. L’artiste se demande pourquoi nous en sommes toujours là. Ce qui lui est intolérable c’est ce système qui consiste à faire d’une différence une hiérarchie ; suivant les mots d’Édouard Glissant, elle ajoute, «je cherche donc à agir dans mon lieu et à penser avec le monde dans lequel je vis.»

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Cyril means well. He’s been compelled by womxn making life uncomfortable

September 18, 2019 by 4 Comments

This story about amending laws to solve the problem. Cyril means well. He’s been compelled by womxn making life uncomfortable to see that this issue is serious. But fixing bail, sentencing laws as a solution in and of itself, no. The laws already tried to do that quite well in the late 90s – no one really cared to implement them well. They don’t have an impact because you’ve got to change the criminal procedure act. That’s a more radical change, shift the power in the courts towards survivors ‘complainants’ give them standing, more control in the court. You’ve got to change that they are dependent on prosecutors that get their ‘sensitivity’ training, but are not held to account when they treat womxn like a hassel. The laws changed so that the rules of courts could be more alive to the patriarchal construction of rape, but the magistrates, they let the old way of doing things carry on, the prosecutors are weak, they don’t fight, and the defence attorneys, the rapists – well they just laugh and commit more violence on the womxn who stand there further humiliated. That’s got to change. Zero tolerance that. Hold them to account for the laws already changed – show that the standards already in place are worth fighting for, then, by all means, add some new layers. 

Then this sensitivity training. Really, that’s the best that you can do. We worked in the 90s on that. It doesn’t work if you don’t also show leadership on those standards presented in this training – from the Preseident, Ministers, MECs to the station commissioner, the senior prosecutor, the health facility manager. It doesn’t work if you spend a bit of money (never enough) and get some person who doesn’t really ‘get it’ to talk the rank and file through the 20 points of sensitivity and then send them back into the same fucking system. It doesn’t fucking work.

 

(Image Credit: The Daily Vox)

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Generation Cry: Taitu Kai Goodwin was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in Anguilla

September 16, 2019 by 1 Comment
                                                       Taitu Kai Goodwin

There is something unsettling in having the world’s eyes turned toward your community. My community. The world temporarily turned its focus toward the latest victims of the climate crisis in The Bahamas and rekindled sweeping debates about the human costs of environmental degradation. This is the reality of the Caribbean community during the hurricane season. We are tired and frustrated, but, as Kamau Brathwaite notes, the hurricane does not roar in pentameters.  Our grief cannot be measured. I watched the video clips from a Bahamian acquaintance of homes being inundated by storm surges. Facebook itself became flooded with posts by other folks from the Caribbean and its diaspora. It is Facebook that constitutes one of the lenses through which I frequently see and engage this community while I study in the United States capital. The United States capital; that place where the decision to refuse Bahamians temporary protected status was made. Facebook is also one of the main platforms on which I navigate global narratives about climate change, race relations, gender, and their intersections. The timeline comes alive. The world speaks. I listen. Everyone is committed to expressing the requisite amount of anguish, sorrow, and compassion. I’m pretty sure a lot of it is genuine. However, soon enough, posts about The Bahamas peter out, as most trending topics, no matter how grave, are wont to on these platforms. 

A few days pass and I find myself walking through the streets of downtown Manhattan after one in the morning. The reason doesn’t matter. I am alone and wary. I’m suddenly overcome with the fear that I could be attacked and so I quicken my pace and phone a friend, a St. Lucian, also studying in the US, to keep me company until I arrive at my destination. I make it home in one piece. I am safe…but home and safe are not synonymous. I eventually make my way back to DC and soon enough I fall back into the rhythm of my daily routine: I log onto Facebook. The timeline is flooded with eulogies for someone I attended high school with in Antigua over a decade ago. Her name was Taitu Kai Goodwin and she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in Anguilla. Taitu Kai Goodwin. Taitu. Daughter of the Soil. Antigua Girls’ High School Alumna. Former Ambassador’s daughter. Miss Anguilla. Someone I knew. Taitu. Her murder is preceded by the killing of another woman in a domestic dispute, Carissa Chandler, in Antigua earlier this year. Carissa’s death is preceded by another. Taitu’s death is followed by another. And another, and another. I do not know all of their names. Life in Leggings and Walking into Walls will tell you. Taitu. Someone I knew was a victim of gender-based violence. I remember Taitu very well. I recall her bubbly personality and incandescent grins. Some classmates even joked at the time that we could pass for twins. I am shocked and overcome. Verklempt. Taitu.

Facebook is flooded with an outpouring of grief from Antiguans and Anguillans. This time it isn’t the global, or rather, the regional gaze that unsettles me but the way that Facebook prompts us to give shape to dialogues around violence and death. For a given person there is an earnest post about the tragedy of her death and of the scourge that is violence against women. In five minutes, something else has caught that person’s attention: a meme, another social issue, a life experience. But Taitu. While someone’s posting habits are hardly an indicator of how they feel internally, and while I cannot presume to tell anyone how to grieve, or how to express that grief, there is something disconcerting about the patterns of discourse on social media in times of tragedy. The Lorde, Audre that is, reminds us that we do not live single-issue lives. However, in stepping back to scrutinize these patterns, it is clear that, like the devastation in The Bahamas, violence against women is often reduced to a trending topic. For a few days we lament the prevalence of domestic and gender-based violence as a group. At the individual level, we are quickly compelled to move on and shelve violence against women for another day. For another tragedy. For another Taitu. In  “Generation Why”, Zadie Smith says that “when a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everyone shrinks…one nation under a format”. Not only are the complexities of character reduced, but our attention and range of empathy. And while Facebook does not necessarily create the conditions whereby we are reduced, it acts as a conduit that amplifies. Reduction squared. We can only care if we knew her. If we knew her, we can only be sad for so long. It’s time to move on to something else. But I wanted time to stop. I wanted that moment, the focus on Taitu, and on violence against women, to freeze. I wanted that moment to swell with the rage of women across the Caribbean until it spilled over and drowned the misogyny that keeps killing us. But it was not to be. The posts are petering out again. It’s something else now.

 

(Photo Credit: The Antigua Daily Observer)

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The English of Domestic Violence, and The Domestic Violence of English

September 15, 2019 by Leave a Comment

The English of Domestic Violence, and The Domestic Violence of English

We split infinitives
We split the atom
We split a skull

What wonderful beings
we are (we men)
we who are superior
to all things

We crack a walnut
We crack a joke
We crack a (spare) rib

We blow out a candle
We blow into our hands for warmth
Those same hands that 
strike a blow

We strike a match
We go on strike – 
and come home to strike
a woman and (girl) child
(in the quiet and dark 
of family life away
from the glare of the public)

We build confidence
We build houses (albeit matchbox ones)
We build relationships, which we
then break down like they are
our matchbox houses

We march, against apartheid
(of the statute book and the mind)
Sometimes we even march against 
capitalism and woman and child abuse

We name our children
We name hurricanes
We call women names

We take up burning issues
and bride-burning continues

We arrange our furniture
and we arrange marriages

What wonderful beings
we are (we men)
we who are superior
to all things

(Penned Saturday, October 08, 2005)

 

Photo Credit: Silindelo Masikane / enca)

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Disinterring Women’s Words (Mots Ecrits)

August 30, 2019 by 1 Comment

In France, on August 12, she was the 88th or maybe the 89th victim. She was 71 years old. There is no age limit to being killed by your partner, husband or ex. There are now 101 women victims of feminicide since January and the death toll will continue to grow. The epidemic is worldwide and almost permanently active. In France the government declared its intention to organize a conference in September to address the issue widely but failed to announce more funding. Compared to the 200 million euros Spain devoted for a national pact against domestic violence that is also called machismo terrorism, France scores poorly with its promised 79 million euros. It is time to face the reality of feminicide in France, and elsewhere.

The theatrical project Mots Ecrits, conceptualized by the actress Sophie Bourel from a collection of archives on women’s lives, makes visible invisibilized violence against women. Bourel decided that the first part of her project will concern the issue of feminicides, an issue that brings the everlasting danger for women of being killed as well as a sense of urgency.  For Mots Ecrits, Bourel collects a corpus of archives on feminicides and creates a theatrical performance based on these written words. With a wide variety of documents, what she calls “de la matière” (raw material), she is able to give life to the words to make the performance live fully and independently.

Sophie Bourel feels that she has an enormous responsibility since feminicide still ravages society. When we met her one morning, she was all excited because she received documents from the archives of a French department. She welcomed us with “Hello I am so happy,” as if she had found a treasure. In fact, for her it was a treasure, since finding anything about women including about their assassination by partners, lovers etc. is so difficult. The invisibility of women is multifaceted and the invisibility of their elimination is at the source of their absence in public space. The files she received that morning concerned a crime that occurred January 16, 1975 in a French town on the Loire river. The woman killed that day first appeared in police records in July 1968. She went to the police station to report violence in her home and her son had a head injury; her neighbor also testified. This ended up in a murder attempt in June 1975, when the perpetrator raped and locked her up. She filed a complaint and got an apartment to which she moved with her children. But she was not safe. At the end of 1975, he visited her. She went to the police station to say that she was scared. On January 16, 1976, he waited outside her apartment building, grabbed her, dragged her to the riverbank and shot her twice.

Sophie Bourel doesn’t see this as an isolated case. She created a list of 78 and then 80 graves. She says, “If I look at my list, I am going to find a woman who has been killed in a similar way: 2 pistol or gun shots! I am going to put the two women in contact with one another to create a sort of echo, the one who died 50 years ago with the one who died in 2019. Killed in the same manner. It is as if one opened her casket to welcome the newly killed.” She adds that it is also a way to fight because we must fight, for if we don’t, nothing will happen to save women. Men should be afraid of killing women.

Within the archive she received, there was also a petition sent to Francoise Giroud, Secretary of State in charge of the condition of women from 1974 to 1976, the first ever ministry established in France that concerned women’s issues The text said:

Reasons for the choice of this type of petition:

The Judicial procedures and the possibilities of intervention of the bodies in charge of people’s safety seem to be able to work only after the crime has been committed. This procedure has the inconvenience of requiring the death of the person first before being able to activate the wheels of law. On the other hand, it has the advantage of not forcing the judges to make preventative decisions (that can be traumatic for the perpetrators).

This petition clearly shows the objectification of women and sadly points to the State as engendering such a view. Representation of human beings in the State means visibility and therefore the opportunity to be heard and seen. It means conferring the person or group with an identity, or a face. If a human being is not recognized by the State, that person is an object and can be killed. As Hannah Arendt points out, when people are objectified, they can be eliminated. Objectification of humans or the environment is the precondition to destruction. Conscience or ethical responsibility is tossed. 

When Pramila’s mother, disabled and sick, was threatened by a family member, she had to get the help of police and lawyers. In one instance, the police said that she could be left alone with the violent family member. When Pramila objected that her mother is in danger of being hurt or even killed, the police responded, “Then we can bring a case against the perpetrator. No problem.” She was aghast. To even suggest that an old, ill and disabled woman should be killed in order to bring her perpetrator to justice is unconscionable.

When Nirbhaya’s rape, known as the Delhi rape case in 2012 led to mass movement for justice for women, a British journalist interviewed the rapists for the BBC. Recounting the incident in which Nirbhaya was sexually assaulted, one of the rapists, Singh, said “While being raped, she shouldn’t have fought back. She should have remained silent and allowed the rape.”  We know that passivity would not have saved Nirbhaya’s life. 

Worse yet is the law’s weakness when it comes to justice for women. Nirbhaya had to die after the gruesome mauling of her body in order for her case to go to the fast-track court! Alive, she had no protection against her assaulters. 

French law has evolved very slowly, and has repeatedly failed to protect women. In March 1994, France introduced a series of laws against violence (in general), but it is only in 2003 that domestic violence is seen as an aggravating circumstance by the law. Since then, almost every year, a new amendment was passed in the desperate attempt to tackle the number of women killed by their partners and exes, but to no avail (articles 221-4222-12 and 222-13 of the French criminal code). 

In comparison, in 2004 Spain reformed its criminal court system to bring down domestic violence, creating 106 specialized courts and an adapted prosecution bringing the rate of Spanish women killed by their husbands from 71 to 43. In Canada, because of the nature of the harm of domestic violence, the judges can provide for release conditions such as “no contact” until the trial or appeal even where no offence has been committed. Yet, where personal injury or damage is feared, courts can also order “peace bonds or recognizances.” The French Criminal laws also contain a number of special provisions that serve to protect victims, but these means are almost never used by the judges and the police. 

How many women have to die in order to change the mentality about the role and rights of women? How many women have to show the scars, the badges of abuse, in order to be heard, and in order for the law to be comprehensively enforced? Laws regarding “national” security are immediately carried out and enforced! The urgency of the situation should have forced us to act a long time ago. Meanwhile, in France, 93 women have died since January 1st. Every week, 3 women are killed by their respective partners. For 3000 years women have been abused by men. In many countries, our laws have been written by men and (un)enforced by men. This is not acceptable.

 

(Photo Credit 1: France Culture / Denis Meyer / Hans Lucas / AFP)

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In France, women demand an end to femicide now, without delay!

July 8, 2019 by 6 Comments

On Saturday, the French women’s organization Féminicides par compagnons ou ex reported a woman in Perpignan had been killed by her partner on Friday, July 5. That murder raised the number of women killed by partners this year in France to 74. Thanks to the work of various women’s organizations, for the past few days French media have been filled with articles concerning women killed by current and ex-partners, femicide, and the complete inaction of the State. On Saturday, tens of thousands of women and supporters protested in the streets of Paris. According to Nous Toutes, on Saturday, over 60,000 women and supporters across France protested and demanded action on Saturday. Today, the French press reported that, on Saturday, July 6, a woman in Yvelines, not far from Paris, was killed by her partner, raising the death toll to 75. The French government responded that they would start doing something in September. Why wait until September? Because August is vacation. Nous Toutes replied, “Monsieur le Président, les violences ne prennent pas de vacances. Nous ne pouvons pas attendre le 3 septembre. Des mesures peuvent être prises avant l’été pour faire cesser les féminicides.” Violence does not take a vacation. 

“Tomorrow, women will go to the police to file complaints that will be refused.” 

In 2016, 123 women in France were killed by their current or former partners. Their complaints were refused. In 2017, 130 women in France were killed by their partners or ex partners. Their complaints were refused. Prominent women and women unknown to the public agree, “It’s a massacre.” Their assessment is refused. According to Féminicides par compagnons ou ex, last week alone, four women were killed by their current or former partners. Their complaints were refused. Gülçin Kaplan lodged five formal complaints against her former husband. Police did nothing, and in doing nothing refused those complaints. In January, Gülçin Kaplan was stabbed to death by her former husband. That was January. 

The women are killed by their current or former partners. The murderers are covered, embraced, supported and protected by the State. This happens everywhere. In England, rape survivors are disbelieved and viciously, intrusively cross examined. In Indonesia, a woman provides damning evidence of her employer’s sexual harassment, and she’s sentenced to six months in jail. And that’s just from today’s news. Women are assaulted with impunity by their partners because their partners have been given immunity by the State. While France is not exceptional, the mobilization by women in France remains noteworthy.

Across France, women are saying, first, that femicide exists in France and that it must be included in French law. As of now, femicide is considered a “sociological” phenomenon, not a legal or criminal one. Women are saying that femicide exists in France, and the State must stop claiming it never imagined such things could happen “at home”. Across France, women are saying that words are fine, but concrete and immediate actions are demanded, and they point to Spain’s recent engagements with femicide, engagements in concrete policy implementations. Across France, women are saying, “Never again!” and “Stop the massacre!” Across France, women are demanding an emergency plan that recognizes the urgency of the massacre, of the threat to women’s daily lives and futures. Across France, women are demanding to know what exactly is the value of a woman’s life.

Across France, women are demanding action now. September is too late to start a “national debate”. In fact, July is too late for that debate. The time for action is now, because tomorrow, a woman will go to the police files complaints that will be refused.

 

(Photo Credit 1: France Culture / Denis Meyer / Hans Lucas / AFP)

(Photo Credit 2: Panorama)

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India strips millions of women in Assam of their citizenship. Call it femicide

July 30, 2018 by 504 Comments

The documents these women presented were deemed invalid.

What’s it called when, with one sweep of a pen or publication of a report, millions of people `lose’ their citizenship. Today, India dropped over four million people living in the resource-rich state of Assam, in northeast India, from the citizenship lists. Poof. Gone. Four million. In one state. And, to no one’s surprise, the majority of the four million are women. Even if women weren’t overrepresented in the rollcall of the suddenly disappeared, the impact on women, individually and collectively, is particularly deep and vicious, and is particular to policy formation in patriarchal states and societies.

Today, the Indian government published the final draft of the National Register of Citizens, NRC, for Assam. Assam has been experiencing a considerable population growth over the last decade. About two-thirds of the state is Hindu, and one third is Muslim. For over seventy years, Indigenous Assamese, in particular the Bodo, and Bengali Muslims have opposed each other, often violently.

Those dropped from today’s citizenship lists are largely, almost exclusively, Bengali Muslims. Many view this as part of the national government’s saffron policies, turning secular multicultural India into Hindu India. Whatever the reasons, the NRC predictably targets, and eliminates, Bengali Muslim women. Shorbhanu Nessa’s story is typical of many Bengali Muslim women in Assam … and typical of many women across India and beyond.

Shorbhanu Nessa married before she was 18. She is surrounded by nevers that result in her elimination from the NRC: never went to school, never owned property, never had a bank account, never thought she needed to. She is the mother of five adult children. As far as Shorbhanu Nessa knew, being married to her husband was sufficient. Not any longer.

Shorbhanu Nessa’s son, Hussain Ahmad Madani, explains, “Because she never voted in her maiden home, she had no way to prove now that she was her father’s daughter. Her father’s legacy data is there, but she has no document to establish her linkage to him. There is no school certificate which would have mentioned his name. Her family settled in this char (a sand bar by a river in Assamese) when she was one-and-a-half years old after their char (Majarlega Char) was swallowed by the Brahmaputra. She was married off to my father in this same char. Though her father passed away, everyone in the neighbourhood knew whose daughter she was; trouble began when documentary evidence was sought by the NRC authorities to prove who her father was.”

Everyone knew, but this particular category of everyone doesn’t count.

Many of those who were dropped from the rolls are women. Almost all of them are Muslim. Most, if not all, are married. As of yet, there’s not an exact gender breakdown of the disappeared, but the stories are everywhere, repeating one another.

No matter how one cuts it, the design for the data collection for the NCR predictably attacked Muslim individuals and communities, who, for various reasons, would not have the documentary evidence to prove what everyone in the neighborhood knew and had known for years, decades and generations. What is it called when millions of people are stripped of their citizenship? Genocide.

But there’s something else here. The NRC structures specifically targeted Bengali Muslim women of Shorbhanu Nessa’s generation. In 1988, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. Bengali Muslim women, like Shorbhanu Nessa, were `encouraged’ to marry before they turned 18. Thus, they never voted using their birth, or maiden, names, and so now they can’t prove they are, and were, who they are, and were, precisely because they were dutiful daughters. None of this is surprising. It’s part of publicly and widely known culture in Assam, and it’s equally part of the NRC plan. The way the data was collected meant Bengali Muslim women would be disappeared, in large numbers, and that was perfectly fine with both Assamese officials and those in the national government. What’s it called when millions of women are disappeared in a single day? Femicide. In this world, citizenship is life. In one fell swoop, India created the single largest stateless population ever, and at the heart of that effort is the nation-State assault on women.

 

 

(Photo Credit: The Wire / Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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