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THE BELOW (updated 12 MAR 2022)
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali
The Guardian
16 Aug 2022
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner
<<Saudi woman given 34-year prison sentence for using Twitter
Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University student, was charged with following
and retweeting dissidents and activists
A Saudi student at Leeds University who had returned home to the kingdom
for a holiday has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a
Twitter account and for following and retweeting dissidents and
activists.The sentencing by Saudi's special terrorist court was handed
down weeks after the US president Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia,
which human rights activists had warned could embolden the kingdom to
escalate its crackdown on dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.
The case also marks the latest example of how the crown prince Mohammed
bin Salman has targeted Twitter users in his campaign of repression,
while simultaneously controlling a major indirect stake in the US social
media company through Saudi's sovereign wealth fund, the Public
Investment Fund (PIF). Salma al-Shehab, 34, a mother of two young
children, was initially sentenced to serve three years in prison for the
<crime> of using an internet website to <cause public unrest and
destabilise civil and national security>. But an appeals court on Monday
handed down the new sentence – 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year
travel ban – after a public prosecutor asked the court to consider other
alleged crimes. According to a translation of the court records, which
were seen by the Guardian, the new charges include the allegation that
Shehab was <assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and
destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter
accounts> and by re-tweeting their tweets. It is believed that Shehab
may still be able to seek a new appeal in the case. By all accounts,
Shehab was not a leading or especially vocal Saudi activist, either
inside the kingdom or in the UK. She described herself on Instagram –
where she had 159 followers – as a dental hygienist, medical educator,
PhD student at Leeds University and lecturer at Princess Nourah bint
Abdulrahman University, and as a wife and a mother to her sons, Noah and
Adam.
....
Shehab sometimes retweeted tweets by Saudi dissidents living in exile,
which called for the release of political prisoners in the kingdom. She
seemed to support the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent Saudi
feminist activist who was previously imprisoned, is alleged to have been
tortured for supporting driving rights for wo-men, and is now living
under a travel ban.>>
Read all about it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/16/saudi-woman-given-34-year-prison-sentence-for-using-twitter
Women's Media Center
8 July 2022
<<Women under siege.
By Nikita Jain
The Gradual Normalization of Violence Against Indian Muslim Women.
NEW DELHI — In April, a video emerged of a Hindu priest addressing a
crowd outside of a mosque in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh,
threatening to kidnap and rape Muslim women. He was recorded making many
incendiary remarks against the Muslim community — each met with cheers
from the crowd and chants of <Jai Shri Ram> (<Victory to Lord Ram,> a
phrase of nationalist devotion co-opted by Hindu supremacists) — but
what garnered the strongest reactions online was his pronouncement that
if a Muslim harassed any (Hindu) girl in the area, he would respond by
kidnapping Muslim women and publicly raping them. The video immediately
went viral.
Only a few days before, in the eastern state of Gujarat, the national
president of a right-wing extremist group — known for inciting violence
against India's marginalized communities — launched into a hate-fueled
diatribe against Muslims while giving an address at an event,
encouraging Hindu men to <save> Muslim women by impregnating them.
Anti-Muslim violence and hate speech have become normalized under the
ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rose to
power after the country’s 2014 general elections, but activists say that
the attacks against India’s Muslims (which are India’s second-largest
religious group, with a population of 172 million) have ratcheted up
over the last year — particularly, against Muslim women.
While the harassment of Muslims in India is nothing new, it has be-come
observably more pronounced in recent years. In 2020, while Muslim women
were being targeted by law enforcement for protesting the new Citizen
Amendment Act (CAA) — which eased citizenship access for religious
minorities from Muslim-majority countries but not for Muslims themselves
— <love jihad,> an Islamophobic conspiracy theory portraying Muslim men
as sexual predators converting Hindu women to Islam, inspired <unlawful
conversion> laws that served no other purpose than to further malign the
Muslim community. More recently, Muslim women have become targets of a
unique and insidious ire. In July 2021, an app called <Sulli Deals>
surfaced that reportedly allowed men to bid on the profiles of featured
Muslim women — all of whom happen to be prominent figures within their
respective professions, including journalists, social workers, students,
and online personalities. Rather than an actual sales platform, the app,
hosted on GitHub, functioned only to humiliate the women who appeared on
it. After sparking public outrage, GitHub suspended the account. Delhi
Police were just as slow to open an investigation into its founders. In
January of this year, another app, called <Bulli Bai,> emerged on the
same platform, also containing photos of Indian Muslim women,
accompanied by derogatory content. But this time, the app included
Muslim women in their 60s and 70s. The app again sparked outrage, not
least of all after law enforcement failed to make any significant
arrests in the <Sulli Deals> case. After significant pressure from civil
society, and multiple complaints, six people were eventually arrested in
connection with both cases; all have been granted bail. One of the women
featured on the <Bulli Bai> app was Khalida Parveen, 67, who runs the
feminist organization Amoomat Society in Hyderabad. Parveen has spoken
publicly about rising fascism in the country, which put her squarely on
the radar of right-wing trolls on Twitter. <I was not ashamed,> said
Parveen. <I felt pity that people like that can stoop to such a level
that they can auction off the photo of a woman who could be their
mother.> Rather than pla-cing the blame on the app's creators, Parveen
pointed to the political climate that enabled them to make it. <With
this government, the hate factory towards Muslims has taken an ugly
turn.>>
Read more here:
https://womensmediacenter.com/women-under-siege/the-gradual-normalization-of-violence-against-indian-muslim-women
Women's Media Centre
12 Apr 2022
Elayne Clift
<<Nellie Bly, Journalist and Changemaker, Is Honored With New York City
Monument.
She was a journalist, traveler, suffragist, inventor, industrialist, and
woman's rights activist, but first and foremost she was a humanitarian.
Her name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, but she was better known by her nom
de plume, Nellie Bly. Born in 1864 in Pennsylvania, she began her career
at age 19 as a journalist at the Pittsburgh Dispatch when she wrote a
rebuttal to a misogynist columnist who argued that girls were meant for
having children and keeping house. His piece was called <What Are Girls
Good For?> Bly responded with <The Girl Puzzle,> signed by <Lonely
Orphan Girl.> In 1887, having moved to New York City, where she was
turned away by numerous newspaper editors, she found the offices of The
New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, and promptly talked her way
into an undercover assignment that led to her feigning <madness> in
order to investigate what was happening to women at the Women's Lunatic
Asylum on Blackwell Island, now Roosevelt Island. Her book, Ten Days in
a Madhouse, which first appeared in The New York World as a series,
resulted in changes in asylum care. The experience changed Nellie's life
and led to her becoming the first female investigative journalist in
America. A year later, Bly determined to take a world trip that would
beat Phileas Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Verne's Around the World in
80 Days, on a global trip. Her editor liked the idea, and 72 hours
later, in a traveling suit and clutching a small <gripsack,> she was on
her way, beating the fictional Fogg's record by completing her trip in
72 days, having traveled solo for more than 21,700 miles. The trip made
her famous worldwide. But Nellie Bly's biggest legacy remains her
commitment to humanity, social change, and women's lives. Motivated by
the cruel treatment of women she had witnessed during her asylum
experience, she found her true calling. <I have never had but one desire
and that was to benefit humanity,> she said.>>
Here I quote London-based writer Rosemary Brown:<The more I got to know
her, Brown says, the more I was intrigued by this spirited woman who
wouldn't take no for an answer despite living in a world where women
'knew their place.' Nellie knew her place all right, smack dab on the
front page of the world's newspapers. She gave voice to the voiceless
and challenged oppression wherever she found it.>>
Do read more here (long story):
https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/nellie-bly-journalist-and-changemaker-is-honored-with-new-york-city-monument
Women's Media Centre
5 August 2022
By Shaistha Khan
<<Muslim Women Reclaiming Spaces in Mosques Across India.
Mosques are public spaces for Muslims not only to worship, but also to
strengthen their relationship with their religious faith and to find and
build community. During the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime, women took part
in all aspects of the mosque, including praying in congre-gation,
teaching and learning the tenets of Islam, and participating in civic
and legislative matters of the community center. At the holy mos-ques in
Mecca and Medina, even today, women engage in worship alongside men and
partake in congregational prayers.
Women in mosques, a taboo across South Asia
As far back as the 16th century, women from the Delhi Sultanate — Razia
Sultan, the first female Muslim ruler, and Maham Anga, the foster mother
of Mughal emperor Akbar — were well known for building mosques. In his
book Women in Masjid: A Quest for Justice, author and journalist Ziya Us
Salam writes, <It all began to change with the decline of the Mughals
and the coming of the British. As conservatism was the order of the day,
women began to be excluded from both mosques and cemeteries.> Over the
years, this conservatism and indoctrination have been perpetuated
throughout South Asia. Women praying in mosques is now widely considered
taboo, with some mosques going as far as barring entry to women. These
cultural diktats stem from patriarchal notions that women must stay at
home or be shielded from the public. <Biases against Muslim women's
access to mosques are more pronounced today than at any time in the
Islamic history of India,> Salam writes. <In Lahore, Pakistan, I will
never forget how my uncle locked my aunt and me inside our home before
leaving for the fajr(predawn) prayer,> says Asra Nomani, a journalist
who has reported extensively from South Asia and activist for women’s
rights in mosques. <In Delhi, Lucknow, and my village in Jaigahan, Uttar
Pradesh, I was stunned to see there wasn’t even a space for women in
mosques. Praying in mosques is considered a taboo today because
regressive interpretations of Islam, and puritanical beliefs have
prevailed over women's rights that Islam granted us in the seventh
century,> Nomani adds.>>
Do read more here:
https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/muslim-women-reclaiming-spaces-in-mosques-across-india
Women's Media Center
4 August 2022
By Juana Ponce de Leon
<<The rise of the ‘nobodies’ in Colombia.
In a conservative, racist, classist, self-proclaimed religious country
like Colombia, the election of Afro-descendant Francia Márquez to the
vice presidency is seemingly miraculous. That for the first time in our
nation's history a Black Colombiana, a progressive candidate, could be
elected to its highest offices has to be understood not simply as a
historic milestone, but a turning point that a movement made possible.
For six decades, Colombia had been steeped in armed conflict. The peace
accords of April 2016 made evident the desire by many to leave violence
behind and aspire to a peaceful society. However, Colombia's media
establishment, which, like in much of Latin America, is control-led by
wealthy families and leans conservative, has tried to sink the accords.
Much like Trump and his coterie of autocratic followers, who cling to
the lie of electoral fraud and use news and social platforms to fan
popular discord, former right-wing president Alvaro Uribe continues to
malign the accords for ostensibly pardoning the perpetrators of
violence, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -
People's Army (FARC), and demand that they not go unpunished. Despite
international praise for the accords —President Juan Manuel Santos was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for taking on this challenge— the
inflammatory media messaging has fueled violence.
The resistance has responded. Masses of Colombians long fed up with the
power plays of the ruling elite organized a grassroots campaign to
insist on change and successfully brought Francia to the highest
echelons of the political structure. With the formidable Gustavo Petro,
a former guerrilla, long-time senator, mayor of Bogota, and now
president elect, Marquez is taking on a calcified political structure.
They will be inaugurated this Sunday. Speaking recently to the Colombian
press, the Vice-President Elect Marquez addressed the conservative,
racist Colombian establishment, saying <I know you have trouble
accepting that a Black woman, who worked as a domestic, now will be in
the presidential palace…I am the voice for the nobodies…we do not live
well here in Colombia. We should all aspire to live joyfully.>>
Read more here:
https://womensmediacenter.com/idare/the-rise-of-the-nobodies-in-colombia
Al Jazeera
3 Aug 2022
By Zubair Amin
<<Muslim women in India allege bias in hiring for jobs
From being denied jobs for wearing a hijab to more implicit forms of
exclusion, as revealed by a recent study, the women are struggling.
New Delhi, India – Lubna Aamir, 28, is a dentist by training. But
practising her profession remains a dream for her. After studying
dentistry and a few years of practice at a government college in the
western Indian state of Maharashtra, Aamir wanted a better position. In
2018, the Pune resident started applying for a job at clinics across
India through email. She even dropped resumes in person at some clinics.
<I wanted to branch out to what we call the class practice and have an
experience beyond local circles,> Aamir told Al Jazeera. She applied for
jobs at nearly two dozen places but there was no response <despite
having very good credentials>.
<I had scored excellent grades and had an internship from a government
college which is much sought after in the dental industry. My work
profile was good. Still, I was not getting any response,> she told Al
Jazeera. Muslims make up nearly 14 percent of India’s 1.35 billion
population but do not have the same representation in government or
private sector jobs. Multiple government-appointed commissions have
found the community is at the bottom among India’s social groups in
terms of education and employment. One of those commissions, headed by
now retired Justice Rajinder Sachar, found in 2006 that India's Muslims
were disadvantaged in social, economic and educational terms. Less than
8 percent of them were employed in the formal sector compared with the
national average of 21 percent, the commission said in its report.
According to the 2011 census, the last conducted by the government since
the 2021 exercise was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, the
participation of Muslim women in jobs was less than 15 percent, whereas
it was more than 27 percent for Hindu women. The corresponding figures
for Buddhist and Christian women were 33 percent and 31 percent,
respectively. The situation has worsened since 2014 when Prime Minister
Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into
power, with the government pursuing policies targeting the Muslim
minority and their economic and religious rights.
Doubly marginalised
In a deeply-polarised society, Muslim women are doubly marginalised.
Experts say they stand at the intersection of gender and religious
differences which significantly increases their likelihood of suffering
prejudice by potential employers. <The bias was always there but with
the dominance of the BJP and RSS, people have been now calling for the
exclusion of Muslims from all the economic areas,> Apoorvanand, an
academic and activist based in capital New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.
<Since this enjoys the protection and patronage often by the state, it
is now being done openly,> he added. The RSS refers to Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, a far-right paramilitary group founded in 1925 that
mentors India's Hindu supremacist groups, including the ruling BJP. The
organisation, which counts Modi among millions of its lifetime members,
aims to turn secular India into an ethnic Hindu state. Apoorvanand said
the objective of the Hindu right is to <cripple the Muslims
economically, force them into a state of deprivation and constant want
so that they turn into a permanent subjugated population>. <Politi-cally
Muslims have been disempowered. The idea now is to disempower them in
all areas of life,> he said.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/3/muslim-women-in-india-allege-bias-in-hiring-for-jobs
The Guardian
1 Aug 2022
By Ed Pilkington in New York
<<Female journalist told skirt too short when reporting on Alabama
execution.
Last Thursday night, the state of Alabama took three hours to find a
vein in Joe Nathan James Jr through which officials could pump lethal
injection drugs and execute him, a process that the department of
corrections insisted was <nothing out of the ordinary>. Alabama appears
to specialize in its extraordinary sense of the ordinary, particularly
when it comes to the death penalty. It has now emerged that, during that
execution, prison officials subjected female reporters who came as
witnesses to the proceeding to a clothing inspection, attempting to bar
one woman from the death chamber on grounds that her skirt was too
short. Ivana Hrynkiw, a journalist for Alabama's pre-eminent news outlet
AL.com, recounted how she was pulled aside by a prison official and told
that her skirt was too diminutive to meet regulations. <I tried to pull
my skirt to my hips to make the skirt longer, but was told it was still
not appropriate,> she recounted on Twitter. The paradox that the state
went to such lengths to uphold what it regards as propriety in clothing
even as it prepared to kill a man appears to have been lost on the
department of corrections. Officials also subjected an Associated Press
reporter, Kim Chandler, to a full-body inspection, making her stand to
have the length of her clothing checked. Chandler said that such an
indignity had never happened to her before in the many times she had
covered executions since 2002. Hrynkiw was eventually allowed to enter
the death chamber after she borrowed a pair of waterproof fisher's
waders from a photographer, attaching their suspenders under her shirt
to keep them up. That was deemed appropriate attire when watching a
judicial killing. But even then it didn't stop. The reporter was
informed that her open toe heels were a breach of regulation and she was
forced to change into tennis shoes retrieved from her car. <I felt
embarrassed to have my body and my clothes questioned in front of a room
of people I mostly never met,> Hrynkiw said. <I sat down, tried to stop
blushing, and did my work.>
After all that, the reporter did her job, and so did Alabama. After
three hours digging around for a vein, it found one, and went ahead with
the execution.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/01/us-prison-officials-alabama-female-journalists-change-clothes-execution
Women's Media Center/WMC FBOMB
27 July 2022
by Sheany
<<Indonesian Trains Will Blacklist Sexual Harassers.
Indonesia's state-owned railway company, announced on June 21 that it
will now blacklist sexual harassers from using its services — a re-freshingly
bold policy move that may set a precedent for other service providers in
the Southeast Asian country. KAI's announcement fol-lowed an incident of
sexual harassment aboard one of its train services that was caught on
camera and had gone viral on social media. <KAI is implementing this
policy to give a deterrent effect and prevent perpetrators from doing
the same thing in the future,> the company stated. The incident was
first brought to light on Twitter by user @Selasarabu_, whose video has
now been viewed 2.6 million times on the platform. The clip showed the
hand of another passenger slowly crossing the seat divider and
attempting to slide below the poster’s thigh. The poster, who identifies
herself as Sela, had quickly messaged the train conductor and asked to
be moved to a different seat — in Indonesia, train passengers are
informed of their train conductors' numbers in case of emergencies or
inconveniences. She was swiftly accommodated and moved to a new seat. As
the video gained online traction and made headlines across the country,
KAI quickly put out statements addressing the problem before issuing the
new policy.
<KAI urges and supports victims to report incidents like this to law
enforcement officers so that it can be followed up,> the company wrote
in a tweet. Under the new policy, any passenger caught committing sexual
harassment will no longer be able to use KAI's services, and the company
will place them on a blacklist that would include personal details,
including their ID number.
A 2018 survey conducted by the Coalition for Safe Public Space (KRPA), a
coalition of civil society groups, and distributed to more than 62,000
people across Indonesia, showed that sexual harassment in the country
occurred most often on the streets, at 28.2%, with public transportation
coming second, at 15.7%.>>
Read more here:
https://womensmediacenter.com/fbomb/indonesian-trains-will-blacklist-sexual-harassers
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