CRY FREEDOM.net

formerly known as
Womens Liberation Front

MORE INSIGHT MORE LIFE

Welcome to cryfreedom.net, formerly known as.Womens Liberation Front.  A website that hopes to draw and keeps your attention for  both the global 21th. century 3rd. feminist revolutution as well and a selection of special feminist artists and writers.

This online magazine will be published evey six weeks and started February 1st. 2019. Thank you for your time and interest.

Gino d'Artali
indept investigative journalist
and radical feminist

 

 

  

                             

 

      

HOME

ABOUT

CONTACT

B

                                                                                                            CRYFREEDOM 2019/2020


<protester Munisa Mubariz pledged to continue fighting for women's rights. <If the Taliban want to silence this voice, it's not possible. We will protest from our homes...
AUGUST 2022
27-31 August 2022
27-23 August 2022
14 and 19-13 August 2022
13-3 August 2022

 

'I will resist': Afghan female journalists defy taliban pressure.
JULY 2022
 

Click here for June untill January 2022

Click here for an overview of 2021

 

 

 

 
International media about atrocities
against women worldwide.

AUGUST 2022

31-21 August 2021
16 AUGUST-27 JULY 2022

JULY 2022
19 - 11 July 2022

(incl. 28 June 2022 and
6 and 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2022

 

 

Click here for June untill January 2022

 INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY 2021
 

CLICK HERE ON HOW TO READ 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
30 Aug 2022
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner
<<Saudi woman jailed for 45 years over social media use, says group.
Another Saudi Arabian woman has been sentenced to decades in prison by the kingdom’s terrorism court for using social media to <violate the public order>, according to court documents seen by a human rights group. Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a specialised criminal court convicted her of <using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia's] social fabric>, according to documents that were obtained and reviewed by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an organisation founded by Jamal Khashoggi. Dawn shared its findings, which it said were verified by Saudi sources, with the Guardian. Few details are known about Qahtani, including her age or the circumstances around her arrest and conviction. But the news of her decades-long sentence comes weeks after Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old PhD student at Leeds University and mother of two children, was convicted and sentenced to 34 years in prison after she returned home to Saudi for a holiday break. Court documents in Shehab case revealed she had been convicted for the alleged crime of following the Twitter accounts of individuals who <cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security>. In some cases, she retweeted tweets posted by dissidents in exile. Shehab told a Saudi court she had faced abuse and harassment during her detention, including being subjected to interrogations after being given medications that exhausted her.
In Qahtani's case, Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned her for <simply tweeting her opinions>, said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf region at Dawn. <It is impossible not to connect the dots between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's meeting with President Biden last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticise the crown prince or the Saudi government for well-documented abuses,> Alaoudh said. Dawn was coming forward with the news, he said, in the hopes that people who know Qahtani might shed light on her case. Few details are known about Qahtani, including her age or the circumstances around her arrest and conviction. But the news of her decades-long sentence comes weeks after Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old PhD student at Leeds University and mother of two children, was convicted and sentenced to 34 years in prison after she returned home to Saudi for a holiday break. Court documents in Shehab case revealed she had been convicted for the alleged crime of following the Twitter accounts of individuals who <cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security>. In some cases, she retweeted tweets posted by dissidents in exile. Shehab told a Saudi court she had faced abuse and harassment during her detention, including being subjected to interrogations after being given medications that exhausted her. In Qahtani's case, Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned her for <simply tweeting her opinions>, said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf region at Dawn. <It is impossible not to connect the dots between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's meeting with President Biden last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticise the crown prince or the Saudi government for well-documented abuses,> Alaoudh said. Dawn was coming forward with the news, he said, in the hopes that people who know Qahtani might shed light on her case.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/saudi-woman-given-jail-sentence-for-social-media-use-says-human-rights-group

Note from Gino g'Artali: Previously The Guardian publisched an article about the female studentSalma al-Shebab being sentenced to 34 years in jail for the same reasons. Read it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/21/plea-for-liz-truss-to-act-after-saudis-jail-uk-student-for-34-years-over-twitter-use

The Guardian
29 Aug 2022
By Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent and agencies
<<China charges 28 people over restaurant attack on group of women.
Chinese authorities said they had charged 28 people and were investigating 15 officials including police for corruption more than two months after a shocking incident in which a group of men assaulted four women at a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan, north-east China.
The men carried out the assault after the women rejected their apparent sexual advances on 10 June. CCTV footage circulated online showed a man placing his hand on a woman's back as she shared a meal with two companions. After the woman pushed him away, the man struck her before others dragged her outside and dealt a barrage of blows as she lay on the ground. Another woman was knocked to the floor. The violent attack reignited a fierce debate about violence against women in China. Millions on China's social media websites condemned the attack. On Monday, prosecutors in Hebei province said they would begin legal proceedings against the suspects – including seven directly involved in the assault – after they obtained <reliable and sufficient> evidence. The statement, shared on the Weibo social media site, did not specify a criminal charge. Police identified the prime suspect in the attack as <Chen>, saying he had <recklessly used violence to commit evil>, according to the state broadcaster China Central Television. The attackers were suspected of being part of a gang, and local media reported in June that the police response had been slow, prompting concerns that corruption was involved. In the meantime, authorities from the Hebei provincial commission for discipline inspection said they were investigating 15 officials over cor-ruption that involved <evil organisations>, including those associated with the attackers.
....
Discussion of feminism has grown in China despite pressure from its patriarchal society, widespread censorship and patchy legal support for victims. But viral online essays condemning the attack as symbolic of the country’s larger problem of gender-based violence were censored.
Two women were taken to hospital after the incident and two others sustained minor injuries, authorities said. Women's rights campaigners say domestic abuse remains pervasive and underreported in China, while prominent feminists also face regular police harassment and detention. Local journalists who travelled to Tangshan to seek information about the victims were harassed, intimidated and even detained, according to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.>>
Read all here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/29/china-tangshan-restaurant-attack-on-women-viral-video-people-prosecuted

Al Jazeera
22 Aug 2022
By Simona Foltyn
<< 'You are not honourable anymore'
Shamed and trafficked into Iraq's sex trade.
Part I – The Ambush
The sedan pulled into a side street in Mansour, an upmarket area of western Baghdad. The rush-hour traffic on the main thoroughfare had thinned into a trickle, allowing the neighbourhood to settle into the mellow, late-morning rhythm of middle-class life. Rolling past the high concrete walls and manicured hedges, the car paused upon reaching a red Kia, parked by a small shop that had been agreed as the meeting point. Two girls, whom we'll call Noor and Shahad, emerged from the backseat. They wore black abayas, full-length garments usually associated with more conservative communities. Their long, black hair was straightened and partly pinned up, the tips distinctly dyed in red and white. They glanced around nervously as a potbellied, middle-aged man, Husham (not his real name), shepher-ded them towards the Kia. Noor and Shahad were about to be sold for $5,000 each. In the distance, Wissam al-Zubaidi from Iraq’s anti-trafficking unit watched the scene from his black Toyota Landcruiser. A moustachioed general in his mid-40s, Wissam wore civilian clothing and Ray Ban aviators, his pistol wedged between his seat and the centre armrest. The driver of the red sedan was one of his men, posing as a pimp who wanted to buy prostitutes to work in northern Iraq. Nearby, a handful more undercover officers stood ready to intervene. There was an air of confident routine; Wissam's unit had staged dozens of sting operations like this before, appre-hending lowly pimps as they traded women in broad daylight, in the middle of one of the capital's wealthiest neighbourhoods. Since his appointment two years ago, Wissam had become one of the most active officers in the Ministry of Interior’s anti-trafficking department. He could claim credit for many of the sex trafficking cases the minis-try had investigated last year. But the official figure – a mere 115 cases in 2021 in a country of 40 million – was likely just the tip of the iceberg. For more than a year, Al Jazeera investigated the sex trade in Iraq, a growing phenomenon fuelled by deeply entrenched socioeconomic factors and enabled by a tangled web of corrupt officials and armed groups, a toxic mix that has become the hallmark of the United States’s post-2003 legacy in Iraq. The practice appeared to stand in stark contrast to the tenets of Iraq’s patriarchal society, where honour and reputation are paramount and closely tied to a woman's chastity. But beneath this veneer of conservative social norms, young girls from poor backgrounds are routinely sold into prostitution, Al Jazeera has found through interviews with more than three dozen individuals, including survivors, women’s rights activists, security officials, pimps and judges. The victims tend to be girls and women from underprivileged backgrounds who are fleeing domestic abuse or child marriage, with traffickers often exploiting society’s preoccupation with honour to shame vulnerable women into the sex trade. Iraq's justice system is infused with the same patriarchal norms and often convicts trafficking survivors for prostitution. There is far less accountability for those who benefit from the trade. The pimps and madams that Wissam’s team targeted were often small cogs in well-oiled machinery that supplied trafficked girls to brothels, hotels and nightclubs across Iraq, lucrative esta-blishments that could operate only with the backing of people with guns and power. Government contacts were needed to issue fake IDs, facilitate passage through checkpoints and get tipped off before the occasional police raid, while militias provided protection in return for a cut of the proceeds. Wissam, who came from a lineage of military officers and held a firm belief in institutions, insisted that nobody was immune from prosecution. <The law is above everyone,> read a slogan scribbled in red paint on the outer walls of his office, housed in a single-storey, dilapidated police station in the Hai al-Jamiya neighbourhood. In truth, the unit lacked the resources and political muscle to turn the tide against the soaring sex trade.
....
Minutes after Husham, Noor and Shahad had gotten into the sedan, the headlights began flashing. It was the signal to intervene. Hand-guns drawn, Wissam's men ran towards the car and opened the passenger door. <Get out,> they ordered Husham, grabbing him by the neck and both hands, including the one which held the incriminating bundle of hundred-dollar bills. <This isn't my money,> Husham protested as the officers handcuffed him and drove him away for interrogation. Noor broke down in tears, convinced they must have been caught up in a turf war between competing trafficking networks. Shahad didn’t cry, but her eyes were wide open with panic as the policemen led them to Wissam’s car. The survivors were taken to the anti-trafficking unit for questioning. A few days later, they were admitted to a government-run safe house, where they shared their stories.>>
Note from Gino d'Artali: Please read the whole article here incl. the part I didn't. Very important to know the perpetrator got arrested.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/8/22/sex-trafficking-in-iraq

The Guardian
21 Aug 2022
By Shanti Das
<<Plea for Liz Truss to act after Saudis jail UK student for 34 years over Twitter use.
The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has been urged to intervene in the <outrageous> case of a Leeds University student jailed in Saudi Arabia for 34 years over her use of Twitter. Hilary Benn, Labour MP for Leeds Central, said the UK had a <duty> to press for the release of Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi national who had been living in Britain and was detained after returning to visit family last year. Shehab, who has two young children, was initially jailed for three years for <causing public unrest> and <destabilising civil and national security> after appearing to support activists and dissidents on Twitter. But an appeals court last week handed down a 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. She has described suffering abuse and harassment behind bars, telling a Saudi court she was subjected to interrogations after being given medications that exhausted her. Amnesty International has called for her <immediate and unconditional release>. In a letter to Truss, Benn says the UK must intervene, and calls on her to <make representations to the Saudi authorities> for Shehab <so that she can be freed to return to her family and to her studies>. He says the case is <completely at odds with Saudi Arabia's claim to be improving human rights>, writing: <It seems that all she has done is use her Twitter account to support women's rights and greater freedom, and to call for the release of imprisoned activists in Saudi Arabia.> Benn adds: <Saudi Arabia says, 'we're
orming the country.' You can't on the one hand say, 'we are opening up and liberalising the country,’ and on the other hand send a woman to prison for expressing her opinions on Twitter.' <I think we have a duty as citizens and countries to speak out wherever human rights are abused and denied in this way. The fact that she was a student in one of our universities adds to that obligation.> He calls the case <shocking and outrageous>>.
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/21/plea-for-liz-truss-to-act-after-saudis-jail-uk-student-for-34-years-over-twitter-use

and also what happened previously:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/16/saudi-woman-given-34-year-prison-sentence-for-using-twitter

 

copyright Womens Liberation Front 2019/cryfreedom.net 2022