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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
Read all about the assasination of the 22 year
young Jina Masra Amini or Zhina Mashra Amini (Kurdistan-Iran)
Al Jazeera
22 Sep 2022
An investigation by The Humanitarian|Al Jazeera
<<Sex abuse allegations against aid workers in South Sudan UN camp.
Malakal, South Sudan - Accounts of sexual abuse committed by aid workers
at a camp run by the UN in South Sudan first surfaced in 2015, two years
after the country's civil war erupted. Seven years on, such reports have
not only continued, but they recently increased, an investigation by The
New Humanitarian and Al Jazeera found. The revelations come at a tense
time, with the UN estimating that as many as 5,000 displaced people may
be headed towards the camp in Malakal soon and current residents
worrying that this influx may increase the incidents of sexual abuse and
exploitation (SEA). They say these incidents have gone largely unchecked
despite a UN-led task force charged with tackling the problem. Residents
also worry that the recent violence that these people are fleeing will
seep into the Protection of Civilians (PoC) site - recent clashes
between Shilluk and Nuer tribespeople in the camp have already flared up.
Aid wor-kers who have worked at the PoC site told reporters that
accounts of abuse began trickling in shortly after the camp opened in
late 2013, but The New Humanitarian and Al Jazeera's investigation found
that the scale of abuse has since grown, according to aid workers, camp
residents, and victims. Reporters also analysed several UN and NGO
documents. One woman said she became pregnant in 2019 by a local World
Food Programme (WFP) worker - although the relationship was consensual,
most aid groups, including WFP, ban sexual relationships with aid
beneficiaries because of the stark power imbalances be-tween aid workers
and aid beneficiaries. She told reporters in December 2021 that she is
so worried about the continuing sexual abuse that she is putting her
eldest daughter, now 15, on birth control. A teenager said she was 15
when a local World Vision worker raped and impregnated her. Fearful of
her future, she said she tried to hang herself before deciding to leave
the camp in an attempt to build a better life. World Vision said it was
opening an immediate investigation into the woman's case, while WFP said
it could not comment on specific cases.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/9/22/sex-abuse-allegations-against-aid-workers-in-south-sudan-un-camp
The Guardian
23 Sep 2022
Agence France-Press
<<China sentences man who attacked women at restaurant to 24 years.
The main perpetrator of an assault against a group of women at a
barbecue restaurant in China has been sentenced to 24 years in prison,
after the case sparked a national debate over gender-based violence.
Chen Jizhi started hitting the women after they rejected his <harassment>
in the early hours of 10 June in the city of Tangshan in Hebei province,
east of Beijing, the court said in a statement.
When the women resisted, Chen and a group of his friends attacked them
with chairs and bottles, the court said, the four women suf-fering <light>
injuries. The authorities have painted the incident as a gang-related
crime, despite calls for a reckoning over violence against women after
footage of the attack was widely shared. Viral online essays criticising
the attack as symbolic of the country's larger problem of gender-based
violence were censored.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/23/china-sentences-man-who-attacked-women-at-restaurant-to-24-years
It embedes also a link to China|Violence against women and girls
Asia Pacific|Gender|news
Al Jazeera
8 Jun 2022
By Akanksha Singh
<<India: Why justice eludes many Dalit survivors of sexual violence.
Mumbai, India – In February last year, Divya Pawar*, 35, left home after
a dispute with her husband to visit her parents. As she waited for a bus
in rural Solapur in India's western Maharashtra state, two
dominant-caste men – one of whom was a police officer – stop and offered
her a ride. However, instead of taking her to her parents' house, they
abducted her and locked her in a tin shed on a farm belonging to one of
the men. Out of earshot for miles around, over the next five days and
four nights, the two men raped her. Even-tually, they called her husband
and informed him she could be found at a hotel half an hour from his
house. Once home, Divya's husband asked her to perform a <purity test>.
The ritual involved pulling a five rupee coin out of a pot of boiling
oil – a <pure> woman would be able to pull the coin out without burning
herself, her husband assured her. He recorded a video of her attempting
to pull the coin out. Within days, the video went viral in the village
via WhatsApp and an activist stepped in to help Divya register a First
Information Report (FIR), the first of many steps to see justice served.
'Targets of violence'
What happened with Divya is not unique. Crimes of a sexually violent
nature disproportionately impact women and girls from India's less
privleged castes, mainly Dalits. Dalits, previously known as the <untouchables>,
fall at the bottom of India's complex caste hie-rarchy and have been
facing discrimination and persecution by privi-leged caste groups for
centuries, despite strict Indian laws to protect the community.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s latest data, there was
a 45 percent increase in reported rapes of Dalit women between 2015 and
2020. The data said 10 rapes of Dalit women and girls were reported
every day in India, on average.
According to the National Family Health Survey 2015-2016 (PDF), sexual
violence rates were highest among women from Scheduled Tribes (Adivasi
or Indigenous Indians) at 7.8 percent, followed by Scheduled Castes (Dalits)
at 7.3 percent, and Otherwise Backward Castes (OBCs) at 5.4 percent. For
comparison's sake, the rate was 4.5 percent for women who were not
marginalised by caste or tribe.
However, these figures are <merely the tip of the iceberg>, ac-cording
to a recent report by the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network (DHRDN),
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and the National Council of Women
Leaders (NCWL). The report, released in March this year, analyses access
to justice by documenting the experiences of survivors of caste-based
sexual violence in 13 Indian states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat,
Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil
Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. <Caste atrocities are
not just based on caste; they're also based on caste and gender. It's
Dalit women's bodies that become targets of violence. For the majority
of Dalit girls, the extreme forms of violence they face is sexual
violence,> lawyer and rights activist Manjula Pradeep, also the director
of campaigns for NCWL and DHRDN, told Al Jazeera. Indian law has special
provisions for crimes perpetrated on people marginalised by caste and
tribe under the Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Act, including state
support and special courts to streamline cases filed under the law.
However, for cases to be tried under the law, survivors must first
report these crimes to the police, following which an inves-tigation
occurs, and only then does the case go to trial. At each step, the
report notes access to justice is limited for women from less privileged
castes, especially in rural spaces.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/8/india-why-justice-eludes-many-dalit-survivors-of-sexual-violence
The Guardian
15 Sep 2022
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi
<<India: two teenage sisters raped and murdered in Uttar Pradesh.
Two sisters in Uttar Pradesh have been found raped, murdered and hanging
from a tree in the latest incident of sexual violence to shock India.
The bodies of the girls, aged 15 and 17, were found sus-pended from a
tree by their shawls near their home in Lakhimpur district on Wednesday
afternoon. They belonged to the Dalit caste, the lowest in India's
hierarchical and discriminatory Hindu caste system, which used to deem
Dalits as <untouchables>.
Police said the postmortem examination confirmed both sisters were raped
after being dragged into a sugarcane field and then strangled to death,
before being hanged from the tree to make their deaths look like
suicide. Six men, including a neighbour of the family, have been
arrested and charged with crimes including rape, murder and helping to
abet and cover up the murder. <The girls were raped in the fields. When
they insisted that the men marry them, the men strangled them with their
dupattas [shawls],> the district police chief, Sanjeev Suman, told
reporters. According to the police, the men, who were all from the same
village, had been known to the girls and the pair had gone with them
willingly on Wednesday af-ternoon. The mother of the two girls disputed
this account and said two of the men had turned up at the house on
Wednesday afternoon and forcibly taken away her daughters on scooters.
<I tried to stop them and ran behind them, but they beat me up and left.
I shouted and ran back to seek help from the villagers,> she told local
media.
The police handed the bodies back to the family but they refused to
carry out the cremation until the government promised a fast-track trial
and compensation. The incident triggered local protests and criticism of
the ruling government of Uttar Pradesh, led by the hardline Hindu
nationalist monk Yogi Adityanath, who has been accused of not doing
enough to protect women from rape and sexual violence, particularly
those from poor and lower-caste backgrounds. In 2020, there was a mass
outcry after a Dalit girl was raped and murdered in Hathras, another
district in Uttar Pradesh. Brajesh Pathak, the deputy chief minister of
Uttar Pradesh, said the perpe-trators would face <such an action that
the souls of their coming generations will also shiver. Justice will be
given.> The incident highlighted the ongoing scandal of rape and
violence against women in India, which was found to be the most
dangerous country to be a woman in a 2018 poll by the Reuters
Foundation. Last month, the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)
reported a 19% increase in rape cases over the past year compared with
2020, an average of 87 cases a day. The NCRB data also shows there was a
45% rise in reported rapes of Dalit women between 2015 and 2020.
However, the true extent of the sexual violence against women and girls
in India is thought to be far greater than the figures show, especially
among the Dalit community where there is widespread under-reporting of
rape. One estimate, based on government data, concluded that 99% of
sexual violence cases went unreported.
Jacqui Hunt, the global lead on sexual violence for the advocacy group
Equality Now, said: <The horrific reported rape and murder of these two
young sisters joins a heartbreaking list of appalling caste-based crimes
of sexual violence that have triggered public protest in India.> The
group has documented the plight of Dalit women in India, who are
disproportionately subjected to sexual violence but denied access to
justice.>>
Please do read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/15/india-uttar-pradesh-teenage-sisters-raped-murdered
The article includes 1 link to an article published by Al Jazeera:
<India: Why justice eludes many Dalit survivors of sexual violence
While official data shows spike in sexual crimes against oppressed caste
women, report says access to justice is limited, especially in rural
areas....>
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/8/india-why-justice-eludes-many-dalit-survivors-of-sexual-violence
France 24| The Observers
14 Sep 2022
By Fatma Ben Hamad
<<Videos show brutal Saudi police raid on a home for young orphan girls.
A series of videos posted on Twitter on August 30 shocked the Saudi
public by showing men dressed in uniforms and plainclothes pushing and
beating young women with sticks, belts and taser guns. The images, which
were filmed in a home for young orphaned girls, led to an internal
police investigation that is still ongoing. But beyond police violence,
the case reveals the girls' ongoing struggle, as they are considered
wards of the Saudi state. The violent scene was filmed by a young woman
living at the home for young orphan girls in Khamis Mushait, a town in
southern Saudi Arabia. She posted the video from an anonymous Twitter
account, preferring to protect her identity, and explained that her
action <comes after many unspoken assaults> that the girls at the home
had suffered before. Since they were posted on the evening of August 30,
the two videos have accumulated more than 3 million views on Twitter and
triggered a huge wave of outrage, anger and support for the victims
under the hashtag <The Orphans of Khamis Mushait>, in Arabic #ايتام_خميس_مشيط.
On that day, the residents of the home ransacked the office of the
director to demand better living conditions and denounced several
regular violations of their rights as wards of the kingdom. Later in the
evening, a dozen police officers, firemen and men in civilian clothes
burst into the institution and beat up several young women from the
home. The images are difficult to watch. For a few minutes, several men
in uniform and plain clothes burst into the courtyard of the home,
chasing young women wearing black abayas or niqabs. At 1'50'' in the
first clip, six men in civilian clothes, their faces covered by their
keffiyehs, grab a young girl they suspect of having filmed the assault
on her phone, tackle her to the ground and handcuff her feet as she
struggles. While one of them holds the handcuffed victim by the hair,
another then orders the rest of the women not to film, at the risk of
suffering the same fate as their comrade.
....
'We are all terrorised by what we witnessed, many girls cried all night'
....
'The headmistress, who is primarily responsible for what happened, is
still in her position'
>>
Read all here because the article let more victims speak out and
describes one more video:
https://observers.france24.com/en/middle-east/20220914-videos-show-brutal-saudi-police-raid-on-a-home-for-young-orphan-girls
The Guardian
4 Sep 2022
By Tumaini Carayol at Flushing Meadows
<<Victoria Azarenka says exploitation of female players happens 'right
and left'
Victoria Azarenka has said that exploitation of female players happens
<right and left> in professional tennis and that the sport should ensure
that safeguarding issues are at the forefront of its concerns. <It's a
very sensitive subject, because you won't hear those stories unless
players come out and tell those stories. It happens right and left on
the tour, which is unfortunate,> said Azarenka in her post-match press
conference after reaching the US Open fourth round on Sunday. <Our job
is to be better at safe-guarding. As player council, it's almost like No
1 subject, to us. Because we see those vulnerable young ladies that
getting taken advantage of in different situation.> Azarenka, a two-time
grand slam champion and former No 1, is the highest-profile member of
the WTA player council. She described how she has seen coaches who
manipulate female players into dependence. <In the women's game,
particularly, I see so many coaches that make their players depen-dent
on them, and I think that's very dangerous. It's very mani-pulative too.
I wish that kind of subject was talked about a little bit more,> said
Azarenka. Azarenka's comments come in light of the news earlier this
week that Fiona Ferro, the French former No 39, has filed charges
against her former coach, Pierre Bouteyre, for rape and sexual assault
between 2012 and 2015, when she was aged between 15 and 18. Bouteyre has
admitted the relationship but claims that their relationship was
consensual. On Friday, Ferro released a statement on social media: <I
confirm that I was not consenting,> she wrote. As she spoke about
safeguarding issues in general, Azarenka directly addressed Ferro's
case: <[The] recent story with Fiona Ferro that came out. I don't know
how to put it in words sometimes. All you can do is check in on the
person and give your hand what I can do, what I can help with. So I
applaud her for being brave. I hope this situation she's gonna come out
of it stronger and tennis is not ruined for her because of that. That's
[a] very, very heavy topic,> she said.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/04/victoria-azarenka-female-tennis-players-exploitation-abuse-safeguarding
The Guardian
PM Media
4 Sep 2022
<<Police name three young siblings killed in violent incident in Dublin.
Irish police have named the three young siblings who died after a
violent incident at a house in Dublin. They said that Lisa Cash, 18, and
eight-year-old twins Chelsea and Christy Cawley died at a pro-perty in
the Rossfield estate in Tallaght. Police were called there at about
12.30am on Sunday. The three were taken by ambulance to Children’s
Health Ireland (CHI) in Crumlin, but all were later pronounced dead. The
victims' 14-year-old brother was also taken from the scene to Tallaght
hospital with serious but non life-threatening injuries. Their mother, a
woman in her 40s, has been discharged from hospital and is being
supported by her family. The garda armed support unit used non-lethal
devices to arrest a man in his early 20s at the scene. He is being
detained at Tallaght garda station under section 4 of the Criminal
Justice Act 1984. Gardaí said all the people involved were believed to
be known to each other and officers were not looking for anyone else.
Gardaí in Tallaght have established an incident room and all the
circumstances are being investigated under the direction of a senior
investigating officer.
The scene in Rossfield estate remained sealed off and a forensic
examination was to take place on Sunday by the garda technical bureau.
The coroner’s office and the office of the state pathologist were
informed. Postmortem examinations will also take place.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/04/dublin-tallaght-violent-incident-three-sisters-dead
The Guardian
3 Sept 2022
By Maya Yang and agencies
<<Woman forced into SUV and abducted while jogging in Tennessee, say
police.
Authorities in Tennessee are searching for a woman who police said was
abducted and forced into a vehicle while she was jogging near the
University of Memphis campus. Eliza Fletcher, 34, was last seen at about
4.20am on Friday, Memphis police said. She was jogging when a man
approached her and forced her into an SUV after a brief struggle,
university police said. She was reported missing when she did not return
home from her regular morning run, authorities said.
<Upon arriving on the scene, officers were advised that a female was
jogging in the area at approximately 4.20am when an unknown individual
approached her,> police said in a press release. <The female was
reportedly forced into an SUV and taken from the scene.> Fletcher's
mobile phone and water bottle were discovered in front of a house owned
by the university, police said. Memphis police and the Tennessee Bureau
of Investigation are searching for Fletcher. News outlets reported that
she is a teacher at a private school. She is described as being 5ft 6ins
tall with brown hair and green eyes, and was wearing a pink jogging top.
Fletcher's family is offering $50,000 to anybody who comes forward with
additional information about her abduction, Fox13 reports. <We look
forward to Eliza's safe return and hope that this award will help police
capture those who committed this crime,> read a statement from the
family reported by Fox 13. News outlets report that Fletcher is the
granddaughter of Joseph Orgill III, a hardware supply magnate who was
based in Memphis. According to the Orgill company website, the company
employs 5,500 people and has annual sales of $3bn.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/03/eliza-fletcher-woman-forced-into-suv-and-abducted-while-jogging-in-tennessee-say-police
Al Jazeera
01 Sep 2022
By Naima Morelli
<<LONG READ
Features|Women
The writers retelling Libya's history through a feminist lens
How Libya's women novelists are reframing the country’s stories in a
post-Gaddafi era.
Hawwa – the Arabic name for Eve – is a young adolescent in 1960s rural
Benghazi. She survives multiple pregnancies after having been married
off to Adam, a truck driver, and struggles for her freedom and
reproductive rights. This account in The Horse's Hair, the acclaimed
novel by Libyan academic and novelist Najwa Bin Shatwan, is none other
than the original sin story, retold with dark humour by an unborn child
narrator, who leads the reader through the parents' tragic trajectories.
The book is reminiscent of feminist retellings such as Circe, the 2018
novel in which the American novelist Madeline Miller adapts Greek myths
from the point of view of a sorceress normally depicted as a villain.
Similarly, with her writing oeuvre, Shatwan revisits Libyan history from
the 19th and 20th centuries through a female lens. <Bin Shatwan's
descriptions of female writers specifically being subject to societal
censorship in Libya suggests a woman writing is a revolutionary act,>
writes journalist Orna Herr in the global literary magazine, Index on
Censorship. Shatwan is part of a growing number of Libyan women writers
who are giving more room to a gendered point of view in literature. This
marks an important change in the still small Libyan literary scene. By
building complex female characters, a growing number of Libyan writers
are quietly introducing their ideas of gender equality. Traditionally
Libyan literature was dominated by male authors, who used their own
archetypes to describe historical crossroads and to understand their
current reality. Notable examples are the Benghazi poet Khaled Mattwa,
known for recounting legends and pivotal moments in history with a
unique flair, and Alessandro Spina who delved deeper into Libya’s past
through a series of novels that include, The Confines of the Shadow.
However, in recent years, female authors – either Libyan or Tripoli-born
Italians – have stepped in, revisiting the country’s history from the
1900s onwards, from the point of view of female characters. They include
Alma Abate examining the advent of the late despot Muammar Gaddafi
through the eyes of Sara in Ultima Estate in Soul D’Amore, or Maryem
Salama writing about interracial marriage in the 1900s with the voice of
the young nurse Fatima in From Door to Door. They are looking at history
in a way that attemp-ts to break down the treatment of women as inactive
objects. Safa Elnaili, an assistant professor in the Arabic department
at the University of Alabama, spotted this trend while researching short
stories published on a popular Libyan website called, Almostakbal.
She was struck by the central presence of women in these narratives,
something new to the Libyan literary canon. <The discussion of these
stories is through the position of the female character in the narrative
in relation to family members, society, and socio-political context,>
she said. In the early years of Gaddafi's rule in the 1970s, the new
government set up a single publishing house. All authors were required
to write in support of the authorities, and those who refused to do so
were imprisoned, forced to emigrate, or had to quit writing altogether.
In 2013, two years after the start of the revolution that overthrew
Gaddafi, Tripolitanian novelist and poet Maryem Salama wrote a poem
using the image of kindling a piece of firework. Deprived of a
structured publishing industry, she published it on her Facebook page. A
few hours later, a friend commented, <Thank you. I still cry burning joy
in a dead home.>
This image stayed with Salama, who has since used the allegory of a
phoenix to refer to her country. <Libya is still being created. It is
not yet that great bird rising from the ashes,> she said over a video
call. <Libya, the land, is waiting for the Libyan people to take
responsibility for becoming the great people of the great land. They
must read, they must know, and they must act.> >>
Read all here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/9/1/writers-retelling-libya-history-feminist-lens
Note opinion from Gino d'Artali: Yes, it's a long read but worth your
time because it again shows that it are women who're pulling the cart
out of oppression and towards New Hopes.
The Guardian
01 Sept 2022
By Mia Alberti in Lisbon
<<Pregnant woman’s death causes outrage over crisis-hit Portugal health
service.
The death of a pregnant woman who could not receive treatment in
Lisbon’s main hospital because of a lack of capacity has been met with
outrage in Portugal, where a months-long health crisis has shut
emergency services across the country and put maternity care under
extreme pressure. The 34-year-old woman was admitted to Lisbon’s Santa
Maria hospital on 23 August with respiratory problems and high blood
pressure. Owing to a lack of space in the neonatal service, she was
transferred to another hospital, but she died after a heart attack in
the ambulance. Her baby, born at 30 weeks weighing 772g (1lb 11oz),
survived. The health minister, Marta Temido, in office since 2018 and
throughout the Covid pandemic, resigned this week after the case came to
light. She said in a short statement sent to the Guardian that she <no
longer had conditions to stay in office>. The prime minister, António
Costa, said the woman’s death was <the last straw> for Temido.
----
Newspaper front pages have called Portugal's formerly highly rated
national health service (SNS) the <national disease service> and the
health ministry the <ministry of pretend> after shutdowns left thousands
without access to care in the virtually free public health system. The
crisis is a result of decades-long structural problems including low
wages, outdated equipment and inefficient bureaucracy, said Dr Gustavo
Tato Borges, the president of the National Association of Public Health
Doctors.>>
Read all here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/01/pregnant-woman-death-outrage-crisis-hit-portugal-health-service
Women's Media Centre
26 Aug 2022
By Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird
<<The Fight to End Forced Sterilization of Disabled Women and Girls in
Europe.
Sixteen women with intellectual disabilities who lived in Balti
Psycho-neurological Hospital, Moldova, were repeatedly raped by the
institute's lead physician, Stanislav Florea. Two of these women became
pregnant and were forced to end their pregnancies by a panel within the
psychiatric institution — which included their rapist in his position as
lead doctor — in order to cover up the abuse.
Following the abortions, one of the women was forcibly sterilized. The
abuses came to light in 2013 after one of the victims revealed to a
family member that she had been raped. <Because they were in an
institution, nobody found out about the abuse. It could continue for
years,> Sarka Duskova, legal manager at the Validity Foundation,
commented via email. The Validity Foundation was established in 2002 to
advocate for people with mental disabilities in Eastern Europe. In 2021,
Validity called for the European Court of Human Rights to consider the
forced sterilizations and forced abortions that took place in this case
as acts of torture. The court has not yet delivered a judgment. The case
was also taken to the Moldovan Supreme Court, and in 2016, Florea was
sentenced to 13 years impri-sonment. The sentence was appealed by the
prosecution, and in 2019 the doctor was sentenced to an additional two
years. <While this is an extreme case, women with disabilities in
institutions and/or under guardianship are typically invisible to the
justice system and to the wider public,> explained Duskova, adding that
<the human rights abuses occurring in these contexts thus often remain
uncovered and unpunished.> In Europe, progress in the fight against
forced sterilization has been slow and unsteady. Activists have been
working to raise awareness among policy makers, and lawmakers have been
strengthening legislation to make forced sterilization illegal in many
countries, but the forced sterilization of disabled women and girls
persists in some places.
A Human Rights Violation
....
>>
Read more here:
https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/the-fight-to-end-forced-sterilization-of-disabled-women-and-girls-in-europe
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