CRY FREEDOM.net

formerly known as
Womens Liberation Front

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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

 

 

  

                             

 

      

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                                                                                                            CRYFREEDOM 2019/2020


Part 6 December 2021 and some time back.
This part: <<The Taliban must allow women to go to work. They must provide jobs for them, there is no employment right now.> One slogan of Afghanistans Resistence Women.

Part 5 November 2021 and some time back.
This part: <Eliminating women means eliminating human beings!> One slogan of Afghanistans Resistence Women's Slogans.

Part 4 October 2021 and some time back
This part: Girls and women keep fighting for education!


Part 3 Sept 30 untill Back to August 5 2021

Part 2 August 27 untill Sept 15 2021: the resistence is becoming bigger and spreading more in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's Women Resistence Part 1
July 7 untill August 18 2021

 


 

THE INTERNATIONAL PROTESTING SYMBOL OF GLOBAL FEMICIDE
The UN, since 1993, has been calling individuals, organisations and last but LEAST governments wordwide to end violence against women which in my opinion also includes femicides, hence this page.
Still, the UN also this year called forward for a 16 days of
activities to stop gender based i.e. violence against
women.
https://www.un.org/en/observances/ending-violence-against-women-day

Read below my report:


 International media about the atrocities
against women worldwide.

Part 10
December 2021 and some time time back.


Part 9
November 2021 and some time time back.


Part 8
October 2021 and some time back.

Part 1 to 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

CLICK HERE ON HOW TO READ THE BELOW

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

Note by Gino d'Artali
The UN has again called the period 25 Nov 'till 10 Dec a time to be extra alert of against violence against women and called forward countries, NGO's and of course activists worldwide to take action against violence against women.
Read more here:
https://www.un.org/en/observances/ending-violence-against-women-day

Note by Gino d'Artali: The United nations pinpointed the period 25 Nov untill 10 Dec 2021 again as the 16 days where feminists and women in general and active NGO's active concerning violence against women and last but not least governments wordwide to take action against violence against women.
For 16 days I kept my finger on the pulse of actions that took place. But alas, again it are government that undertook the least actions. I'll mark the quoted media articles about these governments i.e. countries with a upper case red D.

So this is how the global press during that period reported about actions taken/done or not taken:

During that period I'll work on a special bulletin which I'll publish on 15 Dec 2021.

So here goes from 25 Nov 'till .....

and this is how the global press during that period reported about actions taken/done:

Al Jazeera
8 Dec 2021
Opinion/Women's rights
Marame Gueye
Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Literatures at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina

<<Senegal: To whom do women’s bodies belong?
The Miss Senegal rape case, like many others before it, appears to demonstrate that in Senegal, women’s bodies belong to everyone except
themselves.

In Senegal, gender-based violence is once again occupying headlines. This time, the country’s top beauty pageant, Miss Senegal, is at the centre of the controversy. In November, Miss Senegal 2020 Fatima Dione’s mother told Senegalese media that her daughter was raped while carrying out official pageant duties. She explained that the 20-year-old beauty queen became pregnant as a result of the assault and gave birth to a son five months ago. Dione’s mother also talked about the pain and shame her daughter experienced after giving birth to a baby conceived through rape.
While the allegation itself was shocking, what brought the issue under the national spotlight was the response from pageant officials.
In a November 18 press conference, the President of the Organising Committee of Miss Senegal, Amina Badiane, tried to blame Dione for what her
family says happened to her.
<If Miss Senegal 2020 was raped, it’s because she wanted it. She is over 18,> Badiane said.
Badiane’s egregious comments caused a widespread uproar, especially among women’s rights advocates who for years fought to make rape a serious crime in Senegal, and finally succeeded in January 2020. Hundreds of women filed official complaints against Badiane for <rape apology> and a petition calling for the immediate withdrawal of the pageant organising committee’s operating licence has garnered more than 60,000 signatures. Badiane’s attempts to blame Dione for her rape also led many other former contestants, including former Miss Senegal laureates, to speak up about the sexual abuse they allegedly endured during their time in the pageant. Badiane has sued for defamation.

Badiane’s comments attempting to legitimise rape and sexual assault, for which she has since apologised, were undoubtedly outrageous – especially as it is her responsibility to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the young women competing in this popular beauty pageant, including Dione. However, Badiane is not the source of the problem – she is merely a symptom.
In Senegal, there is a deep-rooted culture of rape and gendered violence. Large segments of Senegalese society do not really know what constitutes rape and view sexual assault as a misdemeanour at best. Thus perpetrators of such crimes are rarely brought to justice or shunned by the public. As a result, public figures like Badiane routinely engage in victim-blaming without facing any real consequences.
In 2018, for example, a philosophy professor and public commentator Songué Diouf claimed on Jakarloo-bi – a popular show on the television network owned by famed Senegalese pop star, Youssou N’Dour – that women get raped because of the way they behave and dress. <You do everything so
that we rape you, and when we rape you, we go to prison and you who have done everything so that you are raped, you continue to be free,> he told the audience.
Following pressure from women’s rights activists, Diouf eventually issued an apology, but neither he nor the producers of Jakarloo Bi faced any real
consequences. In fact, Jakarloo Bi continues to employ commentator Cheikh Yerim Seck, who was convicted of raping a minor in September 2012.
Initially sentenced to three years, Seck only served 15 months in prison and swiftly returned to public life after his release.
Earlier this year, a member of parliament and prominent opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was accused of raping 22-year-old masseuse Adji Sarr. But after hearing her story, the public focused not on the alleged suffering of the young woman, but the political consequences of her accusation. While Sonko was charged with Sarr’s rape in March, he is yet to stand trial. And the public vilification of Sarr continues to this day.

Regrettably, the situation of women in Senegal is getting worse by the day. The country is becoming increasingly conservative, and the deeply
misogynistic views of ultra-conservative preachers are gaining more and more visibility and support. Take some popular preachers’ reactions to the
November 7 triple murder-suicide by dentist Falla Paye.
Paye killed his three children (aged 8, 11 and 13) and died by suicide, allegedly to punish his wife of 15 years who recently left him. He claimed in a 10-page rage and hate-filled letter that his wife pushed him to commit the crime and accused her among many other things of <depriving him of sex
for 42 days>.
The Senegalese media published Paye’s hateful letter in full and framed him as a <victim> in a family tragedy. Commenting on the case, popular
Muslim preacher Oustaz Iran Ndao raised the question about what kind of suffering Paye’s wife inflicted upon him. Another preacher, Oustaz Modou Fall, meanwhile, said that women can be deliberately mean and cause a man’s heart to <dissolve like an effervescent pill>. Fall went on to claim in a Facebook video about the Paye case that men should groom four-year-old girls with material gifts to turn them into submissive wives.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/8/senegal-to-whom-do-womens-bodies-belong


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 LOCAL it
25 Nov 2019

<<Violence against women: X-rays of broken bones show the scale of Italy’s problem.

One Italian hospital's display of x-rays speaks louder than words. Especially since the women whose shattered bones are shown in the sterile black and white images rarely speak out.
On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a hospital in Milan is displaying X-rays from victims of domestic violence who have passed through the doors of the facility seeking help.
The display at San Carlo Borromeo hospital was the idea of trauma surgeon Maria Grazia Vantadori, 59, who wanted to show the stark reality of what she has seen in her 26 years of practice.
Although women arrive at the hospital bloodied, sometimes cut, burned, or with acid thrown in their faces, Vantadori opted for the more sterile
images of X-rays, deeming them more powerful.
<I didn't want it to be gory, just to show something true, real and not fake. This is telling the truth, it's not made up,> Vantadori told AFP.
<The good thing about X-rays is that we're all the same, substantially. Our bones are all the same. So any of these could be any woman,> she said.
In Italy, 142 women were killed through domestic violence in 2018, up 0.7 percent from a year earlier, according to Italian research institute Eures, a number that campaigners say is disturbingly consistent.

In the last five years, 538,000 women were the victims of physical or sexual abuse by their partners, according to Italy's national statistics agency
Instat. Experts say those numbers are conservative because women are reluctant to come forward, partly due to fears of leaving their homes and
children.
The show in the hospital's lobby features about a dozen images: X-rays of a broken nose, a shattered wrist, crushed finger, shin or rib snapped in
two, interlaced with quotes from anonymous women.
One recounted how her partner smashed her face against the kitchen wall and pummelled her with blows, 43 times.
<I counted the blows to try to distract myself from the pain, otherwise I'd be dead,> the woman said.
In one of the most powerful images, a long butcher's knife is seen encased within a ribcage.>>
Read more here:
https://www.thelocal.it/20191125/violence-against-women-x-rays-of-broken-bones-show-the-scale-of-italys-problem/

The Guardian
Rights and freedom is supported by
Humanity United

David Agren in Mexico City
Mon 20 Sep 2021
<<Ten women and girls killed every day in Mexico, Amnesty report says.
Families often left to do their investigations into killings amid widespread indifference by authorities, report claims.

At least 10 women and girls are murdered every day in Mexico, according to a new report that says victims’ families are often left to carry out their
own homicide investigations. The scathing report, released on Monday by Amnesty International, documents both the scale of the violence and the
disturbing lack of interest on the part of Mexican authorities to prevent or solve the murders.
<Mexico is continuing to fail to fulfil its duty to investigate and, therefore, its duty to guarantee the rights to life and personal integrity of the victims as well as to prevent violence against women,> says the report, Justice on Trial.
<Feminicidal violence and the failings in investigation and prevention in northern Mexico are not anecdotal, but rather form part of a broader reality in the country,> the report adds.
Femicide has been rife in Mexico for decades – most notoriously in an epidemic of murders which claimed the life of some 400 women in the border
city Ciudad Juárez during the 1990s. In recent years, a growing feminist movement has held massive street protests against the violence, but
authorities have proved unwilling to take action to stop the killing.

<It’s always a question of political will,> said Maricruz Ocampo, a women’s activist in the state of Querétaro.

Ocampo has been part of teams lobbying state governors to issue an alert when femicides reach scandalously high levels – a move to raise awareness and mobilise resources. But officials often resist such moves, she said, as governors worry about their states’ images and investment.
<They refuse to recognise there is a problem,> she said.
The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has also downplayed the problem. He branded the women protesting on 8 March, International Women’s Day, as <conservatives> and alleged a dark hand manipulating the demonstrations.
When asked last year about rising violence against women, he responded, <Tell all the women of Mexico that they are protected and represented,
that we’re doing everything possible to guarantee peace and quiet and that I understand that our adversaries are looking for ways to confront us.>

Mexico recorded the murders of 3,723 women in 2020. Some 940 of those murders were investigated as femicides.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/20/mexico-femicide-women-girls-amnesty-international-report
 

The Guardian
4 Dec 2021
The Week in Patriarchy
Opinion
Sexual harassment
Women still have to worry speaking up about abuse will cost them their lives
Arwa Mahdawi

<<Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai’s story is a chilling reminder when women speak up about sexual misconduct they tend to be punished for it.

Peng Shuai and the dangers of speaking up about powerful men

Earlier this month the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai posted a statement on the social media site Weibo accusing Zhang Gaoli, a former vice-premier, of sexual assault. Peng’s post acknowledged that she didn’t have evidence to back up her accusations against the powerful former politician, but she was determined not to stay silent. <Like an egg hitting a rock, or a moth to the flame, courting self-destruction, I’ll tell the truth about you,> Peng wrote.
Less than half an hour after the post went up, it disappeared. Searches for Peng’s name seemed to have been blocked, as were searches related to <tennis>, and her Weibo account was hidden from searches. Then Peng herself disappeared. The former doubles world No 1 hasn’t been heard from in more than two weeks.
While there has been growing international concern about Peng’s wellbeing, Chinese media have stayed silent on the matter. The only formal mention of the tennis star was a Twitter post by the state-run English language broadcaster, CGTN, screenshotting a supposed email from Peng in which she says she’s totally fine (just chilling at home!) and the allegation of sexual assault she’d made wasn’t true. Weirdly, people weren’t convinced. I don’t know what has happened to Peng, but she is clearly not just chilling at home.
Peng’s circumstances may be extreme, but they are by no means unusual. When women speak up about sexual misconduct they tend to be punished for it. Speak up about sexual harassment at work and you may find your career suddenly starts to stall. You may find yourself being ostracized; being branded a troublemaker; threatened with the terms of draconian NDAs. Speak out about sexual misconduct at your university and you may find yourself being treated like you’re the one who did something wrong. You may get quizzed about how much you drank, what you were wearing, how many sexual partners you had. Speak out about the popular kid in your town? Your house might get burned down.

That last example isn’t hypothetical – it’s what happened to Daisy Coleman. In 2012 14-year-old Coleman and her 13-year-old best friend Paige Parkhurst were assaulted at a party. After they accused the high school football star both girls were subjected to horrific bullying and harassment. The Colemans had their house burnt down, and mutilated dead rabbits were put in Parkhurst’s car. Daisy’s mother was fired from her job and the family ended up leaving town. Daisy died of suicide last year. Her mother took her own life four months later.
Women who speak up about popular or powerful men will almost inevitably find their histories being scrutinized, their reputations sullied, and their lives torn apart. If you think I’m being dramatic here then just remember what happened to Harvey Weinstein’s accusers. Weinstein allegedly hired an <army of spies> to intimidate his accusers and stop women from going public with sexual misconduct claims. After the New Yorker published a report about Weinstein’s use of spies, the actor Asia Argento wrote on Twitter: <Why didn’t I, @rosemcgowan, @RoArquette [Rosanna Arquette] @AnnabellSciorra spoke [sic] up earlier? We were followed by ex-Mossad agents. Isn’t that terrifying? Very.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/20/women-abuse-speaking-up-peng-shuai-sexual-assault

BBC News
4 Dec 2021

<<Hundreds join violence against women protest in Mexico.

Hundreds of people holding up crosses bearing the names of murdered women have marched in Mexico City to draw attention to rising cases of femicide. The <Day of Dead Women> protest was held the day after Mexico's traditional Day of the Dead celebrations.
Femicide, or the intentional murder of women because of their gender, is increasingly a cause for concern.
At least 975 women were killed in Mexico in 2020, and 762 deaths happened from January to September this year.
Human rights group Amnesty International says investigations of the cases are often flawed because evidence is lost and a gender perspective is not applied correctly, making it <easier for these crimes to go unpunished>.
Chanting <We are your voice,> demonstrators used megaphones to read out the names of murdered women. They also carried photographs and banners with images of some of the victims.
<Each cross is a case, a pain,> Consuelo Martínez, mother of Victoria Pamela, who was killed by her partner, told Efe news agency. <We really want the authorities to act... We seek justice and truth for each of the dead [woman].>
The march was highly emotional, with some of the mothers crying and hugging one another.
<We're here for the same fight: our murdered daughters,> said Nayeli Aquino, mother of Naela Daniela, who was killed in 2019 and whose case remains unsolved.
Cintia Ramírez, whose niece Dulce Lilián was murdered by her husband in 2019, said the protesters wanted the authorities to do more to bring the perpetrators to justice. <The main demand is to urge the government to listen to us, to arrest people who are at large and for justice to be done. They aren't going to bring our dead back but at least they can give us some peace and tranquillity,> she said.>>
And read/view more here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59162501

Links on the above page about: IN PICTURES: Mexico barrier becomes memorial for killed women
and CONTEXT: Fury fuels historic women's strike in Mexico

Al Jazeera
3 Dec 2021
From: UpFront
Native American women are facing an epidemic of violence.
More than 80 percent of Indigenous women in the United States have experienced violence in their lifetime.

Photograph:

Indigenous women in the United States are going missing and getting murdered, at an alarming rate. A rate 10 times the national average on some reservations. Ninety-six percent of the time, the crimes are committed on Native land by a non-Native perpetrator. But because tribal courts and tribal police, for the most part, do not have the authority to prosecute crimes committed on reservations by non-Native perpetrators, there is rarely ever any accountability for these crimes or justice for the families of the victims.
This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill is joined by Mary Kathryn Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a lawyer focused on tribal sovereignty and safety for Native women and children, and Kerri Colfer, a member of the Tlingit tribe of Southeast Alaska and National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s senior Native affairs adviser, to discuss the roots of this epidemic of violence, and what is being done to end it.>>
Watch a video here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2021/12/3/native-american-women-are-facing-an-epidemic-of-violence

Al Jazeera
2 Dec 2021
By Umar Farooq

<<Women's Rights
Documentary on femicides in Turkey is UK’s Oscars nomination.
Dying to Divorce has been chosen as the UK’s entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards.

Istanbul, Turkey – A documentary chronicling the efforts of activists working to end violence against women in Turkey has been chosen as the United Kingdom’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards.
Dying to Divorce, which was produced by Turkish and British filmmakers and took five years to shoot, was released in UK cinemas last week.
It follows the work of lawyer Ipek Bozkurt and activist Aysen Ece Kavas who meet women survivors of gender-based violence in order to help them and their families seek justice through a labyrinthian Turkish criminal system.
As the film points out, many of the victims of violence in Turkey are in fact mothers.
Bozkurt and Kavas are part of the We Will Stop Femicides Platform, which tracks violence against women in Turkey. The organisation also helps mobilise support for victims and apply public pressure by showing up at trials and organising rallies around cases.
So far in 2021, men in Turkey have killed 285 women, according to the platform – on course to exceed the 300 who were killed last year.
Violence against women has often captured headlines in Turkey, but women’s rights activists say the country’s legal system has failed at following through prosecutions and sentencing of the perpetrators. The failure, they say, is a result of a top-down narrative that blames women who choose an independent life.

'More sincere’

Along with seeking to point out the relationship between politics and violence against women, the 81-minute film offers a close look beyond statistics – specifically, at the painstaking physical and emotional toll on two women.
One is Kübra Eken, a television news anchor, who suffered a brain haemorrhage after her husband brutally hit her on the back of the head two days after giving birth to their first child. It took years of treatment and therapy for Eken to regain some mobility and speech.
The other is Arzu Boztas, a mother of six, who decided to divorce her husband after she learned he had raped an underage neighbour and then sought to take her as a second wife. One day, the husband told Boztas to send the children away, then showed up with a shotgun, made her lie on the ground and shot her at point-blank range in each arm and leg. Civil society in Turkey, not just women’s rights groups, have been gutted in the past five years.
British director Chloe Fairweather said she decided to make Dying to Divorce after seeing a meeting of Boztas with Kavas, the activist. <I had not been quite prepared for the extremity of the violence that happened to her, but I was also really struck by Arzu,> Fairweather said.
<She was so strong in a way and so committed to rebuilding her life … I was motivated then to get her story out there.>
The film follows Boztas and her family, including her father who regrets having married her off at the age of 14, as they seek to ensure her ex-husband is properly prosecuted.

Later in the feature-length documentary, the former husband explains from prison that he does not regret shooting Boztas, saying she was not a good mother to their children. <We should kiss the soles of the feet of such mothers, that’s what our president says,> he says, in reference to a 2014 speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about women and motherhood that is shown early in Dying to Divorce. <I would not have gone so far, but she insulted my pride and honour,> the ex-husband adds.
But as the film points out, many of the victims of violence in Turkey are in fact mothers. Boztas waits to see her six young children until she has regained some independence. Doctors are able to restore some use of her arms, but the damage caused by the shotgun wounds to her legs is too widespread, and her legs are amputated. In one scene, after years of rehabilitation, she is fitted with artificial legs, and she shows them to her children.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/2/documentary-on-femicides-in-turkey-is-uks-oscars-nomination

Al Jazeera
By Zena Al Tahhan
Nov 29 2021

<<Palestine: Femicide highlights need for domestic violence law.
The killing of a 30-year-old mother in occupied Ramallah by her husband has caused an uproar among Palestinians.

Ramallah, Occupied West Bank – In the early hours of November 22, Sabreen Yasser Khweira, 30, was allegedly stabbed to death by her husband in a small Palestinian village on the outskirts of occupied Ramallah. The Palestinian Authority (PA) police found Khweira’s body inside her home in the village of Kufr Ni’ma. Her husband also attacked his own mother, 75, who suffered injuries and was transferred to the nearest hospital in Ramallah. She sustained injuries, but is in stable condition.
The suspect, identified as Amer Rabee, fled the scene but was arrested later that same morning, while Khweira’s body was transferred for a forensic medical examination as part of an investigation into the killing.
The Khweira family are now calling on authorities to execute Rabee as a punishment for the gruesome killing – a demand also backed by Rabee’s family. Khweira’s murder came as the world marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25 and launched a 16-day global campaign demanding an end to gender-based violence (GBV), including in Palestine where awareness activities are being held. The killing has caused an uproar among Palestinians about the persistence of domestic violence and patriarchal norms in Palestinian society.
So far in 2021, more than 20 women have been killed in the occupied Palestinian territories in domestic violence, while at least 15 other Palestinian women were killed inside Israel.
The Khweira family has said that her husband had been violent throughout their 12-year marriage and that the mother of four had left the house multiple times. Jumaa Tayeh, Khweira’s uncle and the family’s elected media spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that her husband spent a month in prison earlier this year after she filed a complaint with the police for one incident in which he beat her with cables.
<She was severely bruised – she had marks all over her body. I was with her when we filed a complaint to the police’s Family Protection Units. There were several court hearings, and he spent a month before he was released,> Tayeh said.
Al Jazeera reached out to the media officer for the PA’s Public Prosecution regarding pre-existing domestic violence cases filed by Khweira, but was told that this information could not be disclosed at this stage due to the ongoing investigation.
Tayeh said Rabee was released five days before the killing after spending 40 days in jail for a drug-related case. <She spent one night with him after his release, and then he started threatening to hurt her, so she went back to her father’s house,> her uncle said The night she was killed, he had threatened to hurt her 11-year-old son who was at his grandmother’s house next door, so she would come home. When she returned, <he killed her.>

Vicious cycle

Tayeh said that Khweira had begun to file for divorce several months earlier, but was going through difficult times, particularly with the loss of her 33-year-old brother, Saif, to cancer this year.
Her uncle himself was released from Israeli prisons only a year and a half ago after 25 years, and her father lives in Jordan because Israel has prohibited his return.
<She would escape from his oppression and stay at her father’s house, and her family would support her every time and tell her to divorce him, but she was fearful for her children’s future and she kept going back to him in hopes that he would change and take on responsibility,> said Tayeh.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/11/29/palestinefemicide

The Guardian
28 Nov 2021
Vanessa Thorpe

<<Once, not that long ago, Kubra and Arzu were healthy young Turkish mothers, looking forward to raising their children. Today, sadly, this is no longer all these charismatic, determined women have in common. They are now both among the many damaged survivors of violent attacks at the hands of husbands who believed it was their right to inflict potentially lethal injury on their wives.

This autumn, the two mothers are the impressive stars of Dying to Divorce, a British-made documentary, out last week, that has just been selected to represent Britain at the Oscars as the official entry in the Best International Feature Film category. The film is a startling, sensitively made exposé of the murderous misogyny and dangerous politics behind an epidemic of femicide in Turkey, a country where an astonishing one in three women is subjected to some form of domestic violence.
Dying to Divorce was released to coincide with <16 Days of Activism>, the United Nations campaign against gender violence, and it was made over five long years of care and commitment by director Chloe Fairweather and her friend and producer, Sinead Kirwan.
The pair, who met at university in Bristol, joined together to make the documentary after Fairweather met Arzu when she was filming another project in Turkey. Since then, she and Kirwan have conquered a series of challenges, including repeated battles for funds and lengthy delays imposed by a glacial Turkish legal system. <There were lots of times I felt it was not going to be possible to finish the film,> admitted Fairweather, <but that was the good thing about having Sinead there. If one of us was down, the other was offering encouragement. I’m so pleased it’s been chosen as an Academy Award contender by Bafta, partly because, although it is such an important story, it would have been very risky for it to be made inside Turkey by film-makers there.>

At the heart of Fairweather’s documentary is the work of Ipek Bozkurt, the campaigning Turkish lawyer and activist who has guided both Kubra and Arzu, along with many others, through the painful aftermath of appalling injuries, helping them courageously press charges against their husbands.
Bozkurt is in Britain this weekend for the premiere, and she told the Observer she remains determined to fight back against prejudices in the Turkish criminal justice system, working alongside her comrades on the anti-femicide platform she has established with other Turkish lawyers as a support for survivors and victims’ families across the country.
<It is amazing how quickly things have changed in Turkey,” Bozkurt said. “There is nothing over-dramatic in the way Chloe tells these stories. There is real restraint, but the injuries speak for themselves.> >>
View the trailer and the article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/28/dying-to-divorce-turkish-womens-campaign-against-domestic-violence-is-set-for-oscars

Al Jazeera
28 Nov 2021
Shawn Yuan

<<Child Rights
Iraq: Court hearing resumes on marriage of 12-year-old girl.
Despite the furore surrounding the case, legal scholars say many other child-marriage situations do not get the same level of attention.

Baghdad, Iraq – A court has resumed hearing a case in which a judge was asked to formalise a religious wedding between a 12-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, raising concerns across Iraq.
It was not clear whether a verdict would be given on Sunday.
The court, located in Baghdad’s Kadhamiya district, adjourned the case last week as demonstrators rallied in front of the court, chanting and holding banners with slogans such as: <Child marriage is a crime against children,> and <No to child marriage>.
<Children should be at home watching cartoons, not be married,> said one demonstrator in front of the courthouse last week. <That’s why we are here today to show our condemnation.>
The case was first brought under the spotlight when the mother of the girl – in a video – called on authorities to save her daughter. The mother told local media her 12-year-old daughter had been raped and forced into a marriage to her stepfather’s brother.
A department of the Ministry of Interior that deals with violence against women, however, said in a statement after meeting the girl, her father, and her husband that it was assured she had not been coerced into marriage.
<No matter what, a marriage between a 12-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man is simply not acceptable,> Hala, an advocate for women’s and children’s rights in Iraq, told Al Jazeera, asking to be identified only by her first name.
The law in Iraq states the legal age for marriage is 18, but that it could be lowered to 15 in “urgent” cases should the person in question’s father consent to marriage.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a universal legal document aimed at protecting women’s rights, also states marriage under the age of 18 is a form of forced marriage.
Yet despite the legal provisions, child marriage is rampant in Iraq, especially in rural areas, and other countries in the region. Poverty and religious practices drove many parents into marrying their young daughters off, hoping it would either ease the burden of the family or bring financial support.
According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted by the government of Iraq and published in 2018, 7.2 percent of married women aged 20 to 24 were first wed before they turned 15 years old, and another 20.2 percent were married before age 18.
<Child marriage is a violation of human rights, compromising the development of girls and often resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, with little education and poor vocational training reinforcing the gendered nature of poverty,> UNICEF, a participant in the survey, said.
Despite the furore surrounding this case, many other girls do not enjoy the same level of attention, according to legal professionals.
<This case gets particular media attention because the mother of the young girl went on social media and stirred up nationwide discussion,> Mariam Albawab, a Baghdad-based lawyer who works on children’s rights cases in Iraq, told Al Jazeera.
<However, there are thousands of cases that have gone under the media radar, and many of those marriages went ahead without much notice or condemnation.>

Save the Children, an international NGO, has called for the minimum age of marriage to be at least 18 years and for the removal of any exceptions to this rule.

<You thought the story in Capernaum would all be fictional, but in fact, its plotline is being replayed every day here in Iraq,> Hala said, referring to the Lebanese film released in 2018 with a story that entailed a money-strapped family trying to sell their 11-year-old daughter in exchange for two chickens.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/28/iraq-court-hearing-resumed-for-the-marriage-of-12-year-old-girl

And also read this Al Jazeera article published 25 Nov 2021:
<<Child marriage: Why does it persist in the US?>>
read and view more here:
<<https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2020/11/25/child-marriage-why-does-it-persist-in-the-us

Opinion by Gino d'Artali:
If you don't call forced marriage an act of non-violence against women you're guilty as a pretator and should be brought to face trial!

France 24
26 Nov 2021

<<Thousands of Mexican women march in protest against violence.

Mexico City (AFP) – Thousands of women marched through the Mexican capital and scuffled with police on Thursday demanding an end to femicide and other gender-based violence in the Latin American country.
See picture as part of the article titled:
<They didn't die. They killed them,> read one of the banners carried at the rally to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Shouting <Not one (woman) less,> the crowd, dressed in black with flashes of purple, the color of the women's rights movement, demanded justice for victims of gender violence.
<Femicide Mexico! They're killing us!> one protester cried out during a brief scuffle with the police.
Tensions flared when a small number of hammer-wielding protesters tried to grab shields from police officers, who repelled them with smoke bombs.
Around 10 women are killed every day in Mexico and activists accuse the government of not doing enough to tackle the problem.
More than 10,700 women have been murdered in Mexico since 2019, according to official figures.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has criticized feminist marches on more than one occasion, suggesting that they are promoted by his enemies to undermine his government.>>
Read and view the article/picture here:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211126-thousands-of-mexican-women-march-in-protest-against-violence

BBC News
26 Nov. 2021

<<In pictures: Global protests denounce violence against women
Published26 November 2019

People around the world have taken to the streets to demand an end to violence against women. Protests were organised in countries including Mexico, Italy, Turkey and Sudan. The global demonstrations were held to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Monday.
Some 87,000 women and girls were murdered around the world in 2017, according to the United Nations.
The UN says violence against women and girls is one of the <most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today> and remains largely unreported because of issues including impunity and stigma.
In Mexico City, demonstrators marched through the streets calling on authorities to do more to combat the high rates of femicide - the murder of a woman because of her gender - and rape in the country.
Some women later clashed with security forces and vandalised monuments in the city.>>
View the pictures here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50557784

AWR
WORLD NEWS
<<Thousands take part in global protests against gender-based violence Access to the comments COMMENTS
By Philip Andrew Churm • Updated: 28/11/2021

Thousands took to the streets of Rome on Saturday in protest at violence against women. It was part of the Global "16 Days Campaign" with worldwide demonstrations against gender-based violence. Campaigners denounce what they consider to be an institutional policy hostile to women, the LGBT+ community and those vulnerable to the economic, social and health crisis. Carlotta Cossutta, Spokesperson for the feminist group <Non Una Di Meno" (Not One Less) said: > So far this year alone there have been 109 femicides.

<That's about one every 72 hours, actually even more, and according to the latest data, there are 89 women who report crimes related to gender-based violence every day, from stalking to sharing private material online, to beatings and a whole range of harassment at work or at home. So 89 every day.>

Meanwhile, in Turkey, police broke up the women's rights march in Istanbul with tear gas and rubber bullets. The protesters were denouncing the recent rise in violence against women. According to the advocacy group 'We Will Stop Femicide', 18 women were killed by men and 19 others were found dead under suspicious circumstances just in the last month.>>
Source: https://www.euronews.com/2021/11/28/thousands-take-part-in-global-protests-against-gender-based-violence

Al Jazeera
25 Nov 2021
Marienna Pope-Weidemann
Social justice journalist, writer and campaigner

<<The UK is facing an epidemic of violence against women and girls.
None of us has the luxury to watch this struggle from afar any more – this is a fight for our lives.

<<I do not remember much about that November day four years ago – the day my cousin Gaia’s body was found less than a mile from where she disappeared. The paperwork says she died of hypothermia, but Gaia, like countless others, fell victim to an epidemic of violence against women and girls which is unfolding in the United Kingdom at terrifying rates under a government that lacks the insight and the political will to stop it.
In November 2017, Dorset Police launched a missing persons investigation to find Gaia. But by then they had already let her down.
In 2015, when she was just 17, Gaia told us that she has been raped and that she wanted to report it to the police. We are a close-knit family and my cousins are like sisters to me, so I sat with her through her police interviews to support her. I also contacted our local rape crisis centre in an effort to ensure she had access to counselling and advocacy support.
Gaia did everything she could to bring the man who abused her to justice and prevent other women and girls from being victimised by him. But despite her bravery, the police decided not to pursue the case.
The <alleged perpetrator>, Connor Hayes, was already a known sex offender when Gaia accused him of rape. Dorset police were already aware of his other, mostly underage, victims. But they still decided to drop Gaia’s case. Hayes was eventually convicted for other offences, but he only served a year in prison before he was released to re-offend.
The police failure to prosecute Gaia’s case was a crucial factor in her health challenges, disappearance and death. The rape crisis centre, National Health Service or NHS and social services also failed to support Gaia and to help her cope with this injustice. And, not much has changed in the four years since we lost Gaia – in fact, things have got much worse.
Today, women and girls in the UK have even less reason to believe the police would take the necessary steps to ensure our safety and hold those who harm us to account. The national conviction rate for even the most serious sexual offences stands at less than 3 percent, and the odds are even worse when the victim is Black or a woman from a minority group. Why would anyone trust the police under these circumstances?

But the police are only one part of the problem. British society as a whole is knee-deep in misogyny, and this willful ignorance is adding fuel to the epidemic of violence against women and girls in our country. Indeed, the British public appears to be highly confused about what constitutes abuse and what counts as consent. A third of men who responded to a 2018 survey by YouGov on attitudes to sexual consent, for example, said if a woman has flirted on a date it generally would not be rape, even if she had not consented to sex. Twenty-one percent of female respondents echoed this view. With the state having failed to educate such a large segment of society on the basics of consent, sexual abuse cannot even be recognised when it is in front of our faces. Is it any wonder then that the British police appear unable and unwilling to protect women and girls?
The British police and justice system have arguably never been on the side of sexual assault survivors. In recent years, however, due to a toxic combination of austerity and rising misogyny, they have completely turned against them – they have elevated disbelieving survivors from an art to an actual policy
Sarah Everard’s rape and murder by a police officer in London in March this year, followed by scenes of extreme police brutality directed at women at her vigil in Clapham, was a gruesome reminder of what most of us already knew: the police do not protect us.
Sarah’s murder turned the national spotlight on police misogyny and violence in London and other urban centres, but this is not solely an <urban> problem. Police forces are working against women and girls in every corner of this country.

Take the case of Dorset Police. According to data obtained by our organisation, Justice for Gaia, which was launched in the days after my cousin’s death to fight for justice for her and for all survivors, of 2,058 sexual offences recorded by Dorset Police between 2019-2020, only 46 resulted in criminal charges. Between 2015-2019, 13 Dorset police officers or members of staff have been arrested for serious crimes, including rape, but most have been released without any charges or disciplinary action. Since 2020, one Dorset police officer has strangled a local nurse to death, another has been sacked for sexually assaulting a colleague, and yet another has been found guilty of abusing his position “to engage in sexual activity with members of the public”. Another Dorset officer is currently facing gross misconduct charges related to the Sarah Everard investigation.
Today, it is an undeniable fact that there is an epidemic of violence against women and girls in Britain, and the police are at the epicentre of it. No institution that is unwilling to hold perpetrators accountable within its own ranks can be expected to tackle abuse effectively in society.
This is why earlier this year Justice for Gaia joined 20 other women’s organisations to call on Home Secretary Priti Patel to initiate a meaningful and extensive inquiry into misogyny within the police – a call which she has not even dignified with a response.
Earlier this week a radio journalist asked me what it feels like to mark the fourth anniversary of Gaia’s death while things are steadily getting worse for women and girls. She wanted to know how I manage to remain hopeful that one day Gaia, and other victims of sexual violence, will find justice.

The truth is, I am not always hopeful. Sometimes I just lie down and cry. I only mention this because I know I am not the only one, and it is important to acknowledge no one can be strong all the time.

But I do keep getting back up and continuing the fight, for three reasons.
First, I know that is what Gaia would do. She inspires me every day to try and be as brave as she was.
Second, I know none of us has the luxury to watch this struggle from afar any more. If we are no longer safe on the streets, in our homes, in our offices and even in the back of police cars, it means we have no choice but to fight. This is a fight for our lives.
The last reason is historical perspective. We are undoubtedly going through hard times. But the women’s movement for justice and equality is a chain that stretches back many generations. Countless women before us weathered moments much worse than this to get us where we are today. And we owe it to those who will come after us to keep the chain intact. We have a historical responsibility to continue the fight.
Survivors and front-line service providers have said loud and clear what we need to win this battle: an evidence-based overhaul of the rape justice system and a fearless equalities analysis to take stock of how systemic racism and other forms of discrimination block survivors’ access to justice and recovery; an independent investigation into the perpetrators and failures within the police force; a huge public awareness campaign around consent; an independent review of judicial practices that retraumatise survivors; and sustainable funding for specialist support services.
These are building blocks for safer communities and a future where all survivors are respected, protected and heard. To win that future, we will all have to fight for it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.>>
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/11/25/uk-is-facing-an-epidemic-of-violence-against-women-and-girls

Al Jazeera
Infographic
Hannah Dugal
25 Nov 2021

<<November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The term <violence against women> encompasses forms of male violence against women and girls, including intimate partner abuse, sexual
harassment, human trafficking, female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began early last year, one in three women say they or someone they know has experienced some form of violence,
according to data from 13 countries in a new United Nations report. Thursday also marks the start of 16 days of activism leading up to December 10,
the International Human Rights Day, whose theme this year is <Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now!>

The five infographics below show how prevalent male violence against women is around the world.

Intimate partner abuse
Nearly one in three women have been physically, sexually or emotionally abused by their current or former partner at least once in their life, according to a report published this year by the World Health Organization and the UN. The situation is worst in Afghanistan, where nearly 34 percent of women and girls above 15 have been abused by a partner, data analysed from UN Women show. Five of the 10 countries where women and girls are abused the most are in Africa. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 32 percent of women and girls aged 15 or above have been abused by their intimate partners.

Femicide
Some 87,000 women were murdered in 2017, according to the most recent global homicide report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC).
The rate of intimate partner/family-related homicide was highest in Africa.

Femicide
Women are killed by male relatives or partners daily around the world. The UN says 137 women die this way.
Trafficking
Most of the known human-trafficking victims are women and girls, at 46 and 19 percent respectively, according to UNODC.
Seventy-seven percent of women are trafficked for sexual exploitation, while 14 percent are trafficked for forced labour.
Seventy-two percent of girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation, 21 percent are trafficked for forced labour.
Forced child marriages
Child marriage is prominent in several regions across Africa and in South Asia. In Africa, Niger has the highest prevalence of child marriage, with 76 percent of women aged 20 to 24 today who had been married off before they were 18 years old. South Asia also has a high proportion of child
marriage, with 28 percent of girls forced into marriage before their 18th birthday and 7 percent before their 15th.

Before Covid-19
The UN estimated that more than 100 million girls would be forced into marriages in the coming decade. Today it estimates that a futher more than to million girls will be forced to be married before their 18th. birthday.

Sexual violence in conflict
Some 550 of 638 recorded instances of sexual violence against civilians in conflict zones have been women, according to figures by the Armed Conflict

Location and Event Data Project since January 2020.
Sexual violence in conflict and conflict-related sexual violence includes war-time rape and crimes perpetrated by armed and organised actors.
Africa accounts for the largest number of instances with 376 incidents, the most happening in the DRC, with 135 events mostly perpetrated by
<unidentified armed groups>.>>

Source infographic: UN Women VN
Read more and view the infographic here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/infographic-mapping-violence-against-women

 

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