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PART 1: International media about the
atrocities against women worldwide
from March 1 untill April 16 2021 and continuing

 


PART 2: International media  about the
atrocities against women worldwide from April 26 untill April 12 2021
 


PART 3: International media about the atrocities
against women worldwide.
June 16 (hoever starting with a must read referal to an article June 16 (including a 5 06 referral to an article) and the month May 2021 and further down untill April 16 2021

 


PART 4: International womens-day21
International media about the atrocities
against women worldwide.
5 june - 16 April 2201
 


 

 

   

When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali

WELCOME TO PART 3 OF INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY 2021
WHICH GOES ON THIS PAGE WHERE I
LEFT IN PART 2 APRIL 25 untill 12 BUT NOW CONTINUE FROM THERE IF YOU SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN
OR YOU CAN STAY AT THE BEGINNING WHICH STARTS JUNE 5 2021 AND CONTINUES
WITH MY MEDIA LOGBOOK. YOU'LL FIND OUT HOW IT WORKS
BY SCROLLING, FOLLOW A LINK AND READING.
THANK YOU.

We, my colleagues and me, too often are said <your news is old> but my Mother (Gianna d'Artali 1931 untill 1996) always said: <No news is old news because you can always learn from it.>. When you often experience reading an article of cryfeedom.net as old news you are forgeting that we all have a collective memory.

International Women's Day 2021

When I quote I use < is opening quote and > is closing quote.  I close with >> followed by a link
to the article.
Gino d'Artali, radical feminist, founder
and journalist of cryfreedom.net

Call forward by Gino d'Artali
The violence against women and the rapings of women globally has in this not even 3 months since
the International women's day March 8 2021
increased in a horryfying way and numbers and can be called a global athrocity.
Not only domestically but also by the police, politicians and as a weapon in war. I, a male, I
am a RADICAL FEMINIST and I call all the readers forward to, in whatever way they can, to STOP IT!!!
Do not leave the women alone here and stand by their side!!! And by the way the women are NOT alone because they keep FIGHTING BACK!!!

The first article I refer to is of an extreme atrocity so read it and WAKE UP!:

Al Jazeera
By Thabi Myeni
5 June 2021

‘Our bodies are crime scenes’:
<South Africa its murdered women

Tshegofatso Pule was eight months pregnant when she was murdered and her body hung from a tree on June 5, 2020. This is her story and the story of the other women murdered by men on that day in a country where a woman is killed every four hours.
Police walk past demonstrators during a protest against gender-based violence outside the parliament in Cape Town in 2020.

Johannesburg, South Africa – As the winter sun dipped below the horizon on a cold Wednesday evening last June, hundreds of women, men and children gathered sombrely on the streets of Meadowlands in Soweto.
Dressed in black, and clutching pink balloons and flickering candles, the crowd – some hand-in-hand, many with tears in their eyes – made their way to the home of Tshegofatso Pule, the words of an old anti-apartheid struggle song echoing in the air around them.
<Senzeni na, senzeni na (what have we done?),> they sang, paying their final respects to a life lost too soon. It would be the first of many gatherings in her name.
Five days earlier, on June 5, 2020, a group of residents from Durban Deep in Roodepoort, a residential area seven kilometres (four miles) from Meadowlands, stumbled upon a spine-chilling sight: the lifeless body of a heavily pregnant woman, blood dripping from her torso to her toes, hanging from a tree in broad daylight.
They made multiple phone calls to other community members but their efforts failed to identify her. So the group of men took pictures and videos of the gruesome scene and started circulating them on social media. <The footage was posted to try and find her family,> said one witness, Tshepo Bodibe, who had been summoned to the crime scene by a friend.

On June 8, the devastated family of Tshegofatso, who had been searching for their daughter for days, saw the gut-wrenching viral video of a woman hanging from a withered grey tree. They recognised her as their ‘Tshego’, as she was affectionately known.
The 28-year-old had been eight months pregnant when she was shot in the chest and then hanged.
<Nothing could ever prepare you for this,> says Tshego’s childhood friend, Zinhle Zwane, as tears well up in her eyes. A distraught Zinhle had first shared the news of her friend its gruesome death on Twitter. It sent shockwaves across the country, sparking outcries from women, politicians and celebrities.
Among those who took to social media to express their shock in the wake of the killing was former Miss Universe, Zozibini Tunzi, who tagged the South African president in a tweet, expressly saying <I am not okay! This is not okay! Mr President, we are dying!>
Zinhles smile perseveres across her tear-stained face as her mind wanders back to the good memories she shared with her friend. The pair met 22 years ago when they were just six years old. Their mothers before them, had also been close friends. But the line is now cut; her child will never get a chance to be friends with Tshegos daughter, who died in the womb along with her mother that day.
<As women, we are not safe. We can fight, march and raise awareness, the reality is that we are not safe,> Zinhle says.

One of eight women
In South Africa, a woman is killed every four hours. On June 5 last year – the day Tshego was killed – she became yet another statistic: one of eight women brutally murdered by men in South Africa that day.
We know the names of two of the others: Luyanda Nkambule, 29, whose life was cut short in her home in Secunda, Mpumalanga province, and Nompumelelo Tshaka, 45, who was mutilated and her body discarded in Mthatha, in the Eastern Cape.
For two of the others, we know a bit of their story: in KwaZulu-Natal, two young nurses were brutally killed on their way home from St Apollinaris Hospital, allegedly by an ex-boyfriend of one of the victims.
But the other three are merely numbers. The grim reality is that femicide is grossly underreported in the media, and police reports often strip victims of their identity, turning them into statistics.
According to the human rights organisation, Centre for Constitutional Rights, the femicide rate in South Africa is five times the global average. In the first two weeks of June 2020, 21 women were reportedly murdered by men in the country. But we may never know the names, faces and stories of all of them.
For South African women, the familiar feeling of fear and collective trauma has shown itself in desperate pleas on social media, urging the government to take action against femicide.

Days following the public outcry after Tshego’s killing, President Cyril Ramaphosa released a statement condemning the surge in violence against women and children in the country. In the statement, he urged communities to <end the culture of silence and speak up>, adding <it could save your lives>.
But for many young South African women, like Beloved Sechele, his words rang hollow. The law student replied under his statement posted on Twitter, <This is dismissive and hurtful because we have articulated our troubles and reported many times.> She went on to say, <We are literally suffering and this feels like yet another brush-over of our concerns.> >
Read more here:

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/6/5/our-bodies-are-crime-scenes-south-africas-murdered-women 

June 16 2021
By Zecharias Zelalem

<Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Aster Goshu squints as she speaks quietly into the phone’s camera. <They lock me in the home when they leave,> she says in Arabic, speaking in a frantic tone.
<I spend my days crying,> she adds, pointing to the dark circles under her swollen eyes. <I’ve cried so much that I have trouble seeing things from a distance.>

It was late 2019, and the then-24-year-old Ethiopian woman had waited for her employers to leave their home for work in Beirut, Lebanon, before hitting record.

<I went four years without hearing from my parents,> Aster says into the camera.

<My employers say, ‘you Ethiopians will always be poor, what difference would it make?’> she adds, explaining that she’s only received a salary for three months of the four years she is owed. <I beg you to help me escape this home.>

Six years earlier, Aster left Ethiopia in search of work. But after a Lebanese family hired her as a live-in housekeeper in 2014, she found herself cut off from the outside world and labouring without pay. Aster’s family, unable to contact her, feared she was dead.

Ethiopian women, like Aster, have flocked to the Middle East to work as nannies, caregivers and housekeepers for decades. Driven by Ethiopia’s rising living costs and unemployment, hundreds of thousands have gone to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait. But what many find, activists and domestic workers say, is a cycle of exploitation and modern-day slavery that is hard to escape.>>

Note by Gino d'Artali: I's a long article but please your attention for their situation is very needed!
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/6/16/vanished-the-plight-of-3-ethiopian-domestic-workers-in-lebanon

The Guardian
June 16 2021
Justin McCurry in Tokyo

South Korea
<Online sex crimes crisis in South Korea affecting all women, report finds
Human Rights Watch found sex crime prosecutions involving illegal filming rose 11-fold between 2008 and 2017.
South Korea’s epidemic of online sexual abuse has left survivors traumatised for life, and is adversely affecting all women and girls in the country, according to a new report.

Molka – the use of hidden cameras to film or share explicit images of women without their consent – is forcing victims to contemplate suicide or to consider quitting their jobs or leaving the country, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in the report, My Life is Not Your Porn: Digital Sex Crimes in South Korea.

The trauma is worsened by encounters with unsympathetic police and courts, the US-based organisation said, and called on the government to introduce harsher penalties and educate men and boys about the dangers of consuming abusive images online.

<Digital sex crimes have become so common, and so feared, in South Korea that they are affecting the quality of life of all women and girls,> Heather Barr, HRW’s interim director of women’ rights, said on Wednesday.
Arrests over hotel spycam porn ring that filmed 1,600 guests across South Korea
Barr, who authored the report, added: <Women and girls told us they avoided using public toilets and felt anxious about hidden cameras in public and even in their homes. An alarming number of survivors of digital sex crimes said they had considered suicide.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/16/online-sex-crimes-crisis-in-south-korea-affecting-all-women-report-finds

Al Jazeera
June 15 2021
<Ilhan Omar may face censure for words on Israeli war acts
Republican members of the US House filed a resolution seeking to censure Omar for her criticism of Israel.
Republicans in the United States House of Representatives are looking to exploit a divide among Democrats over support for Israel following controversial comments last week by Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the three Muslim members of Congress.

Three rank-and-file Republican members of the US House filed a resolution on June 14 seeking to censure Omar and her progressive political allies: members of 'The Squad' (LINK TO PREVIOUS ARTICLE), including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
<We cannot turn a blind eye to members of Congress openly defending terrorist attacks by Hamas against our close ally Israel nor their dangerous rhetoric which has contributed to anti-Semitic attacks across the country,> Republican Mike Waltz said in a statement announcing the introduction of the resolution.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was reportedly set to bring the issue before a closed-door meeting of the House Republican Conference on Tuesday.
<We are seeing this big fight within the Democratic Party right now over anti-Semites and whether they’re going to stand up and confront this problem,> Steve Scalise, a top House Republican leader said on Tuesday.
The move by Republicans follows the opening of a divide among Democratic legislators over Israel’s 11-day bombardment of Gaza in May that killed 256 Palestinians.
In a House committee hearing with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Omar had asked about the US opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) inquiries into alleged war crimes by the US, Israel, Hamas, the Afghan government and the Taliban.

If the US opposes war crime investigations at the ICC, a standing body based in The Hague, where should victims of atrocities go to seek justice? Omar had asked. Blinken responded that courts in the US and Israel already provide adequate judicial forums for such claims.

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, announced in March she had launched a formal inquiry into alleged crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel and the US oppose the inquiry.

The ICC is also probing alleged war crimes by the US in Afghanistan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/15/omar-faces-censure-in-house-for-questioning-us-israeli-war-acts
and more articles about her on the same page!

The Guardian
June 12 2021
Staff and agencies

<Hong Kong
Agnes Chow: activist leaves jail as China says Hong Kong ‘pawn in geopolitics’
Key figure was imprisoned for more than six months for her role in the 2019 anti-government protests.
The Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow has been released from jail after serving more than six months for taking part in unauthorised assemblies during 2019 anti-government protests that triggered a crackdown on dissent by mainland China.

Chow, 24, was greeted by a crowd of journalists as she left the Tai Lam women’s prison on Saturday. She got out of a prison van and into a private car without making any remarks.
A small group of supporters were on the scene – the government has threatened to jail those it deems in violation of a sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed on the territory a year ago.
The legislation has resulted in the arrests of leading democracy activists including Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai, who are serving prison terms. Others have sought asylum abroad. Critics say China is routinely violating commitments it made to preserve freedoms promised to Hong Kong for 50 years after the handover to Chinese rule in 1997.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/12/agnes-chow-hong-kong-democracy-activist-is-freed-from-jail

The Guardian
Sam Jones in Madrid
June 11 2021

<Spain
Discovery of girl’s body prompts nationwide protests in Spain.
Father suspected of killing six-year-old and dumping body at sea, amid surge in domestic violence.
Protests against gender-based violence are to be held across Spain after the discovery of the body of a six-year-old girl who is suspected to have been murdered by her father and dumped at sea.
A surge in domestic violence cases has coincided with the end of Spain’s state of emergency restrictions last month.
On Thursday afternoon, search teams looking for two sisters, who were taken by their father at the end of April, recovered the body of the elder child, Olivia, six. She was found inside a sports bag, weighed down with an anchor, at a depth of 1,000 metres about three miles (5km) off the coast of her home island of Tenerife.
A similar but empty bag was found nearby by an oceanographic research ship equipped with specialist sonar. Officers from Spain’s Guardia Civil police force are continuing to search for Olivia’s one-year-old sister, Anna, and for the girls father, Tomás Gimeno.
Their mother, Beatriz Zimmerman, told officers her ex-husband had phoned to tell her she would never see the girls again after he took them on 27 April.

The case has shocked and angered Spain. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said on Twitter on Thursday night: <I can’t imagine the pain of the mother of little Anna and Olivia, who had disappeared in Tenerife, given the terrible news we’ve just had. I’m sending a hug, my love, and that of my whole family, who today stand in solidarity with Beatriz and her loved ones.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/discovery-girl-body-prompts-nationwide-domestic-violence-protests-spain

The Guardian
June 11 2021
Osman Can Yerebakan

<In 2019, the most recent iteration of the Every Woman Biennial drew 3,000 attendees to two galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Among the 600 artists represented were a 12-year-old trans photographer of moths and butterflies and a 91-year-old multimedia artist who makes paper assemblages.

<That was ultimately the show of my dreams,> says C Finley, who founded the world’s largest biennial of women and non-binary artists. She is confident about the forthcoming inaugural London leg: <This show is the thirst trap of London – it will scratch an itch people didn’t even know they had.>
A New York-based artist and curator, Finley started Every Woman seven years ago to carve out room for the inclusivity she realised was missing in the art world. The expansion across the pond pushes her agenda further with the biennial’s most diverse and comprehensive programme to date.

The month-long show opens on 12 June across various sites – from a 19th-century mansion in Canary Wharf to a brutalist building in central London – with more than 300 artists from 33 countries. Copeland Gallery in Peckham will present the show’s main exhibition, My Love Is Your Love, filling its walls with works by more than 200 artists, all available to acquire. Five jury members will each select an emerging artist to reward with £100.

The goal is to give a voice to all. <We are not stuffy about medium – this is a broad church,> says the curator Eddy Grattan-Bellew, who approached Finley with the idea of a London outpost after they met at the LA leg. They co-selected the works, <to break down barriers of access>, entirely from a free-of-charge open call, and almost everyone got in. <This is a ‘pan’ affair: all mediums, nations, ages, and gender expressions are welcome.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/11/every-woman-biennial-london

The guardian
June 11 2021
Hannah Summers

Government pledges to raise legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales.

Commitment from justice ministry seen as victory by rights campaigners, who say current law is exploited to coerce children.
The government has committed to raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales in a victory for campaigners.
Currently, 16 and 17-year-olds can marry with parental consent, but a coalition of charities has warned that this legal loophole is being exploited to coerce young people into child marriage.

In a letter to campaigners from the Ministry of Justice, shared with the Guardian, it said it was committed to raising the minimum legal age to 18 <as soon as legislative opportunity arises>.
The news came as Sajid Javid, the former chancellor, told the Times he would introduce a private member’s bill next week making it illegal for under-18s to marry.
Last month, the four co-chairs of the coalition Girls Not Brides UK wrote a letter to the prime minister warning that the current law on forced marriage law did not go far enough to protect young people.
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/11/government-pledges-to-raise-legal-age-of-marriage-to-18-in-england-and-wales

The Guardian
June 10 2021
Sally Weale Education correspondent

<Schoolchildren have told Ofsted inspectors that sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are such a routine part of their daily lives they don’t see any point in challenging or reporting it.

Girls suffer disproportionately, complaining of sexist name-calling, online abuse, upskirting, unwanted touching in school corridors and rape jokes on the school bus. Boys share nude pictures on WhatsApp and Snapchat <like a collection game>, inspectors were told.

A review by the schools’ inspectorate concluded that sexual harassment has become <normalised> for young people, in school, online and in other unsupervised spaces including parks and house parties.
It found that teachers <consistently underestimate> the scale of the problem and that sex education in schools was so out of touch with the reality of children’s lives that pupils turned to social media or their peers for information. One girl told inspectors: <It shouldn’t be our responsibility to educate boys.>
The report, published on Thursday, concluded that school inspections by Ofsted and the Independent Schools Inspectorate were <sometimes not robust enough> on sexual harassment and there was not always effective joint working between schools and local safeguarding teams.

Presenting the report, the chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman, said she was shocked by its findings. <It’s alarming that many children and young people, particularly girls, feel they have to accept sexual harassment as part of growing up. Whether it’s happening at school or in their social life, they simply don’t feel it’s worth reporting.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jun/10/sexual-harassment-is-a-routine-part-of-life-schoolchildren-tell-ofsted

Al Jazeera
June 10 2021

<Bangladesh to monitor TikTok after girls lured by traffickers
Surveillance begins on app users after a trafficking gang that lured girls into the sex trade in India was busted.
Bangladesh has begun surveillance on people using the TikTok video-sharing platform after security forces busted a trafficking gang that lured girls into the sex trade in neighbouring India using the app, an official said.

<A large number of TikTok users suspected of being involved in criminal activities are under close watch,” ANM Imran Khan, spokesman for the crime-fighting Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), said on Wednesday.
The monitoring began after eleven members of a suspected transnational gang were arrested for allegedly trafficking women and young girls to the neighbouring country using the application.
The traffickers used the app to trap girls by offering to make them TikTok models, and eventually smuggling them to the Indian sex trade in the name of better jobs there, Khan said.

The arrests came after a girl, who managed to escape from captivity in India and return to Bangladesh, filed a case with police in Dhaka, and video of a sexual assault on another 22-year-old Bangladeshi girl went viral on social media last month.
In her complaint, the girl accused one Rifatul Islam Ridoy, who is also known as TikTok Ridoy for his expertise in shooting videos using the app, of tricking her to a bordering district in February, and then smuggling her to India.
She was then taken to the southern Indian city of Bengaluru and forced into the sex trade, police said, according to the complaint.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/10/bangladesh-tiktok-scanner-sex-traffickers-lure-girls

Al Jazeera
June 9 2021
By Parth MN

<Rajasthan, India – <I want to study at least up to 12th standard (grade)> was Saira Bano’s heartfelt cry when her parents started looking for a groom for her in October 2020.

It had been a tough year for her parents in their remote northwestern Indian village. Since a nationwide lockdown to check coronavirus was imposed in March 2020, Saira’s father has not been able to find much work.
He earned about 1,200 rupees ($17) a week as a labourer in pre-COVID times, which barely kept the family afloat. And when that stopped too, he thought it was better to marry Saira off instead of spending the family’s limited resources on her education.

Saira is 17.

<We are six brothers and sisters,> she said over the phone from her village of Kudgaon in Rajasthan state’s Karauli district.
<We have always lived in poverty. After COVID, it has become even more difficult to sustain the household.>
Around the world, about 12 million girls a year are married off before they turn 18, according to the United Nations. Nearly 30 percent of South Asian women aged 20 to 24 were married before 18.
The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the crisis.
While the Indian government has not maintained comprehensive data, international organisations say child marriages could be a major fallout of the pandemic.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/9/girls-india-marginalised-groups-child-marriage

Al Jazeera
June 9 2021

<Failure to Protect: How domestic violence separates families
In Florida, survivors of domestic violence can lose custody of their children. Is the state blaming victims of abuse?

A mother in the US state of Florida was beaten and strangled by her ex-husband, so why did the state take her children from her?
Under Florida law, domestic violence victims can lose their children if the state thinks they did not do enough to prevent the kids from witnessing the abuse. The state calls it <failure to protect>.
<I called for help. I wanted out, and I still got punished,> says Lena Hale, who lost custody of her two children after Florida’s child welfare agency deemed her an unsafe parent because she maintained a relationship with her abusive partner.
Her ex-husband – the abuser – was later awarded full custody of their daughter.
Fault Lines investigates Florida’s child protection agency and asks if the state is doing more harm than good to some families.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/fault-lines/2021/6/9/failure-to-protect-how-domestic-violence-separates-families And if I by mistake copy/pasted the entire article I deeply apologize to Al Jazeera


Al Jazeera
June 9 2021

<Dozens of children, mostly girls, abducted by Mozambique fighters
Report by Save the Children says 51 minors taken by armed groups in conflict-hit Cabo Delgado in 2020, a figure likely an underestimate.
Fighters in conflict-hit northern Mozambique abducted dozens of children during raids in 2020, according to a new analysis by Save the Children.

The charity said in a report on Wednesday the “abduction of children has become a new and alarmingly regular tactic by armed groups” in Cabo Delgado province, where worsening fighting over the past three-and-a-half years has killed nearly 3,000 people and displaced more than 700,000, half of whom are children.
Save the Children said <at least 51 children, most of them girls> were seized by non-state armed groups in the region last year, adding that the numbers involved were likely <far higher> than its estimates, which were based on data collected by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and reflected only reported cases.
It warned that the victims are at risk of sexual violence, early marriage and being used as fighters in the conflict.

<Being abducted, witnessing abductions, experiencing attacks, being forced to flee from armed groups – these are extremely traumatising events for young children and adolescents,> said Chance Briggs, the Mozambique country director for Save the Children.
Attacks by an armed group known locally as al-Shabab, whose origins, analysts say, are steeped in local political, religious and economic discontent, have steadily increased in the Cabo Delgado province since October 2017.
The sophistication of the attacks has increased, too.
The fighters linked to ISIL (ISIS) have ransacked towns and gained control of key roadways, destroying infrastructure and beheading civilians. In some cases, they have forced locals into their ranks or held them as sex slaves.
Since August 2020, the fighters have been in control of the key port town of Mocimboa da Praia, while in March, they launched a coordinated assault on Palma town, killing dozens and forcing more than 67,000 to abandon their homes.
A video by the group distributed in August last year – filmed in either Mozambique or the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the US-based SITE Intelligence Group – showed three gun-toting children flanked by adults in front of an ISIL banner.

<Abducting a child constitutes one of the six grave violations against children in times of conflict, as defined by the United Nations. It is against international humanitarian law and can be a first step towards war crimes such as forced child conscription or sexual violence against children,> Briggs said.

<Every day spent by abducted children outside their community is one too many, and the risks of abuse, early marriage and pregnancy increase the more time goes by.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/9/dozens-of-children-mostly-girls-abducted-by-mozambique-fighters

Al Jazeera
June 8 2021

<Salvadoran woman jailed for suspected abortion released
Sara Rogel had been sentenced to a 30-year jail term for an abortion-related crime in El Salvador.
Women’s rights advocates have welcomed the release of a woman in El Salvador who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for a suspected abortion, in a case that has drawn international attention to the South American nation’s strict abortion ban.

Sara Rogel, 28, was arrested in October 2012 after going to a hospital with bleeding injuries caused by what she said was a fall while carrying out chores at home.
Then a 22-year-old student, Rogel was prosecuted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing her unborn daughter. Her sentence was later reduced to 10 years, which would have seen her released in October 2022.

On Monday, she left a women’s jail near Zacatecoluca, about 56km (35 miles) southeast of the capital San Salvador, where she was joined by members of her family and her lawyer Karla Vaquerano of the pro-abortion rights group ACDATEE.
<She was deprived of freedom for almost nine years, in a sentence we believed was unfairly given,> Vaquerano said.
Rogel was one of dozens of Salvadoran women imprisoned for abortion-related crimes in the country, which banned abortion in all circumstances, including rape or if the mother’s life is in danger, in 1998.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/8/salvadoran-woman-jailed-for-suspected-abortion-released
The page includes links to related articles

Al Jazeera
June 8 2021

<UK police officer admits to kidnapping, raping Sarah Everard
Wayne Couzens, 48, also accepts responsibility for the death of Everard during a hearing at the Old Bailey.
A British police officer has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping Sarah Everard, whose killing shook the United Kingdom and led to a debate about male violence against women.
A court at London’s Old Bailey on Tuesday heard that Wayne Couzens, 48, also accepted responsibility for the death of Everard.
Couzens, who appeared by video link from Belmarsh prison, did not enter a plea on the charge of murder, however.
Everard, 33, was abducted as she walked home from a friend’s house in south London on March 3.
Her body was later found in woodland about 80km (50 miles) away in southeast England.
Everard’s relatives sat in the court on Tuesday as Couzens entered his pleas.

Medical reports about the Metropolitan Police officer are currently being prepared and a further hearing before the judge, Adrian Fulford, will take place on July 9.
A postmortem concluded earlier this month that Everard died as a result of compression of the neck.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/8/uk-police-officer-admits-to-raping-and-kidnapping-sarah-everard

Al Jazeera
June 2 2021


<How to stop Ethiopia its weaponised sexual violence?
Ethiopia its six-month-old conflict in its Tigray region has been marked by widespread reports of rape being used as a weapon by the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, and by forces from the neighbouring Amhara region.
The violence is brutal. There are reports and witness accounts of rocks, nails and other objects being forced inside the bodies of women. There are allegations that men have been forced to rape their own family members or be killed. And aid group the International Rescue Committee has said women are being forced to engage in sexually exploitative relationships for money, food and shelter.
After months of denial and silence, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in March acknowledged that sexual violence was taking place. In a speech to parliament, he called war <a nasty thing> and suggested that troops from neighbouring Eritrea, which has fought on the Ethiopian government its side throughout the conflict, were also responsible. Abiy, though, pointed the finger at the opposing side in the conflict, the Tigray People its Liberation Front, for creating what he called the <propaganda of exaggeration>.
In April, the United Nations Security Council issued its first joint statement on the crisis, expressing <deep concern> about allegations of human rights violations and sexual violence against women and girls. And last week the US government – a key Ethiopian ally – announced sanctions and visa restrictions on government officials and members of security forces over the atrocities.>
In this episode of The Stream, we ask how can the wave of horrific sexual violence be stopped and what accountability for these crimes should look like.

In this episode of The Stream, we are joined by:
Meaza Gidey,
https://twitter.com/meazaG_

Activist and International Relations Researcher

Seenaa Jimjimo
https://twitter.com/SeenaaJimjimo

Executive Director, Oromo Legacy Leadership & Advocacy Association

Madiha Raza
https://twitter.com/madz_raza?lang=en

Senior Global Communications, International Rescue Committee>

Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2021/6/2/how-to-stop-ethiopias-weaponised-sexual-violence

The Guardian
Alexandra Topping
Wed 26 May 2021


<Northern Irish woman told to go to England for abortion gets case heard.
Action is being brought against the Northern Ireland secretary, the Northern Ireland Executive and its health department.
A Northern Irish woman told to travel to England for an abortion during the pandemic lockdown will have her case against the Northern Ireland secretary, the Northern Ireland Executive and its health department heard at Belfast high court on Wednesday.
The woman, whose is bringing the case with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), argues she was put at risk even though abortion should be legally available to women in the country.
The NIHRC launched the landmark legal action against the parties at the start of the year for their failure to commission safe and accessible abortion services, more than a year after abortion was made legal in Northern Ireland.
It accuses the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, of unlawfully denying the rights of women in the country, warning that they continue to be forced to use unregulated services and to travel during the pandemic.
In a statement, the woman at the centre of the case said the service in her trust area was suspended and she could not be referred anywhere else in Northern Ireland. <Travelling to England would have put me at risk at a time when we were being urged not to travel,> she said.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/northern-irish-woman-told-to-go-to-england-for-abortion-gets-case-heard

The Guardian
May 23 2021

<I had to find them. :kidnapped filmmaker Melissa Fung on her mission to find the Boko Haram girls.
After being abducted on assignment in Afghanistan, journalist Mellissa Fung shares an intense bond with the teenage girls who were held captive by Boko Haram.
The journalist and filmmaker Mellissa Fung is showing me her wound – or to be precise, the scar where her wound once was. It is from the struggle with one of the Afghan rebels who, 12 years ago, kidnapped Fung near Kabul and held her in a pit in the ground for a month, a place she refers to simply, and rather chillingly as, <the hole>.
<In combat training they teach you not to fight back, but I played ice hockey as a kid so I couldn’t help it,> Fung says. <The guy had a knife so I learned my lesson.>
I am peering at her collar bone when Fung directs my gaze to a spot on her right shoulder – a white mark about the size and shape of a garden grub.
I nod and a grim silence descends as we both reach for a glass of wine. We are sitting in the kitchen of her flat in Primrose Hill, London, where she has lived for the past five years with her husband, the Canadian TV news correspondent Paul Workman, and their rescue mutt Sammy.
Back in her native Canada, Fung’s kidnapping is a matter of public record. I have met her socially, but I have never been alone with her before and we have never discussed it in depth. I have certainly not seen her scar. By showing it to me she is making a dark joke.
<If you need me to bleed, I’ll bleed,> she says. <But obviously you know all I really want to talk about is the girls.> >
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/23/i-had-to-find-them-kidnapped-filmmaker-on-her-personal-mission-to-find-the-boko-haram-girls

The Guardian
May 21 2021
by Carley Petesch.

<Amid the Covid pandemic, Senegal women find renewed hope in fishing.

More than a thousand women in Bargny, and many more in the other villages dotting Senegal its sandy coast, process fish – performing a crucial role in one of the country its largest exports

Since her birth on Senegal’s coast, the ocean has always given Ndeye Yacine Dieng life. Her grandfather was a fisher, and her grandmother and mother processed fish. Like generations of women, she now helps support her family in the small community of Bargny by drying, smoking, salting and fermenting the catch brought home by male villagers. They were baptised by fish, these women say.
But when the pandemic struck, boats that once took as many as 50 men out to sea carried only a few. Many residents were too terrified to leave their houses, let alone fish, for fear of catching the virus. When the local women did manage to get their hands on fish to process, they lacked the usual buyers, as markets shut down and neighbouring landlocked countries closed their borders. Without savings, many families went from three meals a day to one or two.
Dieng is among more than a thousand women in Bargny, and many more in the other villages dotting Senegal its sandy coast, who process fish – performing a crucial role in one of the country its largest exports.
We speak to all the women of the world to stand up and take their destiny in their hands. Ndeye Yacine Dieng <It was catastrophic – all of our lives changed,> Dieng said. But, she noted, <Our community is a community of solidarity.>
That spirit sounds throughout Senegal with the motto <teranga>, a word in the Wolof language for hospitality, community and solidarity. Across the country, people tell each other: <on est ensemble>, a French phrase meaning <we are in this together>.
Last month the fishing season, the first since the pandemic devastated the industry, kicked off bringing renewed hope to the processors, their families and the village. The brightly painted wooden fishing boats – pirogues – are once again carrying dozens of men to sea, with people swarming the beach to help the fishers carry in their catch when they return.
But the challenges from the coronavirus – and so much more – remain. Rising seas and the climate crisis threaten the livelihoods and homes of those along the coast, and many can not afford to build new homes or move inland. A steel processing plant rising near Bargny’s beach raises fears about pollution and will join a cement factory that is also nearby, though advocates argue they are needed to replace resources depleted by overfishing.
<Since there is Covid, we live in fear,> said Dieng, 64, who has seven adult children. <Most of the people here, and female processors have lived a difficult life … We are exhausted. But now, little by little, it is getting better.>

Dieng and her fellow processors weathered the pandemic by relying on each other. They are accustomed to being breadwinners – one expert estimated that each working woman in Senegal feeds seven or eight family members. Before the pandemic, a good season could bring Dieng 500,000 CFA ($930). Last year, she said, she made little to nothing.

Siny Gueye, center left, is joined by other women fish processors to sing a blessing and thankful song at Bargny beach, 22 miles east of Dakar, Senegal.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/may/21/amid-the-covid-pandemic-senegal-women-find-renewed-hope-in-fishing

Al Jazeera
By Simeon Tegel
19 May 2021

<Peru forced sterilisations case: ‘They could get away with it. Victims of mass forced sterilisations in the 1990s fear upcoming Peru presidential runoff results could close door to justice.
Now a quarter of a century later, she is one of thousands of Peruvian women hoping to finally receive justice for one of the most notorious cases of mass forced sterilisations in history.
The tubal ligations, irreversible surgeries that prevent women from having children, occurred under the guise of a family planning and population control programme during the 1990-2000 government of Peru’s then-strongman President Alberto Fujimori, who is now serving a 25-year jail sentence for ordering two massacres of suspected subversives.
fAter decades of legal roadblocks, a judge finally heard details of the case against Fujimori and three of his former health ministers earlier this year. The judge is due to decide soon whether the case can finally go to trial.
If Fujimori is eventually found guilty, the sterilisations would constitute a crime against humanity as defined by the International Criminal Court. Yet the case is at serious risk of collapsing before it even begins.
Fujimori his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, 45, is running for president and has promised to pardon her father if elected. It is widely assumed in Peru that she would also seek to shut down new prosecutions of her father, including for the sterilisations case.

Alberto Fujimori remains revered by some Peruvians for ending a hyperinflation crisis and presiding over the crushing of the Shining Path, a group that Peru had declared a <terrorist organisation>. But Transparency International accused Fujimori of stealing $600m from public coffers. He has consistently denied the allegation and the many others made against him by prosecutors and human rights groups.

His daughter has acknowledged the former president made <errors> but has insisted that corruption <attacked> his presidency. During the weekend, Keiko Fujimori also dismissed the <so-called forced sterilisations>, saying, <That was a family-planning plan. These are investigations that have been going on for 20 years and which have been shelved on four occasions.<>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/peru-forced-sterilisations-case-fears-they-could-get-away-with

The Guardian
May 19 2021
MaryTuma in Austin

<The Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott has signed into law one of the most extreme six-week abortion bans in the US, despite strong opposition from the medical and legal communities, who warn the legislation could topple the states court system and already fragile reproductive healthcare network.
<This bill ensures that every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion,> said Abbott, flanked by several members of the Texas legislature this morning.

Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), passed by both chambers of the Republican-dominated Texas legislature, bars abortion at six weeks of pregnancy with no exception for rape or incest, amounting to a near-total ban as most women are not aware they are pregnant at this stage. While a dozen states have passed similar so-called <heartbeat> bills – bans on abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected – none have yet been enforced due to court challenges.
 Unlike those measures, the Texas version absolves the state from enforcing the law. Instead it allows any private citizen the extraordinary authority to sue an abortion provider – they do not need to be connected to the patient or even reside in the same state, opening up the floodgates to harassing and frivolous civil lawsuits that could shut down clinics statewide.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/19/texas-abortion-ban-law-greg-abbott

Al Jazeera
May 19 2021
By Al Jazeera staff

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – <When a 17-year-old Malaysian student went on TikTok to call out her physical education teacher for a <rape joke> he shared in front of the class in late April, it triggered a firestorm of debate but also a backlash against the teen in the Muslim-majority country.

In her video, Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam, a student at a state secondary school in Puncak Alam near Kuala Lumpur, said the male teacher had made the comment as the topic of sexual harassment was being discussed.
The class had been talking about laws that protect minors from sexual abuse and harassment when the teacher suddenly interjected: <If you want to rape someone, make sure they are above 18.>

Ain was disgusted.

<He really said that, and the girls were quiet but the boys were laughing like it was so funny to joke about raping someone,> she said.The video has been viewed more than 1.8 million times since it was posted and Ain its social media post has reignited debate over sexual harassment, misogyny and violence against women and girls in the Southeast Asian nation, which is home to the majority ethnic Malays who are Muslim, and sizeable ethnic Chinese and Indian communities as well as various Indigenous groups.

#MakeSchoolASaferPlace

Ain its video came soon after another case that highlighted the victimisation and abuse of girls in schools. A human rights activist with the Twitter handle @TerryDieHeiden brought up the issue of female students being subject to <period spot checks> – a practice where teachers conduct physical examinations of their pupils including touching the girls its groins to see if they are wearing sanitary napkins or asking for evidence of their menstrual blood. The abusive practice apparently evolved from teachers checking to see if their female students were really menstruating at that time as Muslim women are exempt from prayers and fasting during their periods. The tweet – posted during the fasting month of Ramadan – was widely shared and several people on social media confirmed that the practice remained commonplace in schools.
Then several women spoke up, disclosing personal episodes of sexual harassment and trauma they had experienced throughout their formative years.

<By hardening students and children to invasive procedures such as period spot checks, and normalising it, kids grow up not questioning authority figures when they invade or dictate their personal life; from who they love, what they believe, how they think, and so forth,> TerryDieHeiden, who prefers to be known only by their Twitter handle, told Al Jazeera. After Ain created the #MakeSchoolASaferPlace Twitter hashtag to highlight the hostile response she had received for speaking up, thousands of Malaysians from all walks of life took to social media to show their support for Ain, speaking out against sexual harassment in schools.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/the-17-year-old-exposing-rape-culture-in-malaysian-schools


Al Jazeera
May 18 2021
By Abeer Abu Omar and Filipe Pacheco Bloomberg


<Getting more women on corporate boards in the United Arab Emirates was never going to be easy, and the numbers after a new rule went into effect to boost their presence bears that out.
Since the country announced on March 15 that listed companies should have at least one female board member, only four of the 23 people added to such roles at firms on the UAE’s two major stock exchanges have been women, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That barely moves the needle in a country where about 96% of such positions are held by men.

Giving Teeth

The UAE wants to show it is serious about its new rule. The Securities and Commodities Authority told Bloomberg in a written response to questions that penalties for companies that don’t comply may range from warnings to a fine, or even a referral to public prosecution. Companies will be asked to disclose board representation in annual reports, an SCA spokesperson said.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/18/bbuae-struggles-with-new-rule-to-get-women-on-company-boards

Al Jazeera
May 17 2021

<US Supreme Court will consider rollback of abortion rights

The majority conservative court will decide whether states can ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to consider a major rollback of abortion rights, saying it will decide whether states can ban abortions before a foetus can survive outside the womb.
The court’s order on Monday sets up a showdown over abortion, probably in the fall (from September), with a more conservative court seemingly ready to dramatically alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights. The court first announced a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v Wade decision and reaffirmed it 19 years later. The abortion-rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America called the court’s decision <a direct challenge to Roe v Wade, opening the door for this majority-conservative, anti-choice (Supreme Court) to overthrow Roe.> The case involves a Mississippi
law that would ban abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. The state its ban had been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with a Supreme Court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the foetus can survive outside her womb. <(The) law at issue in (the) Mississippi abortion case bars abortion after 15 weeks, except in cases of medical emergency of severe foetal abnormality. Such laws have broad public support in this country and are widespread in Europe,> Ed Whelan, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told the Reuters news agency. The justices had put off action on the case for several months. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an abortion rights proponent, died just before the courties new term began in October. Her replacement, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is the most open opponent of abortion rights to join the court in decades.> >
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/17/us-supreme-court-will-consider-rollback-of-abortion-rights

Al Jazeera
May 15 2021

<Ten bodies found on former El Salvador police officer his property

Seven women and three children found buried on ex-policeman his property after he was arrested for two other murders.
The buried bodies of seven women and three children were discovered on the property of a former police officer in El Salvador.
Hugo Osorio Chavez Osorio, 51, is being investigated on suspicion of sex crimes and 13 murders, the country its attorney general his office said.
He was originally arrested last Saturday for the murder of a woman and her adult daughter, to which he confessed, according to The Associated Press. That arrest came after neighbours in the western city of Chalchuapa called the police and reported hearing a woman crying for help.
Officers found the bodies of a 57-year-old woman and her 26-year-old daughter in the house in a pool of blood with signs of sexual abuse.The investigations led to excavations in various places on the property. Among the bodies found were a 7-year-old girl and two boys aged 2 and 9.
Police did not elaborate why the number of murders being investigated was 13.
Some of the people appeared to have been killed about two years ago, the attorney general his office said on Twitter.
Seven other possible graves on the property are still being investigated. At least 25 people are considered missing in the area.
Chavez Osorio had been fired from his job as a police officer in 2005 for sexually aggressive behaviour and spent five years in prison, investigators said. Based on the information in the case, prosecutors issued arrest warrants for nine other suspects who may have acted as accomplices in 13 killings, including the murders of eight women.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/15/ten-bodies-found-on-former-el-salvador-police-officers-property and 3 more related articles.

The Guardian
May 14 2021
Humanity United and
Tracy McVeigh

<Bodies are being eaten by hyenas; girls of eight raped>: inside the Tigray conflict. A nun working in war-torn Tigray has shared her harrowing testimony of the atrocities taking place.>>

An article one must read :
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/14/bodies-are-being-eaten-by-hyenas-girls-of-eight-raped

Al Jazeera
May 14 2021
By
Maziar Motamedi
<
Tehran, Iran – As Iran its crypto community grows, so does the number of women making their mark on it. Mostly young, self-taught and
multi-disciplined, they are swelling the ranks of active traders looking to shield hard-earned savings against local currency inflation and economic uncertainty.
Some of these women are sharing their insights with aspiring crypto investors and even taking advantage of a self-employed flex schedule to achieve a healthier work-life balance. Like other crypto investors, many of these innovators have been burned by the famously volatile, sometimes shady crypto market. But they are all crushing it in their own way.

Narges Moradabadi

The thrill of the trade

Full-time crypto trader and investment adviser Narges Moradabadi first embarked on her crypto journey in 2018, when she took a job heading the digital marketing department at a Tehran-based, crypto-focused firm.
Then last year, with COVID-19 ravaging Iran its already sanctions-strapped economy, she made the leap to full-time trading; starting small, then scaling up as she taught herself more about a market in which price swings can be so sudden and steep, it birthed the acronym HODL – hold on for dear life.
But for Moradabadi, who studied technology engineering and earned an MBA, the volatility is the best part of it.
<What attracted me the most to trading was how challenging and diverse it is, and how much excitement it brings,> she told Al Jazeera. <You lose track of time at the charts.>
The 34-year-old also likes the flexibility that comes with trading since it allows her to adapt her schedule to spend more time with her four-year-old daughter and her husband.
Moradabadi is also <sharing the wealth> so to speak, publishing her analysis charts on social media where she boasts tens of thousands of followers.>>
Read more here:

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/14/these-iranian-woman-are-crushing-it-in-crypto

Al Jazeera
May 14 2021
By Andalusia K Soloff

Mexico City, Mexico – <In the middle of the global pandemic crisis, Maria Muñoz, a 26 year-old journalist, found herself facing an unwanted pregnancy in Mexico City. Fearful of contracting COVID-19 at a hospital or clinic she decided to abort at home, with assistance coming via the popular messaging service, WhatsApp.
An increasing number of women in Mexico are turning to online support networks who advise them on how to use misoprostol, an over-the-counter ulcer medicine, to abort.
Maria found about this network through a friend, contacted them and was added to a WhatsApp group alongside psychologists, and what they call <abortion accompaniers>. They checked in with her frequently to see how she was feeling, sent her infographics on where to get misoprostol, how to take the pills, what she should eat beforehand and sent her reminders so she would keep to the proper administration schedule.

While Muñoz lives in Mexico City, one of two places in Mexico where abortion is legal until the 12th week of pregnancy, she still opted for the home-online support option. <I decided to do it at home because many times you go to the clinic and there are anti-right groups that attack you,> she told Al Jazeera. COVID-19, economic accessibility and the ability to have her partner by her side also contributed to her decision.
Following her abortion she was added to a WhatsApp group of women across Mexico who had been through the process and wanted to share their experiences. <It really affected me to listen to women who aborted where it was not legal and they had to suffer from double fear – the fear of aborting and also the fear of being incarcerated for abortion when they are in such a vulnerable moment,> added Muñoz. In 30 Mexican states, womens options to abort are very limited. The legal termination of pregnancy is only permitted under certain circumstances including rape or health factors that put the woman her life at risk. Abortion was legalised in Oaxaca in 2019 yet very few clinics provide it as a service, making women’s access there basically non-existent.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/14/women-in-mexico-use-mobile-apps-for-at-home-abortions
and 3 more related articles.

The Guardian
May 14 2021

<A game-changing moment>: <Chile constitution could set new gender equality standard>

<Chileans to elect 155-strong assembly made up of equivalent men and women to set out new framework and enshrine equal rights.
Womens rights activists in Chile say that the country its new constitution will catalyze progress for women in the country – and could set a new global standard for gender equality in politics.

In a two-day vote this weekend, Chileans will elect a 155-strong citizens assembly to write a new constitution for the country – the first anywhere in the world to be written by an equal number of men and women.

<You might die because you desire peace>: Colombians split on protests.

<It is a game-changing moment, like when women won the right to vote,> said Antonia Orellana, 31, who is running as a candidate in the capital, Santiago.

A new constitution for Chile emerged during an anti-government uprising in October 2019, when calls for equality and fair access to health, pensions and education broadened to a demand for an overhaul of the entire political framework.

The current constitution – drawn up in 1980 during the Pinochet dictatorship and chiefly authored by a conservative Catholic lawyer, Jaime Guzmán – prioritizes a market-driven economy but has been broadly criticized for failing to adequately guarantee healthcare, education and pensions.

During the uprising, women were among the most fervent advocates of a constitutional rewrite to enshrine equal rights and greater public participation.

Although Chile its current constitution guarantees equality or non-discrimination based on sex, it does not ensure women its rights to equality in marriage and stipulates the protection of <life to be born> – a clause that has blighted access to legal, safe abortion in the country.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/14/chile-constitution-gender-equality-women

The Guardian
May 13 2021

Sarah Johnson and Ruth Michaelson

<A decade after the launch of the Istanbul convention, the landmark human rights treaty to stop gender-based violence, women are facing a global assault on their rights and safety, according to campaigners.

This week marked 10 years since the first 13 countries signed up to the convention, seen as a turning point in efforts to address violence against women.

Yet despite 46 countries signing the treaty, the world has become gripped by a pandemic of violence against women, exacerbated and exposed by Covid-19, according to a UN envoy.

<The Covid pandemic revealed what was happening before,> said Dubravka Šimonović, UN special rapporteur on violence against women. She said across the world there had been a stark increase in calls to domestic violence helplines, reports of women missing or killed, and a lack of safe places for those fleeing abuse.

<We have a pandemic of violence against women that was not addressed properly in a huge number of states,> she said.

The rise in violence against women and girls has been mirrored by a political backlash against the convention – the first international legally binding framework to prevent domestic violence, protect survivors and promote equality.

In March, to widespread domestic and international condemnation, Turkey, the birthplace of the convention, announced it would be pulling out of the treaty from July.

Turkey its withdrawal from the convention capped years of escalating anti-feminist, anti-women and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric by its politicians, including the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdoğan has publicly and repeatedly stated that he does not believe in equality between men and women and his government has increasingly linked womens safety to remaining at home with their families and having more children.

<We lost a safety net,> said Elif Ege, of the women its refuge organisation Mor Çati in Istanbul. <The Istanbul convention was not implemented properly at all over the years … but it doesn not mean it was completely ineffective; it was a significant tool in the hands of feminist organisations.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/13/violence-against-women-a-pandemic-warns-un-envoy

Al Jazeera
May 13 2021

<Pam Turner: Rally held for US Black woman killed by cop

The family of Turner, a Black woman killed by a Texas police officer, join George Floyd his family lawyer at a rally calling for justice.

Civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump joined the family of Pamela Turner, a Black woman
killed by a Texas police officer in 2019 at a rally on Thursday, calling for justice in her killing on the second anniversary of her death.

Turner, 44, was killed in May 2019 in the parking lot of her apartment complex after a confrontation with Baytown police officer Juan Delacruz, who also lived at the complex. Delacruz shot Turner after the two struggled over his stun gun. Turners family has said she was suffering a mental health crisis at the time of the shooting. Turner was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2005. A bystander captured the confrontation on video. <Today we declare, we will not let them disrespect Pam Turner,> Crump said at the rally, held outside the complex where Turner died.
Delacruz, who faces a charge of aggravated assault by a public servant over Turners death, is still employed by the Baytown Police Department. Dozens of people attended the rally, chanting <Fire Delacruz!> Crump said Delacruz is <still employed by the Baytown Police Department, completely disrespecting Pam Turner>. Delacruz his lawyer Greg Cagle has claimed Delacruz was acting in self-defence and according to his training.
Federal lawsuit

Crump and Turners family announced a federal lawsuit against Delacruz, the city of Baytown and the apartment complex in April. That month, a jury found former Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin guilty of unintentional murder and manslaughter in the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd. Crump represented Floyd his family in a civil suit against the MPD, securing a record $27m settlement. The settlement and guilty verdict have given hope to police reform activists that change is coming.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/13/pam-turner-crump-demands-justice-for-black-woman-killed-by-cop

LIFEGATE
11 May 2021
by
Luigi Mastrodonato

<The state of women’s rights in Turkey is critical, and gender-based violence is increasing. The country’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention will only make matters worse.

If there’s a country that needs the Istanbul Convention more than most, that country is Turkey. After becoming the first country to ratify the document on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence in 2011, the country’s government, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has in recent years set its sights on gender-based issues, curtailing rights and liberties. Today, Turkey is characterised by an alarming state of affairs from this perspective, with femicides and abuses on the rise – a situation further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The government’s decision, last March, to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention risks precipitating an already compromised situation.
Erdogan against women

The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence owes a lot to Istanbul, Turkey its iconic city. It is here that the Council of Europe its Committee of Ministers approved the Convention in2011, and it its also where, one year later, the document was ratified for the first time, by Erdoğan’s government. Entering into force in 2014, this legal instrument commits countries to respond to gender-based violence, introducing a series of new crimes and establishing new forms of protection for victims of abuse and discrimination.>>
Read more here:
https://www.lifegate.com/turkey-istanbul-convention-womens-rights

Al Jazeera
May 11 2021
Leena Ghani, Lala Rukh and Pakistan its #MeToo movement

<One of the leading voices in Pakistan its #MeToo movement discusses the feminist icon who inspired her.
On the day she appeared in court for the first time in her life, Leena Ghani found it difficult not to squirm in front of the judge. She realised within five minutes that the cushioned seat she was on was infested with bedbugs. You could sit right on the edge of your seat and hope to be spared, or, as she shows me on the day I accompany her to Karachi its city court in February, you give it a good thump. That was her second lesson. The first: she was dressed entirely inappropriately at that appearance, in a comfortable
Stranger Things sweatshirt and jeans, her nails painted black. On the day we meet, she wears clothes borrowed from her mother – a white cotton kurta with sleeves long enough to cover the delicate stars inked on her wrist, loose white cotton trousers that almost hide the kite tattooed in flight on one ankle, and a grey scarf to cover her head out of respect for the female judge she will appear before. She finds a way to represent herself though – her white khussas are hand-painted with a map on one shoe and the line <Oh, the places you will go!> on the other.

Over the past year, Ghani, an artist and activist, has come to relish these court dates, but at first, she was intimidated. Now she does not stare at the convicts with chains hanging from their wrists waiting for their turn in the dock, and she walks without pause through a scrum of lawyers gleefully watching a man and woman shout at and abuse each other outside the court room. She cuts an unusual figure. The women we see around us have worried faces, they are here to request a judge grant a divorce, convince their husbands to return their dowries, plead for custody of their children. Unlike them, since 2018, Ghani is both accused and accuser.
On April 19, 2018, the singer and actress Meesha Shafi tweeted a note accusing a fellow singer and actor Ali Zafar of <sexual harassment of a physical nature…> It was the first big allegation of this kind in Pakistan after the #MeToo movement had kicked off the previous year. Both artists are stars in Pakistan, and while Shafi had made her Hollywood debut in Mira Nairs ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ opposite Riz Ahmed, Zafar was forging a career in Bollywood. Shafi and Zafar had been friends and performed together for many years, with Shafi even doing a small cameo in a music video for a song off Zafar’s first album in 2003. <I know I am not alone,> she wrote in her tweet. Zafar responded with a denial and said he would <take this through the courts… to address this professionally and seriously rather than to lodge any allegations here, contesting personal vendettas on social media and in turn disrespecting the (#MeToo) movement…>

A few hours later, there was a second accusation, also from a friend of Zafars. <In the many years I have known Ali, wrote> Leena Ghani on Twitter, he has on several occasions crossed boundaries of what is appropriate behaviour between friends.> She called out <inappropriate contact, groping, sexual comments…> and added, <The memories of the times where Ali thought he could get away by saying vulgar things to me still disgusts me.> Zafar has denied the <false and malicious statements>, and in a note tweeted by his legal team, stated that Ghani’s allegations came <as no surprise> as she had worked with Shafi in the past, and knew one of Shafi her lawyers, Nighat Dad, through her activism. Her allegations were part of a <malicious agenda> to support Shafi and target Zafar, his team implied.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/5/11/leena-ghani-lala-rukh-and-pakistans-metoo-movement

LIFEGATE
10 May 2021
by Valentina Neri, Gurvinder Singh, Mike Mwenda and Lise Josefsen Hermann

<One in three. Violence against women is a global pandemic.

One in three women have suffered physical or sexual violence. With contributions from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, we look at how this shadow pandemic affects every corner of the world.
11th May marks the ten-year anniversary of the signing of the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. The Council of Europe convention is a binding international treaty, and the widest in scope when it comes to combatting this serious human rights violation. We look at different areas of the world to discern just how global the plague of violence against women is, with a focus on Europe, Italy in particular, South Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Violence against women is a global pandemic

One in three women worldwide have been subjected to either physical or sexual violence, according to the World Health Organisation. This trend is thought to have been aggravated by the financial strain and restrictions on movement unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic, the brunt of which have been felt by women the world over. So alarming is the situation that UN Women, which is dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment, launched the Shadow Pandemic campaign stressing the global rise in domestic violence on the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis.>
Read more here:
https://www.lifegate.com/violence-against-women-world

Al Jazeera
May 10 2021

PODCAST THE TAKE

<The mobile apps helping Mexican women seek abortion

Feminist groups and activists in Mexico are helping women perform ‘at-home’ abortions.

Feminist groups and activists in Mexico have taken it upon themselves to help women gain access to abortion, in a country where it is largely illegal. At great risk to their safety, they use social networks to inform women on how to perform <at-home> abortions. They have taken to the streets and to their cellphones to push back against the law, while helping women find the support they seek. The local efforts come as Mexico its Supreme Court prepares to discuss the legal merits of cases surrounding abortion in June.

And about 7 more articles i.e. links to Instagram – Twitter and Facebook>>
Click here to read more:
https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2021/5/10/the-mobile-apps-helping-mexican-women-seek-abortion

The Guardian
May 9 2021
Moira Donegan

<For too many girls, teenage years are a time of unwanted attention from older men


A viral TikTok video captured an everyday reality reflected in the allegations against Matt Gaetz and Blake Bailey.
A
t first the girl is animated and fast-talking, gesturing with her hands as she speaks to the camera. She is wearing a tie-dye shirt that hangs cavernously around her thin frame; her long blond hair is stick straight. She speaks with the unrestrained enthusiasm of a kid. Later, I learn that she is 18. When the man approaches her, just out of frame, at first she thinks he just wants to take one of the empty chairs that is at her table and drag it away somewhere else; she is in the courtyard of the motel where she is staying with her mom, and she is sitting at one of the outdoor tables alone. But he does not want to take the chair, he wants to sit down in it. The man never enters the frame, but we can tell he is older, and he must be much bigger than she is: the girl, still seated, cranes her face to look up at him. The calm confidence behind her large glasses snuffs out; her shoulders tense up, rising toward her ears. He is trying to sleep with her. Off camera, the man can be heard commenting on the girl its visible discomfort. <I see your hesitancy,> he says. On the screen, the caption the girl eventually added to the video reveals that she has given him a fake name. Eventually, she reveals to him that she is taping. “I’m just doing a live and talking to some people,> she says, and glances towards her phone. That is when he finally leaves her alone: not when he notices that she is uncomfortable, but when he realizes that he is being watched.


The video (in two parts), posted to TikTok by the teenage user @maassassin_, immediately goes viral. Women, young and old, saw in the exchange a microcosm of their own experiences of being young girls, and of being approached, harassed, groomed or merely leered at by older men in ways that scared them at the time, and which they only later learned to put into context. The video blasted into the public consciousness on the heels of two high-profile cases of sexual misconduct by adult men towards teenage girls: first that of the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who allegedly paid a 17-year-old for sex, and second that of Blake Bailey, the Philip Roth biographer who is accused of paying untoward attention towards his middle school students, and of sexually assaulting some of those students, as well as another woman, after they became adults. Gaetz and Bailey both deny wrongdoing.

The incidents have prompted a miniature reckoning, with women reflecting on how much of their teenage years were spent navigating the sexual attentions of men many years their senior – and what it means when teenage girl her experiences of male mentorship, early romance, and their own emerging adulthood is filtered so heavily through the lens of male desire and power imbalance.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/teenage-girls-unwanted-adult-male-attention

The Guardian
May 9 2021
Simon Tisdall

<Cries of the victims of mass rape go unheard in Ethiopia its mountain war
<Prime minister Abiy Ahmed opened the way for victimisation of women with disastrous decision to attack Tigray.

The use of rape as a weapon of war is as old as warfare itself. In Bosnia in the 1990's, thousands of Muslim women were brutalised by Bosnian Serb forces, who set up <rape camps> as part of a policy of <ethnic cleansing>. In 2001, the UN its Yugoslav war crimes tribunal redefined mass rape
as a crime against humanity. Yet there have been many similar atrocities since then, including in South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Myanmar.
Now the world looks on – or rather, looks away – as it happens again. Today, in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, large numbers of women and girls are again being subjected to <unimaginable> terror and suffering as a result of persuasive sexual violence. The word <unimaginable> is taken from a disturbing new report on Tigray by Parliament its international development committee – a report largely ignored by the British government and media.

Reporting from Tigray last week, where fighting erupted in November after government-led forces invaded to topple the region its breakaway leadership, the International Rescue Committee charity the crisis was especially affecting women. <Women are having to engage in sexually exploitative relationships, receiving small amounts of money, food and/or shelter to survive and feed their children,> an IRC spokesman said.
<Rape is being used as a weapon of war across the conflict. Multiple displaced people have given eyewitness accounts of mass rape. Women who are assaulted are in need of multiple levels of care, including emergency contraceptives, and drugs to prevent HIV in addition to psychological support. With 71% of hospital and medical facilities damaged and many looted, medical supplies are scarce,> the IRC said.
Ethiopia its prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, opened the way for this mass victimisation of women with his disastrous decision to attack. Once feted as a peacemaker, he will be remembered as the man who chose brute force to settle a political argument, in one of the world its most fragile states, in the middle of a global pandemic.
After failing to secure the quick victory he predicted, Abiy has minimised the scale of the emergency. The latest UN assessment tells a different story: 4.5 million people in need of food and assistance, hundreds of thousands displaced,
67,000 refugees sheltering in Sudan, and humanitarian convoys blocked. Opposition parties say more than 50,000 people have died. Amnesty International last week decried a <ferocious tide> of rights violations including <numerous credible reports of women and girls being subjected to sexual violence, including gang rape, by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/cries-of-the-victims-of-mass-go-unheard-in-ethiopias-mountain-war


Note from the cryfreedom editor: The Guardian was so kind to tell me that I have read 110 articles that relates to the
www.cryfreedom.net feminists topics.

Al Jazeera
May 8 2021
By Mersiha Gadzo

<Muslim women are reviving forgotten tradition of Quran recitation

#FemaleReciters movement aims to revive the sacred practice of female public Quran recitation, forgotten in the West.
Learning to become a qari (or qari’ah for females), a skilled reciter of the Quran, the holy book for Muslims, is not easy. It takes years or even decades of practice and discipline to master proper recitation and pronunciation known as tajweed. For Madinah Javed, 25, a law graduate and activist from Glasgow, Scotland, her journey to become a qari’ah began from a young age when her mother would attend tajweed classes while they were living in Qatar. As a toddler, she would sit in her classes and inadvertently absorb what she was hearing. Some two decades of training later, the St Mary its Cathedral in Glasgow invited Javed in 2017 to recite a part of the Quran and share the story of Mary and Jesus as a guest for their Christian service. The audience was touched by her melodic recitation, and it was a proud moment for Javed. But when she posted the video of her recitation online, she did not expect to be met with a huge backlash from the far-right worldwide.

For months she was the target of hate messages and threats, so much so that she wanted to disappear and change her name. The police had her phone number registered, so that if she called they would arrive immediately. Through the entire ordeal, the Muslim community remained silent, as women are usually shunned in many communities in the United Kingdom when they recite the Quran publicly. It was something that never made sense to Javed as she believed the focus should be on the meaning of the recitation, instead of the reciter its gender, colour or dress. But later, Javed realised there was a silver lining after all. After viewing her recitation online, many Muslim women wrote to Javed, saying they were inspired as it was the first time in their lives they heard a woman recite the Quran in public.

#FemaleReciters

In many Muslim-majority countries such as Algeria, Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, it is common for women to recite the Quran in public spaces for both men and women to hear. But in some Muslim communities in the West, some hold the opinion that women cannot recite for audiences that include men, as they see the woman’s voice as <awrah>, as part of that which should be covered. Noticing it was mostly men posting their recitations online on this side of the world, Javed launched her #FemaleReciters campaign that year, aiming to encourage Muslim girls and women to share their recitations online, to raise awareness and help revive the sacred tradition of Quran recitation.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/5/8/muslim-women-are-reviving-forgotten-tradition-of-quran-recitation

Al Jazeera
May 7 2021

<Here is how women are changing the way economies are run

Being open to new solutions, empathising, speaking up for the vulnerable are proving key to solving emerging challenges. Women now hold many of the jobs controlling the world its largest economy – and they are trying to fix it. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and trade tsar Katherine Tai hold top jobs in United States President Joe Biden’s administration and many of his economic advisers also are women, as are nearly 48 percent of his confirmed cabinet-level officials. This sea change may already be affecting economic policy – a new $2.3 trillion spending plan introduced by Biden last week includes $400bn to fund the <care economy,> supporting home- and community-based jobs taking care of kids and seniors, work normally done by women that has mostly gone unacknowledged in years past. The plan also has hundreds of billions of dollars more to fix racial and rural-urban inequalities that were created in part by past economic, trade and labour policies. Yellen says the focus on <human infrastructure,> and the earlier $1.9 trillion rescue bill should result in significant improvements for women, whose share of the workforce had hit 40-year lows even before the crisis and for everyone else as well.

<In the end, it might be that this bill makes 80 years of history: it begins to fix the structural problems that have plagued our economy for the past four decades,> she wrote on Twitter, adding, <This is just the start for us.> Women leaders can bring a fresh perspective to economic policy, experts say. <When you are different from the rest of the group, you often see things differently,> said Rebecca Henderson, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. <You tend to be more open to different solutions,> she said and that is what the situation demands. <We are in a moment of enormous crisis. We need new ways of thinking.>
Empathy, stability
Over the past half-century, 57 women have been president or prime minister of their countries but institutions that make economic decisions have largely been controlled by men until recently.> >
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/4/7/heres-how-women-are-changing-the-way-economies-are-run

The Guardian
May 7 2021

<The Guardian has published more than 5m pieces of journalism since 1821. With the help of staff, readers, supporters and alumni we pick 200 of the most powerful, and ask Guardian staff past and present to reflect on their enduring appeal. Day three: women, from suffragists to sexploitation.>>
Click here to read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-interactive/2021/may/07/we-were-there-the-guardians-most-memorable-journalism-over-200-years

Al Jazeera
By
Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne
May 7 2021

<Noel Clarke accused of sexual harassment on Doctor Who set

Exclusive: BBC faces questions as further allegations made about Clarke – and co-star John Barrowman is accused of exposing himself

Noel Clarke accused of sexual harassment on Doctor Who set

The Noel Clarke sexual harassment controversy threatens to embroil the BBC after several sources came forward to allege they were sexually harassed or inappropriately touched by the actor on a flagship show, Doctor Who.

Another Doctor Who actor, John Barrowman, has also been accused of repeatedly exposing himself to co-workers on two BBC productions, prompting questions about whether the corporation allowed a lax culture on its sets during the mid-2000s.

The developments come a week after ITV, Sky and the BBC announced that they had cut ties with Clarke after the Guardian published testimony from 20 women who variously accused him of groping, sexual harassment and bullying.

Clarke, who vehemently denies any allegations of sexual misconduct, criminal wrongdoing or sexually inappropriate behaviour, including the latest accuations, was also stripped of a Bafta award he was given earlier this month.

Clarke his new accusers allege sexual harassment on the set of Doctor Who or at a promotional event for the show. He played the vehicle technician Mickey Smith from 2005 to 2010 in Doctor Who, gaining household fame.>>
Read more here:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/may/07/noel-clarke-accused-of-sexual-harassment-on-doctor-who-set

Al Jazeera
By
Sasha Borissenko
7 May 2021
<Why New Zealand its foreign minister is her own woman.
Nanaia Mahuta, the daughter of Māori royalty who entered Parliament at 26, has been shaped by her Indigenous background.
Wellington, New Zealand – Nanaia Mahuta was only 11 when she first stood up for her political beliefs.
Mahuta was one of 30 Māori and Pacific Island students at an all-girls Anglican school and the South African rugby team was touring New Zealand, dividing the country in the process.
While the schoolgirl had no idea of what was soon to become one of the largest civil disturbances in New Zealand history, she could not stomach the fact her school had offered to host a group of South African students – a decision she felt validated apartheid.
Rather than simply <dealing with it>, she skipped school in protest.
<As a Māori woman there is an embedded sense of social justice, and striving for equality of opportunity and Indigenous advancement,> she told Al Jazeera.. <If you have been brought up in a Māori community you will have experienced some form of mistreatment and at an extreme level – racism.>

The daughter of Sir Robert Te Kotahitanga – the adopted son of Māori King Koroki – Mahuta grew up assisting her father in key treaty negotiations.
She has spent almost half her life in Parliament, having first won a seat at the age of 26.
In 2016, Mahuta became the first woman to display a moko kauae (sacred facial tattoo) in Parliament, and last year chalked up another first – becoming New Zealand its first female foreign minister. The 50-year-old’s appointment was a surprise, according to political commentator Ben Thomas.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/7/holdwhy-new-zealands-foreign-minister-is-her-own-woman


The Guardian
May 7 2021

<Noel Clarke and the allegations that have shaken the film and television industry.
Journalists Lucy Osborne and Sirin Kale discuss the allegations of verbal abuse, bullying and sexual harassment by 20 women against Clarke.

On 10 April 2021, the actor, director and writer Noel Clarke was awarded one of the most prestigious accolades bestowed by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the prize for outstanding British contribution to cinema. But 13 days before presenting Clarke with his award, Bafta was informed about the existence of several allegations of verbal abuse, bullying and sexual harassment against Clarke. Bafta does not dispute it received anonymous emails and reports of allegations via intermediaries, but said it was provided with no evidence that would allow it to investigate.

Journalists Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne tell Rachel Humphreys about their investigation into Clarke. They spoke to 20 women, all of whom knew Clarke in a professional capacity. They variously accuse him of sexual harassment, unwanted touching or groping, sexually inappropriate behaviour and comments on set, professional misconduct, taking and sharing sexually explicit pictures and videos without consent, and bullying between 2004 and 2019.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2021/may/07/noel-clarke-and-the-allegations-that-have-shaken-the-film-and-television-industry-podcast

Read also:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/01/met-police-receive-report-of-sexual-offence-claims-after-allegations-against-noel-clarke

The Guardian
May 6 2021
Lauen Attani

<Two women stabbed in San Francisco amid rise in anti-Asian attacks.
Women, one 63 and the second 84, were waiting for the bus. Suspect arrested and faces two attempted murder charges.

Two women are in hospital after they were stabbed at a bus stop in
San Francisco in the latest attacks against Asian Americans nationwide since the start of the pandemic. The women, one 63 and the second 84, were waiting for the bus on San Francisco its Market Street early Tuesday evening when a man stabbed them each multiple times. A woman working at a flower stall nearby who witnessed the attack told the Associated Press that she saw the man walk away <like nothing happened> after the stabbing.
Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that has been
collecting self-reported incidents of anti-Asian hate and violence, said in a report on Thursday that there were 6,603 incidents of reported anti-Asian between 19 March 2020 and 31 March 2021. Over a third of the incidents were reported in 2021, an uptick in reporting the coalition says is due to increased attention around hate-related incidents.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/06/san-francisco-asian-women-stabbed


The Guardian
May 6 2021
Jason Burke, Africa correspondent, and
Samuel Okiror in Kampala

<The international criminal court has sentenced a former militia leader and child soldier from Uganda to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a landmark judgment.

The presiding judge, Bertram Schmitt, said the panel of judges had considered sentencing Dominic Ongwen to life imprisonment, the court’s harshest punishment, but had sided against it due to the defendant its own personal suffering. Ongwen was convicted in February on charges of murder, rape, sexual slavery, abduction and torture committed as a commander in the Lord his Resistance Army (LRA), a violent cult which waged a bloody campaign in Uganda and neighbouring countries from the mid-1980s until only a few years ago.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/may/06/icc-sentences-ugandan-lords-resistance-army-leader-dominic-ongwen-to-25-years

Aljazeera
May 5 2021
From wittness.

<Becoming Black: A filmmaker her quest for truth about her past

Filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain shares her experience of growing up Black with white parents in East Germany in the 1960s.
 
Born with dark skin to white parents in East Berlin in the 1960s, filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain had a childhood shrouded in secrecy. Ines was told as a child that her skin colour was a coincidence and of no importance. But she discovered later that her biological father was one of the African students invited by the East German government during the Cold War to study at an East German college. To better understand her past, she travels between Togo, Benin and Germany and untangles the astonishing strategies of denial that her parents and those around her came up with.>>
Read and watch more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/witness/2021/5/5/becoming-black-a-filmmakers-quest-for-truth-about-her-past

LIFEGATE
May 4 2021
By Camilla Soldati

<European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reminded us of the gravity of violence against women around the world, and of the Istanbul Convention’s utmost importance.
European Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen, during a plenary session of the European Parliament on 26th April, spoke about the incident that took place during her visit to Turkey alongside European Council President Charles Michel. When the two arrived at a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, von der Leyen was left without a chair. She believes this wasn’t an issue of planning or protocol, but a gender issue. All countries should ratify the Istanbul Convention

Von der Leyen used the incident to bring light to what happens to women all over the world every day: discrimination, violence, and a lack of equal treatment. Unfortunately, however, too many episodes of violence – psychological or physical – are not reported, so nothing is done about them. For this reason, von der Leyen highlighted the importance of the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe treaty to combat and prevent violence against women and domestic violence, which was opened for signature ten years ago, on 11th May 2011.>>
Read more here:
https://www.lifegate.com/ursula-von-der-leyen-women-istanbul-convention

Aljazeera
May 3 2021
Guillerme Canela
Chief of Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists at UNESCO
<UNESCO has just announced the Philippine investigative journalist and media executive, Maria Ressa, as the winner of the Guillermo Cano Prize for Press Freedom, which honours champions of media freedom, particularly those who have faced danger in order to do this. Ressa risks her own personal safety every day, as she pursues the facts and holds the powerful to account. She is often the target of anonymous online attacks – in 2016 she received 90 online hate messages an hour – many of which are rooted in misogyny and racism.
But Maria Ressa is by no means alone. Women everywhere are being attacked online for daring to practice journalism while female. Back in 2014, 23 percent of the women journalists who responded to a UNESCO survey said they had been threatened, intimidated and insulted online in connection with their work. By December 2020, this number had leapt to 73 percent.

Women journalists from more than 120 countries, across all UNESCO regions of the world, have now spoken out in a new study commissioned by
UNESCO and carried out by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), describing how they were attacked online. They work for the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and other national and local media outlets.
The study reveals alarming trends: female journalists are threatened with physical violence, rape, kidnapping, and doxxing – the publication of their addresses on social media. Some are publicly accused of using sex to secure stories. Their inboxes and those of their newsroom colleagues are spammed with lies, disinformation and pornographic images with their faces photoshopped in. In some cases, these women’s partners and children are directly threatened, or sent the photoshopped images. Unsurprisingly, a quarter of women told the researchers they had sought psychological help; some had suffered PTSD. Increasingly, online violence leads to offline abuse, attacks and harassment: some of the women interviewed who were trolled via email or social media, were then also verbally abused, or physically attacked. This was the case for over half of Arab women journalists surveyed. The late Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was initially targeted with online threats that she would be burnt as a witch, before being killed with a car bomb. I cannot emphasise enough that online abuse aimed at shutting down women journalists and deterring them from reporting on controversial stories, works. After being targeted, 30 percent of the women surveyed said they self-censored on social media and 38 percent adopted a lower public profile. Some women switched beats to report on less inflammatory stories, some quit journalism or even emigrated.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/3/online-violence-is-silencing-women-journalists

And also:
Kimberly Halkett (
@KimberlyHalkett) White House correspondent, Al Jazeera English

Ghada Oueiss (@ghadaouiess), Presenter, Al Jazeera Arabic

Julie Posetti (@julieposetti), Global director of research, The International Center for Journalists

Connect with The Take:

Twitter (@AJTheTake), Instagram (@ajthetake) and Facebook (@TheTakePod)
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

The Guardian
May 1 2021
Molly Blackall

<Met police receive report of sexual offence claims after allegations against Noel Clarke
Police said they received report of allegations of sexual offences but did not confirm identity of the person implicated
 The Metropolitan police say they are assessing a <third-party> report relating to claims of sexual offences committed by a male, after allegations were made against the actor Noel Clarke. The Met police did not confirm the identity of the person implicated, but said they had received the third-party report last week.
The Guardian spoke to 20 women who accused Clarke of sexual harassment and bullying, and a further six came forward with allegations of misconduct after publication of the report on Thursday. The Met police said in a statement: <On Wednesday 21 April police received a third-party report relating to allegations of sexual offences committed by a male over a period of time. Officers are currently assessing the info <We would urge anyone who believes they have been subjected to a sexual offence to report this to police so the information can be assessed and investigated accordingly. There are specially trained officers ready to provide advice and support.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/01/met-police-receive-report-of-sexual-offence-claims-after-allegations-against-noel-clarke

The Guardian
April 30 2021
Rafqa Touma

<Rape and sexual assault

Stealthing is rape’: the Australian push to criminalise the removal of a condom during sex without consent.
<ACT Liberal leader Elizabeth Lee is trying to change legislation to explicitly criminalise the act amid a rise in disturbing rethoric.

One in three women and one in five men globally have been the victim of <stealthing>, the non-consensual act of removing a condom during sex, yet the term has only recently entered public awareness – and courtrooms. <Anecdotally, stealthing was something that felt yuck, confusing, violating and wrong,> the Australian Capital Territory its Liberal opposition leader, Elizabeth Lee, says. <But victims of it did not even know it had a name, let alone that it negated their consent.> In 2015, Monica Tan described stealthing in Guardian Australia as <sort-of> rape. Two years later, American civil rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky wrote of <rape-adjacent> condom removal for Columbia its Journal of Gender and Law, enshrining its colloquial name in academia. In the same year, bothvictims and perpetrators shared their <stealthing stories> to Triple J's Hack. The act has now begun being openly portrayed on screen, namely in Michaela Coel’s series I May Destroy You. And cases of stealthing have increasingly entered judicial courts around the globe, with New Zealand its first prosecution against the act last week landing the accused in jail. As a result, stealthing has slowly started entering the realm of discourse around consent. Now, Lee leads the Canberra Liberals its proposal to the ACT legislative assembly, pushing to change ACT consent legislation to explicitly criminalise the act of stealthing.
<Sex without consent is sexual assault. And sexual assault is a crime,> she says. <In essence, stealthing is rape.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/01/stealthing-is-the-australian-push-to-criminalise-the-removal-of-a-condom-during-sex-without-consent

Then read the follow-up by:
Al Jazeera
April 27 2021
By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska and Aigerim Turgunbaeva

<Aizada Kanatbekova her stalker murdered her after she rejected his advances in a case that has prompted calls for reform. Aizada Kanatbekovas cold, lifeless body lay in a red Honda Civic parked in a field about 25 minutes drive from central Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan its capital. Next to her, the corpse of 37-year-old Zamirbek Tenizbayev. On April 7, a witness informed the police about the tragic discovery. The car had been parked there for two days. Traditionally, the Kyrgyz custom of Ala Kachuu – bride kidnapping – gave young people whose parents were against their marriage the chance to tie the knot according to adat – the local law. It allowed young couples who wanted to be together against all odds to elope. But Aizada and Zamirbek were not the Kyrgyz Romeo and Juliet. The custom of Ala Kachuu, which dates back to the 17th century, has often been used as a way to abduct women and force them into marriage against their will. Aizada, 27, worked as a Turkish translator in a textile company.On April 5, her colleagues informed her mother that she had not made it to work.

Her family immediately started their search. They felt that something bad had happened. In the preceding months, Aizada had complained about a stalker. Though they had met on the internet, she was not interested in continuing the acquaintance. But Zamirbek Tenizbayev was not ready to let her go. He found out where she worked and walked home with her several times. When she rejected his advances, threats began. <He told her: ‘There are only women in your family and you will not be able to defend yourself, even if I do something to you.’ Then he started following her and threatening her that he would stab her mother,> Baktygul Shakenova, Aizada her aunt, told Al Jazeera. <This went on for a while. On the advice of her friends, Aizada turned to a lawyer, but he told her there was little they could do.> The day they realised Aizada was missing, her family went to the police station and quickly found out that she had been kidnapped by four men. A CCTV recording soon emerged. According to Aizada her aunt, the police joked that they should soon expect gifts from matchmakers, as required by the Kyrgyz tradition. <One investigator, Ularbek, said that in his youth he also stole a woman and everything worked out between them,> Shakenova said. <I said that Aizada would have called us, to which he replied that they had probably stopped somewhere to eat and drink and that they will call us by the evening.>
Systemic bride kidnapping

The practice of bride kidnapping is prolific in KyrThe United Nations estimated in 2018 that almost 14 percent of all Kyrgyz women under 24 were married through some form of coercion.The same year, Kyrgyz police stated that over a five-year period, they had received 895 reports of abductions with the purpose of marriage. According to rights groups, however, the data does not reflect the true scale of the problem. Even though authorities upped penalties for bride-kidnapping in 2013, making the crime punishable with up to seven years of imprisonment, the situation has remained largely unchanged since.>> Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/27/we-want-justice-family-of-murdered-kyrgyz-woman-demand-change

The Guardian
April 26 2021
Ben Quinn

<British woman to sue UAE royal she accuses of sexual assault for damages. Caitlin McNamara her lawyers say she is taking the step after the CPS refused to prosecute Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan A British woman who accused a senior United Arab Emirates royal of sexually assaulting her has issued a formal claim for damages. Caitlin McNamara is claiming damages for multiple sexual
assaults and false imprisonment she allegedly suffered at the hands of Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan on 14 February 2020 at a private residence in Abu Dhabi. Her lawyers said today that she was compelled to take the step after t
he refusal of the British authorities to prosecute Nahyan, the UAE’s minister for tolerance and coexistence. In effect, the letter gives the sheikh an opportunity to hold his hands up and potentially offer an out-of-court settlement. The likelihood of that remains an open question. Civil proceedings will be brought if necessary in the high court in London, according to the law firm Carter-Ruck, which has been engaged by McNamara. McNamara, who was the curator of the first Hay festival in Abu Dhabi in February 2020, went public with her accusations last year. She alleges that the sheikh attacked her shortly before the festival, which his department had funded.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/26/british-woman-to-sue-uae-royal-sexual-assault-damages-sheikh-nahyan


The Guardian
April 25 2021
Pryja Elan


<Model ‘hands off my hijab’ post sparks protest over France its proposed ban
Rawdah Mohamed, whose Instagram selfie went viral, says she wants to fight ‘deeply rooted stereotypes’

A Somali-Norwegian model whose Instagram post criticising a proposed ban on the hijab in France went viral has said she wants to fight <deeply rooted stereotypes> against Muslim women.
Rawdah Mohamed posted a selfie on Instagram with <hands off my hijab> written on her hand, starting a campaign that has been trending on Twitter,Instagram and TikTok.
#Handsoffmyhijab, along with its counterpart
#PasToucheAMonHijab, has been taken up by the Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad and the US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, as well thousands of women internationally. They have used the hashtag to protest against the French senate its vote to ban anyone under 18 from wearing the garment in public. <I started the hashtag as I felt the need to humanise the movement,> Mohamed told the Guardian. <Ethnic minority women are always spoken for. I wished to take back the control of our narratives and tell our stories.> Mohamed added that the proposed legislation <stems from discrimination and deeply rooted stereotypes against Muslim women.> France was the first country to ban the niqab in public spaces, in April 2011, and French towns have banned the burkini, starting a national conversation around nationalism, identity and feminism.>>
Click here to read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/apr/25/model-rawdah-mohamed-hands-off-my-hijab-protest-france-ban

Read also an interview with Rawdah Mohamed here:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/13/muslim-women-are-always-left-out-qa-with-rawdah-mohamed

and more on the same page different issues concerning this matter.

Note from Gino d'Artali: during editing this page, which took me about 3 weeks. I often listened to Arvo Paert's Symphony No. 3, Symphony of sorrow songs  with a soprano whose singing chills the bones just like the nummerous murders and rapings of women globally.
Listen to it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLXliq-WP0

The Guardian
April 16 2021

<Documentaries to view of...

In the heart of the Village, a loyalist area in Belfast, the Windsor Womens Centre has fought a 30-year battle to keep its doors open. The centre, an oasis for vulnerable women, is deeply rooted in the community. As it faces financial insecurity and navigates the pandemic, will these women make it through their toughest year so far?
Film-maker Kathryn Ferguson talks with us about making the documentary and the relevance it holds in today its context.
Read the interview here:

https://www.theguardian.com/global/ng-interactive/2021/apr/16/space-to-be-documentary

 

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