Black Looks

Something many have suspected has now come to light as the International Community of Women Living with HIV\Aids (ICW) prepares to sue the Namibian government over 15 cases for the forced sterilization of women. Forced sterilizations have also taken place in the DRC, Zambia, South Africa. In South Africa there are cases of HIV positive women being forced into agreeing to sterilization in order to access medical treatment. Overall there is a campaigin amongst certain governments to sterilize HIV positive without their consent in yet another attack against women bodies.

The ICW has documented cases in Namibia where HIV-positive women minutes from giving birth were encouraged to sign consent forms to prevent them from having more children. Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet, its co-ordinator in the country, said: “They were in pain, they were told to sign, they didn’t know what it was. They thought that it was part of their HIV treatment. None of them knew what sterilisation was, including those from urban areas, because it was never explained to them.

“After six weeks they went to the family planning centre for birth control pills and were told that it’s not necessary: they’re sterile. Most of them were very upset. When they went back to the hospital and asked, ‘Why did you do this to us?’ the answer was: ‘You’ve got HIV’.”

Gatsi-Mallet said that some women were now afraid to go to hospital in case they are sterilised, and infertile women were often rejected by their husbands and communities: “In African culture, if you are not able to have children, you are ostracised. It’s worse than having HIV.”

African women aged between 20 and 34 have a higher prevalence of HIV than any other social group; in South Africa one in three is infected.

On average an HIV-positive mother has a one in four risk of transmitting the virus to her child. With the latest antiretroviral drugs, the probability can be cut to less than one in 50. But such medical interventions are underfunded and inaccessible to millions of women across the continent.

The ICW accuses the Namibian government of encouraging state doctors to sterilise HIV-positive women as a means of preventing the spread of the virus. Its request to see the government’s official guidelines has been refused. It hopes to bring 15 or more cases to court later this year.

Further reading on forced sterilisation and medical experimentation on Black women – in the US but no reason to doubt that this cannot or has not taken place in Africa.

Links:
Medical Apartheid : The Dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present.
Mississippi Appendectomy
Forced Sterilisation of Black Women

Via Kameelah Writes

A survey by the South African Medical Research Council found that one in 4 men have raped a woman and half admitted they had attacked more than one woman. Many of the rapists started in their late teens. One in 20 had raped in the past 12 months. A further one in 10 said they had been raped by other men.

Links:
Rape of lesbians in corrective rape
One in Nine Campaign
South African rape survey shock

A great post on Miriam Makeba by The Roots Cause

PRESS STATEMENT – May19, 2009
STOP THE GENOCIDE IN DELTA STATE: THE CRY OF NIGER DELTA WOMEN

We, the women of the Niger Delta have noted with dismay the horrifying act of genocide meted out to innocent indigenes and inhabitants of Gbaramatu kingdom in Delta State by operatives of the Joint Task Force. This is happening despite repeated declaration by the Yar’adua government of its good intentions to address the issues and the neglect of the Niger Delta people. By this action, it has been revealed that the President feigned his sympathy for the Niger Delta problems with his much acclaimed 7-point agenda, the setting up of the Technical Committee on the Niger Delta as well as the establishment of the Ministry for the Niger Delta. But the President and Commander-In-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Umar Musa Yar’dua could not pretend for long too. Perhaps, he could have been labeled a rebel to deviate from the path towed by previous administrations, especially the Obasanjo administration that ordered the razing down of Odi, a Niger Delta community, in 1999.

Thus, the Yar’adua administration has manufactured its own excuse for a greater massacre of Niger Delta women and children under the guise of fishing out militants. Beginning Wednesday, May 13, 2009 the Joint Task Force has been bombing Kurutie, Kokodiagbene, Kunukunuma, Oporoaza and Okerenkoko communities in Gbaramatu kingdom of Delta State, killing innocent persons, majority of them, women and children. Many more persons are rendered homeless; the Punch of Monday, May 18, 2009 reported that about 20,000 people are trapped in these riverine communities because the waterways are blocked by the JTF.
Read more…

This is really cool, cheap and effective –

Mrs. Muyonjo is a housewife in a remote village of Ivukula in Iganga district, Eastern Uganda. She used to ride her bicycle for twenty miles in order to come to the nearest small town with electricity to charge her mobile phone battery. Not any more.

One day, she fell victim to unscrupulous individuals. “I will never give my telephone to the village battery chargers again. I gave them my new phone for charging, and they changed my battery and instead returned to me an old battery whose battery life can only last for one day.” Unable to find the money or time to charge the battery daily, she decided to find an alternative charging solution. “I looked at what was readily available to me and came up with my own charger. I devised this method to enable me charge my battery every day. It works perfectly.”

In 2008, the Zimbabwean government unleashed a wave of politically movitated violence against women. Between May and July some 2000 women were raped by militia, many of these were gang rapes, whilst others have been tortured and imprisoned. To date 500 The violence continues despite the so called “Unity” government and only this week, activists who had been released from prison including Jestina Mukokowere again ordered to return.

In Hear Us! is a truly powerful testimony to the courage and strength of Zimbabwean women.

“They beat me and lifted me up. If I fainted they poured water on me. I fainted three times. They continued beating me. I was crying, ‘Mother, I am dying.’ They said, ‘Does anyone have a knife?’ Someone said, ‘Yes.’ And they said, ‘Bring it here. In the coming elections, you shall not vote; you have already voted.’” – Zimbabwean woman”

Hear Us! is produced by the Research and Advocacy Unit[RAU] and Witness.

Zimbabwean women links:
Women in Zimbabwe – RAU interview
Free Jestina Mukoko
Kubatana Net
WOZA

There are approximately 500,000 Ogoni living in some 200 villages spread across 400 square miles of land just north of the River’s State capital of Port Harcourt. Like other parts of the Delta region, Ogoniland is criss-crossed with hundreds of miles of pipelines carrying crude oil many of which pass close to homes and farmland. Dotted around the network of pipelines are gas flares which have been burning for the past 40 years spouting black dust and fumes day in day out. In addition due to the pipes running along the surface and poor maintenance by the oil companies there are constant spills and leakages most of which have been left to destroy the ecology system. It is this ecological abuse together with the failure of successive Nigerian governments to develop the region and to allocate a fair share of the resources to the people as well as the refusal of multinationals to adequately compensate local people for damage to their land, that forms the backdrop to the continued struggle in the Niger Delta.

As I stated in last week’s post the Ogoni women through the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Associations (FOWA) were crucial both to MOSOP and to Ken Saro-Wiwa’s leadership. When I visited Ogoni women in February 2000, woman after woman repeated the one condition that would enable Shell to return which was the return of Ken Saro-Wiwa. By this they meant as long as they were standing, Shell would never return to Ogoniland. In actively participating in the Ogoni struggle, FOWA are part of a long history of protest by Nigerian women against colonial and neo-colonialist capital dating back to the turn of the century ………

Throughout the twentieth century, Nigerian women have exercised the social power under their control in their own interests, and in the interests of the community [Amadiume 1987, Mba 1982]. The Aba women’s wars of 1928-1929, the Egba women’s movement of the early 1930s to the 1950s, the Ogharefe women’s uprising of 1984, the Ughelli women’s anti-tax protests of 1985-1986, and the Ekpan women’s uprising of 1986 are some examples. [1]

However the emergence of the Ogoni struggle and formation of MOSOP in 1991 brought about a dramatic change in the characteristics of the fight back from the commons. The main factor influencing the changes in the form of resistance was the consolidation of the “corporate military state”, an alliance between the Nigerian Military government and the multinational oil companies such as Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Elf and Agip. Essentially this led to the struggle for self-determination and resource control (See Ogoni Bill of Rights) becoming a “gendered class alliance between previously separately organised groups and in some cases directly opposed ones.

Gendered class alliances were struck in Nigeria’s contemporary cycle of struggle when women organized autonomously against the exploitation of oil corporations and local male dealers. When men broke from the male deal and joined the autonomously-organized women to challenge capital and male dealers, gendered class alliances grew stronger. [2]
Read more…

An investigation exposing an international scheme to bring waste from the West and dump it in Somalia and into the murder of journalist, Ilaria Alpi who along with her camera man, Miran Hrovatin was murdered whilst investigating arms trafficking and the illegal disposal of toxic waste.

Part 1

Part 2