Black Looks

Amnesty International have released a report on the sexual violence being carried out against refugee women in Chad. The violence is taking place in the Eastern region where Chad borders with Sudan. Out of the 250,000 refugees most are women and children who are living in 12 different camps.

The nightmare therefore continues in refugee camps in Chad through the constant threat of
rape (when women forage for firewood to cook their food), chronic hunger, and a lack of essential needs to support their families. Many of the women expressed the feeling that they would be better off anywhere else and even, some said, better off dead. Among 88 women interviewed, PHR researchers documented 32 instances of both confirmed and highly probable cases of rape. Fifteen of those instances occurred in Chad, with one woman assaulted twice. Eleven of these instances were confirmed rapes and four were highly probable. Ten of the eleven confirmed rapes occurred when women left the camps for such activities as searching for firewood. The report highlights that fearfulness and unhappiness have become commonplace among women in Farchana Camp

The sexual violence is taking place inside and outside the camp. Nowhere are women and girls safe in this horror of displacement, poverty and violence and where the perpetrators roam freely as they act with impunity.

And now in Guinea hundreds dead have been shot on the streets, many with multiple bullet wounds and what of the women protesters? They have been stripped naked and sexually assaulted on the streets of Conakry.

Eyewitnesses and medical personnel told Human Rights Watch that many of the bodies of protesters were riddled with bullet holes. Others had stab wounds from knives and bayonets. A number of women taking part in the demonstration were stripped naked and sexually assaulted by security forces, victims and witnesses said…………..A second witness to the violence said:

“I saw the Red Berets [an elite unit within the military] catch some of the women who were trying to flee, rip off their clothes, and stick their hands in their private parts. Others beat the women, including on their genitals. It was pathetic – the women were crying out.”……….Another eyewitness said: “I saw several women stripped and then put inside the military trucks and taken away. I don’t know what happened to them.”

To avoid what Dan Mosenberg calls the “profession of shock and or the endless, and endlessly reiterated, cycle of lamentation” and thereby

argue for the importance of respecting the multiple intersections and convergences, the multiple layerings, that underwrite and comprise any single event of sexual or gender based violence, and that necessarily complicate any discussion of these at a broader level”

Whilst I fully understand what Dan is saying, at this moment I am finding it very hard to find anything in the “multiple layerings” of either of these events – Dafur is less an event than an ongoing nightmare that provides some kind of meaning understanding outside of sheer brutality and terror against women that exists in every country, everywhere.

Gendered intersections – globalisation, militarisation, commerce, poverty all come to mind!

For many of us the hourly news reports showing the horrific slaughter and devastation of the Israeli attack on Gaza is still very much fresh in our minds. Daily coverage on TV, radio and news media with endless analysis, pundits as well as live reports. At some point in the war I remember thinking how fickle is the news media as by the end of the 3rd week, reports had dwindled to a few hours a day, a few articles a day from a height of almost continuous cover in the early days. I began to think about the amount of time devoted to these and other Middle Eastern wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan compared to the coverage of wars in Africa such as the DRC, Somalia and Darfur. I came across a site called “Stealth Conflicts” which is based on the book of the same name by Virgil Hawkins. Stealth conflicts are those conflicts which remain marginal in relation to the overall agenda of the various industrial complexes that constitute global capital – the media, academia, NGOs, policy makers and so on.

Perception defines our reality. Where access to information that may enhance our perception is limited, the reality we see becomes distorted and warped. Our view of the state of armed conflict in the world today is one of the most unfortunate victims of such distortion. In spite of supposedly unprecedented access to information, the information presented to us on conflicts occurring throughout the world is so skewed that the reality is almost unrecognisable..

This is particularly true of the most conflict-torn region of the world – Africa, which has produced more than 90 percent of the conflict-related deaths since the end of the Cold War. Despite the scale of the human suffering, it seems that Western-centric consciousness (and outrage) ends at the Suez Canal.

Read more…

Jacques Depelchin, peace activist and Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity based in the DRC, has written a poem “From Africa to Haiti to Gaza: Fidelity to humanity”. The poem makes the connection between historical and contemporary struggles for liberation and justice from Africa to the Americas, to the Caribbean and to Palestine.

the consequences of
of Relentlessly violating humanity
Now Palestinians, then Africans centuries ago
Today displaced, refugees, best fodder
For humanitarian missions
The modernized version of abolitionists
On a mission which has not changed:
Violate humanity,
Eradicate it if too vocal
But Sabra, Shatila can still be heard

He concludes with a challenge to give name to the truth of what has and what is now taking place.

Palestinians, Africans, in the same boat
When the unending story of negating humanity started
Like Africans they are being processed and branded
Fit to be fodder for humanitarian crisis because what is being done
Must not be called
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

No one dares to call the slaughter of civilians
In Gaza by its proper name
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

From the times of the Arawaks
Violating, torturing, liquidating
Humanity with impunity
Has led to greater and greater
Crimes against humanity
Franchised differently
Preparing the biggest holocaust
Humanity has ever known and,
When that unfolds, as before,
We shall hear the usual
Shameful lame lie
‘We did not know’.

Read this exceptional poem in full here.

Google Earth and the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) have added a new layer of refugee camps around the world – Chad, Darfur, Palestine, Western Sahara to name a few.

Google Earth’s new mapping programme takes you on a virtual reality tour with the UN refugee agency of some of the world’s major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims.

The first use of this geospatial tool focuses on refugees and displaced people located in remote areas of Chad, Iraq, Colombia and Sudan’s volatile Darfur region. Sit in front of your computer and, with a few clicks, see, hear and develop an emotional understanding of what it is like to be a refugee.

Highlighted are not only the physical area of the camp and surrounding country, but key parts of daily life such as education and health in photo, text and video format. Within seconds, Google Earth brings the daily life of a refugee camp into your home thousands of kilometres away. To start your journey, click here.

Haitham of Sabbah’s blog was initially very excited over the project until he realised that “NONE of the Palestinian refugee camps within the Occupied Palestinian Territories are published there”

Haitham suggests two possibilities for ignoring the Palestinian camps: there has been an end to Israeli occupation of Palestine and they forgot to tell the world; or possibly the UNHCR doesn’t recognise the Palestinian refugee camps. I wonder if there is something bordering on a conspiracy of silence going on here between Google and the UNHCR. We all know how strong the Israeli lobby is in the US so I don’t think it is beyond belief.

It is disturbing to see such a horrible mistake (intentional or unintentional, we need to know) spread by a UN agency which claims to be taking care of refugees all around the world. The UNRWA lists the name of all the refugees camps in West Bank (19 camp) and Gaza (8 camps) and their population (West Bank 486,479, Gaza 478,272, total 964,751). Not only that, but they also have location maps for these refugees camps on their website:

A petition has been created to ask Google Earth and UNHCR to correct the mistake and to include the Palestinian camps on the map. You can sign the petition here.

Links:
Google Earth map of Darfur atrocities
Silobreaker – Google maps various

Tags:

Google Earth
Refugee Camps

The NYT publishes a story that highlights the low status of Black people in the Middle East and one of the least discussed histories of Africa and the Arab speaking world, Arab-led slavery. This particularly report is about the Black Yemenis locally referred to as “Al Akhdam” [the root khadama to serve] a derogatory name which means servant. Black Yemenis are thought to have been soldiers originally from modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea during 600AD and settled after a failed invasion and have been slaves and servants ever since.

Set apart by their African features, they form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of Yemen’s social ladder.

Degrading myths pursue them: they eat their own dead, and their women are all prostitutes. Worst of all, they are reviled as outsiders in their own country, descendants of an Ethiopian army that is said to have crossed the Red Sea to oppress Yemen before the arrival of Islam.

The Black Yemenis face discrimination on the basis of their African descent and are subject to massive human rights abuses, forced to live in segregated areas and only able to work in certain jobs.

I intend to return to the subject of Arab-led slavery particularly as it still exists today in Mauritania and the Sudan. Secondly Arab-led slavery and it’s present day legacy, is one of those discussions which is uncomfortable for some Africans and Arabs and one that has largely resulted in an unwritten conspiracy of silence. The discussion in Africa on whether to name the violence in Darfur as genocide has to some extent it’s origins in the historical relations between Arabs and Africans and how these are viewed by each group. A number of articles in Pambazuka News last year exemplified these relations – Professor Mahood Mamdani’s “The politics of naming: genocide, civil war, insurgency”, the response by Professor Kwesi Prah “The politics of apologetics: genocide denial, Darfur version” and “Dafur again“….. by Eva Dadrian and also on Black Looks, Andile Mngxitama’s article (also in response to Mamdani) “There is no genocide in Darfur“. One comment accused Mamdani and the responses to his piece as a “distraction from the real issue” as if African and Arab relations and the naming of the violence are not part of the “real issue” in Darfur and Sudan.

Links:
Yemen Observer

Tags:
Slavery
Yemen
Darfur
Genocid

Many acts of Gender Based Violence which could lead to contracting HIV/AIDS, are part of the daily experience for women in Darfur. As part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women, a short play on HIV/AIDs was performed in Abu Shouk refugee camp in North Darfur.

A short skit on HIV grips the attention of the audience; the HI virus, dressed in bright red and wearing what is intended to be a horrifying mask, warns of the doom that is sure to follow anyone who dares to take sexual risks.

The skit’s protagonist contracted HIV from a scheming ‘town’ girl, who, having discovered her own status, sets out to infect 150 men with HIV.

The message might be skewed, painting AIDS as a virtual death sentence and people living with the virus as malicious individuals intent on passing it on, but the performance also clearly demonstrates the key messages about HIV prevention and treatment…….

“Domestic violence, rape, sexual exploitation of children, forced marriage – they all have consequences, including death and HIV/AIDS,”

As the report points out, a play promoting awareness around HIV/AIDS would not have been possible in Darfur a few years ago and is certainly a positive move. However there are other aspects of the play that have a “skewed message”. It is a woman ” a scheming town girl” that is responsible for not only passing on the virus to the protagonist but who then chooses to “infect” 150 other men with HIV. In this way the play actually contradicts the reality of how HIV/AIDS is spread by putting the blame of transmission solely onto women.

Tags:

Gender Violence
HIV/AIDS
Darfur

The Sudanese government are holding 27 men believed to be “prisoners of conscience”. Amnesty International believe the men have been tortured and may be sentenced to death. The men are:

* Abdel Jalil al-Basha (m), Umma Reform and Renewal Party General Secretary
* Yaqoub Yahya (m), former army officer
* Kabbashi Khater Mohammed Ahmad (m), trader
* Tawer Osman Tawer (m), aged 58, former army officer
* Ahmad Salman (m), aged 35, secretary to Abdel Jalil al-Basha
* and 22 others held in Kober prison, Khartoum North, Sudan

The five men named above and 22 others are being held in the main section of Kober Prison in the capital, Khartoum. They were arrested on or soon after 14 July 2007 and have been tortured or ill-treated during prolonged incommunicado detention. A number of them have also been denied access to medical treatment.

All 27 defendants have been charged with a number of offences against the State including charges under Article 50 (Undermining the Constitutional System) and Article 51 (Waging War against the State) of the 1991 Penal Code. Both charges carry the possibility of the death penalty.

The so-called leader of the group, Mubarak al-Fadel al-Mahdi, President of the opposition Umma Reform and Renewal Party was released from prison on 1 December after charges against him were dropped. The General Secretary of the Party Abdel Jalil al-Basha remains in detention……….Continue

The men are all Sudanese and they are all Muslims. Who will come to their rescue? Will Muslim leaders from Britain’s Muslim community come to save them? Will Muslims stand outside the Sudanese embassy and carry placards saying “NOT IN OUR NAME”? Will the BBC, The Guardian and the The Sun print daily stories about what is happening to these men? Will thousands of British people march through the streets of London asking for their release? Will Friday prayers in Khartoum be followed by hundreds shouting for the release of the innocent? Will CNN make false reports about the numbers of people on the march eg hundreds instead of thousands or if it suits them, thousands instead of hundreds? – it doesn’t matter as long as the report serves the interest of the masters.

Who will save these men? Who will end death in Darfur?

Tags:
Darfur
Sudan
Prisoners of Conscience

I live in Europe where i can get free health care. But how do you feel safe when 2 more boys are killed by a police in Paris and within hours they are forgotten as the media and people start to talk of riots and burning car and the “the problem with these immigrants”.

Meanwhile the mainstream media and the public have for years ignored the Sudanese government and their responsibility for the atrocities and nightmares in Darfur, but all of a sudden because a British schoolteacher is jailed for 15 days everyone is up in arms with Brits flying over to Khartoum by the plane full.

But I dont think its safe to be in Europe any more but then its not safe anywhere if you are different unless you hide the truth and conform.

Tags:
Paris Riots
Sudan + School Teacher

Protecting Black Women From Rape has been organised by Afrosphere to publicise two horrendous cases of rape against Black women in the United States.

Ms. Megan Williams

Megan Williams thought she was going to a party. For more than a week, authorities say, the 20-year-old black woman was kept captive in a shed, tortured, beaten, forced to eat rat, dog and human feces, and raped by six white men and women who taunted her with racial slurs. “They just kept saying ‘This is what we do to niggers down here,’” Williams told The Associated Press in one of her most extensive interviews since the shocking case made national headlines last month.

In Dunbar Village Case

4 males aged between 14 and 18 have been charged as adults on a 14 count indictment

Hoping to steal money and jewelry, Avion Lawson, 14, said he and someone else wore masks when they entered the 35-year-old woman’s apartment that night, according to the documents. Once inside, Lawson said, he and his accomplice, whose name is blacked out on the report, encountered the woman in bed with three other masked males around her. Lawson told police he sexually assaulted her and stole two video games and a truck.

The victim returned home from her job delivering phone books about 9 p.m. the night of the attack, according to her statement to police. While fixing her son something to eat, a young male with braids knocked on her door to tell her the tires on her truck were flat. Once outside, she said, she saw a male with a large gun and two others armed with guns. They wore black clothing over their faces, she said, and ordered her back into the apartment, where they demanded money.

After being told there was no money, the attackers tore off the woman’s clothes and raped her until five others arrived, according to the documents. The new arrivals took turns having sex with her and then sodomized her. The mother was then ordered into a tub filled with vinegar and water where they used hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, nail polish remover and ammonia on her. At gunpoint, the assailants forced the mother and son to have sex.

Throughout the attack, the victims suffered beatings, including having a bowl and light bulbs smashed over their heads. The encounter was recorded on a cell phone camera, according to the mother.

Reading about these two horrific acts of violence against women, I am reminded of a piece I wrote after the rape, torture and murder of two South African lesbians this past July, Sigasa and Masooa and the millions of other Black lesbians, bi-sexual and heterosexual women who have been raped over the centuries. Raped by white men, by black men, by gangs, violated in the most horrific ways.

I have been thinking about the rapes and murders. Wondering about the safety of my friends. I do want to know the why and the who of rapes of women. I am sure much has been written on why men rape and who these men are. But I want to think this through for myself. When rape takes place every minute then I have to ask some more questions on why this is happening. People are not sleeping thinking about being raped. Thinking about their mothers, sisters, daughters and friends being raped. Who have been raped. Women are suffering from terrible anxiety thinking about these things. The pain of one rape goes beyond the victim or survivor and spreads to every other woman she knows. The knowledge that you were raped because of your sexuality, when that sexuality is viewed as being unnatural, doubles your anxiety. When everyone around you is continually saying you are sinful or ostracising you because of who you love – it fucks up your head. You are strong but at night you cry. You live in fear because every time you walk out of your house or compound the predator(s) maybe watching and waiting.

We are living in fear, in Darfur, in the DRC, in South Africa, the US, in Haiti, in Britain – everywhere we are living in fear of rape and hate. The hate, the misogyny It comes with attitudes and language as well as physical, emotional and sexual violence. It is not just men who need to take account of their brothers, fathers, sons and male relatives and friends. Often women are themselves complicit in these acts of violence, less often they are participants.

We all have choices every time silence is chosen over speaking one more woman is left unprotected against violence.

Tags:
Black Women
Rape

Our bowls clanking
like frail vessels,
we stand against sun and wind,
and death that loops over
to take our vision,
when all else has deserted us
in the blankness of the hour,
the horizon our last scene,
coming at us
from where no sun
has ever risen.
© Rethabile Masilo

This poem is in memory of Kevin Carter, and that little Sudanese girl in his snap.