This essay by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán makes the link between civil rights and marriage equality with a plea for voters in three US state, California, Florida and Arizonia to vote against amendments which would outlaw same gender marriage. Although directly addressing people in the US, Timoteo Bodhran words speak to those in Africa and elsewhere who continue to deny the existence of same gender loving people and the right to “same gender marriage equality”

We remember that our ancestors, Indigenous, African, and immigrant were enslaved and denied through various laws the right to marry, because we were seen as unhuman, heathens, merely property and labor.

We remember that our ancestors were denied entry into the country and residence in the country as full families due to xenophobic laws that only wanted single workers that would stay temporarily and be worked to death.

We remember that until 1967, in various parts of the U.S. it was illegal for our multiracial ancestors to legally marry, due to anti-miscegenation laws that tried to keep white blood pure, white wealth separate, and to prevent our communities of color from working together, with each other, and with anti-racist whites.

We remember how our traditional honoring of relationships and ways of forming extended, women-led, and same gender families were outlawed, killed, written out of our memories by racist laws.

And we remember the millions of families ripped apart by war, genocide, boarding schools, colonial occupation of our landbase, and enslavement………Continued

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Bigotry disguised as religious truth

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Same Sex Marriage
LGBTI

“The Troy Davis case involves Troy Anthony Davis, an American sports coach, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a Savannah, Georgia police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony.^[1] Seven of nine witnesses later recanted their testimony, but he has been unable to get a new trial. Amnesty International, Pope Benedict XVI and others have appealed against his sentence, contributing twice to the sentence being stayed temporarily. However, in October 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Davis’ last appeal. Davis’ execution date had been set for October 27, 2008, but was stayed on October 24 by a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.^[2]”
[source…]

This is a complicated case because one man has been killed, and another is going to be killed. A family is bereaved and another is going to be bereaved. The logic is all wrong in feeling rage for the loss of a loved one and intending to make someone else feel rage for the loss of their loved one.

I am against killing people for whatever reason. There are a number of things capital punishment does not do, and one of them is bring back the dead person. Another one is satisfy the family of the dead person. Another is curb violent crime. And yet another is be safeguarded against errors liable to execute innocent people.

Troy Davis must be allowed to present his case, especially if there is new evidence. The witnesses who have recanted must be grilled, and those who haven’t recanted must be grilled as well, because a cloud of doubt hangs over whether this man is guilty or not. Is he guilty? I don’t know, and I’m willing to bet very few people know. That’s not enough to kill a man for.

My poem does not attempt to say that Troy is innocent. It tries to say he has not been proven guilty. Too many black people have been killed because someone had to pay, and they were there, black and disposable. That is why Troy must not be killed unless he’s proven guilty. And that is why I have written The Message.

THE MESSAGE
(for Troy Davis)

Over the outer walls
a sun is rising, lighting
the same things suns light
whether or not another war
has been sparked, or
a market dried up to die,
the same sun that sometimes
appears to linger above
land on which his mother
grows beans, collards, in soil
smeared with blood, cleared with toil.
It’ll be so heavy one might
mistake it for a low moon
on white picket fence
at this unusual hour,
the morning of his last day;
but a cock crows to tell the boy,
who has grown into a man,
it’s time to go. Elsewhere
in the country, a post-woman
slides letters into mailboxes
whose arms, too, hang loosely
at the sides. A dog scampers after
her jeep to the end of the street,
slinks back home dragging its tail.
It’s a day nobody is waiting for
nor thinks should shine. A day
Jehovah won’t forget easily.
A last day for a man who was a boy,
and through whose skin, silly
with melanocytes, past whose
layers of vein wall, and into
whose lumen, a needle will
go in and leave its message.
© Rethabile Masilo

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Hundreds of Nigerian prisoners are being held on death row many of whom have been tortured or whose trials were not conducted properly.

“The police are overstretched and under-resourced. Because of this, they rely heavily on confessions to ’solve’ crimes - rather than on expensive investigations,” Ms van Kregten said.

Ledap, the Nigerian legal organisation which co-authored the report, says that under Nigerian law, confessions under torture cannot be used as evidence in court

Judges know that there is widespread torture by the police - and yet they continue to sentence suspects to death based on these confessions, leading to many possibly innocent people being sentenced to death,” Ledap’s national co-ordinator Chino Obiagwu said.

The report ties in with an interview I did last year with Damien Ugwu from the Nigerian Civil Liberties Organisation on torture by police in Nigeria. Damien highlighted the police tendency to target young men, poor people as criminals. The torture statistics are extremely high with 99% of people detained by the police were likely to experience physical or mental torture. Most of the torture is performed by by junior ranking police officers many of whom have not had proper training plus they are under pressure to get results. Although there is no official policy there is a culture of torture with most police stations having a torture chamber and an officer in charge of torture.

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Nigeria
Police Torture
Civil Liberties

The Portuguese-language media is reporting that a rebellion took place last week against a number of diamond mining companies in the Curango municipality in north-east Angola. The rebellion, by mine workers was started after some unlicensed diamond miners were expelled, was brutally repressed by security forces working for the mining multinationals. The police report one person has been killed and over 120 people have been arrested. However human rights defenders are saying that there are at least five deaths and over 400 people have been detained.

One of the companies involved in the brutality is Luminas, which is owned partly by Israeli billionaire and settlement magnate, Lev Leviev. This is not the first time that security forces working for Leviev’s have been involved in violence against mine workers in Angola.

Africa: Leviev’s alliance with Angola’s central government, which won the country’s civil war, led to his gaining primary control of the country’s rough-diamond supply in 2000. A security company contracted by Leviev was accused this year by a local human-rights monitor of participating in practices of “humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual abuse, and, in some cases, assassinations.” Leviev’s formal response to the report did not directly address the abuses but touted his charitable activities in Angola.

In another connected story, members of the French government and businessmen are presently on trial in France for supplying illegal arms to Angola during the country’s civil war which was largely financed by diamonds. The monies involved in the diamond mines controlled by Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, were huge for example in a six year period $3.7billion as were the number of people killed, wounded, raped and displaced - putting an added meaning to Blood Diamonds.

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Blood Diamonds
Angola
Palestine
Leviev

The US Supreme Court has denied Troy Davis a new hearing effectively ending his hope of submitting new evidence in his favour.

“The Supreme Court’s decision is truly shocking, given that significant evidence of Davis’ innocence will never have a chance to be examined,” said Larry Cox, executive director for AIUSA. “Faulty eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, and the hallmark of Davis’ case. This was an opportunity for the Court to clarify the constitutionality of putting the innocent to death – and in Davis’ case, his innocence could only be determined with a new hearing or trial.”

“It is disgraceful that the highest court in the land could sink so low when doubts surrounding Davis’ guilt are so high,” Cox added.

I’m not sure what happens next but a new execution date will be set and possibly his only hope now is clemency from the State of Georgia. You can still do something - see here for more details on what you can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz56WstYusk Troy Davis speaking

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