Mississippi is burning to kill Michelle Byrom

March 25, 2014 by 19 Comments

Central Mississippi Correctional Facility

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in.”

Michelle Byrom may, or may not, be executed this Thursday, in two days. She currently sits on death row in Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, in Pearl, Mississippi. Mississippi has three State prisons. All women `offenders’ end up in CMCF. In 1996, Mississippi hosted 807 women prisoners. By 2001, it boasted 1,445 incarcerated women. Today, according to the State’s March 2014 `fact sheet’, Mississippi’s prisons and jails hold 2,233 women behind bars. 900 women live, and die, in Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.

In 1999, someone killed Edward Byrom, Sr. By all accounts, Byrom Sr. was a vicious, abusive man, who tortured his wife, Michelle, and forced their son, Edward Byrom Jr, known as Junior, to live in the lowest rungs of hell. Physical abuse, mental and emotional torture, and sexual exploitation were the daily, and hourly, fare in the Byrom household.

The State decided that Junior and a friend had been part of a murder-for-hire plot hatched by Michelle Byrom. When Byrom was killed, Michelle Byrom was in the hospital for double pneumonia. Junior has confessed, at least four times, to having actually murdered his father. Something snapped, he picked up a gun and shot him. Michelle Byrom has been diagnosed “with borderline personality disorder, depression, alcoholism and Muenchausen syndrome, a serious mental illness that caused her to ingest rat poison to make herself ill.” And, of course, her counsel, by all accounts, was somewhere between dreadful and criminally negligent.

Observers have waxed literary in describing the case. For example, Warren Yoder, executive director of the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, said, “John Grisham couldn’t write this story … In any reasonable world, this would be a short story by Flannery O’Connor. Instead, it is happening now in our Mississippi.”

Why is Mississippi burning to kill Michelle Byrom. For that, better to turn to Lord of the Flies. Mississippi hasn’t killed a woman in 70 years, and Mississippi can read the writing on the wall. Soon, capital punishment will come to an end, even in Mississippi, a national leader in executions. That recognition feeds the fire. Facts be damned, along with presumption of innocence and shadows of doubt. The beast needs blood.

The details of Michelle Byrom’s life are hard and disturbing, but the substance, and stench, of Mississippi’s burning is far worse. Stop the execution of Michelle Byrom. Stop all the executions.

 

(Trip Burns / Jackson Free Press)

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Women reject foreclosure, austerity, debt

March 24, 2014 by 4 Comments

 

On Friday March 21, Linda Tirelli, an attorney defending homeowners from foreclosure, and Kevin Whelan, of Home Defenders League in Minneapolis, were interviewed on Democracy Now about recent revelations concerning Wells Fargo’s shady dealings in foreclosures.

A recent internal Department of Justice document disclosed that the DOJ deemed mortgage fraud as low and often no priority. Its claims of success were wildly overstated, and its claims of concern were flat out false.

At the same time, a recently revealed Wells Fargo internal document, issued just one week after the allegedly historical national mortgage settlement, shows that Wells Fargo instructed its lawyers to fabricate documents that would lead to homeowners’ foreclosure on homeowners. This program targeted primarily people of color and the most vulnerable.

At one point in the Democracy Now interview, Juan Gonzalez asked Kevin Whelan, “Can you put this in a national context of the mortgage crisis? Here we are now, six years into the home mortgage crisis that crashed the entire economy.”

Lenders’ mortgage fraud did far more than produce a mortgage crisis. By means of a manufactured crisis, the neoliberal approach of crashing economies increased and expanded the financial grip on civil society. Austerity measures led to the foreclosure of entire countries like Greece, and especially the foreclosure of women. Women’s organizations in Europe have demanded to a clear assessment of the impact and logic of austerity measures.

Wells Fargo lawyers fabricated false documents in order to plunge the most vulnerable into dependency and debt.  Entire, vibrant communities were thrust into poverty and desperation. Likewise, austerity measures were fabricated to form false promises to resolve a “crisis” that have hurt women first and foremost and have also moved many into destitution.

Across Europe, women have been marching against the austerity measures and crying loudly that precariousness is not their societal projects.

Since 2012, Femmes d’Europe en route contre la dette et l’austerité  (European Women in route against the debt and austerity) have organized events to denounce the privatization of public services. And they are still demonstrating. Health care, reproductive care and women’s health have been particularly viciously targeted. These various forms of privatizations are being felt heavily by women in Great Britain, Hungary, Greece and elsewhere. Moreover, the failed US model of private health care is being pushed in places where the public system was efficient and better served its purpose.

Women against Austerity have not received the attention that they should for the same reasons the subprime crisis and the criminal manipulations of the financial sectors in the United States have been underplayed. The illegitimacy of the foreclosures and the austerity measures are the expression of the same ascending power of debt: “Debt constitutes the most deterritorialized and the most general power relation through which the neoliberal power bloc institutes its class struggle.” And, I would add, its gender struggle! The struggle continues!

 

(Photo Credit: CADTM)

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In Spain millions march for dignity

March 23, 2014 by 12 Comments

Belèn Calvo

“I came because I have dignity.”

As many as two million demonstrators converged on Madrid this weekend to reject austerity and support individual and collective dignity. For the past month, eight columns have been on the move, and Saturday, they met, as the Marches for Dignity flooded the streets and captured the imagination of the Spanish people.

Marchers and supporters have demanded no more payment of the debt; no more cuts; no more Troika; and bread, work, shelter (and roses) for all. While they have specific policy demands, such as a law establishing a basic income and an end to all evictions, the heart of the mobilization has been to demand an end to State terror and a concerted effort to build dignity. To march, and to work, for dignity is to reject the politics of fear and terror.

The marchers’ manifesto demanded equal rights for women, migrants, people of color, members of LGBTIQ communities, elders, the poor, workers, dissidents, and more. More to the point, they have demanded an end to the assaults and a beginning to real democracy and real dignity.

Women have been prominent across the sectors. Women have led the anti-eviction movement, and they have led and populated all other movements as well, from mining communities to farm communities to urban communities, from factories to schools to clinics. Women like anti-eviction activist Mamen Ruiz argued that women had been pushed to the brink, and beyond, and that now is the time. Women like Virginia, a government employee, marched to protest the astronomically rising tax rates and the new, stringent anti-abortion laws. Women like teacher Belén Calvo came because, in her words, “I have dignity.”

Women marched to secure an end to sexual violence and exploitation. They argued that women had long struggled with and organized to secure the right to live without male violence and the right to family planning. Under the Troika’s constant assault on women, and almost everyone, violence against women has intensified. Violence has intensified against women of color, immigrant and migrant women, women workers, women students, women seeking medical assistance, and the list goes on.

Outside of Spain and the usual suspects, the Western media has barely covered the largest protest in recent Spanish history, except to note that they ended with some clashes between police and a very small number of demonstrators. Whether police or protesters began those clashes remains debatable. What is clear is that the only `news fit to print’ is violence, however incidental.

For the international news media, austerity is the new normal. Meanwhile, anti-austerity resistance is gaining ground in Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal, Spain. Much of the prison resistance organizing in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia is anti-austerity at its core. Much of the protests about public service in South Africa are as much about the State’s austerity development program as the shoddy service. In each instance, women are at the core of organizing. In each instance, women echo Belén Calvo: “I come because I have dignity.”

The message is clear. End the reign of terror and torture that passes for austerity. Remember, we each and all came because we have dignity.

 

(Photo Credit: El Pais / J.J.G.)

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For women farmworkers of Immokalee NOW IS THE TIME!

March 21, 2014 by 20 Comments

In Florida’s tomato fields, and across the United States, women tomato pickers and farmworkers – such as Lupe Gonzalo, Silvia Perez, Nely Rodriguez, and scores of others – are organizing a quiet revolution, by waging a raucous, joyous, ferocious struggle. Welcome to the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida. Welcome to the future.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been organizing, representing, testifying, winning and consolidating farmworkers’ power for twenty-one years. In that time, the organization itself has matured. A key part of its growth has been the formation of the Immokalee Women’s Group and the recognition of women as a central sector in the struggle for farm worker’s rights, dignity, and power.

Recognizing women’s centrality has meant recognizing that the struggle for rights, dignity, and power is a community wide struggle rather than strictly a `shop’ issue. While exorbitantly expensive, predatory housing affects everyone, women carry the greater load of both dealing with rent payment and of maintaining the household. Women attend more to health care, child care and children’s well being, food provision in food deserts amidst the farmlands, and the list goes on. Women keep the daily train of the everyday moving along.

At the same time, women in the fields face their own special circumstances. Rampant, and often illegal, use of pesticides and lack of both information and safeguards imperils women’s health in particular ways. Sexual abuse at work attacks women daily.

The women of Immokalee have declared NOW IS THE TIME! They reject the planned catastrophe of lethal housing, fatal indebtedness, wage slavery, sexual abuse and exploitation. They reject the harvest of shame and the fields of abjection. They organize hope.

On Saturday, March 8, International Women’s Day, the women of Immokalee wrote and delivered a letter to Wendy’s, which has thus far refused to sign the Fair Food agreement, “Hear the voice of the woman, who today dares to defend her dignity in the fields. A new day is coming to Florida’s fields, with the Fair Food Program. It guarantees that the dignity of women is respected. We have to keep fighting, and we have to keep shouting, at Wendy’s and other corporations, that the hour has arrived. NOW IS THE TIME!”

On the following Saturday, Lupe Gonzalo, CIW farmworker and organizer, spoke directly to Publix, which has also not signed the Fair Food agreement; to supporters and to the world: “We want to say to Publix that as women, we will not even consider allowing sexual violence to continue in Florida’s fields or the agricultural industry.  We will not take one step backward.  We will only continue forward.”

We will not take one step backward. Lupe Gonzalo has been recognized as “a powerful voice” for justice. She is. Her power is the power of women, rejecting sexual abuse and all forms of exploitation. Her power is her capacity for affirmation, her ability to reach and teach others around her, and especially women, to affirm themselves, individually and collectively, and to “feel proud to walk, to march, to demand justice, to demand respect for ourselves, for our families, for our children, for future.”

As one CIW woman farm worker noted, two years ago, “Our history is not written in any books. I don’t think there’s enough paper to capture the daily life of a woman in the struggle, fighting to provide for her family. We as women want to move forward, so that tomorrow our children will not have to suffer as they do today.”

The future is now. NOW IS THE TIME!

(Photo Credit: Forest Woodward / Facebook)

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In Cyprus austerity passionately embraces incarceration

March 18, 2014 by 21 Comments

 

Sunday, March 16, marked the first year anniversary of Cyprus’s crash program in austerity. The troika – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – in its infinite wisdom forced Cyprus to welcome a raid on all its bank deposits by means of a tax on all deposits. While that particular, and particularly destructive, policy was rescinded, other measures remain in place. Two weeks ago, Cyprus Parliament approved massive and deep privatization of public services. What does not close is the prison.

Last week, in response to two reports, the European Parliament backed resolutions critical of the Troika’s lack of democratic accountability. For Liem Hoang-Ngoc, co-author of one report, Cyprus is a prime example of the Troika’s anti-democratic practices and mentality: “If there had been open debate at the European Parliament, the Eurogroup would never have suggested that Cyprus tax deposits under 100,000 euros… Macroeconomic goals have not been realized: growth is sluggish and debt has skyrocketed. We underlined the disagreements among the members of the Troika, proving that other politics were possible. The message I wanted passed is that the politics of austerity have failed. Democratic debate must be open in order to make public the existence of alternative politics.”

Throughout the island nation’s year of political uproar and economic collapse, prison, and specifically detention of migrants and asylum seekers, has remained a growth industry.

Cyprus has had a longstanding love affair with putting asylum seekers behind bars. A 2012 report noted, “Every year, hundreds of people who flee to Cyprus to escape persecution, war or simply grinding poverty are put behind bars and detained as if they were criminals, even though they have committed no crime. Most are detained for months, often in poor conditions without access to adequate medical care and usually unable to challenge the lawfulness of their detention due to the paucity of free legal aid. In some cases, the Cypriot authorities refuse to free people even when the Supreme Court has ordered their release.”

The report told the story of N: “N. is an asylum-seeker from Sri Lanka. She is married to another Sri Lankan asylum-seeker who lives in Cyprus and they have submitted a family asylum application. They have an eight-year-old daughter. In September 2011, N. was arrested without documents and detained in Block 9 of Nicosia Central Prison. Her lawyer, [said] that despite his repeated requests, the authorities did not provide him with the deportation and detention order, so in April he challenged the lawfulness of her detention before the Supreme Court…In December 2011, N. was still in detention along with several other women held pending deportation. She tearfully said: `What kind of country separates a mother from her child? Yesterday it was her birthday. My daughter told me, ‘mama I miss you so much’.’ N. was eventually released on 23 April 2012, one day before the scheduled Supreme Court hearing and after seven months in detention.”

That was 2012. A report released today suggests the only change is from `prison’ to `detention centre’: “One woman, Nina (name changed), 28, was separated from her 19 month old son whom she was still breastfeeding and detained in a police station, after she was arrested while trying to apply for permanent residency. She is married to a Romanian citizen and told Amnesty International her immigration status has always been regular and that she did not know the reason for her arrest. Her son was taken away by social services and was only allowed to see her three times a day for 20 minutes at a time for feeding.

A second woman from Sri Lanka, was detained in Menogia detention centre after visiting her husband, also a Romanian citizen, who was being held at a police station. They were accused of having a marriage of convenience despite a DNA test proving that her husband was the father of her child. She was only allowed to see her three year old son twice a week for half an hour each time. Both women have since been released after four days and four weeks in detention, respectively.”

In the past year, there have been repeated hunger strikes both by prisoners inside Menogia and by loved ones and others outside: “It must be a special kind of hell, the bottom beneath the bottom, to escape persecution, war or a natural disaster only to be locked up indefinitely in a place every bit as dehumanizing as a prison. At the Menogia detention center in Cyprus, twenty-five Syrian refugees fasted to try to end their mistreatment, which included the denial of food and medical care.”

From the debtors’ prisons popping up in the United States to the immigration and asylum prisons in Cyprus, austerity passionately embraces incarceration. In a world in which “migrant populations have become increasingly feminized,” another world, without special kinds of hell, must be possible.

 

(Photo Credit: Cyprus Mail)

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The 1001 days and nights of Reeyot Alemu’s imprisonment

March 17, 2014 by 21 Comments

 


“Every new stretch of prison for a group of political prisoners gave birth to a new batch of freedom songs. Jail spells had not broken us; they had helped make us.”
Ruth First: 117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation Under the South African 90-Day Detention Law

Sunday, March 16, marked the 1000th day Reeyot Alemu spent in an Ethiopian prison, the notorious Kaliti Prison, for the crime of writing critical news pieces. Alemu followed a path similar to that of Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Kenya, Paulo Freire in Brazil, Ruth First in South Africa, Angela Davis in the United States, and so many others. That is, she is a teacher who was called upon to write. Nothing heroic. Just write. Write the news. Write the facts. Write the analyses. These acts of writing qualify as terrorism in Ethiopia (as they do in much of a world covered by interlocking Wars on Terror).

In Reeyot Alemu’s case, her terrorism was to focus on poverty, inequality, corruption, and gender inequality, or, more precisely, women’s rights and the oppression of women. For that, she was initially sentenced to fourteen years in prison. The sentenced was then `reduced’ to five years.

In 2012 Alemu won the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award. In May 2013, she won UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2013. Each time, she managed to smuggle out notes that called on journalists to be of courage, to report and write and expose, to “be voices of the voiceless [and] reveal the truth of the oppressed ones.”

Since the UNESCO award, it appears that life has grown even more difficult for Alemu. Her visitors have been restricted. At one point, she was only allowed to see her parents and a priest. Her fiancé and her sister have both been prohibited from seeing her. In September, Reeyot Alemu was on hunger strike. Alemu’s family says she is living with breast cancer, and the prison is refusing her medical treatment. Reports suggest that the State has paired Alemu with a “tormentor”, a prisoner whose job is to make another prisoner’s life a living, and dying, hell. When Alemu is not in the living hell of her cell and cell mate, she’s in the torture hell of solitary confinement.

Some, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, have broadcast Alemu’s case, but in general the media has remained silent. Why? Have the abusive and abysmal conditions of Kaliti Prison become the new normal? Has the abuse of journalists and teachers become beside the point? Is the War on Terror so much a part of the global everyday that the struggle of one woman to address the conditions of women and the corruptions of State become just so much collateral damage?

Some suggest that Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law, passed in 2009, was actually forced upon the nation by the United Nations. While that’s doubtful, it is the case that in passing the law, and entering into the global prison regime, Ethiopia joined the 21st century’s league of nations.

The pedagogy and the literature of the oppressed will emerge from the prisons of the world. One day, Reeyot Alemu will teach us that the voiceless are not voiceless. They are working and giving birth to new batches of freedom songs, and to new practices of justice.

Meanwhile, today, Monday, March 17, 2014, marks day 1001 of Reeyot Alemu’s imprisonment. Tell someone … now.

 

(Image Credit: Global Voices)

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Women need more than a day to become visible and full human beings

March 17, 2014 by 7 Comments

March 8 was International Women’s Day. Two recent events in the United States show that we need more than a day to establish women’s rights.

While bills to ban shackling pregnant women in custody were being discussed in both Maryland and in Massachusetts, a Virginian lawmaker declared, “Once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.” After being roundly criticized, he said that his words were taken out of context and what he really meant was bearer instead of host.

Meanwhile, in Maryland at the hearing of HB 27 Healthy Births for Incarcerated Women Act, lawmakers pondered how to “manage pregnant women” in prison. They focused on security issues for guards and the general public and what possible incidents could occur if pregnant inmate walk without shackles. Responding to a delegate’s question on the history of escape by pregnant inmates, one witness for the Department of Public Safety said, “ We are not aware of any incident like this but we want to make sure.”

As they debated whether the bill was not too lenient on pregnant inmates, a delegate wondered, “How do we go back about writing a bill? Precisely what is the nature of the security issues?” Again the Department reported zero incidents. Throughout the discussions of `safety and security’, the actual facts and realities of being incarcerated while pregnant and possibly being shackled became invisible and the safety of the women was of no concern.

All that changed with the testimony of Delegate Mary Washington, the Bill’s sponsor; Sara Love, Public Policy Director of ACLU Maryland; and Jacquie Robarge, Executive Director of Power Inside, an organization that “serves women impacted by incarceration.”

Jacquie shared a report from inmates who witnessed pregnant women shackled during transport. No officials take notice of the lived situations of incarcerated women. A code of silence permeates prisons and jails, and so the only way to know what is happening comes from other inmates. That is why such a bill is necessary. For lawmakers, however, the main point of contention was to make sure that the “host” could be controlled at any time.

In Virginia, State Senator Steve Martin’s `host’ response to the valentines’ card sent by reproductive rights advocates, via Facebook, reminded women that their reproductive capacity made them less than a full being in a state that claims to protect democratic values. It comes as no surprise that Senator Martin supported both the mandatory ultrasound bill as well as the personhood bill. Fortunately, the `hosts’ organized and defeated both bills.

The Maryland and Virginia examples reveal the position of women in the minds of too many lawmakers today. Women need more than a day to become visible and full human beings.

(Photo Credit: Grassroots Leadership)

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Amira Bouraoui: Barakat! Ça suffit! Enough! ¡Ya basta!

March 7, 2014 by 14 Comments

 

Enough! That’s Amira Bouraoui’s message for Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in office now for 15 years and running for another term. Bouraoui started a new, and yet not so new, movement in Algeria, a movement of  “Algériens indignés”. Indignant Algerians. Algerians who refuse to be counted out or, worse, counted among the dead: “L’Algérien n’est pas mort, il réfléchit et il n’est pas d’accord.” The Algerian is not dead. He thinks about what’s happening, and he does not agree.

Amira Bouraoui is a gynecologist, a mother of two, and an ordinary woman. On February 22, before Bouteflika had formally announced his candidacy, Bouraoui showed up at the gates of her local university, stood there alone with a placard, and said, STOP. She said, Barakat! Ça suffit! It’s enough! Around the world, people heard a woman saying, yet again, “¡Ya basta!”

Within two days, that singular action sparked a movement.

On Thursday, hundreds gathered in a peaceful demonstration and were met with police intimidation and, for some, brutality. Bouraoui was arrested. Of Thursday’s demonstration, Bouraoui said, “We organized this protest not only to say NO! to a fourth term for Bouteflika, which would be a shame for Algeria, but also to promote the struggle to dispel people’s fear of expressing ourselves freely and openly in our own country.”

Around the world, women, individually and singularly and collectively and together, organize to say NO to patriarchy, domination, oppression, violence. Women organize to say YES to expression, sharing, collaboration, real peace, love.

Amira Bouraoui got up one day, kissed her children, and walked out the door. Alone, she carried a sign to the local university, because she thought and thinks students matter and education matters, and she said, NO! Barakat! Enough is enough! Ça suffit! And around the world … the world heard a woman saying, yet again, “¡Ya basta!” It was a woman’s solitary, small gesture that lit up the sky.

That’s the message for March 8, 2014, International Women’s Day. ¡Ya basta! Enough! Ça suffit! Barakat!

 

(Photo Credit: Le Portail des Hommes Libres)

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How many women? Ask the women of Papua New Guinea

February 25, 2014 by 49 Comments

How many women are raped in order to produce the world’s gold? How many women are chased off their land, kicked out of their own social structures, and otherwise beaten down in the pursuit of mineral resources? Ask the women of Papua New Guinea.

The Porgera open-pit gold mine in Papua New Guinea is a good old-fashioned money, and blood, pit: “The mine has a terrible reputation for both human rights abuses (rapes, beatings and killings by security personnel) and environmental damage (vast quantities of potentially toxic tailings dumped into a nearby river). But gold prices, while down from their recent peak, are still three times what they were a decade ago, so dig they must.”

The Porgera mine, owned by the Canadian company Barrick, is rich. In the last two decades, the mine has produced over 20 billion dollars worth of gold. Barrick is rich. Papua New Guinea is poor. Almost a third of the population lives in dire poverty. Around the Porgera mine, it’s worse. As happens so often around `wealthy’ mining sites, the area has experienced severe “social disintegration.” The local communities derive little benefit from the mines, and what benefit they get is slotted to the men. Gender inequality increases. Women become both absolutely and proportionately poorer and more vulnerable. Bride price and polygyny increase dramatically. Women’s status declines. Women’s customary abilities to negotiate dwindle. Abandonment of women and children rises. Domestic violence both increases and intensifies.

Three years ago, a major report investigated and confirmed repeated incidents of gang rape of local women by Porgera’s private security firm. All of the women were brutally beaten. None of the women reported the rapes. What would have been the point? Another report, this one from last year, noted: “A number of the women whose assaults had become public knowledge were stigmatised, beaten by family members or divorced by their husbands.”

The women started organizing and issued demands. What happened? At first, nothing. Then … Barrick created a “remedy program for victims”. This included “the requirement that to receive compensation, women must waive their right to sue Barrick.”

In order to get help, in order to get compensation, the women have to sign away their rights. First, Barrick denied and stonewalled for five years. Then they bullied and bullied some more, all in the name of `remedy.’ The United Nations `recommended’, and the world `condemned.’ No matter. The Barrick non-judicial grievance mechanism remains in place, opaque as ever. Here’s how one witness describes it: “Many women were not aware of the remedy program, others were suspicious of it, and we found general lack of clarity about the process. Women said that the program was being run in a language that they could not understand and that they had not been offered translation. Women said that the things they were being offered through the program were either not what they needed to address the harm they had suffered, or not compatible with culturally appropriate remedies for the type of harm they had suffered, or simply not commensurate with the harm they had suffered. The primary things these women were being offered were baby chickens to raise and second hand clothes to sell. The program seemed to be confusing small scale development programs with remedy.”

There is no confusion. The founder and chairman of Barrick explained that the sexual violence at Porgera occurred because, in Papua New Guinea, “gang rape is a cultural habit.” It never happened, we weren’t there, and anyway it’s your fault, even though it never happened. Barrick was there, Barrick is there … and in Tanzania … and … How many women? How many more women?

 

(Photo Credit: Brent Stirton/Getty Images for Human Rights Watch)

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Nowhere to go: Women and migrants fight for their rights

February 24, 2014 by 9 Comments

Recently, the Spanish government made headlines when it tried to sharply curtail women’s reproductive rights. Now, another set of human and civil rights is in shambles: the right to be, the right to seek safer grounds.

The European Union has two main points of entry on African land, Ceuta and Melilla. These two cities are Spanish territories on the coast of Morocco. Their existence is linked to the complex history of invasions and establishment of protectorates on Mediterranean shores. The EU has been walling up some of its borders in the South against migrants. In 2005 the EU financed the raising of a double iron curtain 6 meters high around these two Spanish enclaves. The Rajoy government had cutting blades installed on the top of the fence. The EU has also built a 12.5 kilometers wall between Turkey and Greece. Bulgaria is building its own iron curtain.

On February 6, 2013, 200 migrants tried to enter Ceuta. Fourteen died at sea as they tried to get around the fence. After some denial, the Spanish Guardia Civil finally admitted that they had used rubber bullets and tear gas against the migrants. The Minister of Interior Jorge Fernandez Diaz has been vague about these incidents that killed desperate migrants. At first, he denied any involvement or responsibility of the Guardia Civil. Then he recognized the use of riot gear only as a deterrent. Shooting at fragile craft with people onboard who don’t know how to swim is not a deterrent. Remember that, on the other side of the border, Moroccan forces are busily cudgeling migrants.

Ten days later, another 300 migrants forced the gate of the city of Melilla. About 50 were able to go in. They were then sent to temporary camps, where eight died.

In Spain, people were outraged. Within a week, demonstrations to denounce these disguised murders were organized in numerous Spanish cities. Various slogans were shouted: “Natives or foreigners, we’re all the same working class”; “No one is illegal”; and, alluding to the government’s anti abortion stand, “Where are the pro lifers?” The assault on women’s rights and the sealing of the borders are intimately linked.

In these times of global deterritorialization, with climate and economic insecurity, people migrate to escape armed conflict, starvation and misery. The non-negotiable rights to life are easily forgotten.

In the United States, immigration rights and women’s rights have been compromised, even more so recently.

In Greece, with the “debt crisis”, politically motivated violence against women and the increasingly restricted reproductive rights leaving many women without safe delivery or abortion services links with the extreme violence that migrants face at the hands of the police and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn. These various issues developed with the austerity measures brutally imposed by the Troika (the European financial power), and only now finally questioned. They have deeply destabilized every sector of the Greek society, except for the rich and powerful. In Greece, as in Spain, people are demonstrating for human rights, and against fascism.

Economic austerity measures have allowed a state of emergency to administer cruel treatments onto displaced populations. The migrant population that lands on Greek soil escapes one set of dangers only to face another. Despite the EU official commitment to human rights, there is no protection for them, and so they are abandoned in the streets of Athens and eventually attacked by Golden Dawn squads. They are the hidden casualties of the austerity measures.

The common thread that joins these stories is the elusive reliance on a neoliberal vision of the world order that displaces, isolates, impoverishes populations, and in particular women. Migrant rights and women rights are the first victims. If we don’t fight for these rights, we would have nowhere to go.

 

(Image Credit: http://www.4ojos.com)

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