Landmark case: In South Africa, ALL pregnant women, women who are lactating, children under age six are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment. ALL. Period.

April 22, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Section 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa states, “Everyone has the right to have access to health care services, including reproductive health care.” Section 28 of that same Constitution states, “Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.” This week, the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng division, confirmed those sections, in no uncertain terms, in a landmark decision brought by the law and advocacy organization, Section27, and three women: Kamba Azama and Nomagugu Ndlovu, denied free health services while pregnant, and Sinanzeni Sibanda, whose child under six was denied free health services. While the judgement is a decided victory, many question why it had to come to this in the first place.

In 2020, the Gauteng Department of Health issued the Policy Implementation Guidelines on Patient Administration and Revenue Management, which was written and interpreted to allow Gauteng public hospitals to deny free services to pregnant women, lactating women, and children under six. Hospitals began charging exorbitant fees up front before offering any services. They believed provincial policy superseded the national Constitution; effectively, they believed the Constitution was, at best, an interesting document. Section27, Kamba Azama, Nomagugu Ndlovu, and Sinanzeni Sibanda said NO! to that policy and notion, and took the Health Department to court.

Over the last three years, reports of such abuse have increased. For example, “Julian” and his wife and child moved from Maratane Refugee Camp, in Mozambique, to South Africa, seeking, among other things, health care for the infant daughter, who lives with cerebral palsy. As an undocumented resident, “Julian” found only impediments: demands for identity documents, demands to pay upfront as a private patient. Today, he and his family struggle with the R40,000 debt that was imposed on him. Suffer little children …

“Grace Jean”, an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo was eight months pregnant and suffered from high blood pressure. After consulting a clinic, she was referred to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital. She went twice to the hospital. Each time, she was told to pay R20 000 to obtain a hospital file number and be treated. Unemployed, Grace and her husband could not come up with the money. She lost the baby.

“Fezal Blue”, an asylum seeker living with HIV, was in labor. She approached three hospitals. None would take her, because she couldn’t provide South African identity card and wasn’t carrying her asylum seeker permit. “Fezal Blue” gave birth in the back of a car, going to a fourth hospital. Mother and child survived, and the baby did receive nevirapine, preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

In his decision, Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland declared Gauteng’s policy to be inoperative and generally an incoherent mess, not to mention a violation of the Constitution. Additionally, he gave all health establishments, across South Africa, until July 17th to post in a clearly visible place, the following: “ALL pregnant women,

ALL women who are lactating, and

ALL children below the age of six

Are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment, irrespective of their nationality and documentation status.”

ALL is capitalized in the Judge’s orders.

The Gauteng policy targeted the most vulnerable: asylum seekers, undocumented persons and persons who are at risk of statelessness. It did more than declare them persona non grata, it declared them nonpersons, unworthy of rights, dignity, or simple human decency. As Mbali Baduza, legal researcher at Section27, explained, “The effect of this court order is that it applies across the country… Medical xenophobia or health xenophobia has been on the rise in certain provinces, and this court order makes it clear that all pregnant women and children under six — regardless of their status — can access hospital care for free… and that’s an important precedent”.

Sharon Ekambaram, head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights and a spokesperson for Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, Kaax, noted, “It is concerning that our government needs to be reminded of their constitutional obligations as set out in our Constitution and in our policies. This situation is but one component of a much broader crisis of institutionalised xenophobia”. Dale McKinley, also of Kaax, added, “We should be angry that we’ve had to go this far and that we have to continue to force our government to do the most basic things in terms of what our law says”.

Medical or health xenophobia is nationwide, across South Africa, as it is worldwide, and it’s spreading. Celebrate the victories, such as this landmark decision; and be concerned and angry. Part of the decision was to enforce the rule of law and the power and responsibility of the Constitution, and aprt of the decision was to emphasize the map. No assault on persons’ dignity is unique or individual, they are always part of a pattern of viral growth, and so every response must also be expansive. What happens in Gauteng does not stay in Gauteng.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Jana Hattingh / Spotlight) (Image Credit: Section27)

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Where are the women? In Ireland, and beyond, incarcerated and sleeping on the floor

April 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Dóchas Centre

Perhaps April is indeed the cruelest month, but when it comes to prison overcrowding, abuse, and general disregard for human dignity or life, it’s just another month. Take Ireland, for example. Reports started circulating at the beginning of the month that Irish prisons were dangerously overcrowded. On April 10, The Irish Times reported, “Fourfold increase in prisoners sleeping on floor as officials warn of safety risks in Mountjoy”.  Since the beginning of the year, the number of prisoners sleeping on the floor has increased by 400% … in a mere three months. The pandemic must be over, and this must be what `return to normal looks like’. The epicenter of this increase is Mountjoy Prison, which is at 110% capacity. In response, prison administrators are planning to buy bunk beds. That should take care of the problem, right? No. People sleeping on the floor presents a safety hazard to both incarcerated people and staff, according to an internal memo. But here’s the thing. This article is 20 short paragraphs long. It isn’t until the seventeenth and eighteenth paragraphs that the reader learns who exactly is being endangered: “Overcrowding is worse in the Dóchas Centre women’s prison which, with 172 prisoners, is operating at 118 per cent capacity. Limerick men’s prison, which was recently expanded, is at 130 per cent capacity (274 prisoners) while Limerick women’s prison is at 175 per cent (49 prisoners).” Where are the women? Sleeping on the floor and reduced to the margins of their own stories.

As of the most recent prison census, on April 13, Dóchas Centre, the women’s section of Mountjoy, remains at 118%. The Limerick women’s section is currently at 179%. Bunk beds won’t fix that, and everyone knows as much. Building more jails won’t address the situation either.

Chaplains who service Ireland’s prison release regular reports. The most recent one for Dóchas Centre, in 2020, reported, “Most recently a prisoner was remanded to the Dóchas Centre after having spent over a year in a psychiatric facility. The prisoner was clearly unwell and confused to the extent that after a few days in custody the prisoner wanted to know what hospital she was in. From as soon as she arrived in the Dóchas Centre the prisoner remained in bed all day. Prison was obviously not the place for that prisoner, yet the prisoner had been charged, arraigned in Court and remanded to prison. After considerable intervention by the Governor and Health Care Staff, the prisoner was removed back to the psychiatric facility that she had come from …. While Staff were dealing with this prisoner two other prisoners on the same landing were even more difficult to deal with: both were self-harming and both were violent. Both of the prisoners had been treated for mental illness before coming to prison. One of the prisoners had been brought to the Dochas Centre infected with Covid 19. The other prisoner was returned to the psychiatric facility where she had been a patient. That prisoner however was returned to the Dochas after she behaved in the same violent way that she had behaved in when she was being held in the Dochas previously. Obviously she had been referred to the psychiatric facility for specialist treatment. How was she expected to receive that treatment when she was returned to the Dochas? This is a clear example of the Dochas being used as a dumping ground.”

 “The Prison Service is too well aware of how prisons are constantly being used as the dumping ground for other agencies’ problems. Offenders whose offence is rooted in mental illness invariably get sent to prison because the State cannot accommodate them elsewhere. This imposes a duty of care on the Governor and his Staff which the normal exercise of their duty was not designed for. Prison Officers are not trained to handle psychiatric cases …. Covid has preoccupied all our thinking for almost a year. Hospitals filled to capacity are part of everyday discussion. At this time of terrible fear and anxiety in the community, no one is going to be surprised to hear that the Central Mental Hospital has no bed space available either. The difference however is that the CMH had no available space before the Covid 19 pandemic. Most prisons have prisoners suffering from mental illness who have been waiting for a bed in the CMH for over a year.” According to the Chaplain’s Report, the situation is “soul destroying. No one seems to care.”

The Chaplain concludes, “Government could find the resources to rescue the collapse of the banking system. Government could find the resources to pay workers to stay at home during the pandemic. Government could find the resources to protect the vulnerable from a life of addiction, homelessness and petty crime. Government instead sends the weakest and most vulnerable in society to prison at the cost of the taxpayer and the fabric of society.”

What has happened in the intervening three years? Women are no longer dumped into beds. Now, they’re dumped on the floor. Further, women have been even more deeply erased from the public record. They’re there, somewhere near the end of the rare account, as an afterthought. Where are the women? Dumped on the floor, dumped from their own stories. The Prison Service is too well aware …

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Irish Examiner)

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A Western Australia prisoner transport van forced Anna to endure hours in urine-soaked clothes. Why? Because she’s Aboriginal.

April 6, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: first as tragedy, then as farce.

                                                            Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

According to a report, “The transport of regional and remote prisoners”, released Monday, April 3, by the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services of Western Australia, history repeated itself recently. The report describes “Anna’s journey”, a “transport welfare fail”. It then notes that the exact same failure happened to another incarcerated woman … two weeks earlier. The report opens, “This review was prompted by a few recent incidents that raised questions for us about the conditions under which prisoners were being transported across regional Western Australia. It was also undertaken against a historical backdrop of the tragic case of Mr Ward who died during a prisoner transport in 2008. We set out to seek assurance that the gains made since 2008 have been sustained.” The report ends, “There is a clear gap in the monitoring of … movement services at regional locations, which should be addressed by the Department. This aligns with the findings of the Coroner following the death of Mr Ward, and a recommendation for the Department to conduct regular reviews of transport contractor services in regional locations (Hope, 2009).” What does it mean that a failure in 2022, reported in 2023, “aligns” with findings and recommendations, issued in 2009, concerning an incident in 2008?

In 2022, Anna entered Greenough Regional Prison, for the third time. The staff at Greenough knew Anna. Flagged as living with schizophrenia, Anna was known to have an extensive psychiatric history, including frequent episodes of self-harm and suicidal behavior. This time, in her first week or so, Anna was reported twice for uncooperative and erratic behavior. She stopped taking her medications. Despite her non-compliant and erratic behavior, it was decided to move Anna to Bandyup Women’s Prison. The pre-transfer report described Anna as “satisfactory – no major concerns”. When staff tried to place Anna on a plane headed for Bandyup, Anna urinated on herself in the transport vehicle and refused to wear a mask. The trip was cancelled. As Anna was being returned to Greenough, staff issued a new plan, with no mention of schizophrenia or any other issues. The new plan was to transport Anna by van the 400 some kilometers to Bandyup.

A week later, Anna was bundled, shackled and handcuffed, into the security pod of an escort van, and off they went. The journey was 4 hours and 35 minutes. During that trip, early on, Anna, still handcuffed and shackled, urinated. There was no CCTV footage or cell phone call recordings. There was no documentation of anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps that’s because there was nothing out of the ordinary. Two hours in wet clothes, shackled and handcuffed in a so-called security pod. All in a day’s work … if the person is an Aboriginal woman.

Anna’s story ends in redundancy: “Prior to Anna’s transfer, another female prisoner departed Greenough in early April 2022 and urinated in the vehicle. Upon arrival to Bandyup, staff were made aware that this prisoner had urinated in the pod during the journey. Many of the issues we identified with Anna’s experience were also present in this earlier case …. It is concerning, and disappointing, that staff failed to learn from this earlier incident and implement measures, such as bringing a change of clothes or a towel, that would have helped protect the dignity and welfare of Anna during her journey a few weeks later.”

It is concerning and disappointing, and altogether predictable. Staff did not fail to learn, they did not even have to refuse to learn, because there has been no reason to. Throughout the report, the Inspector invokes the tragic case of Mr. Ward, who died in a prisoner transport in Western Australia. In January 2008, Mr. Ward, 46 years old, a respected elder, was taken on a 220 mile ride across the blistering Central Desert to face a drunk driving charge. Mr. Ward had represented the Ngaanyatjarra lands across Australia and at international fora. The people who drove Mr. Ward threw him into the back of a Mazda van, into the security “pod” with metal seating and no air conditioning. All male remand prisoners are considered dangerous, or “high risk”. That Mr. Ward was known to be cooperative and congenial was irrelevant. For his own safety and welfare, he had to go in the back. The trip took almost four hours. The temperatures that day were 40 degrees Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Mr. Ward died of heatstroke. He died with third degree burns. Mr. Ward cooked to death, slowly and in excruciating pain.

In a 2001 government study, identical Mazda `pods’ were described as “not fit for humans to be transported in.” They were seen as “a death waiting to happen.”  In the intervening decade, there were other major reports, two in 2005, in 2006. In 2008, Mr. Ward was dumped into the oven of the back of that Mazda. When asked about the implications of Mr. Ward’s story, Keith Hamburger, the principal author of the 2005 report, responded, “That’s a matter of great concern because this is not rocket science, we’re dealing here with duty of care.”

A duty of care. In 2022, that duty of care meant two Aboriginal women, separately, abused. The list of Aboriginal women who died in custody, in Western Australia alone, is long: Maureen Mandijarra, 2012; Ms. Dhu, 2014; Cherdeena Wynne, 2019; JC, 2019. Many die in police custody, others in prisoner transport vans, others in their cells. Year after year, the Inspector of Custodial Services for Western Australia has described Anna’s ultimate destination, Bandyup Women’s Prison, the only women’s prison in Western Australia, as a hellhole. Speaking of Bandyup, the Inspector said, “I wanted to know how such an event could occur in a 21st Century Australian prison and to prevent it happening again.” First as tragedy, then as farce does not mean the second time is funny. For those forced to suffer, the pain is new, and yet not new, each time. The farce is in the expressions of surprise, discovery, concern of the perpetrators. It is concerning and disappointing … and happening somewhere right now.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Ngayarta Kujarra by Jakayu Biljabu, Yikartu Bumba, May Chapman, Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman, Doreen Chapman, Linda James, Donna Loxton, Mulyatingki Marney, Reena Rogers, Beatrice Simpson, Ronelle Simpson, and Muntararr Rosie Williams / The National Gallery of Victoria)

 

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“The death of four-year-old Langalam Viki in a pit toilet should never have happened”

March 20, 2023 by Leave a Comment

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not”

A boy-child was forced to drown in shit.
The Elders expressed shock, then promised
Change, then did nothing, less than and worse
Than nothing. Then a girl-child was forced
To drown in shit. The Elders expressed
Shock, promised great change, and did nothing.
Less than and worse than nothing. This month
A girl-child was forced to drown in shit.
The Elders expressed shock, then promised
Change, then did nothing, less than and worse
Than nothing. This poem, this story,
This song, we call this education.

In the Daily Maverick, Zukiswa Pikoli wrote, “The death of four-year-old Langalam Viki in a pit toilet should never have happened. The people who work for the Department of Education at the school, provincial and national level, who are responsible for this negligence and neglect should hang their heads in shame.”  Another South African, Melanie Verwoerd, wrote, “Thinking of the fear these little children must have felt and their desperate struggles for air in the last minutes of their lives is almost unbearable. Of all the things the government has neglected to deliver on, this is without doubt the most shameful.” On Saturday, March 18, in the town of Buffelsdoring in the Eastern Cape, four-year-old Langalam Viki was laid to rest. Langalam Viki drowned in a pit latrine at her school. When Langalam Viki did not show up at her home, her mother, went looking for her. Langalam Viki’s body was finally located and “retrieved”. What else is there to say?

On January 20, 2014, when five-year-old Michael Komape drowned in a pit latrine at his school, in Limpopo, James Komape, Michael’s father, said, “They should have helped. My son was going to school. I did not send him to die.” I did not send him to die, and yet he was sent to his death, by a State that refuses to replace the certain death sentences of schoolhouse pit latrines with safe and secure school toilets.

On March 12, 2018, when five-year-old Lumka Mketwa drowned in a pit latrine at her school, in the Eastern Cape, Lumka Mketwa’s family had serious questions. They asked who was responsible for their daughter’s death? They asked, who is responsible for children’s education, safety, wellbeing, when they are at school?  They asked, why is this not a national emergency? How many more children must die, how many more families must be haunted? Michael Komape’s family is haunted. Lumka Mketwa’s family is haunted. The State is not haunted. If it were, it would have acted.

Since the unending tragedies of Michael Komape and Lumka Mketwa’s respective and combined deaths, studies have “strongly argued for the total eradication of pit latrines in all South African schools, especially those located in the rural areas and informal settlements.” Anything less would be a gross violation of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Others have noted, with a sense of urgency, “The right to basic education of a child is a requirement of human dignity. South Africa, through its new dispensation and conformity with human rights laws, is expected to transform and be consistent with the provision of the Constitution of 1996 that promotes and protects the best interest of the child.” Pit latrines are not in the best interest of the child. Meanwhile …

Zukiswa Pikoli concludes, “The name Langalam means “my sunshine” in isiXhosa. The Department of Basic Education should hang its head in shame for taking away grieving mother Nangamso Viki’s sunshine.”  The Ministers lie, the children die, the parents ask why … and the world, such as it is, moves on, and the cycle we pursue begins and ends in shame, or at least its invocation.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Lady Skollie: “Papsak Propaganda III: And I Was Really Far Out And You Thought I Was Waving, But I Was Drowning” / Everard Read)

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In India, Maharashtra’s women’s jails are at almost 500% capacity. Set the women free.

March 13, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Last July, India’s prisons were at 155% capacity. 80% of the `residents’ were remand prisoners, people awaiting trial. Maharashtra prisons were at 105.8% capacity. Maharashtra has 60 central and district jails. Of them, one, Byculla Women’s Jail, is the only one dedicated for women and children.  On March 31, 2020, Byculla, capacity 200, held 352 women. That’s 176% occupancy rate.  In September 2021, as Covid raged through Byculla, the jail held close to 300 women. Today, Byculla holds 414 women. So, it’s gone from a `scandalous’ 105.8% … to a perfectly reasonable 200.1%?

Meanwhile, today, Maharashtra’s state prisons department reports that the situation in jails is equally catastrophic, if not worse. For example, the Thane district jails have a capacity of 3,794. They currently house 9,284. Among those jails, the Kalyan jail has a capacity of 540. It houses 2,061 people. The Thane Central prison has a capacity of 1,105. Today, it holds 5,057.

And then there’s this: “Although the jails in the district can accommodate only 60 women inmates, they were holding 290 women.” Women’s jails are at 483% capacity. Of course, the response of the state is to build more prisons. Not to question the process, not to wonder at what crimes, other than that of being women, these women have supposedly committed, not to wonder what happens to the concepts of law, justice, punishment even, when almost five people are crammed into spaces designed to hold at most one.

Activists, many of them formerly incarcerated women, have said that the government should consider decongesting prisons and jails. The government did just that, and the numbers soared to historic highs, especially for women. For women in Maharashtra and beyond, the process – rule of law, due process, presumption of innocence, innocence itself, justice itself – is the punishment. Often, it’s a death penalty. Cry cry cry, set the women free.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Smithsonian)

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All that is human drowned in the sea: They did not drown. They were executed.

February 27, 2023 by 1 Comment

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Psalm 23

BBC headline today: “Italy migrant boat shipwreck: More than 100 people feared dead”. The  article, in part, reads: “There are fears that more than 100 people, including children, have died after their boat sank in rough seas off southern Italy. At least 62 migrants are confirmed to have died, with 12 children said to be among the victims, including a baby. The vessel, thought to have carried some 200 people, broke apart while trying to land near Crotone on Sunday. People from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Iran were said to be on board. Bodies were recovered from the beach at a nearby seaside resort in the Calabria region.” Notice how “people” become bodies. And who exactly “fears”? The governments that turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard? The governments that support them, by turning border rivers, mountains, deserts, plains into cemeteries? The people who vote for these policies?

Remember?

May 30, 2016: “Last week at least 700 people – refugees and asylum seekers – drowned in the Mediterranean. That raises this year’s known death toll to 2000. Italy plans to build a cemetery, a memorial of sorts, to those who die at sea. It would be located next the remains of the country’s largest fascist concentration camp. While the cemetery is the least Italy, or any country, can do, that cemetery is not a “final resting place”. There is no final resting place for those refugees and asylum seekers. This weekend is filled with images of cemeteries and those who come to the cemeteries: families, dignitaries, people. But there is no picture of the surface of the Mediterranean, and there should be. As we stare at the photographs of cemeteries, we should be made to stare at the unbroken surface of the Mediterranean. We should remember all who have perished in the name of war.”

December 30, 2016: “This year, all that is human drowned in the sea, all that is holy has been profaned, and we are at last compelled to face with sober senses our real conditions of life, and our relations with our kind. In 2016, at least 5000 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean. Last Friday, two boats capsized, and “about 100 people are missing and feared dead.” Who fears them dead? No State and no amalgam of nation-States fears them dead. Rather, in this the deadliest year ever for migrants trying to reach Europe, the year’s epitaph is simple: “2016: The year the world stopped caring about refugees”. We are the world, and we turned the sea into a graveyard. This year, the women, child, man of the year lies on the bottom of the Mediterranean, and we do not know their names, and we do not much care. If we did, they would be alive today. So here is a poem for the unknown refugees who lie in the cemetery that we have made of the Mediterranean.”

July 26, 2019: “Today was to be about the women in Puerto Rico who changed history, who sparked and sustained a movement against patriarchy, colonialism, injustice, imperialism, racism, misogyny. Today was to be about the women in Puerto Rico who continue to move a nation forward. But 150 women, children, men died – were murdered – off the coast of Libya, and the story that is told cannot stand. The story that is told is so much noise “tragedy”, tragedy, tragedy. Fear: feared drowned; feared dead; feared dead; feared drowned. These reports empty tragedy and fear of all meaning. As activist Helena Maleno has noted, Europe and the United States have militarized the borders into death zones, zones of necropolitics, necrocapitalism, necroborderlands, in which people are killed or abandoned to die. Criminalize all attempts at rescue or support, militarize the spaces between nations, criminalize those who seek rescue or support, fill the waters with sharks, and then, when the refugees and asylum seekers drown, call it a tragedy of monumental proportions.”

December 31, 2019: “Once again, the year ends with the surface of the Mediterranean concealing thousands of humans lost. According to the International Organization of Migration, 1246 people – women, children, men – drowned in the Mediterranean while trying flee certain death. In certain circles, this number, 1246, is being celebrated as a mark of success. The numbers of dead have declined. Fortress Europe, like Fortress Australia and Fortress USA, is working. This is the mathematics of success in our contemporary world. 2019: 1246 dead: “the fifth straight year of at least 1,000 deaths on the Mediterranean”. 2018: 2299 dead. 2017: 3139 dead. 2016: 5143 dead. 2015: 4054 dead. 2014: 3283 dead.  From 2014 to today, 19,164 souls – women, children, men – thrown into the deep waters of unmourning. No language, no marking of names, no taking of place. No singing. Only the silence of “success”.”

December 31, 2020: “For the last few years, Europe (including the United Kingdom), the United States, and Australia – the imperial ‘we’ – turned bodies of water, such as the Mediterranean, into massive graveyards. This year, dissatisfied with having poisoned the Mediterranean, Europe extended the Mediterranean into the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canary Islands. According to Helena Maleno and her organization, Caminando Fronteras, this year 2170 people died, drowned, trying to reach Spain. The overwhelming majority of those who drowned died on their way to the Canary Islands. 1851 people died in 45 shipwrecks. In 2019, 893 people died trying to reach Spain. A 200% increase in African deaths is considered a success in Fortress Europe, having `secured’ the Mediterranean by increasing military patrols and forcefully decreasing rescue ships. As of two days ago, 1,156 deaths were recorded this year in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean Sea the deadliest migration route and, extending now to the Canary Islands, the largest cemetery ever built.”

December 31, 2021: “On December 25, in three separate incidents, three boats filled with refugees capsized. At least 31 people died, and, as of now, scores of people on those boats are still missing. It is the worst Aegean death toll since October 2015. The next day, December 26, close to 30 people washed ashore in Libya, refugees who had tried to cross the Mediterranean, just so much flotsam from another shipwreck. These corpses capped a week in which at least 160 people, migrants, drowned in shipwrecks off the coast of Libya.”

It’s too late, way too late, to claim to “fear” that migrants have died. Those children, those women, those men, did not drown. They were executed, and now the hangmen “fear” they might be dead?

Here, in lieu of Psalm 23, is today’s prayer …

“Not one more refugee death

By Emmy Perez

A river killed a man I loved,
And I love that river still

—María Meléndez

1.
Thousands of fish killed after Pemex
spill in el Río Salado and everyone
runs out to buy more bottled water.
Here, our river kills more crossers
than the sun, than the singular

heat of Arizona, than the ranchlands
near the Falfurrias checkpoint.
It’s hard to imagine an endangered
river with that much water, especially
in summer and with the Falcon Reservoir

in drought, though it only takes inches
to drown. Sometimes, further
west, there’s too little river
to paddle in Boquillas Canyon
where there are no steel-column walls

except the limestone canyon’s drop
and where a puma might push-wade across,
or in El Paso, where double-fenced muros
sparkle and blind with bullfight ring lights,
the ring the concrete river mold, and above

a Juárez mountain urges
La Biblia es La Verdad—Leela.

2.
Today at the vigil, the native singer
said we are all connected
by water, la sangre de vida.

Today, our vigil signs proclaimed
McAllen is not Murrieta.
#iamborderless. Derechos
Inmigrantes=Derechos
Humanos. Bienvenidos niños.
We stand with refugee children.
We are all human. Bienvenidos
a los Estados Unidos.

And the songs we sang
the copal that burned
and the rose petals spread
en los cuatro puntos were
for the children and women
and men. Songs

for the Guatemalan
boy with an Elvis belt buckle
and Angry Birds jeans with zippers
on back pockets who was found
shirtless in La Joya, one mile
from the river. The worn jeans

that helped identify his body
in the news more times
than a photo of him while alive.
(I never knew why the birds
are angry. My mother said
someone stole their eggs.)

The Tejas sun took a boy
I do not know, a young man
who wanted to reach Chicago,
his brother’s number etched in
his belt, his mother’s pleas not
to leave in white rosary beads

he carried. The sun in Tejas
stopped a boy the river held.
Detention centers filled, churches
offer showers and fresh clothes.
Water and a covered porch may
have waited at a stranger’s house

or in a patrol truck had his body
not collapsed. Half of our bodies
are made of water, and we can’t
sponge rivers through skin
and release them again
like rain clouds. Today

at the vigil the native singer
sang we are all connected
by water, la sangre de vida.”

We are all connected by water, la sangre de vida. Not one more refugee death. Amen.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Kassidy Dawn / Lacuna)

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In (the news coverage of) Nigeria’s elections, where are the women?

February 26, 2023 by 2 Comments

#NigeriaDecides. For the last couple months, the hashtag has been everywhere. Well, if not everywhere, in many places. In a much-anticipated election, Nigeria voted yesterday, February 25, 2023, for President and members of the National Assembly. Leading up to vote, a number of news agencies ran articles with headlines like “What you need to know”, “What’s at stake”, “What to Know”, “what are the issues”, and the list goes on. While these articles focused on the youth vote, economic insecurity, military insecurity, they did not include any mention of gender, of women, despite that actually being a topic of more than passing interest among Nigerians, especially Nigerian women. So, where are the women in Nigeria’s elections? Sadly, severely underrepresented.

This year, one woman, Princess Chichi Ojei, of the Allied Peoples’ Movement, ran for President or for Vice-President. That’s out of 36 presidential candidates and running mates. In the last election, 2019, 28 of the 146 presidential candidates and running mates were women. From 2019 to 2023, then, the percentage of women among candidates for top positions has gone from 19.2% to 2.8%. Of the 1,100 candidates for Senate seats, 84 are women, or 7.6% of those running. As Africa Check noted, “Our factsheet on the status of women in Nigeria shows that since the country’s return to democracy in 1999, the share of women in the federal legislature has remained well under 10%. Sadly, this will not change in 2023.”

In Nigeria and across the continent, as people followed the lead-up to the elections, many asked, ”Where are the women?” For example, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, and K.Y. Amoako, founder and President of the African Center for Economic Tranformation, wrote, “Women’s progress toward high leadership positions unfortunately leaves much to be desired. Since it gained independence in 1960, Nigeria has not had any women presidents or vice presidents. It has not elected any female governors across its 36 states. Its proportion of women representatives in both legislative chambers does not exceed 7%. The country’s national average of women’s political participation has remained around 6.7% in elective and appointive positions, far below the global average of 22.5%. In Nigeria, women and girls account for half of the population, and therefore represent half of its potential as an African nation. For Nigeria to prosper and progress, it must increase the representation of women in decision-making positions. Nigeria’s equity challenge did not arise because of a lack of leadership potential in its women. Nigerian women are a shining beacon of public leadership on the global stage.”

Nigerian women, individually and in organizational spaces, have been aware of and decried the current situation. In January, Chimamanda Adichie asked, “There is … something sad about the idea that we haven’t had a woman governor in this country. It’s wonderful that we are celebrating the possibility [of having one soon] but why has it taken so long?” Ayisha Osori, former candidate for National Assembly, noted, “Elections in Nigeria are monetised and transactional, and women are already socially disadvantaged considering that in Nigeria, the fastest way to be rich is to be in government. If women are not in politics then they cannot raise money and if they cannot raise money, then they cannot be in politics.” Mufuliat Fijabi, CEO of Gender and Election Watch, a Nigerian NGO, noted that this election is part of a trend, “If you look at the global average practices, we are not where we should be in terms of inclusion of women in leadership and decision-making positions. The number of female candidates in this election is 7.8 per cent which means it’s very few and if we are not careful, the number may decrease.”

Speaking of the National Assembly, the outgoing legislature has 469 members, of whom 21 are women. 4.4% of the legislature are women. That’s the legislature that in March 2022 rejected five gender bills that would have provided special seats for women at the National Assembly; allocated 35% of political position appointments to women; created 111 additional seats in the National Assembly and the state constituent assemblies; and committed to women having at least 10% of ministerial appointments. The Assembly rejected them all: “This is a tragedy for Nigerian women.”

Nigerian women have experienced both a gradual erosion of their position and progress in elected and appointed positions, as well as a more recent open backlash. At the same time, the international press, with the exception of Al Jazeera, has largely kept silent on the situation, despite claiming to offer necessary information about the Nigerian election. What you need; what’s at stake; what to know; what what what what what. What I know is where are the women in (the news coverage of) Nigeria’s elections?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic Credit: Al Jazeera)

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“Shackling her was `brutal, sadistic, and unconscionable.’” Stop shackling pregnant people.

February 19, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Dayton, Minnesota, the night of January 7, 2020, Faris and Sara Hussein were at home, chilling. Faris was playing video games. He had his headphones on. Sara Hussein was in the kitchen, cooking. Sara was nine months pregnant, expecting their first child in two weeks or so. There was a knock at the door. Faris, playing video, didn’t hear it. Sara, busy in the kitchen, didn’t hear it. Then a boot kicked in the door, armed men rushed in, armed men in plain clothes grabbed Faris, grabbed Sara and threw her to the floor. Home invasion? Yes, by police. Maple Grove police were looking for … a stolen snowblower. Yes, a snowblower. Shackled, Sara and Faris Hussein were taken to the Hennepin County Jail. Although Sara was never charged with anything, she was kept in shackles, even when she went into labor. According to her, she was kept in shackles while in labor for five hours. A few hours after finally being released, Sara Hussein delivered her and Faris’ first child. Sara Hussein has since sued Hennepin County: “The lawsuit she filed against the county said shackling her was `brutal, sadistic, and unconscionable.’” This week, three years later, Hennepin County settled the suit for $500,000.

Everything about that night was wrong. In Minnesota, by state law, shackling pregnant people is illegal. Sara Hussein was shackled in labor for five hours, in plain sight. Sara Hussein, nine months pregnant, was shackled from beginning to end, again in plain sight. No one objected. No member of any so-called law enforcement agency reminded anyone that shackling a pregnant woman is illegal. Minnesota passed a law banning the shackling of pregnant women in 2014. This all happened in January 2020, six years later. Finally, Hennepin County Jail is the largest jail in Minnesota. None of this is out of ordinary. Illegal, yes. Cruel, decidedly. Unusual, sadly no. Minnesota law requires any shackling of pregnant women must be reported to the legislature within three days. Sara Hussein’s case was never reported. Nor were a number of other cases. Again, illegal, yes. Cruel, decidedly. Unusual, no.

Kare 11, a local Minneapolis – St. Paul news station, first covered this story and has done so, pretty much exclusively ever since. Their reporting has been thorough and reliable. However, from beginning to end, Kare 11 has insisted on the significance of Sara Hussein’s innocence. Their first account’s headline read: “Jailed, innocent, in labor – and shackled”. This week’s report’s headline read: “Bungled raid led to innocent pregnant woman’s shackling”. Shackling Sara Hussein was brutal, sadistic and unconscionable, and illegal, not because she was innocent, but because she was pregnant and then in labor. Her presumed innocence or guilt is irrelevant. Again, shackling pregnant people, shackling people in labor, is brutal, sadistic, unconscionable, and it should be illegal everywhere. Stop shackling pregnant people. What will it take to stop shackling pregnant women?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Radical Doula) (Photo Credit: Kare 11)

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Hope in a time of choler: Spain expands women’s, transgender rights

February 17, 2023 by 2 Comments

A protest calling for the legalization of abortion, Madrid 1978

On Thursday, Spain’s Congress passed laws, some groundbreaking, that expand the rights and well-being of women, transgender people, and everyone. First, Spain became the first country in Europe to entitle workers to menstrual leave. Second, Spain revised its laws concerning abortion. Under the new law, 16- and 17-year-olds no longer need parental consent to undergo an abortion. The new law further enshrines the right access to abortion in public hospitals. Currently the overwhelming number of abortions take place in private hospitals because state hospital doctors refuse to perform them, claiming religious objection. Period products will now be offered, free, in schools and prisons; hormonal contraceptives and the morning after pill will be offered, free, in public health centers. Third, Spain widened transgender rights. Under the new law, anyone older than 16 can change their legally registered gender without any medical supervision. With parental consent, 14- to 16-year-olds can change their legally registered gender. 12- and 13-year-olds will need a judge’s authorization. No one will be required to prove gender dysphoria. Fourth, another new law bans the use of `conversion therapy’ for LGBTQIA+ people. Finally, a fifth law provides state support for lesbians and single women seeking IVF treatment. The new laws also expanded sex education across the educational landscape. When these laws were all passed, Irene Montero, Equality Minister and member of the Unidas Podemos party, said, “I am well aware that the road does not end here.” There’s more to come. We make the road by walking.

Individually, each of these laws is a major step, and, as always, the result of years of struggle and organizing. Taken together, they offer a glimpse of a world filled with hope that begins with and always insists on the full and unquestionable humanity of every individual and group. As Montero noted, when discussing the transgender legislation, “This is a law that recognizes trans people’s right to freely decide their gender identity. It stops trans realities being treated as abnormalities. Trans people aren’t sick people; they’re people – full stop. They are who they are – full stop. Trans women are women – full stop. From today, the state recognizes that.”

While Spain’s menstrual leave law is the first in Europe, it’s not the first anywhere. Japan, Indonesia, Zambiahave passed similar laws, with varying effects. Likewise, Argentina recognized transgender rights in 2012, and Denmark followed suit in 2014. The point is not which came first but rather that the community of countries widening, rather than further restricting rights, is growing, thanks to Spain’s actions this week. Love is love, people are people, humans are humans, women are women. Full stop.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit 1: Chema Conesa / El País) (Image Credit: Barbara Kruger / The Broad)

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In Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa, the struggle for housing is a struggle for home

February 6, 2023 by 1 Comment

120-128 Bromwell Street

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa consists of a Preamble and 14 chapters. Chapter 1 provides the “founding provisions” and opens: “The Republic of South Africa is one, sovereign, democratic state founded on the following values: Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. Non-racialism and non-sexism. Supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law. Universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness.” It’s a promising beginning. Chapter 2 is titled “Bill of Rights” and begins: “This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. The state must respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights.” Section 26 of the Constitution, located in Chapter 2, concerns housing and so much more: “Housing: Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right. No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.” This is one of only two occasions on which the Constitution discusses “home”. The other, Section 14, articulates the right to privacy: “Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have their person or home searched.” There’s a great deal, though not enough, of discussion these days of `homelessness’. Recently, that condition has been somewhat refined by calling the loss of housing the state of being unhoused. While a welcome intervention, this still doesn’t tell us what home is.

Beyond the right to access to adequate housing and the right to not be arbitrarily evicted or have one’s home arbitrarily demolished, what is the State’s responsibility to something they, the inhabitants, residents, neighbors, community, call home? This is a particularly poignant question in a country marked by a history of forced mass dislocations, a description as apt for the United States, Brazil, India, England, as South Africa. Nevertheless, when the authors of the South African Constitution codified the right to housing, they remembered, acutely, the dislocations, demolitions and deprivations of housing and home under the apartheid regime. And today? Consider a court decision rendered today by the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, concerning the rights of residents in the Woodstock neighborhood of Cape Town. While today’s decision may mark a turning point, it is not the end of the story.

For some, the story would start on October 30, 2013, when The Woodstock Hub bought 120 to 128 Bromwell Street. On June 30, 2014, residents were served eviction notices and given a month to clear out. Residents, 26 in all including children, began organizing. They went to court. In 2016, the Cape High Court decided in favor of the landlord. The residents’ attorneys argued that at the very least the City had an obligation to move the residents into nearby and adequate housing. Instead, the City proposed to move them to Wolwerivier, far from the city center and with absolutely no public transportation whatsoever. Woodstock, on the other hand, is one of the most centrally located suburbs in Cape Town, and while it managed to avoid forced removals in the 1950s, its location has meant wave upon wave of gentrification, displacement, and struggle. With that in mind, the residents and their attorneys appealed the decision.

In 2021, five years later, the Cape Town High Court decided that the City’s plan for removal to Wolwerivier was indeed unconstitutional. The Court ruled the City must find the residents emergency housing as near as feasibly possible and within the year. In response, The Woodstock Hub appealed, and that’s where we are today. Today, the Court ruled the City plan is not unconstitutional, because the earlier decision “did not identify the extent of invalidity for the City to rectify in its order.” On the other hand, the Court did say the City must provide adequate housing “in a location as near as possible to where they currently reside” before the end of May. It’s a mixed decision. Whether the residents will accept or appeal is unknown just now.

120 to 128 Bromwell Street has been, and is, home to these residents. Brenda Smith is 82 years old. She was born in 128 Bromwell Street. Today, she lives in 128 Bromwell Street. Charnell Commando is 36 years old. She has lived on Bromwell Street all her life. In fact, her parents, grandparents, and great grandparents also were born and lived at her current address. Graham Beukes, 42 years old, has lived all his life at his current Bromwell Street address, where his parents lived for 50 years. What `value’ does their history, do their lives, have? What is home?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit 1: Rejul Bejoy / GroundUp) (Photo Credit 2: Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp)

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