“This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix”

March 15, 2026 by Leave a Comment

 

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”
Robert Frost, Mending Wall

When do we start to care? What is the threshold of our concern? Gordon Brown was once Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a country with its own blood splattered history of abusing asylum seekers, especially children. Last week, in response to the U.S. bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh school, the slaughter of 168 schoolgirls, Gordon Brown wrote, “The killing of a reported 168 people, primarily schoolgirls, in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab in Iran has shaken to its very core the conscience of the world ….No child should ever become collateral damage in a conflict.” Brown then goes on to call for “the creation of a dedicated international criminal court for crimes against children”. As Gordon notes, this event is not isolated. Children are killed, assaulted, destroyed, broken from Gaza and the West Bank to Lebanon to Iran … and beyond. Gordon notes, “We cannot afford to stand by as yet another established international law governing the conduct of war is broken, apparently with impunity.” Something is broken … something in us. And it’s not only in “foreign lands”. It’s down the street, around the corner. Ask the five children of the El Gamal family, who have been detained in Dilley since June 2025. They wrote letters which were presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Wednesday.

The children are Habiba El-Gamal, 18; a sixteen-year old son; a nine-year-old daughter; and five-year-old twins, one boy one girl.

This is the beginning of Habiba El Gamal’s letter: “My name is Habiba Soliman. I’m eighteen years old and I have been detained in Dilley, Texas since June 2025 with my family. Every morning we wake up wondering how much more of this we can take because nine months has felt like an eternity.” Habiba graduated high school in May. She “was chosen as one of the `best and brightest’ students in the state and was recognized by a picture with the mayor with a scholarship from the Colorado Springs Gazette. She wants to be a doctor and dreams of Harvard medical school.” She stills dream of Harvard … and she dreams of freedom: ““We forgot what it feels like to be free. We miss what it feels like to wake up in our own beds with our phones next to us. We dream about how we want our first meal together as a family to be pizza and then cake. We dream of a time when each one of us will be in school and will be able to work on his future. We dream of a normal life where we still are able to make a difference in the world.” We dream we dream we dream … But, Habiba adds, “this place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.”

No child should ever become collateral damage. This place broke something in us. Something that I don’t know if we will ever be able to fix.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: 9-year-old child / Texas Tribune)

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Households with children experienced a sharp increase in food insufficiency soon after the eviction moratorium ended

March 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment

We live amid (reports of) orchestrated, organized violence against children – bombs dropping on schools in Gaza, Iran, Sudan; children kidnapped by masked agents of the State across the United States; children strip-searched in prisons across the world; and so much more performed in the name of “national security”. These all garner and deserve whatever attention they get … but we must remember, they don’t come out of the blue. They may be atrocities, but they are not anomalies. For decades we have drowned children in daily trauma, all in the name of development, property rights, national security, societal well-being, and the list goes on.

Consider, for example, the situation of children and eviction in the United States. A recent study, “‘The rent eats first’: Did ending the national eviction moratorium increase food insufficiency among renters in the United States?”, found exactly what one would expect. With the end of the moratorium, food insufficiency increased among renters. Black renters suffered the impact more than renters of other racial identities (in particular white renters). Women renters felt the impact most strongly. Lower income renters suffered more widely than other income renters. As the researchers noted, none of this was a surprise. But then they note, “Most strikingly, households with children experienced a sharp increase in food insufficiency soon after the revocation of the eviction moratorium”. Most strikingly … and yet not striking at all. In the United States, as elsewhere, eviction targets and impacts women and children first.

We have known this for a long time. Three years ago, in a widely disseminated study, the Eviction Lab found that, in the United States, those most threatened by eviction are young children. Each year, children under age 18 represent 40% of those threatened with eviction. In a discussion of the study, the authors note, “Across the life-course, the risk of experiencing an eviction—a deeply traumatizing event—is highest during childhood. Evicted children face increased risk of food insecurity, exposure to environmental hazards, academic challenges, and a range of long-term physical and mental health problems. We now know that nearly three million children face these risks every single year …. Our results demonstrate the disparate impact of eviction faced by at least two protected classes [under the Fair Housing Act]: Black renters and renters with children. As eviction filing rates return to pre-pandemic levels, it’s these renters who will pay the price.”

Since then, children have “graduated” from “food insecurity”, meaning “households were, at times, unable to acquire adequate food for one or more household members”  to “food insufficiency”, meaning a household does not have enough to eat. We have “progressed” from hunger to starvation. This is us, a nation whose policies subject children to trauma in the name of property rights, urban development, “progress”. Do not be surprised at the levels and range of atrocity committed upon the lives of “our” children. For they are the future … and the future is starving.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Käthe Kollwïtz, “Hunger” / MOMA)

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“Children are going to die in this country needlessly, more and more are going to die because of what’s happening here”

February 19, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Two-month-old Juan Nicolás

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”                               Matthew 19:14

On February 17, 2026, PBS New reported, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced recently it will not review Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine despite late-stage trials showing it was safe and effective.” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, noted, “This sent chills up the spines of all of us in public health and the vaccine world because it’s so arbitrary.” While an overwhelming majority of the FDA staff favored proceeding with the review, one member, Vinay Prasad, the chief medical and scientific officer and director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, killed the review. Even The Wall Street Journalobjected, in an editorial titled “Vinay Prasad’s Vaccine Kill Shot: Does the White House know the harm he’s doing to public health?” Yes, yes it does. Dr. Osterholm described the harm, “Children are going to die in this country needlessly, more and more are going to die because of what’s happening here”.

While the refusal to review was reversed on February 18, the reasons given were not that the government wanted to avoid the prospect of children dying in this country needlessly. They don’t.

On February 18, 2026, the same day the FDA reversed its decision, the San Antonio Current reported, “Two-month-old ICE detainee Juan Nicolás deported while sick with bronchitis”. Two-month-old Juan Nicolás was being held in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. Two days earlier, the San Antonio Current reported that two-month-old Juan Nicolás was “choking on his own vomit… and having respiratory issues”. At that point, Juan Nicolás had spent a month, or half of his life, in detention. According to U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, “His life is in danger.”

On February 17, the San Antonio Current reported that Juan Nicolás was “rushed to the hospital”, where he was diagnosed with bronchitis. Despite that diagnosis, Juan Nicolás was released and rushed back to Dilley.

Juan Nicolás will not die needlessly in this country … because, the following day, he was deported, rushed out of the country. U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, explained, “After a discussion with their attorney, I have confirmed that Juan, his 16-month old sister, his mom and his dad have been deported. According to their attorney, the family was deported with only the money that they had in their commissary—a total of $190.” According to Univision reporter Lidia Terrazas, the family was “practically abandoned” in Mexico. Problem solved.

Children are going to die in this country needlessly, more and more are going to die because of what’s happening here.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: San Antonio Current / Instagram / Lidia Terrazas)

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“Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this.”

February 15, 2026 by 1 Comment

A self-portrait Kamilla made while her parents spoke to NBC News.

“Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?”
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

NBC News released a report this week, “‘Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this’: A family’s nightmare in ICE detention”. The report opens: “Nikita and his wife, Oksana, fled Russia in desperation two years ago, believing America was their only hope of giving their three children a life free of fear and oppression. Instead, those children are growing up behind the razor-wire fences of a South Texas detention center, among hundreds of other families swept up in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.” What else is there to say, really? Plenty.

The three children are Kirill, 13; Konstantin, 4; Kamilla, 12. The family has been held in Dilley Immigration Processing Center for four months … and counting.

Konstantin was once a social, outgoing child. Now, surrounded by guards, who “are just as tough as the guards at the adult facilities,” and constant sharp noises, Konstantin cries a lot and keeps to himself. Actually, the guards at Dilley are tougher than guards at adult facilities, inasmuch as they are “guarding” children. Other than guards, what precisely are the dangers the children face?

Kirill taught himself to play piano and then attended music school. A bright and talented child … who now “spends most days withdrawn, waking at night with anxiety and panic attacks”.

Kamilla is a dancer who loves to perform. She now has partial hearing loss, “thanks” largely to the conditions at Dilley, which include whatever is worse than substandard health and medical care. She now lives in constant pain, with little or no relief. When her mother made a makeshift headband, to cover and protect the ear, the guards removed it, claiming it was “contraband”. Kamilla cried. Again, what are the guards “guarding”?

With Kamilla’s birthday approaching, she was asked if she had any wishes. She replied she had only one, “To get out of here.”

Kamilla’s case is not an isolated one: “When several children fell ill with stomach ailments at Dilley, medical staff refused to treat them unless they had already vomited at least eight times.” A “medical staff” that refused to treat ill children is not a medical staff. Period.

In January of this year, an 18-month-old at Dilley had dangerously low blood-oxygen levels. The parents knew something was terribly wrong. For weeks, they begged for someone to address the child’s illness. No one did. Finally, after week, she was taken to a regional children’s hospital, where she was treated for treated her for pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV and severe respiratory distress. She stayed in the hospital for a ten days. She was prescribed medication. She was then returned to Dilley, where the “medical staff” refused to administer the drugs.

When “medical care” means refusal to care in any way, when the food is poisonous, when the “education” is such that children stop reading, when pianists go silent and the dancers sit all day, there can be only one wish: “To get out of here” Are we sleeping, while others suffer? Are we sleeping now? Tomorrow, when we wake, if we wake or think we do, what shall we say of today?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: NBC News)

 

COMMENTS:

Mari: wow, this makes me cry. So sad, this is the moment to do something !!

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Cruelty: As eviction rates rise, more children are being listed on eviction proceedings

July 9, 2024 by Leave a Comment

 

             “Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible”
Maggie Smith, Good Bones

Ron Padgett opens his poem “The Absolutely Huge and Incredible Injustice in the World” with a simple question, “Why are we so mean?” That question came to mind recently reading the opening to a news report, “A housing advocate in central Ohio warns that more kids are being listed on eviction proceedings, as eviction rates increase. Though the problem isn’t widespread, it can have huge consequences on the children’s future access to credit and rental housing.” Children are being listed as defendants in eviction cases. While the number of cases is not great, why is there a number at all? And why must we be `convinced’ that this is a terrible thing? Why must we be `persuaded’ that listing a child on an eviction filing will affect and endanger that child’s well-being, possibly for the rest of their life? Why do we require studies to demonstrate that eviction, in fact housing precarity of any sort, has long term detrimental impacts on children? Why are we so mean?

The article under question focuses on Franklin County, in central Ohio. Franklin County is home to Columbus, Ohio, the state capital and the most populous city in Ohio. It’s also the home to Ohio State University. According to the 2020 Census, Franklin County held around 1,280,000 residents, of whom close to 61% are White, and a little close to 23% are Black.

According to Gene Edwards, Franklin County’s Municipal Court Legal Director and magistrate, “Franklin County is experiencing an absolute wave in evictions. We are seeing more evictions come in everyday than we have ever felt in our lives. We are on track this year to exceed 24,000 evictions. That would be setting a record. Last year, we set a record.” According to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, eviction filings in Columbus are up 38% relative to their pre-Covid average. In March of this year, eviction filings were 2% above the pre-Covid average; in April, 36%; in May 62%. Who’s receiving these eviction filings? 32% of renters in Columbus are Black; 53% are White. 49% of those receiving eviction filings were Black; 38% were White. 58% were female. None of this is surprising, but it needs to be said.

In all of this predictable, and predictably dismal, stew, how do children figure, and, more to the point, how do children’s names end up on eviction filings? Study after study, article after article, has documented that the epicenter of the national eviction crisis is single Black women heads of households. While, again, it should be obvious, it needs to be said that “heads of households” means accompanied by children. That’s how children figure in this crisis, today and for decades to come. How do their names appear on eviction filings? The landlord’s attorney adds the children’s names to the eviction notice. Those names are not on the lease, if there is a lease. In many instances, those children were not yet born when the family moved into the unit. Yet somehow they’re now responsible, and they can be held responsible for the rest of their lives.

Evictions can follow a person for life. In a world in which many credit history apps don’t distinguish between eviction filings and evictions, eviction filings can haunt a person forever, irrespective of how the case was adjudicated. As Carlie Boos, Executive Director of the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio, noted, “It means that you are absolutely going to see children who were, you know, two years old, three years old today. They will grow up, they will get an education. They will go out into the world or they’re going to try and rent their first apartment, and they’re going to be denied, because there’s an eviction record from when they were a baby sitting there”.

Why do we allow, and even encourage, this cruelty? How many studies are needed before we understand that the “eviction crisis” is a war on Black women? How many articles and studies are needed before we address our complicity in the erasure of the futures of a whole generation of Black children, growing up today? Why are we so mean?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic Source: The New York Times)

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We do it for the children … prison, solitary, torture, trauma, and beyond

June 26, 2023 by Leave a Comment

“In a democracy, we do not put children in cages. Period. There is no debating it. Nothing you can say to me will justify putting children in cages.”             Patricia Okoumou

Ethan Weinstein, a reporter for the VTDigger, covers southeastern Vermont. Of late, he’s had reason to cover the Vermont Department of Corrections. In a recent interview, speaking of the high and rising number of deaths, and particularly suicides, in Vermont’s prisons and jails, Weinstein noted, “There’s a belief that things are going to be messed up there, that you’re not going to be receiving adequate care. And so it has felt like, in order for something to be a story, someone has to die. You know, it’s not enough to hear that a person has a concussion, and they can’t see a doctor, or a person has been prescribed a medication their whole life and has been refused it once they’ve been incarcerated. It just seems as though our tolerance for issues within our prisons is so high that it can be hard to get people to care about this.” What if that person is a child? Does that matter? Does it matter to you? Recent news reports would suggest the answer is No.

For years, the United States has `struggled’ with an epidemic of seclusion rooms and physical restraints in schools. Time and again, one district or another has been forced to `discover’ its own alarming propensity for torture of children in the name of schooling. This past week, Alabama put a new twist on an old story by … doing absolutely nothing. Last week, Al.com, Alabama’s largest news site, reported that, after six years waiting, the state had still not provided any requested data on school seclusion and restraint incidents. In March 2017, Al.com requested data. Nothing came. In 2020, they tried again, and, again, no response. In June 2022, they tried again, and again received nothing. Public school districts are required to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Education every year. The last year Alabama reported on was 2017 – 2018. As far as Al.com can tell, Alabama’s state department doesn’t seem to care. The Alabama state department is supposed to collect information from every school district every year. It doesn’t, and what it does manage to get doesn’t seem to undergo any review.

In 2017 – 2018, Alabama reported nearly 600 incidents of seclusion, of putting a child in a locked room often for hours, and often for days, on end. The use of seclusion rooms in schools was outlawed by the Alabama legislature in 2011, but it’s not significant enough to warrant enforcement.

In 2021, an Aboriginal youth, Michael, was `referred’ to Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, in Queensland, Australia. Cleveland is almost always described as “troubled.” Michael, who lives with intellectual disability, was charged with a violent assault. He spent 744 days in detention, awaiting trial. On Friday, at trial, it was `discovered’ that Michael had spent 500 days in solitary confinement, “regularly locked in his cell for more than 20 hours a day.” The explanation for this was “staffing issues”. Rodney Dillon, a Palawa man and Indigenous rights advocate, has a better explanation, “This system is not about looking after human beings, this is about torture. It’s a torture chamber, that’s what it is. The effect this will have on this kid’s life is irreparable. That kid will be damaged for the rest of his life; that kid will never, ever move on from what’s happened. That is the worst thing you can do to any human being, is put them in solitary confinement … We need to change this system, the racism that’s in this system, and the hatred.”

What exactly are children meant to learn, the ones thrown into solitary, the ones watching their friends go into solitary? Why are we so invested in seclusion and restraint of children, generally, and of children living with disabilities, particularly? What terrible crime have these children committed that entire systems invest so much in maintaining practices that constitute torture?

What terrible crime have these children committed? Must they die to be a story, for us to care? Remember Alan Kurdi, the two-year child who drowned September 2015 and was famously photographed, dead, on the beach? Remember? In England, in 2018, ten-year-old Muhammad Amin entered and won a youth poetry contest. Rather than throwing children into solitary, rather than torturing them, rather than only hearing (of) them when they’ve died, we should listen to them. Listen to Muhammad Amin listening to Alan Kurdi:

Alan Kurdi
by Muhammad Amin

Alan Kurdi lies on the beach
Like autumn’s fallen leaf
Seagulls soar in the sky
Singing a song of grief

His eyes are bright pools
Swimming in the deep
Are forgotten faces full
Of pain, faces that weep

Alan Kurdi doesn’t breakfast
No sugar puffs or corn flakes
Snap, crackle and pop. Bombs
Fall like little earthquakes

He has never played nintendo
Nor xbox, truth or dare
Only hide-and-seek with IED’s
Landmines and the snipers stare

The water lapping at his feet
His body lies on the sand
Still, silent, frozen, frail
A ragdoll from another land

Alan Kurdi’s voice reaches me
“Amin, Amin listen to me
I was put into the sea
Like Moses. Don’t you see?”

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Anna Vignet)

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We must address the cruelty: Of eviction

August 1, 2021 by 4 Comments

At midnight last night, the CDC moratorium on evictions ended. Despite the Delta variant of Covid raging through the country, and the certainty that eviction increases the incidence of Covid. Despite billions of dollars in rent relief sitting idly, criminally, in state coffers, frozen because no one could figure out that for people in distress to have to go through intricate application processes would be both inhuman and futile. Despite the knowledge that the first to suffer, and the ones to suffer most deeply and for the longest period, will be children, especially children of color, children in low to moderate income households. Children. Despite the knowledge that single mothers, which means children, will be the ones to suffer. Despite months of mounting debts, of mounting certainty of imminent eviction once the moratorium ends, despite months of stasis, now, at whatever follows the eleventh hour, now the agencies are `scrambling’. Where were they, where was everyone, for the past six months? We must address the cruelty of this moment. We must address the cruelty of eviction.

Over $40 billion has been allocated for rent relief. That money has been sent to state and local governments, who were supposed to pass it on. Most haven’t. As of now, $3 billion has been distributed. State and local governments `explain’ that there was so much to do, so much money, so many applicants, so much staffing, so much so muchness. Many state and local governments didn’t open their application processes until June. They knew when the moratorium was set to end. State and local government after state and local government now `urges’ and `encourages’ tenants and landlords to apply. Even though, as in Louisiana, of 24,000 tenants who already applied, only 3,000 have been approved. That’s 24,000 households, of which 3,000 have been approved. Those 3,000 don’t necessarily have checks in hand, but they do have approval. For the others, the line has gone dead. And for the other others, the ones who waited to apply or didn’t know, the sky has fallen, as the hospitals in Louisiana fill to overflowing. 

This was all decreed decades ago, with the decision to finance everything with real estate taxes, giving corporate landlords complete and total dominion. They used eviction filings as a routine means of threatening tenants. They continued to do so during the moratorium, and with impunity. Only now, Congress is just beginning to investigate major corporate landlords who routinely  violated the moratorium as well as the rights and lives of thousands of people across the United States.

And what about the children? Children will be the first and last to suffer, and by all accounts, we just don’t care. Or worse. We take pleasure in the suffering of children, other people’s children. In July, Spain extended its eviction moratorium until the end of October. Specifically, Spain extended its eviction for vulnerable people, including children, minors, dependents, and survivors of sexual violence. Spain has also provided additional support, financial and otherwise, to those who have suffered economic distress due to and during the pandemic. Why does Spain cherish its children more than the United States?

Cruelty occurs when people commit violence because they’re indifferent to the pain of others or they take pleasure in inflicting pain on others. The cruelty of eviction addresses our system of disposable populations, whole Black and Brown neighborhoods and communities, all trying to make it through another day, all told, “Too bad. We tried. The check is in the mail, but you won’t get it. So sorry.” The eviction moratorium ended last night at midnight. The check is in the mail. 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: The New York Times / Sally Ryan)

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South Africa confirms the rights of all children to education!

December 18, 2019 by 3 Comments

It’s the end of the year and decade, and we need some good news, right? As the United States continues to throw migrant children into the abyss of immigrant detention and India throws millions under the bus of lost citizenship, last week a court in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa came through. In a case concerning the rights of 37 undocumented children to attend school, the Judge President of the Eastern Cape Selby Mbenenge, writing for the Makhanda High Court, emphatically declared that the Constitution of South Africa enshrines the right of all children to access to education. Judge Mbenenge opened his decision: “Central to this application is the right to basic education enshrined, without any qualification, in section 29 of the Constitution … Education is a mighty tool in the hands of the possessor. Its efficacy depends largely on the bulwark that surrounds it – the right to education … In our constitutional dispensation basic education is a pivot of transformation.” Children matter, democracy matters, education matters, rights matter, the Constitution matters, courts matter, judges matter, decency matters, compassion matters, transformation matters … without any qualification. Amen.

Who are the undocumented children of South Africa? According to the Department of Basic Education, of the 998,433 undocumented children currently enrolled in public schools, 880,968 are South African citizens. A little over 88% of those children are South African. Of the 37 children represented in the Eastern Cape case, 23, or a bit more than 60%, are South African citizens. South African children born at home often don’t have birth certificates. There are other barriers. Eight of the children live in a safe house for abandoned and orphaned children. Their situation didn’t matter. Without proper papers, they were expelled. Who are the undocumented children of South Africa? Poor. Black. Vulnerable. But first, they are children.

The Makhanda High Court has said that children’s situation does not matter, because they are children and thus are due an education, and that obligation is without qualification. Section 29 of the Constitution of South Africa reads:

“Section 29 Education

 (1) Everyone has the right –

(a) to a basic education, including adult basic education; and

(b) to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible.

(2) Everyone has the right to receive education in the official language or languages of their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably practicable. In order to ensure the effective access to, and implementation of, this right, the state must consider all reasonable educational alternatives, including single medium institutions, taking into account –

(a) equity;

(b) practicability; and

(c) the need to redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws and practices.

(3) Everyone has the right to establish and maintain, at their own expense, independent educational institutions that –

(a) do not discriminate on the basis of race;

(b) are registered with the state; and

(c) maintain standards that are not inferior to standards at comparable public educational institutions.”

Everyone means everyone. Tell that to the governments of the United States and India, and all those fortress nations in between and beyond. This is a victory for vulnerable children as it is a victory for inalienable rights without qualification. Transformation is still possible. 

 

(Photo credit: Daily Maverick)

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For the world that abandons children, the future is the house of the dead

August 8, 2019 by 1 Comment

“Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease.”   Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I stay stuck on this point. There is a new outrage every day, but I try to remember children. If I were one of them, away in a strange place, all alone, surrounded by strangers, and my mother or father or both were taken away, how could I possibly cope? If I were the father of a child taken away from me to who knows where, and I had no idea if I would see my child again, how could I continue to function?” Charles Blow

Welcome to the horror show of contemporary “life”. Around the world, reports indicate that nation-States, so-called democratic nation-States, have formally, finally, and once again decided it’s time to abandon children, to criminalize their childhood, and to turn the future into so much rotted carnage. In Loiret, the government plans to “release” 150 unacccompanied migrant teenagers from State services. The plan is no plan. Put them out and let them fend for themselves. Australia anticipates “removing” triple the number of Aboriginal children within 20 years.Over thirty children are being forced to suffer “searing temperatures” on board a ship in the Mediterranean because Italy and Malta refuse to let them disembark. Yesterday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 680 people, workers in various plants in Mississippi. Hundreds of children of all ages were left behind, without a moment’s notice or concern. Children are not the concern of the State. Families are scared to death. Story after story appears of children of immigrant workers in Mississippi left at school with no one knowing what to do; children on board a boat in the Mediterranean with no one knowing what to do; Aboriginal children in Australia being removed from families with absolutely no consultation with the community and, again, no one knowing what to do; already precarious, isolated children in France being thrown into the streets and no one knowing what to do. This is our knowledge, the knowledge of no one knowing what to do. This is the future. Cover the mirrors with black sheets. Turn off the lights. Close the door. But first, remember to devastate the children. 

(Photo Credit: Rogelio V. Solis / Associated Press / New York Times)

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India votes and `suffers’ women prisoners and their children. And we call it democracy.

May 24, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Elections matter. Australia voted, catastrophically, and immediately after suicide attempts and other forms of self-harm spiked among refugee and asylum seeker prisoners on Manus Island and Nauru. Elections matter. India voted, catastrophically, and the news for women inmates in prisons and jails across India is grim. The last five years of the Modi regime have meant ongoing and increasing violation of women prisoners’ rights, autonomy and well-being, on one hand, and a policy of increased opacity, on the other. In both instance, Australia and India, the State blames the women and children for the violence and torture the State visits upon their bodies and souls … and they call it democracy.

India went to the polls from April 11 to May 23. While it had little or no impact, the same week the elections began, the National Crimes Record Bureau, NCRB, finally released its Prison Statistics India 2016 Report. That report came in after an unexplained years’ long delay. The Prison Statistics India 2015 Report was issued in a timely manner in September 2016. The 2015 Report opens: “I am privileged to release the 21stedition of `Prison Statistics India’ for the year 2015, an annual publication of National Crime Records Bureau since the year 1995.” In 1996, the National Crime Records Bureau was tasked with publishing an annual report on the conditions in India’s prisons and jails. For 21 years, it did so, dutifully and faithfully. And then … it stopped. This silence concerning the conditions of prisons, jails and, most importantly, prisoners was matched by an equivalent “failure” by the NCRB to publish its annual Crime In India report for 2017. This was the first “failure” of this annual report since 1953. Taken together, the lack of reporting begins to look more like refusal than failure: “All this has happened on the watch of a government that is known for being less than forthright about official data.”

This refusal to provide detailed data continues throughout the Prison Statistics India 2016 Report. Most glaringly, the new report says nothing about caste or religion. Whereas earlier reports described, in detail, the situation and conditions in prisons and jails for Dalits, members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, members of religious minorities, especially Muslim, this last `report’, the methodology of which is ostensibly the same as previous reports, says nothing. According to the most recent census, 16.6% of India is Dalit, while Dalits made up 21.4% of India’s prison and jail population. Likewise, Scheduled Tribes make up 8.6% of the Indian population and 12.8% of the prison and jail population. Many noted these discrepancies and strove to address them. The Modi regime has addressed them by erasing not only categories but whole sectors of the population. This is not failure to represent, this is refusal to represent, and it’s part and parcel of the caste and religion-based politics of the Modi regime and of his political party.

Where are the women in this picture? Everywhere and nowhere. Before the latest report came out, it was already known that prisons and jails in India are particularly damaging to women. First, they’re designed for men. Second, they have less access to facilities and resources within prisons and jails. Third, they have less access to resources outside of prisons and jails. For example, “a woman, nearly 70 years old, has been in jail for the past 18 months on kidnapping and rape charges … While five others, including two male co-accused, have been released on bail, she continues to be behind bars. Having lost her husband during her incarceration, she has no one to reach out to. What purpose is being served by keeping her inside?”

Further, over the preceding fifteen years, the rate of men’s incarceration has increased by 33%, while that of women has grown by 61%. Despite this growth of women’s incarceration, neither budgets nor infrastructure has increased. Thus, the women’s prisons are severely overcrowded and filthy; the food and hygiene are deplorable; and there is virtually no physical and mental health care. For Dalit and Adivasi women, the conditions are predictably worse. According to a recent study, “76% (279 prisoners) of prisoners sentenced to death in India belong to backward classes and religious minorities, with all 12 female prisoners belonging to backward classes and religious minorities.” None of this is in the most recent NCRB report.

The NCRB report does provide some data, and the most salient fact is that 67% of India’s prisoners are “undertrial”, meaning awaiting trial … meaning officially innocent. From 2014 to 2016, the number of undertrial, or remand, prisoners rose 3.6%, from 282,879 to 293,058 in 2016. Close to 71% of undertrial prisoners are deemed illiterate or low literate. While among convicted prisoners, prisoners 30 – 50 years old predominate, among undertrials the majority are 18 to 30 years old. 72% of women prisoners are awaiting trial. Much more than with male prisoners, women prisoners are overwhelming young, minimally educated, poor … and formally innocent. Additionally, there are 1,809 children in prisons and jails across India, and they all are cared for by their mothers, women prisoners. Of the 1809 children living behind bars, 78% of their mothers are awaiting trial, minimally educated, poor … and formally innocent. 

Elections matter. Information matters. Transparency matters. Democracy matters. The United States “discovered” this week that a 10-year-old girl from El Salvador died in custody, last September, and that the State lied and hid that girl-child’s death. We are dismayed but not shocked or surprised. Refugee and asylum prisoners in Australia engage in increased self-harm and suicide attempts following the Australian national elections. Some are finally, in some cases after five-year delays, sent to the mainland for `care’. India cages more and more Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim young women and children, all formally innocent, and covers it in the civil equivalent of the fog of war. And we call it democracy.

 

(Photo Credit: The Tribune India)

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