{"id":1128,"date":"2011-12-16T07:31:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T14:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2016-12-16T04:44:36","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T11:44:36","slug":"haunts-they-are-neither-mules-nor-witches-they-are-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=1128","title":{"rendered":"They are neither mules nor witches. They are women."},"content":{"rendered":"

Janice Bronwyn Linden<\/p><\/div>\n

Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser. Janice Bronwyn Linden. Sixteen elderly women, unnamed.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded by the Saudi Arabian government. The charge was witchcraft and sorcery.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Janice Bronwyn Linden was executed, by lethal injection, by the Chinese government. The charge was drug smuggling, of being a `mule.\u2019<\/p>\n

On Monday, it was reported that, in one district of one province in Mozambique, from January to November of this year, sixteen elderly women had been accused of witchcraft and then were murdered.<\/p>\n

Witches. Mules.<\/p>\n

Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser<\/a> was arrested in 2009. She was in her sixties. The charge was that she engaged in unorthodox healing methods<\/a>. She charged people as much as $800 a session for \u2026 the claim of a cure. There is no way of knowing if this was, indeed, a fraud or if Nasser believed in her methods. She was never given the chance to explain. Instead, she was deemed \u201ca danger to Islam\u201d, and that was that.<\/p>\n

Janice Bronwyn Linden<\/a> was a thirty-five year old South African woman, from KwaZulu Natal, who was arrested in 2008 for smuggling three kilograms of crystal methamphetamine<\/a>. The South African government tried to intervene, tried to appeal to the Chinese government for clemency. As is the practice in China, Linden was not informed of her impending execution until the morning of the day she was to die. Her family is distraught<\/a> and despondent. South Africa, at least according to discussions in online forums and newspapers, is divided as to the execution<\/a>. Many feel Linden deserved her fate. Why? She was a mule. She smuggled drugs into China. She should have known better. She `chose\u2019 her path. She was a mule.<\/p>\n

In Mozambique, in the district of Marromeu in the province of Sofala, women elders are under attack. A group of women elders, mulheres da terceira idade, women of the third stage, explained that when young men encounter failure, in work, in school, in life, they blame the elder women, they charge them with witchcraft, and then, filled with righteous indignation, they murder them. The women asked<\/a>: \u201cEstas situa\u00e7\u00f5es est\u00e3o a ser frequentes na nossa sociedade . Ser\u00e1 que possuir 50 anos de idade deve constituir motivo para a idosa ser considerada feiticeira e condenada \u00e0 morte?\u201d \u201cThese situations<\/a> are becoming common in our society. Is being old sufficient reason for being considered a witch and being condemned to death?\u201d<\/p>\n

Witches. Mules. These are terms that legitimate the murder of women. And they are terms of the current period, our period. They are the names of what is becoming common in our society. The real story<\/a> is not crime but women\u2019s power and audacity, \u201cthe struggle between orthodox men of the Establishment and an unorthodox woman making claims on forms of social power and authority. Ms. Nasir was low on the social hierarchy but making claims to high status by virtue of magical gifts. She posed not so much a danger to Islam as a danger to the authority of the clerics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real crime is the witch-hunt<\/a>. Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser. Janice Bronwyn Linden. The sixteen women elders. They are neither witches nor mules. They are women. Remember that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Photo Credit: South Africa History On Line<\/a>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser. Janice Bronwyn Linden. Sixteen elderly women, unnamed. On Monday, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded by the Saudi Arabian government. The charge was witchcraft and sorcery. On Monday, Janice Bronwyn Linden was executed, by lethal injection, by the Chinese government. The charge was drug smuggling, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1475,1482,5126,114,5228,556,1476,5227,1483,5055,1477,83,1479,1480,5085],"class_list":["post-1128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-amina-bint-abdul-halim-bin-salem-nasser","tag-capital-punishment","tag-china","tag-dan-moshenberg","tag-execution","tag-haunts","tag-janice-bronwyn-linden","tag-mozambique","tag-mule","tag-prison","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-south-africa","tag-witch","tag-witch-hunt","tag-women","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20753,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/20753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}