Protest And Honor Killings: Women In This World
By Countercurrents.org
24 September, 2012
Countercurrents.org
The world encounters the reality it creates: women commoditized, dishonored, killed. Protests arise also.
Faces, types, motivations, styles and languages of the protests differ. A few of those are commoditized also. Philosophy, ideology and class character, fundamental questions, shape the protests.
The commoditization, types of protest and killing unmask character of societies and ideologies, and the state of women. A few protests have hidden agenda. Types of protests are fundamentally different from the type of protest the working women organize at appropriate time with appropriate organization.
A Guardian reader informed: “[I]n some African countries women have stripped naked to make vital political points in dangerous situations. [A]t a demonstration in Kenya about trying to save the environment, women took their clothes off to protect themselves from being beaten by police. [W]omen often do not have much more than their bodies to defend themselves with. In Ghana last year, a woman journalist was stripped by a policeman when she asked difficult questions to a public personality involved in a big court case.”
From Paris, Kim Willsher reported in The Observer on September 23, 2012: A group of women activists from Ukraine have set up a centre to teach women the art of naked protest. The report “Femen's topless warriors start boot camp for global feminism” [1] said:
In a chaotic and crumbling former public wash house, Ukrainian feminist Inna Shevchenko was explaining the way a large leather punch bag hanging from the rafters might be used by the foot soldiers of a new generation of feminists.
As Inna prepared to welcome recruits to the feminist group Femen's first "international training camp", it was clear that the instruction would not be all ideological. The talk was of "war", "soldiers", "terrorism" and "enemies". Was it not curious, one French journalist asked, that Inna and her warriors had adopted the language of combat to describe their mission?
Was it not also inconsistent, another asked, that the new feminists were using nakedness to rail against female exploitation? In a week that had seen the banning of photographs of a topless Duchess of Cambridge, it was certainly topical.
"Ah, but we have a different idea; we are talking about peaceful war, peaceful terrorism," Inna said. "We are taking off our clothes so people can see that we have no weapons except our bodies. It's a powerful way to fight in a man's world. We live with men's domination and this is the only way to provoke them, the only way to get attention.
"We don't hide our bodies, we don't hide our faces, we confront our enemies face to face. We look them in the eyes and we have to be well prepared physically for that."
There was, she explained patiently, no contradiction in going topless or naked to protest against what they view as the three main evils of a global "patriarchal society": sexual exploitation, dictatorship and religion. Protesting naked, as Femen's slogans insist, is liberté, a reappropriation of their own bodies as opposed to pornography or snatched photographs which are exploitation.
On a less intellectual level, taking their clothes off ensures a lot of publicity.
"There is an ideology behind protesting topless, but we quickly realized that if we took our tops off and screamed loudly it was a good way to get attention," Alexandra Shevchenko, one of Femen's founders, said. "It works. Of course, people talk about our nakedness, but they are also listening to our message."
She added: "Believe me, it is really difficult for me to take my clothes off and stand in a public place. But this is the fight, and the fight is never easy."
The Femen was created in Ukraine in 2008 to protest against sexism, prostitution and the exploitation of women there. Inna, 22, second daughter of an army officer, and a journalism graduate, took off her top and joined the protests, a decision that would cost her a well-paid job as a press officer at Kiev town hall. In August, she fled Ukraine after a well-publicized stunt in which she wielded a chainsaw semi-naked to chop down a large wooden Orthodox cross in support of the jailed Russian feminists Pussy Riot: "Afterwards I was followed for three days by the secret services. In fact they're not very secret, they like you to know they are following you to make you scared. One morning they tried to break into my apartment. I thought it was a sign I was in danger. I wasn't scared about being in prison. I have already been in prison many times, but there are worse things."
An invitation from a group of feminists in France brought her to Paris, where Femen has set up camp in the Lavoir Moderne Parisien, in Paris's poor and ethnically mixed Goutte d'Or district.
On the first floor, a vast airy room is plastered with Femen campaign slogans: "Nudity is freedom", "Let's get naked", "I am a woman, not an object".
If the male journalists and photographers are disappointed to find the girls fully dressed in the international uniform of jeans and T-shirts, they have the good grace not to show it.
Outside, on the streets of Goutte d'Or, the three tall, beautiful women cut an incongruous path through the veiled and headscarf-wearing women of the large local Muslim community, weaving their pushchairs through the road works. Femen's "Better naked than the burqa" campaign has made few inroads here.
"The decision to bring the fight to France and open a training centre was a French initiative, an invitation from French feminists who sent us a message saying they needed us," said Inna.
"Before then we thought of France as a first world and already feminist country that didn't really need us. Since arriving, I have met many Frenchwomen and they say they need to start the fight again. We are bringing a new face, new blood, a new fight to feminism."
She added: "Classical feminism is like an old sick lady that doesn't work any more. It's stuck in the world of conferences and books. We have the same ideas as the classical feminists, what is different is the form of fight. We fight in a way that will attract young women to the ideology again.
"Early feminists fought for the right for women to wear trousers and jeans and won. Now we can wear trousers and jeans, but when a woman speaks in parliament, do the men listen? It's still a world dominated by men, where women are slaves and where women still do not earn the same or have the same opportunities. So we have to start again. It's the clothing fight all over again."
To that end, Inna is staying in Paris to give her new feminist recruits their "physical and ideological training", while Femen militants Alexandra, 24, and Oxana Shachko, 25, are returning to Kiev, where a similar camp will be established. A third is planned for Brazil, where Femen has a large following, in the run up to the 2016 Olympic Games.
"Soldiers will be born here, but they will not be French soldiers. They will be feminist soldiers, international soldiers," said Inna. "Women in every country need Femen."
Inna admits that the training sessions will not be entirely pacifist. "Feminism should be provocative," she adds. "There's no other way for women to get attention. It's the only action left to us. So the training will be moral but also physical. You have to be in good shape, because at protests you may need to run away or attack the police or jump on a building or a car."
The report concludes with the following information:
The French riot police in their "robocop" outfits have been warned.
Meanwhile, RT informs [2]: Running Femen’s office in Kiev allegedly costs the movement more than $2,500 a month and each member’s salary allegedly comes to around $1,000. The TV program aired on Ukraine’s 1+1 Channel that sent their journalist to investigate Femen’s activities reportedly made a conclusion that “the bare breasts of the feminists covers up somebody’s money and political interests.” They made further assumptions that among their sponsors could be the founder of the Kiev Post media, Jed Sunden – a German millionaire – or a German businesswoman who has often been seen in the company of the Ukrainian feminists.
Simultaneously, like a montage, the world is reminded an honor killing: Banaz Mahmod, a 19-year-old girl, was killed. The murder of Banaz by her family in 2006 shocked the UK. A documentary now tells her story.
Tracy McVeigh’s report, “ Forced marriage, 'They're following me': chilling words of girl who was 'honour killing' victim”, in The Observer on Sept. 23, 2012 [3] said:
On police videotape, the girl named those she believed had intended to kill her. They would try again, she said. "People are following me, still they are following me. At any time, if anything happens to me, it's them," she told the officers calmly. "Now I have given my statement," she asked an officer, "what can you do for me?"
Banaz went back to her family in south London. Three months later she disappeared. It was several months before her raped and strangled body was found and four years before all those responsible for killing her were tracked down and jailed. Her father and uncle planned her death because the teenager had first walked out of a violent and sexually abusive arranged marriage, and later had fallen in love with someone else.
Now a documentary at the Raindance film festival includes for the first time some of the recordings made both by Banaz herself in the run up to her murder and the videotapes of some of the five visits she made to police to report the danger she felt herself to be in and name, before the event, her murderers. She told how her husband was "very strict. Like it was 50 years ago."
"When he raped me it was like I was his shoe that he could wear whenever he wanted to. I didn't know if this was normal in my culture, or here. I was 17." Her family was furious when she finally left him.
The so-called honour killing of Banaz, who was murdered on January 24, 2006, shocked the UK. The police team faced an investigation within an Iraqi Kurdish community, many of whom believed Banaz had deserved her fate for bringing shame on her father – a former soldier who fled Saddam Hussein and had sought asylum in the UK with his wife and five daughters. Mahmod and his brother, Ari, were jailed for life for their part in the murder in 2007, but two other men involved fled to Iraq and were extradited back before being jailed for life in 2010.
Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Goode, who won a Queen's Award for her dedicated efforts in getting justice for Banaz, said she found the case harrowing. In most cases police get justice after a murder for the family. "In this case the family had no interest whatsoever in the investigation. It was an absolute outrage that this girl was missing and nobody cared."
The film shows the continuing effects of the killing, with both Banaz's boyfriend and her sister, Bekhal, still living in hiding and in fear. Bekhal has put her own life at risk by her decision to give evidence against her family in court. She now "watches her back 24/7".
Remembering her sister, she tells the film-makers: "She was a very calm and quiet person. She loved to see people happy and didn't like arguments, she didn't like people raising their voices, she hated it. She just wanted a happy life, she just wanted a family."
The film, Banaz: A Love Story, was made by the former pop star and now music producer and film-maker Deeyah. Norwegian-born, but of Punjabi and Pashtun heritage, Deeyah has herself been subject to honour-related abuse and her singing career was marred by endless death threats that, in part, led to her giving up touring. The story of Banaz, who died because she just wanted to be an ordinary British teenager […] struck an immediate chord with her.
"Despite the horror, what emerges is a story of love," said Deeyah. "What has upset me greatly […] is how absent Banaz was from her own story. Whenever you see a film about someone who has passed you will always have family, friends, people who knew the person, sharing their love, their memories and thoughts about the person who has died. That was just not the case here at all. The only person speaking for Banaz who had known her alive was her sister. Other than that, everyone else in the film came to know Banaz after she had died."
A search for other witnesses to her life proved fruitless. "We tried to find anyone who would have known her, no one came forward," said Deeyah. "Then I came across the videotape with Banaz herself, telling us what her suffocating reality was like. […] I had spent three-and-a-half years working on this film, […] and suddenly here she was, when no one else would come forward to speak about her.
"No one listened to her in her life. As a society we let down Banaz, as her community we let her down. [S]he had to die for people to start learning more about this problem.
"We don't need empty slogans or lip service, we need real concise action on this issue. Living in western societies, we need our lives as 'brown' women to matter as much as any fellow human being."
The incidents tell state of the societies and women in these societies.
Source:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/22/femen-topless-warriors-global-feminism?newsfeed=true
[2] http://rt.com/art-and-culture/news/femen-topless-activist-feminist-665/
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/22/banaz-mahmod-honour-killing
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