BBC News Magazine
A POINT OF VIEW
Clive James
Women who believe liberal values exploit their sexuality have something much greater to fear - the jackboot of dictatorship, says Clive James.
In a week when the troubled parliament of Britain continued to swamp the front pages with tales of fiddle, fraud and the incredible disappearing Speaker, there wasn't much room for news about the parliaments of other countries, but there was one story in the middle pages that might have been calculated to remind us of why democracy really matters. The parliament in Kuwait has just acquired its first four women MPs.
Kuwait is by no means, a perfectly constituted democracy. As far as I can figure out, there is a ruling family whose Emir chooses the government and calls elections for parliament. But women have now been elected to the parliament, by popular vote. It should hardly need saying that this would have been unlikely to happen if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to continue to rule the country by terror, but let's leave his awful memory aside for a moment, if we can, and dare to put forward a general reflection.
Democracy is the best chance for women. Or if that sounds too naive, too pro-western perhaps, then let's put it this way. The absence of democracy is seldom good news for women. Or, to get down to bedrock, if women can't vote for women, then they haven't got many weapons to fight with when they seek justice.
My own view, which I'm ready to hear contested, is that this is the main reason why some feminists in the west have been so slow to get behind those women in the world's all too numerous tyrannies who have to risk their lives to say anything.
It's just too clear a proof that men have a natural advantage when it comes to the application of violence. When you say that women have little chance against men if it comes to a physical battle, you are conceding that there really might be an intractable difference between the genders after all.
Ideological feminists in the West were for a long time reluctant to concede this, because they preferred to believe that there was no real difference, and that all female handicaps were imposed by social stereotyping that could be reversed by argument. But this belief was really possible only in a society where the powers of argument had a preponderance over the powers of violence.
And since many western feminists are still convinced that the social stereotyping of the West is the product of fundamental flaws within liberal democracy itself, they have a tendency to believe that undemocratic societies are somehow valuable in the opposition they offer to the free countries which the feminists are so keen to characterise as not free enough.
I have to pick my words carefully here, because this is the touchiest theme I have ever tackled in these broadcasts, but I do think it's high time to say that if feminist ideologists find liberal democracy unfriendly, they might consider that the absence of liberal democracy is a lot less friendly still.
Helping to give me courage, here, finally, is that quite a lot of women are already saying it. But they tend not to be western pundits. They tend to be women out there, in the thick of a real battle not just an argument. Why their bravery doesn't shame more of our feminist pundits I hesitate to say. It certainly shames me.
This importance of democracy, or at any rate of an amelioration of tyranny, should have become clear when, after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the first provisional government in Iraq included women members. But it didn't become clear, because too many of our commentators wanted to call the provisional government a puppet government, under the control of the US.
Vote best hope
Even as it became steadily more clear that nothing in Iraq was under the control of the US, feminists in the West continued to do a stunning job of ignoring the risks that women in Iraqi public life were running. An Iraqi female MP could get murdered and it was held to be a natural result of US imperialism, almost as if she had been murdered by George W Bush in person.
But she hadn't been. She had been murdered by local men who were making an example of her. They feared what she would bring: the spectre of women claiming an importance equal to that of men.
Last year the excellent Australian feminist journalist Pamela Bone finally died of cancer, but while she was still fighting it she published, in 2005, in response to what she regarded as the thunderous silence that had greeted the stand taken by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an article called "Where are the western feminists?" What Pamela Bone meant was, that she was amazed why so many of her colleagues couldn't see, or didn't want to see, that democracy was the best hope for women.
Pamela Bone was well aware that there is a necessary quarrel about how democracy can be brought about in countries that don't have it, and I hasten to concede that of the two possible main views about the invasion of Iraq, for example, my own view, in favour, soon became the minority view. But Pamela Bone couldn't see how there could be any doubt that women in the countries without democracy were in a battle that they were bound to lose if the men could prevail by force.
Men will always monopolise the means of violence if they can. Women can learn to shoot guns, but there are no all-female armies, and even the Amazons were probably a myth. Women, on the whole, would naturally like to do something else, whereas an army, for too many men, is a home away from home, and often their only home.
It's the only home for the junta in Burma. The junta is in the news again this week because it found a pretext for locking Aung San Suu Kyi into prison, instead of just leaving her helpless under house arrest. The terms of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest were that she should receive no visitors, and some poor demented American
Slow martyrdom
Vietnam veteran made sure that the terms were violated by swimming to her front door.
Like many a head-case he probably just wanted to discuss his theories about how aliens control everything, but the all-male military junta in Burma really does control everything and here was their chance to dump Aung San Suu Kyi into jail until the next election is over.
Aung San Suu Kyi not only has the stature, she has the right, to lead the government of her county. If the public got a chance to say so, she would do so, and bring immeasurable improvement not only to Burma but the whole area.
I say all this because in some moment of optimism I allowed my name to get put on the masthead of the organisation in this country that campaigns for her release, the Burma Campaign, but I have done nothing else for her before today, mainly because I don't believe that my going to dinner with like-minded humanitarians is likely to help much.
What she needs is an invading army, but even if there were one available, armed intervention, since the Iraq incursion, has been out of fashion: no doubt with good reason, but those appalled by the moral cost of toppling a tyrannical regime are still stuck with counting the moral cost incurred by leaving it alone.
The regime in Burma will most likely go on being left alone. Aung San Suu Kyi's slow martyrdom makes the cost obvious. The current best plan for getting her sprung is to bring persuasion to bear on India so that India will bring pressure to bear on the junta, and so on until she grows old and grey.
A better world
Being who she is, she grows old slowly, and at the age of 63 she looks like her own daughter, but time is still against her. If time is all you've got going for you, it isn't much. What justice needs, when it is ranged against naked force, is a contrary force, and the fact that there isn't one is enough to reduce the onlooker to despair.
Despair can coarsen one's judgment. I knew enough about what Saddam Hussein and his talented son Uday were doing to women to want that regime toppled. The price of doing so might have seemed too high, but at least now, six years later, it is no longer official policy to rape a woman in front of her family. There may be unofficial forces still on the loose in Iraq who would like to do that, but the government no longer does it.
Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan still seems worth it when you have read about what the Taliban want to do with any woman who seeks an education, but it's easy to despair when you think of how hard it is to stop them.
Sometimes despair overwhelms us when we read of just a single so-called honour crime in which the men of a family have ruined the life of a daughter for what seems no reason at all, and the men walk free because that's the culture, and the culture runs the government. I felt despair when Aung San Suu Kyi got taken off to jail, and for her I thought I had no despair left.
But heartbreak feels out of place when we see this news story about the four women MPs in Kuwait, and there's a photo of one of them, rejoicing with her friends. I'm looking at the photo right now. Her name is Aseel al Awadhi. She has a merry face and an exultantly elevated thumb. It will be a better world for all of us if women like her are free to do well, and if she could hear us it would be our simple duty to say good luck to you. And another duty, alas, to say: mind how you go.
Showing posts with label honor killing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label honor killing. Show all posts
Friday, May 22, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Iraq: For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual
The Widespread Practice of Female Circumcision in Iraq's North Highlights The Plight of Women in a Region Often Seen as More Socially Progressive
TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq
Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.
There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.
As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.
"This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. "We don't know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it."
Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq --and one of the few places in the world--where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.
The practice, and the Kurdish parliament's refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.
"When the Kurdish people were fighting for our independence, women participated as full members in the underground resistance," said Pakshan Zangana, who heads the women's committee in the Kurdish parliament. "But now that we have won our freedom, the position of women has been pushed backwards and crimes against us are minimized."
Zangana has been lobbying for a law in Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region with its own government, that would impose jail terms of up to 10 years on those who carry out or facilitate female circumcision. But the legislation has been stalled in parliament for nearly a year, because of what women's advocates believe is reluctance by senior Kurdish leaders to draw international public attention to the little-noticed tradition.
The Kurdish region's minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn't think the issue required action by parliament. "Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it," he said.
The practice of female circumcision is extremely rare in the Arab parts of Iraq, according to women's groups. They say it is not clear why the practice -- common in some parts of Africa and the Middle East -- became popular with Iraqi Kurds but not Iraqi Arabs.
Supporters of female circumcision said the practice, which has been a ritual in their culture for countless generations, is rooted in sayings they attribute to the prophet Muhammad, though the accuracy of those sayings is disputed by other Muslim scholars. The circumcision is performed by women on women, and men are usually not involved in the procedure. In the case of Sheelan, her mother informed her father that she was going to have the circumcision performed, but otherwise, he played no role.
Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman's sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares.
"I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure," said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.
Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan's eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said "Of course" and explained that the procedure is painless.
"They just cut off a little bit," she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.
Women's rights groups in Kurdistan are working eagerly to change the perception that the procedure is harmless and that it is required under Islam. They go to villages in rural areas where the practice is most ingrained and tell women and religious leaders of the physical and psychological damage the circumcision can cause. Health experts say the procedure can result in adverse medical consequences for women, including infections, chronic pain and increased risks during childbirth.
Ghamjeen Shaker, a 13-year-old from the Kurdish capital of Irbil, said she is still traumatized from the day she was circumcised. She sits with her legs clenched together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, as if protecting herself from another operation. Indeed, Shaker says she sometimes dreams that the midwife who circumcised her is coming back to perform the procedure again.
She was 5 when her mother sent her out to buy parsley and then locked her in the front yard of their home with six other girls. "I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know exactly where they were going to cut," she recalled. "My family just kept saying, don't worry, this is a social custom we have been doing forever."
"They pinned me to the ground, and I just cried and cried," said Shaker, who spoke barely above a whisper. "I was just so astonished. But now I realize that they want to prevent women from living their lives normally."
Her mother, Shukria Ismaeel Jarjees, a 38-year-old housewife, said she was forced by her relatives and elderly women in the community to have her daughter circumcised. "I made a huge mistake, and now my daughter is always complaining of pain in her pelvis," Jarjees said. Her eyes began to fill with tears. "I now advise my daughters to never circumcise their children."
Shaker hopes to become a social worker focusing on women's issues, in particular other girls traumatized by female circumcision.
"I want to make sure the world understands they cannot silence girls like this," she said.
Susan Faqi Rasheed, president of the Irbil branch of the Kurdistan Women's Union, said that even in the cosmopolitan capital, as many as a third of young girls are circumcised. "When the Kurds hold on to something, they hold on to it strongly," she said. "So now they hold to Islam more than the Arabs."
One of the religious leaders who have been less vocal in demanding female circumcisions is Hama Ameen Abdul Kader Hussein, preacher at the Grand Mosque of Kalar and head of the clergymen's union in Germian. Previously, he preached that female circumcision was required. Now he says it is optional, which Hussein believes has caused the area's rate of female circumcision to drop from 100 percent to about 50 percent.
"If there is any harm in this exercise," he said, "we should not do it."
Despite the outreach efforts, a study of women in more than 300 Kurdish villages by WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, found that 62 percent underwent the procedure.
In Tuz Khurmatu, the most famous practitioner of female circumcision is Maharoub Juwad Nawchas, a 40-year-old midwife with traditional Kurdish tattoos covering her chin. She learned from her mother, who used to perform the procedure for free, though Nawchas now charges 4,000 Iraqi dinars, or just under $3.50, because her husband is disabled and can't work. She has circumcised about 30 girls a year for the past two decades.
On the day she circumcised Sheelan, the midwife began the ritual by laying down an empty white potato sack to serve as her working area. AK-47 assault rifles hung from the wall of the dingy concrete house, and watermelons rested below.
When Sheelan entered the room, her mother, Nawchas and a local woman placed the girl on a tiny wooden stool the size of a brick. The midwife applied yellow antiseptic to her pelvic area and injected her with lignocaine, an anesthetic. Little children peeked through the window to see what the noise was about.
"It's all right, it's all right," Sheelan's mother whispered, as the girl screamed so loudly her face turned red. She tried to bunch up her skirt over her pelvis and shield the area with her hand, but the women jerked her arms back.
Then Nawchas uttered the prayer, made a swift cut, and immediately moved the girl over a pile of ashes to control the bleeding.
The entire ritual took less then 10 minutes.
Back home, Sheelan lay on the floor, unable to move or talk much. She clutched a bag filled with orange soda and candy and barely said anything except that she was in pain.
But she became more animated when asked whether it was worth it to have the operation so her friends and neighbors would be comfortable eating food she prepared. "I would do anything not to have this pain, even if meant they would not eat from my hands," she rasped slowly.
"I just wish that I could be the way I was before the procedure," she said.
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondents Nian Ahmed and Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.
TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq
Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.
There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.
As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.
"This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. "We don't know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it."
Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq --and one of the few places in the world--where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.
The practice, and the Kurdish parliament's refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.
"When the Kurdish people were fighting for our independence, women participated as full members in the underground resistance," said Pakshan Zangana, who heads the women's committee in the Kurdish parliament. "But now that we have won our freedom, the position of women has been pushed backwards and crimes against us are minimized."
Zangana has been lobbying for a law in Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region with its own government, that would impose jail terms of up to 10 years on those who carry out or facilitate female circumcision. But the legislation has been stalled in parliament for nearly a year, because of what women's advocates believe is reluctance by senior Kurdish leaders to draw international public attention to the little-noticed tradition.
The Kurdish region's minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn't think the issue required action by parliament. "Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it," he said.
The practice of female circumcision is extremely rare in the Arab parts of Iraq, according to women's groups. They say it is not clear why the practice -- common in some parts of Africa and the Middle East -- became popular with Iraqi Kurds but not Iraqi Arabs.
Supporters of female circumcision said the practice, which has been a ritual in their culture for countless generations, is rooted in sayings they attribute to the prophet Muhammad, though the accuracy of those sayings is disputed by other Muslim scholars. The circumcision is performed by women on women, and men are usually not involved in the procedure. In the case of Sheelan, her mother informed her father that she was going to have the circumcision performed, but otherwise, he played no role.
Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman's sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares.
"I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure," said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.
Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan's eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said "Of course" and explained that the procedure is painless.
"They just cut off a little bit," she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.
Women's rights groups in Kurdistan are working eagerly to change the perception that the procedure is harmless and that it is required under Islam. They go to villages in rural areas where the practice is most ingrained and tell women and religious leaders of the physical and psychological damage the circumcision can cause. Health experts say the procedure can result in adverse medical consequences for women, including infections, chronic pain and increased risks during childbirth.
Ghamjeen Shaker, a 13-year-old from the Kurdish capital of Irbil, said she is still traumatized from the day she was circumcised. She sits with her legs clenched together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, as if protecting herself from another operation. Indeed, Shaker says she sometimes dreams that the midwife who circumcised her is coming back to perform the procedure again.
She was 5 when her mother sent her out to buy parsley and then locked her in the front yard of their home with six other girls. "I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know exactly where they were going to cut," she recalled. "My family just kept saying, don't worry, this is a social custom we have been doing forever."
"They pinned me to the ground, and I just cried and cried," said Shaker, who spoke barely above a whisper. "I was just so astonished. But now I realize that they want to prevent women from living their lives normally."
Her mother, Shukria Ismaeel Jarjees, a 38-year-old housewife, said she was forced by her relatives and elderly women in the community to have her daughter circumcised. "I made a huge mistake, and now my daughter is always complaining of pain in her pelvis," Jarjees said. Her eyes began to fill with tears. "I now advise my daughters to never circumcise their children."
Shaker hopes to become a social worker focusing on women's issues, in particular other girls traumatized by female circumcision.
"I want to make sure the world understands they cannot silence girls like this," she said.
Susan Faqi Rasheed, president of the Irbil branch of the Kurdistan Women's Union, said that even in the cosmopolitan capital, as many as a third of young girls are circumcised. "When the Kurds hold on to something, they hold on to it strongly," she said. "So now they hold to Islam more than the Arabs."
One of the religious leaders who have been less vocal in demanding female circumcisions is Hama Ameen Abdul Kader Hussein, preacher at the Grand Mosque of Kalar and head of the clergymen's union in Germian. Previously, he preached that female circumcision was required. Now he says it is optional, which Hussein believes has caused the area's rate of female circumcision to drop from 100 percent to about 50 percent.
"If there is any harm in this exercise," he said, "we should not do it."
Despite the outreach efforts, a study of women in more than 300 Kurdish villages by WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, found that 62 percent underwent the procedure.
In Tuz Khurmatu, the most famous practitioner of female circumcision is Maharoub Juwad Nawchas, a 40-year-old midwife with traditional Kurdish tattoos covering her chin. She learned from her mother, who used to perform the procedure for free, though Nawchas now charges 4,000 Iraqi dinars, or just under $3.50, because her husband is disabled and can't work. She has circumcised about 30 girls a year for the past two decades.
On the day she circumcised Sheelan, the midwife began the ritual by laying down an empty white potato sack to serve as her working area. AK-47 assault rifles hung from the wall of the dingy concrete house, and watermelons rested below.
When Sheelan entered the room, her mother, Nawchas and a local woman placed the girl on a tiny wooden stool the size of a brick. The midwife applied yellow antiseptic to her pelvic area and injected her with lignocaine, an anesthetic. Little children peeked through the window to see what the noise was about.
"It's all right, it's all right," Sheelan's mother whispered, as the girl screamed so loudly her face turned red. She tried to bunch up her skirt over her pelvis and shield the area with her hand, but the women jerked her arms back.
Then Nawchas uttered the prayer, made a swift cut, and immediately moved the girl over a pile of ashes to control the bleeding.
The entire ritual took less then 10 minutes.
Back home, Sheelan lay on the floor, unable to move or talk much. She clutched a bag filled with orange soda and candy and barely said anything except that she was in pain.
But she became more animated when asked whether it was worth it to have the operation so her friends and neighbors would be comfortable eating food she prepared. "I would do anything not to have this pain, even if meant they would not eat from my hands," she rasped slowly.
"I just wish that I could be the way I was before the procedure," she said.
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondents Nian Ahmed and Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Jordan: Honour killing sentence could signal tougher stance
A court in Jordan has sentenced a 23-year-old man to 10 years in jail for killing his sister.
He was originally sentenced to death, but this was commuted to give him the chance to repent.
Human rights groups have urged Jordan's King Abdullah to do more to prevent what are known as honour killings.
His Government has abolished the legal provision that had seen those convicted of such killings in the past receive sentences as light as six months.
The harsher punishment delivered by the court in this case may be a sign of greater official determination to curb honour killings in the conservative, tribal-dominated society.
- BBC
He was originally sentenced to death, but this was commuted to give him the chance to repent.
Human rights groups have urged Jordan's King Abdullah to do more to prevent what are known as honour killings.
His Government has abolished the legal provision that had seen those convicted of such killings in the past receive sentences as light as six months.
The harsher punishment delivered by the court in this case may be a sign of greater official determination to curb honour killings in the conservative, tribal-dominated society.
- BBC
Friday, March 7, 2008
West Bank/Gaza: No Day Is a Woman's Day in Gaza
Mahasen Darduna suffers in ways the world recognises; her suffering comes at the hands of the Israelis. But there are many Palestinian women whose suffering the world does not see, because their hell is inflicted on them by Palestinians.
One way and another, no day is a woman's day in Gaza. For all of a week, Mahasen Darduna, 30, has sat day and night by her son's bedside in hospital. The boy, Yahiya, 9, was among the group hit by an Israeli missile while playing football on a field at the Jabaliya refugee camp. Yahia survived, but with severe injuries.
"He needs my support, he has been confined to this bed since he was maimed by the Israeli missile," Mahasen says. But she must also slip away often to see her other five children, who she has moved to her mother-in-law's house in belief they will be safer there. "I think of them constantly when we are apart. I feel terrible: two are getting sick, and they all cry each time we say goodbye. I can't be at both places."
In the same hospital room, Umm Ali Faraj looks after her seven-year-old son, who suffered a cracked skull in a bombing. Umm Ali too has rearranged her family life. Four of her seven children stay with her in the hospital. Umm Ali goes back and forth between hospital and home, cooking for the children and getting them off to school.
Like Mahasen and Umm Ali, countless women have suffered through more than 40 years of Israeli occupation. "Palestinian women's lives are incredibly difficult under the crippling international siege and the Israeli army's killing invasions," says Nadyia Abu Nahla, director of the Women's Affairs Technical Centre in Gaza, an independent group that supports women's rights. The large number of women who have been forced to give birth at army checkpoints is well documented by international and Israeli rights groups.
Israel's policy of demolishing Palestinian homes has collectively punished tens of thousands of women in Gaza and the West Bank, rendering them and their children homeless. But through this period, women have also struggled against denial of rights by Palestinian society. "The dire economic situation is one of the causes of an increase of violence in Gaza," Abu Nahla told IPS.
With resistance to the siege and military attacks, religious fanaticism has grown, and that has contributed to an increase in violence against women, she said. "Islam forbids violence against women, and forbids the use of women as slaves," says Sheikh Dr. Hassan al-Jojo, head of Gaza's Legitimacy Court, the main court for society and family issues.
But Dr. Jojo acknowledges that women do not have their full rights. 'Honour killing' has increased, according to Abu Nahla. At least 17 women died in 'honour killings' in Gaza last year, her centre reports. Last year and 2003 have been the worst years for known 'honour killings' in Gaza. In 2003, 34 women were killed in Gaza and the West Bank.
Jordanian criminal law enforced in the West Bank, and Egyptian law enforced in Gaza, neither effectively prohibit nor appropriately punish violence against women. Women are rarely encouraged to go to the courts, or to seek the help of social services for rehabilitation. Police chief investigator Mussa Dawoud told IPS that violence against women is taken seriously.
But in trying to solve problems, he says the police try to protect the family structure, and avoid complications that could lead to divorce. Police officers and clan seniors routinely mediate to resolve issues around family violence, but provide solutions that usually mean that the abused woman is sent back to her husband.
Where women receive support to take a strong stand, they face pressure and punishment from abusive men. One 29-year-old woman from Khan Younies is not allowed by her husband to use the phone or even send an sms, says Abu Nahla. She is locked up at home daily, and on one occasion could not take her sick child to hospital.
Other women have been beaten up by husbands for visiting relatives without their permission, Abu Nahla said. Only 13 percent of Palestinian Legislative Council members are women, with fewer holding leading positions. "This is not enough," Abu Nahla said. "We are hoping there will be more seats for women." And, she said, that there will be safety at home in every way.
-- Mohammed Omer from IPS
One way and another, no day is a woman's day in Gaza. For all of a week, Mahasen Darduna, 30, has sat day and night by her son's bedside in hospital. The boy, Yahiya, 9, was among the group hit by an Israeli missile while playing football on a field at the Jabaliya refugee camp. Yahia survived, but with severe injuries.
"He needs my support, he has been confined to this bed since he was maimed by the Israeli missile," Mahasen says. But she must also slip away often to see her other five children, who she has moved to her mother-in-law's house in belief they will be safer there. "I think of them constantly when we are apart. I feel terrible: two are getting sick, and they all cry each time we say goodbye. I can't be at both places."
In the same hospital room, Umm Ali Faraj looks after her seven-year-old son, who suffered a cracked skull in a bombing. Umm Ali too has rearranged her family life. Four of her seven children stay with her in the hospital. Umm Ali goes back and forth between hospital and home, cooking for the children and getting them off to school.
Like Mahasen and Umm Ali, countless women have suffered through more than 40 years of Israeli occupation. "Palestinian women's lives are incredibly difficult under the crippling international siege and the Israeli army's killing invasions," says Nadyia Abu Nahla, director of the Women's Affairs Technical Centre in Gaza, an independent group that supports women's rights. The large number of women who have been forced to give birth at army checkpoints is well documented by international and Israeli rights groups.
Israel's policy of demolishing Palestinian homes has collectively punished tens of thousands of women in Gaza and the West Bank, rendering them and their children homeless. But through this period, women have also struggled against denial of rights by Palestinian society. "The dire economic situation is one of the causes of an increase of violence in Gaza," Abu Nahla told IPS.
With resistance to the siege and military attacks, religious fanaticism has grown, and that has contributed to an increase in violence against women, she said. "Islam forbids violence against women, and forbids the use of women as slaves," says Sheikh Dr. Hassan al-Jojo, head of Gaza's Legitimacy Court, the main court for society and family issues.
But Dr. Jojo acknowledges that women do not have their full rights. 'Honour killing' has increased, according to Abu Nahla. At least 17 women died in 'honour killings' in Gaza last year, her centre reports. Last year and 2003 have been the worst years for known 'honour killings' in Gaza. In 2003, 34 women were killed in Gaza and the West Bank.
Jordanian criminal law enforced in the West Bank, and Egyptian law enforced in Gaza, neither effectively prohibit nor appropriately punish violence against women. Women are rarely encouraged to go to the courts, or to seek the help of social services for rehabilitation. Police chief investigator Mussa Dawoud told IPS that violence against women is taken seriously.
But in trying to solve problems, he says the police try to protect the family structure, and avoid complications that could lead to divorce. Police officers and clan seniors routinely mediate to resolve issues around family violence, but provide solutions that usually mean that the abused woman is sent back to her husband.
Where women receive support to take a strong stand, they face pressure and punishment from abusive men. One 29-year-old woman from Khan Younies is not allowed by her husband to use the phone or even send an sms, says Abu Nahla. She is locked up at home daily, and on one occasion could not take her sick child to hospital.
Other women have been beaten up by husbands for visiting relatives without their permission, Abu Nahla said. Only 13 percent of Palestinian Legislative Council members are women, with fewer holding leading positions. "This is not enough," Abu Nahla said. "We are hoping there will be more seats for women." And, she said, that there will be safety at home in every way.
-- Mohammed Omer from IPS
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