Part I
Part II
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Forced marriages in Pakistan
Here's a story from the BBC about forced marriages in Pakistan. The reporters recount the story of Alia, who was taken from the UK on vacation to Pakistan, and then forced to marry her 15 year old cousin. She has been trapped with her in-laws for eight months with no possibility of leaving.
The High Commission in Islamabad has taken it upon itself to rescue girls who are victims of forced marriages. Commissioners, as soon as a girl contacts them, will go to the in-laws, and rescue the girl, sometimes in the cover of night. The girls are then taken to a safe house and protected as divorce procedures get finalized. In light of the previous story that I posted on this blog, you can truly see the threat that girls live under on a daily basis. Many of the girls who threaten to leave bad marriages are either beaten, burnt with acid, and sometimes in extreme cases, killed.
There are many justifications for such horrific acts of violence, of course, not the least of which is the extreme devaluation of women and their role in society. Yet, if you think about it, they embody the culture's and their clan's honor. So... are they as powerless as we think?
Tough choice between freedom and honour
By Emily Buchanan
BBC News world affairs correspondent
For officials from the High Commission in Islamabad, rescuing forced marriage victims is a tough, frontline job.
Their latest case takes them on a tortuous five hour car journey into the hills of Kashmir. They have little to go on, except a brief call from a distressed teenager from the Midlands.
Her mobile phone battery low. She resorted to a few text messages to communicate where she was being held captive.
In the first nine months of 2008, the Foreign Office's Forced Marriage Unit handled more than 1,300 cases - about half of these involving minors.
The BBC obtained exclusive access to the Pakistani branch of the operation which rescues British nationals from such forced marriages.
Alia, not her real name, was forced by her parents to marry her 15-year-old Pakistani cousin.
She's been trapped with her in-laws for eight months with no means of escape. There's no public transport in this remote part of the country.
The consular officials, backed up by a police escort, eventually find the house and ask to speak to Alia alone.
Intimidated
She tells them she wants to leave her in-laws' house straight away. The prime mover in this rescue strategy is Albert David, a Pakistani working at the High Commission.
He has the delicate and sometimes dangerous job of breaking the news to the father-in-law.
He comes back with the message that Alia's family wants to speak to her. She refuses, too intimidated to stand up to them in person.
Albert tells her: "We will go out this door with whatever possessions you've got. The car is waiting outside, so you don't have to face them."
Alia agrees immediately and they rush her out the back door into the consular car. So far, there's been no sign of her husband, but then he too is only a teenager.
Most cases of forced marriage involve British women of South East Asian origin. Often, their families' motivation is to help poor relatives obtain a spousal visa so they can live in the UK.
The British government estimates that two-thirds of forced marriages of British nationals are linked to Pakistan, and many of them involve poor families in remote rural areas.
Walking out of her marriage has been a momentous step for Alia - but she knows defying her parents' wishes will be seen as betrayal of the family, especially as the marriage was her grandmother's dying wish.
Every day, Albert David sees the price the women he rescues have to pay.
"This is a very big step for a young person. They know by doing this they are cutting themselves off from the family and they are going into a very uncertain future," he says.
Honour
Vice Consul Theepan Selvaratnam describes another woman he's just visited, a woman who we'll name Rubina.
"She's in a terrible state. She had injuries on her arms and neck. She said she'd been beaten, pushed against a wall, grabbed by the throat.
"Initially, she wanted to come with us. Then she spoke to her husband and decided to stay."
In the car on the way back to Islamabad, he and Albert discuss whether she decided to stay under duress.
"I think she was under their influence and felt threatened. She was worried about her mum and her sister," Albert says.
"If she leaves, what will happen to them?" he asks.
Three days later, Rubina's family allow her to visit the High Commission and speak to consular officials alone.
She is shocked at how hard it is, even with her British education, to stand up for herself against her husband.
"I've never seen anyone with a temper like this," she tells the staff.
"You think because you're a British girl you can stand up for yourself, but it's so difficult. You feel so lonely.
"There never used to be a day I didn't go out with my friends. But here your husband is supposed to be your everything."
You can read the rest of the article, as well as listen to the report and view a video here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7754280.stm
Acid attacks and wife burnings of women in Pakistan
The New York Times ran a very moving op Ed yesterday about acid attacks and wife burnings of women in Pakistan.
Terrorism That’s Personal ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Terrorism in this part of the world usually means bombs exploding or hotels burning, as the latest horrific scenes from Mumbai attest. Yet alongside the brutal public terrorism that fills the television screens, there is an equally cruel form of terrorism that gets almost no attention and thrives as a result: flinging acid on a woman’s face to leave her hideously deformed.
Here in Pakistan, I’ve been investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region.
This month in Afghanistan, men on motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who dared to attend school. One of the girls, a 17-year-old named Shamsia, told reporters from her hospital bed: “I will go to my school even if they kill me. My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.”
When I met Naeema Azar, a Pakistani woman who had once been an attractive, self-confident real estate agent, she was wearing a black cloak that enveloped her head and face. Then she removed the covering, and I flinched.
Acid had burned away her left ear and most of her right ear. It had blinded her and burned away her eyelids and most of her face, leaving just bone.
Six skin grafts with flesh from her leg have helped, but she still cannot close her eyes or her mouth; she will not eat in front of others because it is too humiliating to have food slip out as she chews.
“Look at Naeema, she has lost her eyes,” sighed Shahnaz Bukhari, a Pakistani activist who founded an organization to help such women, and who was beginning to tear up. “She makes me cry every time she comes in front of me.”
Ms. Azar had earned a good income and was supporting her three small children when she decided to divorce her husband, Azar Jamsheed, a fruit seller who rarely brought money home. He agreed to end the (arranged) marriage because he had his eye on another woman.
After the divorce was final, Mr. Jamsheed came to say goodbye to the children, and then pulled out a bottle and poured acid on his wife’s face, according to her account and that of their son.
“I screamed,” Ms. Azar recalled. “The flesh of my cheeks was falling off. The bones on my face were showing, and all of my skin was falling off.”
Neighbors came running, as smoke rose from her burning flesh and she ran about blindly, crashing into walls. Mr. Jamsheed was never arrested, and he has since disappeared. (I couldn’t reach him for his side of the story.)
Ms. Azar has survived on the charity of friends and with support from Ms. Bukhari’s group, the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org). Ms. Bukhari is raising money for a lawyer to push the police to prosecute Mr. Jamsheed, and to pay for eye surgery that — with a skilled surgeon — might be able to restore sight to one eye.
...
Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: they are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.
Since 1994, Ms. Bukhari has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.
For the last two years, Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar have co-sponsored an International Violence Against Women Act, which would adopt a range of measures to spotlight such brutality and nudge foreign governments to pay heed to it. Let’s hope that with Mr. Biden’s new influence the bill will pass in the next Congress.
You can read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30kristof.html?_r=1
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Reabolish Slavery
Thank you Sarah for bringing this to my attention.
This is a very interesting ad against human trafficking:
The informal health care sector
At the beginning of the semester, we discussed how women's care to an elderly parent or a spouse considered to be an informal health care sector. The New York Times today has an article that gives some very interesting figures.
The article notes that "[t]he unpaid services of America’s family caregivers amounted to some $375 billion in 2007, up from $350 billion in 2006." The report also estimates that
34 million American adults provide an average of 21 hours a week of care to another adult, usually an elderly parent or spouse, worth $10.10 an hour in the marketplace.The article further notes the following, which is the most relevant to our class:
That’s a bloodless way of thinking about the typical caregiver, who is defined in a series of benchmark studies as a 46-year-old woman, married, employed and looking after a widowed mother who needs help with everyday tasks and medical issues. But you know who they’re talking about: You.
You have a full-time job, a demanding husband, probably children of your own. You spend nights and weekends neglecting your own family while doing your mother’s grocery shopping and visiting her because she rarely gets out anymore. When she has a doctor’s appointment you skip work. She’s fallen a few times and you’ve raced from the office, or a Little League game, to the emergency room. You’re always tired. You don’t have enough time for anyone, and you have no time at all for yourself.
...You can read the full article at the New York Times Web site by visiting this link: http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/loves-labor/?hp
The AARP report also notes the other costs of caregiving. Out-of-pocket expenses for our hypothetical 40-something daughter — on groceries, home repair, medications for her mother — average $5,531 a year. If mom lives in Florida and you in New York, that’ll be $8,728 a year because of travel, long-distance telephone and the like.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Global AIDS day
Today is the 20th anniversary of the World AIDS Day Campaign. It's a day when politicians, activists, academics, and people who are affected by this disease stand in solidarity with one voice and one mission, and renew their pledges to do everything they can to combat AIDS.
The Global AIDS Campaign has a site where you can read more about what's being done around the world, plus ways to become involved.
This year's theme is Leadership, an ideal that is sorely needed in this fight. From the campaign's Web site:
Leadership encourages leaders at all levels to stop AIDS. Building on the 2006 theme of accountability, leadership highlights the discrepancy between the commitments that have been made to halt the spread of AIDS, and actions taken to follow them through. Leadership empowers everyone – individuals, organisations, governments – to lead in the response to AIDS. (Source)Health and Human Services (HHS) has an AIDS campaign that contains facts, news, testing information, prevention, and treatment and care.
The HHS has identified ways that you can participate in getting the word out about today:
Participate in a Blogging Call to Action on December 1st
AIDS.gov and the National Institute on Drug Abuse are partnering with Blog Catalogto host “Bloggers Unite on World AIDS Day.
Link People to HIV Testing Centers via Text Messaging
To find an HIV testing site near you, send a text message with your ZIP code to “KNOWIT” (566948) or visit www.hivtest.org. Promote KNOWIT by copying the code at http://www.aids.gov/knowit.html and pasting it on your profile, website, or blog.
Attend the World AIDS Day Event in Second Life
Join us in Second Life for a World AIDS Day Musical Festival on November 30 and on December 1 for a World AIDS Day event that will feature HIV/AIDS presentations and displays, tours, writing workshops, and virtual red ribbons and t-shirts. For more information, visit the Second Life World AIDS Day page
Tell people about the CDC’s New HIV Incidence Data
CDC recently published national HIV incidence (new infections) that showed an estimated 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in 2006—that’s substantially higher than the previous 40,000 estimated annual new infections. Visit the CDC’s website to learn more.
So, on this day join me in spreading the word about AIDS, and make or renew your pledge to do everything you can to protect yourself and others, help protect yourself and others, and demanding that your country's commitment to stop this disease is being followed through.
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