Both were 22-year-olds. Their deaths in 2023 serve as a reminder on International Women’s Day that the tragedies of femicide and gender-based violence (GBV) will continue into 2024. “Honor killings” need to be recognized as problems that are not only confined to the global south and developing world.

 While governments often react to direct violence, this problem will not end unless both state and society recognize endemic structural and cultural violence that enable femicide. The failure to act on these problems becomes a form of “necropolitics,” where the states allow women to succumb to the fate of femicide.

Direct Violence

Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung’s Triangle of Violence begins with “direct violence,” which often gets the most attention.

The father of Tiba Al-Ali projected direct violence against his daughter by strangling her. The last thing Tiba saw was the eyes of her father before she died.

Turetta projected direct violence against Giulia, a video camera capturing him beating her, and then later stabbing her 20 times to the neck and head. The last thing Giulia saw was the eyes of her ex-partner.

Tiba chose to defy her father.  Giulia chose to leave Filippo and she was graduating before him, which he could not accept.

Structural Violence

Cameroonian scholar Achille Mbembe defines “necropolitics” as how political actors allow certain demographics to die. When states fail to prevent femicide that is a form of necropolitics, or what Galtung would call “structural violence.”

Ali’s murder is part of the rise of GBV due to a revival of tribal culture that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein encouraged after the 1991 Gulf War to maintain domestic order, as his security forces were diminished. Iraq’s gendered insecurity continued unabated as the security sector collapsed after the 2003 invasion.  The US touted post-Saddam Iraq as a model state that would inspire a wave of democratization in the region. Yet Articles 41 and 409 of the Iraqi Penal Code, to this day, permits males to “punish” female members of a household. Those codes are a form of structural violence and necropolitics, enabling “honor killings.” It allows “practices of patriarchy” at the state level.

Women’s rights in Iraq • FRANCE 24 English Video

Structural violence and state patriarchy is evident by the security sector failing to address this issue, as the police allegedly knew beforehand that Al-Ali’s life was at risk and failed to take action.

Let us turn to Europe. Surprisingly, the Italian state engages in necropolitics by not legally recognizing “femicide” as a separate crime. Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, referred to this problem when said, “Femicide is a murder committed by the state because the state doesn’t protect us.” The state’s failure in this case to prevent direct violence is itself a form of violence. In the absence of the state Elena refers to the need for Italian civil society and NGOs to step in: “We need to fund anti-violence centres and give the possibility to those who need to ask for help.”

After the murder, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she would increase funds to women’s shelters and anti-violence centers. However, Meloni was also part of the problem, since her misogynistic right-wing politics and “Brothers of Italy”(Fratelli d’Italia) party enabled gendered cultural violence in Italy.   

Cultural Violence

After the murder in Iraq, a twitter user, Ali Bey, wrote that women should “behave or face the same fate as Tiba Al-Ali,” along with a series of other voices in the Iraqi cybersphere condoning, if not celebrating the murder. These outbursts are examples of cultural violence or societal patriarchy that enables such crimes.

Elena links the murder of her younger sister to the patriarchal culture of violence that pervades Italy, a form of cultural necropolitics, which normalises the toxic behaviour of men like Turetta and eventually commits femicide. She said “Turetta is often described as a monster, but he’s not a monster.”  She then addresses cultural elements: “A monster is an exception, a person who’s outside society, a person for whom society doesn’t need to take responsibility. But there’s a responsibility. Monsters aren’t sick, they’re healthy sons of the patriarchy and rape culture.” 

Meloni promised promised a new educational campaign in schools to eradicate “the toxic culture of violence” in the country. While Meloni had condemned sexual violence in the past, it was usually when a migrant committed GBV, to support the anti-immigrant politics of her party.

In 2023 I conducted two digital autopsies on Tiba’s YouTube account and Giulia’s Instagram account. Both were beautiful souls that made the earth a better place. Tiba’s vibrant videos described her new life in Istanbul, to pursue her education. Guilia loved her mom, had a collection of beer bottle tops, and apparently had a fear of going to the hospital alone, but overcame her fear.  That fear apparently had to do with the fact that she was taking care of her mom who eventually died of cancer.

The triangle of violence and necropolitics offers a nuanced means of analyzing the agents of patriarchy.  But a simple linguistic exercise can also achieve this goal, using patriarchy as a verb instead of an abstract noun. We must each ask ourselves “Who or what has patriarched me or others in the past, present, and future?” and “Who or what have I patriarched?” Difficult questions, yes, but by bringing them into focus we can begin to identify the active agents and institutions that have patriarched and continue to patriarch in Iraq, Italy and the world.  On this International Women’s Day, Iraq and Italy have failed to ensure gendered security.

The human rights experts held a news conference on Monday to call for an impartial inquiry into the abuses apparently committed by Israeli troops against women and girls, including murder, rape, and sexual assault. They expressed extreme concern at the “horrifying reports” that had reached them

International human rights experts called for an independent investigation into suspected Israeli violations committed against Palestinian women and girls, including murder, rape, and sexual assault. The experts expressed their deep concern about the “horrific reports” that revealed cases of rape and threats of sexual assault by Israeli forces during their arbitrary detention of Palestinian women and girls in Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank. They said there were “credible and conclusive allegations of blatant violations” and that women and girls were victims of arbitrary execution, often alongside members of their families, including children. In a communique, they expressed their shock at the reports of deliberate targeting and extra-judicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought safety or while they were fleeing.

These human rights experts were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, but are independent and not UN representatives. I give their names below.

TRT World Video: “Israeli violations against Palestinian girls, women in Gaza”

They pointed to the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women, among them human rights defenders, journalists, and humanitarian activists in Gaza and the West Bank. They said, “Many were exposed to inhumane and degrading treatment and to severe beatings. They were deprived of menstrual pads during their periods, of food, and of medicine.”

The Office of the High Commission on Human Rights quotes the experts as saying, “We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence.”

OHCHR adds, “They also noted that photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online.”

They spoke of their dismay at reports of Palestinian women in prison being subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, including strip searching by male troops of the Israeli army. They demanded an independent, unimpeachable, comprehensive, urgent and effective investigation into these assaults, with full Israeli cooperation.

They said that they had evidence that at least two imprisoned Palestinian women were raped, while others were threatened with rape and sexual violence. They said there were indications that Palestinian girls and women were deliberately targeted and extra-judicially executed in places of asylum or during their attempts to escape. Some of the latter were waving pieces of white cloth but were killed by the Israeli army.

According to OHCHR, the communique concluded, “Taken together, these alleged acts may constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute. . . . Those responsible for these apparent crimes must be held accountable and victims and their families are entitled to full redress and justice,”

The OHCHR notes that the experts were “Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences; Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; Dorothy Estrada Tanck (Chair), Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi, Working group on discrimination against women and girls. The experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system.”

The Israeli mission in Geneva hastened to denounce the communique, charging that the international human rights rapporteurs were animated by a hatred of Israel rather than a devotion to the truth. It said that the Israeli authorities had not received any complaints but were prepared to investigate the Israeli security forces if there were credible allegations and evidence.

It is a particularly ugly custom of Israeli officials to meet any criticism with charges of “hating Israel” or hating Jews, which they conflate with the former. Tel Aviv owes an apology to these internationally respected human rights experts, even if they are only women.

Palestinian women prisoners are subjected to torture, abuse, beatings and threats of rape

Written byRaseef22

 

Freed Palestinian prisoner Ruba Assi was welcomed as a hero upon her release in the prisoner exchange deal last November. Screenshot from a video by medyascope english. Fair use.

This article is written by Hala Al Zuheiri, and was originally published in Raseef22 An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.

“They took me and my daughter to a room inside the house, and they brought in a female soldier with a police dog. She ordered us to undress completely. We did. I acted blind, deaf, and mute so that they would not beat my son,” Suhad Al-Khamour, 49, from the Dheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem, tells Raseef22.

In late November, Suhad’s home was surrounded by a large number of heavily armed Israeli occupation forces (IOF), who then stormed it and destroyed its contents. Suhad, a mother to three sons and a daughter, spoke with Raseef22 about how the armed soldiers kept her husband and son in the living room while she and her daughter were taken into the bedroom at gunpoint and trailed by a guard dog. Suhad and her daughter were forced to undress before redressing and quickly leaving the house. They went out barefoot, waiting in the cold for the questioning of her husband and her son, Mohammad, 26, to conclude. When they came out, the IOF took her son with them, only to release him two hours later.

On December 4, the IOF raided Suhad’s home again before taking Mohammad to Ofer Prison, near Ramallah. This is not Suhad’s first violent targeting by the occupation forces. Her son Ibrahim, 20, is detained at Nafha Prison, where he is completing a 5-year sentence, whereas her son Omar, 14, died in early 2023, after he was shot in the head by occupation forces. Rona, 24, is the only one of Suhad’s children still with her at home, although her psychological condition is rapidly deteriorating.

Suhad is just one of hundreds of women who have been arrested or have had family members arrested in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, and subjected to various forms of humiliation and violence.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, about 300 female prisoners were arrested in 2023, including 184 after October 7, 2023. 

Since October 7, Israel has escalated its campaign of illegal arrests and its targeting of women’s bodies through torture, abuse, strip searches, forcefully removing veils, in addition to starvation, depriving them of basic needs, and detaining them in harsh conditions in prisons and compounds. 

Testimonies from Gazan female prisoners similarly reveal use of the same tools of humiliation. Many civilians have been forcibly taken prisoner by occupation forces, and their whereabouts are still unknown.

Reinforcing the occupation by violating the body

Ruba Assi was released on November 28, 2023, in the fifth part of the prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel. Assi spoke with Raseef22 about her arrest after October 7. It was significantly more violent and humiliating than her first arrest and detention in 2020, which lasted for 21 months.

Shortly after the start of the war on Gaza, the IOF blew open the door of Assi’s house in the town of Beit Liqia, west of Ramallah, in the West bank, and stormed inside. Family members were separated into different rooms, and Assi was arrested without being allowed to say goodbye to her family or even wear a jacket. 

Occupation forces tied and blindfolded her, before dragging her into a military vehicle. The female soldier assigned to her spoke loudly and aggressively in Hebrew, intentionally provoking her. She also threatened to send her to Gaza to torture her there. After Assi arrived at the Israeli camp, still bound and blindfolded, a group of soldiers approached her, taunting her and insulting her.

She was later transferred to the Hasharon Detention Center, where she was subjected to a strip search by two female guards. “If the prisoner refuses [the search], she will be severely beaten,” Assi explained. Eventually, Assi was placed in solitary confinement at Damon Prison. She shared:

There was not enough food or water. We were deprived of bathing and subjected to violent oppression without any prior justification and at any time. We were deliberately neglected in terms of medical care, and existing health conditions were not taken into account. Even when we were preparing to be released after our names were included as part of the exchange deal, we were subjected to strip searches.

Many testimonies from released female prisoners reveal torture, abuse, beatings and threats, include threats of rape, as well as being taken hostage in order to pressure family members to turn themselves in. Palestinian civilians are also subjected to these methods of torture during home raids, at Israeli checkpoints, and during visits to detained family members.

A longstanding policy

Strip searches are not a new tool of suppression and humiliation for Israel, but they have recently emerged as an integral part of the ongoing violent crusade against and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Ismat Mansour, a former prisoner and expert on Israeli affairs, told Raseef22, “In Gaza, we saw how men were stripped down and filmed, in order to strip the person from within and instill a sense of inferiority and helplessness.” Mansour labels strip searches a tool of the occupation used to violate the privacy and desecrate the space of Palestinians, while diminishing their humanity. It is a deeply intentional measure.

The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association similarly confirmed to Raseef22 that the policy of strip searching is not new. However, since the start of the ongoing war on Gaza, the violence accompanying physical inspections has blatantly increased, according to testimonies from released female prisoners. 

Workers at Addameer confirmed, “Female prisoners are subjected to a strip search at the moment of their arrest and at the detention center, and sometimes they are ordered to sit in a squatting position. Male prisoners are also subjected to this– a tool to seize control of the detainee’s body and humiliate and violate their dignity.” Testimonies recorded after October 7 indicate that female prisoners have been threatened with rape and verbal harassment.

Hassan Abed-Rabbo, spokesman for the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, believes that “this is primarily intended to undermine and harm national and human dignity, as well as to send a message to all Palestinian women that anyone thinking of acting against the occupation will have her dignity violated and her privacy invaded.” He emphasized, “it is an attempt to pressure women and sideline them from their role in the struggle.”

Who will hold Israel accountable for violating women’s bodies?

Dr. Dalal Iriqat, an international law specialist, explained to Raseef22, “When violations against prisoners are systematic and repeated, and laws safeguarding prisoners’ rights are continuously violated, the policy, according to international and legal definitions, escalates into a war crime against humanity.”

Iriqat emphasized that the policy of strip searches violates international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, stressing that the violations are not limited to this policy but also include depriving female prisoners of basic rights, such as food and a healthy environment. “The Israeli authorities took advantage of the preoccupation of human rights organizations about war crimes in Gaza to further abuse and torment the prisoners,” says Iriqat.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called on the international community to pressure Israel to reveal the fate of Gazan women who have been arrested and whose whereabouts are unknown. Approximately 3,000 Palestinian detainees from Gaza have disappeared, including children and minors. The Human Rights Monitor claims that the Israeli army continues to arrest dozens of women, girls, and infants, all of whom are subjected to humiliating detention conditions, strip searches, the forced removal of their hijab, and threats of rape.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs state that the intensity of the crimes committed against women is one of the most prominent and dangerous aspects at this stage in the war. This violence is an extension of a long history of Israeli targeting of Palestinian women; Will this war on Gaza be much harsher than any of the previous wars in the history of the occupation?

Written byRaseef22

Afghanistan has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 28 million people – two-thirds of the population – in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations has reported that four million people are acutely malnourished, including 3.2 million children under 5.

“People in Afghanistan are living a humanitarian and human rights nightmare under Taliban rule,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Taliban leadership needs to urgently reject their abusive rules and policies, and the international community needs to hold them accountable for the current crises.”

Together with decades of war, extreme weather events, and widespread unemployment, the main causes of food insecurity since the Taliban takeover have been the harsh restrictions on women and girls’ rights. The result has been the loss of many jobs, particularly the dismissal of many women from their jobs and bans on women working for humanitarian organizations, except in limited areas. Women and girls are denied access to secondary and higher education.

On December 24, 2022, the Taliban announced a ban on women working with all local and international nongovernmental organizations, including the UN, with exemptions for health, nutrition, and education. This has severely harmed women’s livelihoods, as it is impossible to determine whether women are receiving assistance if they are not involved in the distribution and monitoring processes. The crisis has disproportionately harmed women and girls, who already have more difficulty getting access to food, health care, and housing.

In the wake of the recent stabbing attack on a University of Waterloo professor and two students in a philosophy of gender course, we need to talk about the profound power words have to shape our world.

We are both professors at the University of Waterloo who focus on various aspects of gender and language in our research and teaching.

In her book, Call Them By Their True Names, journalist and author Rebecca Solnit argues that we are presently in a crisis of language where words have lost their meaning in a sea of misinformation and inflamed debates. Her response is that we all must be careful and precise with the words we use in order to “oppose the disintegration of meaning.”

In this spirit we will be very precise in our language here: the continued patterns of violence both online and offline against women, racialized, disabled, queer and gender nonconforming people are forms of stochastic terrorism and need to be named as such.

What is stochastic terrorism

At its core, stochastic terrorism is public demonization of a group which incites random violence against that group. Crucial here are the words public, demonization and violence. They work together to silence people either by threat of violence or through violence itself.

When a group of people are publicly and repeatedly demonized, they are dehumanized for the benefit of others. This demonization and distancing is crucial for inciting violence. It makes violence toward certain people, or those expressing certain ideas, more palatable. It distances those enacting the violence from the true horrors of their actions.

When it comes to gender-based violence such demonization is hardly new. It was used to target women and others who did not conform to religious dogma in medieval and early modern witch trials.

More recently, the demonization of women has been a staple of so-called incel doctrines that have informed other acts of violence including the Isla Vista shootings in 2014 and the Toronto van attack in 2018.

James Chow was in the UWaterloo gender studies class, where a professor and two students were stabbed in a hate-related attack.

This is the most detailed explanation and recounting of events from any witness so far — it’s a must listen. The events are terrifying. pic.twitter.com/yHq9hAmhjr

— Ahmar Khan (@AhmarSKhan) June 30, 2023

Social media is awash with influencers like Andrew Tate who spread misogynistic rhetoric to millions. All this combines to create a situation where gender-based violence becomes more likely.

Spreading hate has real consequences

This hatred is spread through public conversations, often on social media platforms that do not adequately regulate hate speech or protect the most vulnerable recipients of that hate speech.

When such ideas spread rapidly and easily in online spaces without consequence it allows them to multiply and gain validation. This combination of widespread, normalized, publicly accessible hatred and dehumanization is central to the forms of violence we see erupting across spaces currently, including in our spaces of learning.

As women scholars who came of age in the shadow of the École Polytechnique massacre, we are well aware of how gender-based violence makes a lasting impact on how we experience and move in the world. The murder of 14 women by a gunman motivated by a hatred of feminists sent a very direct message to Canadian girls and women who witnessed the horror and its aftermath.

At a time when both of us were planning out our post-secondary studies, the message we heard was: you are not welcome in spaces of learning and the threat of violence will always be present. For us and others of our generation, this formative experience served as a basis for many of our feminisms.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

This week, the immediate thoughts and feelings we experienced after the violent attack on members of our university community were all too familiar. They reminded us again that the threat of violence for daring to stand in a classroom and speak is ever-present.

University classrooms can be transformative

Being precise with language allows us to also name what could be. In her 1993 Nobel Lecture, American novelist Toni Morrison defined language as something that delimits the possibilities of our world. Language can oppress and do violence. However, when it is used collaboratively in good faith, it becomes a way to open us all to a better world.

Universities embody this double-edge. They can be sites of violence and silencing that has shaped us in profound ways. They are also sites of risk in choosing to speak at all, in sharing ideas that are new and untested, and in the sense that by inviting new perspectives we risk our well-worn certainties and challenge our fundamental assumptions.

But that is how places of learning become sites of transformation and liberation. This specifically is what we want for our students, now and in the future. The risk is present, but so too is the promise of change. And so we will continue to teach and share insights on issues of gender within our classrooms because the sharing of knowledge is what universities are intended for.

There has always been rhetorical and violent backlash when people express new ideas and challenge established norms. Women, queer, racialized and gender nonconforming students and professors are vulnerable to the violence of what is considered the norm. It is disingenuous and dangerous to pretend it is otherwise.

We must name things for what they are, acknowledge the ways that we are vulnerable, and confront the continued harm done by the unchecked and dehumanizing public forums of the internet. We hope the ongoing threat of violence does not deter younger generations from being curious, examining the world, and sharing their visions for the future.

What we need to do as a public community both inside and outside universities is support our youth by naming hatred and violence for what it is. In doing so, we can expose the consequences of the demonization of others and the weaponized use of language.

Shana MacDonald, Associate Professor of Communication Arts, University of Waterloo and Alysia Kolentsis, Associate Professor, English language and literature, University of Waterloo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

According to local news reporting, one of the members of the brotherhood, Yusuf Ziya Gümüşel, who is a founder of a foundation affiliated with the brotherhood, reportedly married his six-year-old daughter (known only by her initials H.K.G.) to a 29-year-old man 18 years ago. The story was first reported by journalists Timur Soykan and Murat Agirel, who have also shared evidence that the child was subject to sexual abuse since the age of six. The journalists who broke the case are now facing a targeting campaign against them, with some even urging officials to launch an investigation into the reporters and try them in court.

Image by
Kostiantyn Li. Free to use under Unsplash License.

There are approximately 30 religious communities and sects in Turkey, according to Dokuz Eylül University professor Esergül Balcı, who published a research paper in 2018 on how religious communities, religious sects, and cults influenced Turkey’s education system, with over 400 branches and 800 madrassas (an Islamic religious school) spread out across the country.

According to Balci’s findings, these religious sects flourished under the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). Similarly, Soykan, in his 2019 book about sexual exploitation by some of the Islamic religious cults in Turkey, looked into some of these groups, describing their time under the AKP as a “golden age.” In June 2022, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the funeral of the founder of İsmailağa Brotherhood, Mahmut Ustaosmanoğlu, saying, he was a man of “knowledge and wisdom of eternity.” The President also shared a video from the funeral via his Twitter. 

Another research by the senior lecturer in the Department of General History Efrat Aviv at the Bar-Ilan University pointed out that:

The İsmailağa is one of the most widespread communities representing the Naqshbandi tradition in Turkey, with well over one hundred thousand members and supporters. According to Milliyet, of some 4.5 million people affiliated with the various Naqshbandi communities in Turkey, as many as 7.2 percent are attached to the İsmailağa community […] It is also known as “Çarşamba Cemaati,” referring to its main and sacred Çarşamba neighborhood in the Fatih district of Istanbul.

According to researcher Salim Çevik, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) “maintains a special relationship [with these communities] based on a policy of carrots and sticks.” This policy is largely dominated by the ruling party making “state resources available to these religious communities in exchange for electoral support,” opines Çevik. This is typically done by providing land or financial support for religious organizations.

A record of abuse

The brotherhoods and orders are often in the news for cases of indoctrination, child abuse, and violence. This time, in the case of forced underage marriage, it is a combination of all three and more. Soykan also revealed in his investigation that numerous officers and officials were made aware of the abuse after the victim was brought into a hospital when she was 14. Noticing the age discrepancy, a medical doctor called the police, who then questioned the family and the girl. The family lied to the police at the time, hiding the victim’s real age and instead saying she was 17 and was married of her own will. Instead of asking for the victim’s birth certificate, the prosecutor’s office at the time requested a bone age assessment. The family used their connections and swapped their daughter with a 21-year-old woman for the test. The case was closed, and the victim was sent back with her family to endure further abuse at the hands of her husband.

H.K.G. is now 24. Two years ago, she managed to escape her family and move to a different city, where she now lives in a dorm and is trying to complete her studies. Her escape was precipitated by an incident of severe physical abuse, after which she went to the prosecutor’s office on November 30, 2020, to file a complaint. She brought evidence of the abuse and photographs of her as a child bride, as well as a secret audio recording with her husband in which she talks about her story with her husband, asking him why he and her parents abused her. But neither the parents nor the husband were arrested. Instead, the parents claim their daughter suffered from psychological issues and that she is lying. It took two years for the prosecutor’s office complete an indictment in which the prosecutor concluded that the parents condoned the rape and that the victim’s husband and parents were complicit in the sexual abuse of a child. The prosecutor asked for at least 27 years in prison for each of the perpetrators and an additional penalty for the husband on the charge of sexual assault.

In the meantime, the foundation, which the victim’s father founded, released a statement on its homepage that the investigations about the child bride have nothing to do with the foundation’s work. The foundation also removed any mention of Yusuf Ziya Gümüşel, the father, from its website, according to reporting by Diken newspaper.

There has been an outpouring wave of criticism about the case. Journalist Ahmet Hakan wrote, “I saw the indictment prepared by the prosecutor’s office. I read the audio recordings. I reviewed the allegations. I am ashamed of my humanity. This is pure pedophilia.”

Academic and writer Fatih Yasli tweeted:

Anyone who does not mention the İsmailağa community, who does not demand closure of “sects” or does not mention secularism in their reactions to the marriage of a 6-year-old in their reactions to the “marriage” of a 6-year-old girl, is both a fraud and is complicit in crimes committed against that child as well as other children.

Similarly, the Mayor of Istanbul Municipality, Ekrem İmamoğlu, expressed his disbelief in what has happened. “I don’t understand how a 6-year-old girl’s marriage can be real. This is unscrupulous, this is immoral, this is child abuse. Everyone who is making concessions and is ignoring this issue is complicit in this crime,” the mayor said in a statement.

In a statement, another politician and the IYI Party Chairman, Meral Akşener, vowed to investigate the “marriage” of a six-year-old girl with a cult follower.

A member of Turkey’s Workers Party and lawmaker Sera Kadıgil demanded answers from six separate ministries, including the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Family and Social Services, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Culture and Tourism Ministry, as well as the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the ruling Justice and Development Party, Ömer Çelik, said the party was closely following the investigation. “We condemn the abuse of children. Child abuse is a cursed crime that will never be forgiven,” tweeted Çelik in response to mounting criticism.

Via Globalvoices.org

Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

( Globalvoices.org) – Scores of women are killed in Turkey on regular basis, according to local women’s organizations. The number of femicides remains high, while the existing protective measures lack effectiveness. A local platform, We Will Stop Femicides, which tracks femicides and suspicious deaths of women, reported at least 282 femicides between January to October 2022. Another platform, called Anit Sayac [monument tracker], displays the number “349” on its homepage to represent the women who have been killed so far in 2022. The stark numbers are indicative of just how few measures have been taken to protect women from violence by the state institutions. To mark November 25, designated International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women by the UN, women across Turkey plan to take to the streets and hold various events to raise awareness.

As women groups across Turkey plan to mark the day, fears grow that the police may violently crack down on demonstrators. Last year, women faced rubber bullets, tear gas, and violence from the police as they marched to end gender-based violence.

Image by Sydney Sims. Free to share under Unsplash License.

At least eight members of a local women’s platform, Avcilar Kadin Platformu, were detained on Tuesday, November 22. The women’s platform decided to join the UN’s earlier call on women’s organizations globally to join the 16 days of activism — UNiTE campaign — led by the UN Secretary-General and UN Women.

Some women joined the hashtag #25KasımKasımKadınaYönelikŞiddetleMücadeleGünü [#November25TheDayToEliminateViolenceAgainstWomen] online, like the prominent journalist Sedef Kabas, who tweeted a photo of herself holding a sign that read “Istanbul Convention will live.”

It is a crime against humanity to cancel Istanbul Convention at a time when violence against women reached a record high. Women must demand accountability at the ballot box and must not leave this “crime” unpunished.

Kabas was briefly detained in January 2022 over a proverb the journalist used on a television show and later on her Twitter.

Turkey withdrew from Istanbul Convention in March 2021 over what the ruling government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) called the treaty’s “normalization of homosexuality.” Since then, despite country-wide demands to rejoin, the ruling AK party has not budged on its decision.

At the time of the withdrawal from the convention, a treaty signed by member states of the Council of Europe to prevent violence and domestic abuse against women, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assured women that the state will rely on national laws to prevent gender-based violence. But numbers reported and documented by local women’s organizations tell a different story.

In July 2022, Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, urged the government of Turkey to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the convention and said that relying solely on domestic legislation was not enough considering the preventive and protective measures in place are not strong in Turkey.

In a report published by Human Rights Watch in May 2022, the international watchdog examined the failure of the state “to adequately protect women from violence, prevent the recurrence of violence, and hold perpetrators to account.”

One prominent Turkish journalist, Burcu Karakas, in a recent investigation, looked into the effectiveness of protection mechanisms in place — namely, the shelters for victims of domestic abuse and their treatment of women who have escaped violence at home.

These shelters fail to provide sufficient psychological assistance or any support for victims to start a new life after their time at the shelters.

There are also not enough shelters in the country to accommodate the growing number of victims, according to Karakas’s investigation. As of October 2022, there are a total of 149 shelters with a capacity to house 3,624 people across all 81 provinces. These are barely enough — according to the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities recommendation, shelters must provide at least one bed capacity for every 10,000 inhabitants.

There is also a discrepancy in data. In a tweet by the We Will Stop Femicides, the platform scolded the Minister of Family and Social Services, Derya Yanik, for misguiding the public about decreasing numbers of femicides and their lack of transparency in the documentation process.

What the Minister of Family and Social Services Derya Yanik said:
– In the first ten months of 2021 there were 242 femicides;
– In the first ten months of 2022 there were 225 femicides.
Our data shows:
– In the first ten months of 2021 there were 225 femicides and 175 suspicious deaths;
– In the first ten months of 2022 there were 282 femicides and 208 suspicious deaths.
Contrary to what ministries say, the number of femicides are not going down. The ministries are responsible to provide femicide data in a transparent manner. We will continue to provide real data. We will stop femicide.

Some women who decided to join the demonstrations reported being stopped by the police.

We cannot march. We have been surrounded by the police.

As a preventive action, police also barricaded some of the key meeting points.

Gezi park has been barricaded by the police. Why? Because women will demonstrate this evening against violence. Down with this kind of leadership. I tried going to the park (of which there are very few anyway) this morning while listening to whatever funny broadcasts I could find and this is what I see. How scared are you?

But women in Turkey are used accustomed to all kinds of violence, including from the police. And so, no matter how many barricades are put up and how much force the police will use against demonstrating women, for activists, the fight against gender-based violence, equality, and freedoms will continue today and every day.

Arzu Geybullayeva is Azerbaijani columnist and writer, with special focus in digital authoritarianism and its implications on human rights and press freedom in Azerbaijan. Arzu has written for Al Jazeera, Eurasianet, Foreign Policy Democracy Lab, CODA, Open Democracy, Radio Free Europe, and CNN International.

Via Globalvoices.org

( Middle East Monitor ) – The women’s rights NGO, Equality Now, has released a policy brief to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on how inadequate justice for women and girls, and a lack of deterrents for perpetrators, has increased violence against women.

According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 30 per cent of women, worldwide, have experienced physical, sexual intimate partner violence, or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime, a figure exacerbated by inequality, discrimination and permitted violence found within some laws.

Equality Now’s latest brief highlights sex discrimination in laws in MENA countries, including the highly controversial “marry your rapist”, laws in Libya or Kuwait which have sparked a worldwide outcry. Under this legislation, men can have their rape convictions overturned if they marry the women or girls they have assaulted.

“Equality for women and girls in the law is far from being achieved in the MENA region,” Equality Now’s Regional Representative in the MENA region, Dima Dabbous, told MEMO as the UN Day against Violence against Women launches 16 days of activism to increase awareness of the issue.

“Although there has been some progress, it has been slow and inconsistent. Women and girls continue to face legal discrimination in various ways, including in laws relating to violence.”

“This places them at a greater risk of harm by preventing them from being able to access legal protection, or justice when their rights have been violated. It also fosters a culture of violence against women and girls by enabling offenders to go unpunished.”

In 2012, there were protests in Morocco after a man was allowed to marry a 16-year-old girl he raped. Amina Filali killed herself after the court ordered her marriage and the law was later repealed.

“On a positive note, in recent years, women’s rights activists and lawmakers have successfully campaigned for the repeal of statutory “marry your rapist” loopholes from legal provisions in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Palestine,” adds Dabbous.

A law in Syria that completely exempted men from punishment if they killed their female relatives in the name of “honour” has been repealed.

“I applaud the brave work of women’s rights campaigners throughout the region who are taking a stand against sex discriminatory laws – sometimes at serious personal risk – and are pushing back again regressive forces that seek to remove or undermine legal protections for women and girls,” says Dabbous.

Yet, there is still a long way to go. In Iraq, a husband has the legal right to punish his wife, and for parents to discipline their children, within certain limits prescribed by law or custom.

Iraq’s penal code also allows mitigated sentences for murder with “honourable motives” or if a man catches his wife or another female relative in the act of adultery.

Egypt allows for a lesser punishment for men who kill their wives on discovering them in an act of adultery than for other forms of murder, yet if a woman kills her husband, she will be given the full sentence.

At the same time, women who are victims of domestic violence are not protected because domestic abuse and marital rape are not explicitly criminalised under Egyptian law.

Via Pixabay.

“Equality Now is calling on all governments in the MENA to urgently review and amend their sex discriminatory laws and put in place explicit guarantees of sex equality to ensure protection for women and girls, as outlined in international laws and commitments,” says Dabbous.

“The right to equality and to not be discriminated against on the basis of sex, both in the law itself and in practice in everyday life, is a fundamental human right.”

“Criminalising acts sends society a clear message that it is not acceptable. In this way, the law helps transform social norms and behaviour. Laws also have a preventative effect.”

“Holding offenders to account is an important deterrent, because people are less likely to act when they know there are legal consequences. Having a law in place gives rights and protection to those at risk and provides survivors with a means to access justice. Without the law, there is immunity for perpetrators, which encourages further abuses.”

melia Smith is a writer and journalist based in London who has reported from across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2016 Amelia was a finalist at the Write Stuff writing competition at the London Book Fair. Her first book, “The Arab Spring Five Years On”, was published in 2016 and brings together a collection of authors who analyse the protests and their aftermath half a decade after they flared in the region.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

( Middle East Monitor) – A new policy briefing by the NGO, Equality Now, on how marriage laws in the MENA region and around the world discriminate against women and girls reveals how failure to reform means they are at increased risk of human rights violations, such as child marriage and domestic violence.

In Egypt, 62 per cent of men and 49 per cent of women agree with the practice of honour killing. According to the World Bank, at least 35 per cent of women in the MENA region have experienced some form of violence by an intimate partner at some stage in their life.

“As shocking as this figure is, it is likely to be an under-estimate, as gender-based violence frequently goes unreported due to obstacles such as social stigma, victim-blaming and concerns that the case will not be dealt with effectively by the State,” Dima Dabbous, Equality Now’s regional representative in the Middle East and North African region told MEMO.

“In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout, cases of domestic violence, child and forced marriages surged in the region, as they did globally, with women and girls from poorer communities and refugee families in conflict areas especially impacted.”

Almost 30 years ago, in a conference hall in Beijing, world leaders pledged to remove existing unfair laws and make legal equality a reality. But these goals, promised at the 4th UN Conference on Women, are not only far from being realised, Equality Now’s briefing says, but they are getting worse.

“Advances in the MENA have been slow and inconsistent,” says Dima. “Worryingly, in recent years, there has been a backsliding on women’s rights in some countries. Governments have been reluctant to address or prioritise reform, and countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia have been actively targeting and punishing women’s rights activists.”

Via Pixabay

In Lebanon, the father has all parental authority, apart from breastfeeding and, if a woman remarries, she loses custody of her children. Under Algeria’s Family Code, a woman requires the permission of a male marriage guardian, whilst in Israel, under the Marriage and Divorce Law, the divorce relies solely on the will of the husband.

Three decades since that conference, these discriminatory laws are not being removed because there is a lack of political will, says Dima. “This is fuelled, in part, by those in power seeking to preserve the status quo and maintain support from conservative constituencies that do not support women’s empowerment.”

“Attempts to reform family laws can be risky, even dangerous, in some MENA countries,” she continues, “especially where authoritarian governments treat peacefully campaigning for women’s rights as a crime punishable by social and economic sanctions, imprisonment, torture and even death.”

Last year, leading Egyptian women’s rights activist, Amal Fathy, was sentenced to a year in prison after she criticised the government’s failure to protect women from sexual harassment. In 2016 Egyptian lawyer and feminist Azza Soliman was arrested, her assets frozen and a travel ban put in place. Azza has now been cleared of charges against her in a terror court, but is still banned from travelling.

Also in 2021, prominent Saudi women’s rights activist, Loujain Al-Hathloul, was released from prison after three years in detention where she was tortured. Despite being released, Loujain was banned from travelling.

Whilst laws strengthening legal rights for women and girls have been introduced in the region, other strategies need to also be put in place, which generate public support to make sure they are accepted and implemented, says Dima.

“Achieving systematic, lasting change requires shifting negative attitudes and behaviour towards women and girls. For example, in Egypt child marriage is forbidden by law and denounced by the religious Al-Azhar authority, yet it remains widely practiced and culturally accepted.”

And, whilst the Egyptian government has increased the number of women appointed to government positions and criminalised denying women their inheritance, they have, at the same time, continued to squeeze free speech.

There are restrictions on civil society, including a law which prohibits NGOs from disclosing the results of field research without government approval, threatens fines of up to one million Egyptian pounds for receiving funds without government approval and prohibits cooperation with foreign organisations and experts.

Beyond the MENA region, there is almost no country in the world which has eradicated sex discriminatory laws, says Dima. By 2022, only 12 countries achieved full legal equality, according to the World Bank.

“Sex discriminatory marital status laws make gender equality impossible. Until women and girls have legal equality, there will continue to be the proliferation of harmful practices such as child marriage and forced marriage, and sexual and gender-based violence.”

“One major area of reform in personal status laws that states in the [MENA] region must undertake is to make their nationality and citizenship laws gender-equal, so that women have the same rights as men to transfer nationality to their children and spouses, and acquire or change it,” Dima adds later. “This will improve women’s lives, as well as their families, and bring countries into compliance with international law, which requires gender equality in nationality rights.”

Amelia Smith is a writer and journalist based in London who has reported from across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2016 Amelia was a finalist at the Write Stuff writing competition at the London Book Fair. Her first book, “The Arab Spring Five Years On”, was published in 2016 and brings together a collection of authors who analyse the protests and their aftermath half a decade after they flared in the region.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.