Tiny babies are abandoned in villages because Amtambahoaka
tribe believe twins are a curse that will bring death to their families
Eyes screwed up tight, she forces out a tiny weak cry as I cradle
her. Weighing only 3lb, there is barely enough of this premature baby to
fill the palms of my hands.
In the UK, her precarious start to life would be deemed unlucky even
in the protective warmth of a UK hospital incubator with a loving
family around her.
But here in Madagascar, an island haunted by black magic and taboos,
this child’s sinister misfortune runs much deeper than that.
There is no incubator to protect her. Only a tatty mosquito net. There is no loving mum and family. Only flies circling her cot.
She is a Bad Luck Baby. Abandoned by her frightened mother simply because she was a twin – a quirk of nature seen here as a terrifying curse.
The elders of her Amtambahoaka tribe believe raising twins brings misfortune, even death, to their families.
In the past, newborn siblings were often taken out into the bush and
left there to die. Today, civilisation has made some inroads into the
remote south east corner of this island state off the coast of Africa.
Most end up in centres where they are put up for adoption. Many go on to start new lives in France, Italy, Sweden and Canada.
But the dark ages-old taboo out in the bush remains unbreakable. And
as a mother, cradling this little victim whose sibling had already died,
I want to find out how superstition can be stronger than the maternal
bond to a child. Orphaned: Twins in Madagascar
That is why I am here with Channel 4’s Unreported World TV
documentary team investigating the extraordinary story of the
Amtambahoaka twins.
The nurse who handed the baby to me at a fly-blown hospital in the
coastal city of Mananjary tells me the child’s mother lives in a village
which is a a three-hour ride away on a bumpy speedboat down the
Panagalanes canal.
When we get there, the villagers tell us the young woman who had
given birth to twins was already back out in the fields planting rice.
Her name is Cecile, and she is 20 years old. She looks frightened
when we approach her but Cecile, her husband Adreobert and her mother
agree to talk at the tiny wooden hut that is their home.
Cecile tells us that, with no ante-natal care at all, she had no idea
she was carrying two babies. “When they were born I was shocked,” she
says.
“And scared for her life,” her husband Adreobert cuts in. While I was
trying to understand her fear, I saw a tell-tale dark patch of leaking
breast-milk growing on her T-shirt.
Just talking about the tiny babies she felt forced to give away was making her body produce breast milk.
“We want to keep our twins,” Cecile’s mother tells us. “But it is up
to the chiefs. If it changes we will keep our babies. But if not, we
will have to keep abandoning them.”
We are determined to meet the tribal chiefs responsible so we can ask
them why they promote a taboo that tears families apart. But they don’t
see it that way.
At a gathering of the senior elders of the Antambahoaka, one of the
oldest tells me bluntly: “Keeping twins is like eating your own s**t.”
Yet villagers are starting to rebel. On the outskirts of Mananjary,
we visit seven defiant families, all with twins. They live in makeshift
tents after being forced to leave their villages as outcasts.
One mum there, Carolin, must be the unluckiest woman in Madagascar – she has three sets of twins.
She says: “We had to move over 30 times before we came here, because
people think that even renting us a home with twins will bring bad luck.
“Most of my family would ignore me if they saw me on the street – but nothing will ever make me give up my babies.”
Across the city there is a centre for abandoned children where more
than a dozen pairs of twins are currently being given shelter. Since it
opened in 1987, hundreds of twins have passed through its doors. Julie
Rasoarimanana, who runs the centre, tells me not a single parent has
ever returned to reclaim their children.
A few days later, back at the hospital, we discover that our
surviving Bad Luck Baby’s luck has changed. She has been adopted by
Juliet, a local schoolteacher from a different tribe who named her
Nvayo, which means “to rise”’.
On our last day in Mananjary, we visit Nyavo in her new home, where her new mother is gently rocking her to sleep.
For this twin at least, good fortune has defeated superstition.
Unreported World: The Cursed Twins is on Channel 4, Friday May 9, at 7.30pm
A new report has
called for the practice of some British Asian men mistreating women and
leaving them soon after getting married in South Asia, to be treated as a
form of domestic violence.
Academics at the University of Lincoln
have discovered that these men have been taking thousands of pounds
from their new wife's family and using the women as domestic slaves for
their in-laws.
These "disposable women", as the report calls
them, are also often physically abused and then abandoned either once
they have moved to the UK, or - more commonly - while still in India.
Some
are brought temporarily to the UK but later taken on a pretend holiday
back to India, where they have their passport taken away.
Many
women hide the fact that this has happened to them, so academics spent
more than a year finding 57 women in India who had experienced the
phenomenon and would share their stories.
Dream wedding
Marriage
for Sunita, not her real name, began how she had always dreamed it
would in a grand venue in India's Punjab region, with hundreds of guests
and a beautiful red dress.
"Everything was great," she says, as she runs through photos of her big day on her phone.
After
the wedding, her new husband stayed with her for a month in India
before returning to his home in the UK. Sunita expected him to come back
to India shortly afterwards and take her back to live with him there,
but things then started to go wrong. "It was coming up to a year and he still didn't return," she
says. "I asked him many times 'Come back to India, when are you
coming?' but he would just say 'Not now, another time'.
"He demanded a lot from me too. At times 'give money' and at other times 'give furniture'."
Sunita's
husband eventually stopped talking to her on the phone. She hasn't seen
him since and has also since found out he was already married to
another woman in the UK.
As is common in India, and some other
countries in South Asia, Sunita's family had given her husband's family
almost £3,000, as well as around £4,000 in gold as a dowry - money or
goods given by the wife's family to the husband's when they get married.
Find out more
The Victoria Derbyshire programme is broadcast on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel.
Sunita says her husband and in-laws were also physically abusive towards her.
"When I used to question if he had a wife [in the UK], and why did he marry me - they would beat me just for asking."
Her
family is not rich and her father is watching on as she speaks, clearly
devastated by what has happened. He spent thousands of pounds on a
marriage he thought would give his daughter a happy future.
"I'm very upset. I'm finding it hard to talk about. He made [sexual] relations with me, my life is ruined," she says. Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Dr Sundari Anitha says the stigma surrounding abandoned wives is "massive"
Researchers point out that this problem also exists
in Pakistan and Bangladesh - countries where marriages to people living
in the UK, the US, Canada, and other nations with a large South Asian
diaspora are common.
Dr Sundari Anitha, from the School of Social
and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln, spoke to women
personally affected on a number of trips to Punjab, Delhi and Gujarat in
India.
She met women who had paid as much as £25,000 in dowry
before being abandoned, women raped by their new husbands, some who were
used to have a child and then abandoned and others left in India to act
as carers and domestic slaves for their in-laws.
She says patriarchal culture in South Asia means being abandoned can ruin a woman's life.
"The
stigma is massive and it even has an impact on other people in the
family. So a woman's sister will find it harder to get married. She will
find it harder to get a job, she faces financial insecurity and she's
seen as damaged goods - primarily because the assumption is she's had
sex."
The report recommends that the British state recognises
abandonment as a form of domestic violence and offers protection to
women "disposed of" by British men, even if they never travel to the UK.
Image caption
Pragna Patel says recognising abandonment as domestic abuse will improve legal rights
Pragna Patel, director of campaign group Southall
Black Sisters, worked with academics on the study and says this would
offer recourse to some sort of justice for women who at the moment have
none.
The group says that the constituent parts of abandonment -
such as blackmail, fraud, emotional abuse, financial abuse, controlling
and coercive behaviour and domestic servitude - can be prosecuted under
existing laws, but that "few, if any, perpetrators face any
consequences".
The victims may be unaware of their rights or feel too ashamed or frightened to report their abuse, it is suggested.
Ms
Patel explains, however, that "once it is recognised as domestic
violence then all the legal avenues that should be open to women either
to seek protection or prosecution, or other legal remedies, would be
available to abandoned women".
She says that in the last month,
staff at Southall Black Sisters have encountered a case in which a man
had married and abandoned five different women - each time profiting
financially.
"It's like a business for him," she says. "The
perpetrators are British nationals. If the British state turns a blind
eye or is indifferent to this abuse then it is contributing to this
culture of impunity - these men are not held to account by anyone.
"We have to wake up to the fact that violence in transnational spaces is a new and emerging form of violence against women."
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37472233?post_id=1107237902639582_1416001658429870#_=_
Trevor Hughes was jailed for 12 years after breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.Merseyside PoliceA paedophile has been put back behind bars after he was caught walking off with a missing five-year-old girl in Liverpool.
Trevor
Hughes, 66, of Knowsley Road, Bootle, was jailed for 12 months on
Friday for breaching an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order
which prevents him from being with children unsupervised.
Liverpool
Crown Court heard her frantic mother saw him with her daughter near a
leisure centre after giving the girl some bubbles as a birthday gift.
She had started a search for her daughter with the help of her neighbours.
Addressing
the court Judge Alan Conrad, QC, said: "It is every parents' nightmare
that their child playing will be grabbed by a sex offender and that is
exactly what happened here."
The court was told, according to the Liverpool Echo, that since the incident the girl has nightmares and "wakes up screaming".
Hughes
had previously been jailed for two-and-a-half years in June 2013 for
possessing indecent images of children and sexually assaulting a girl he
had groomed.
Note: Al Jazeera is publishing this piece on World Suicide Prevention Day. If you are affected by any of the issues it raises, please visit IASP's website.
Megan Dallat shows me her series of three photographs of women
hanging in a downtown Belfast art gallery. Each of the women has a
violent streak of red paint running across their bodies.
They are disturbing images, particularly given Dallat's history of self-harm.
The arts blogger first cut herself when she was 14, on her left
forearm with a pin. She progressed to fishing knives and razor blades on
her upper thighs. The cutting continued until last year when, at 23,
she got the help she needed and stopped self-harming.
"Back then if I was to cut I would know that I was going to do it
throughout the day. I would feel a building frustration and there was
nothing that I could do to help myself, or nowhere I could turn.
"It was so frustrating and then it was almost exciting to get ready
to do it, and then doing it was a release of, I don't know, an up
emotion,'' said Dallat, who has a small sunflower tattooed on one ankle
and a tiny heart tattoo, barely visible in white ink on her wrist.
Mental health workers estimate that 10 to 15 percent of young people
self-harm; cutting and pill overdoses are the most common forms. Most,
like Dallat, learn other ways of coping and outgrow the destructive
behaviour by their mid-twenties, but 1 to 2 percent end up committing
suicide.
Mental health professionals say that a majority of people who do kill themselves have self-harmed at some point in their lives.
Parents of young people who self-harm are often blind-sided when they
learn their carefully nurtured child is harming themselves. Dallat's
parents learned their daughter's secret from a teacher.
Warning signs
Now, there is help available, in the form of a 12-page booklet entitled, "Coping with Self-harm; A Guide for Parents and Carers". It's been translated into Flemish and Icelandic and other languages may follow.
I went to Oxford to the university's Centre for Suicide Research to meet the guide's author.
Anne Ferrey consulted 42 parents in putting together the guide. It's
clearly written with tips on what parents should look for: a child
refusing to swim, covering their arms with long sleeves, or bangles and
bracelets - more than the usual teenaged withdrawn behaviour.
Ferrey explained that self-harm does seem to release endorphins, positive chemicals that bring short-term relief.
"For some people it just helps them feel more in control of their
life. So, young people will say, 'I can't control anything else … but I
can control how I treat my own body'.
"Although it does help them in the moment feel like it's improving
the way they're feeling, overall it's quite negative and it's not
something you would want to continue," she said.
Ferrey's office in the Department of Psychiatry is tucked behind the
Warneford Hospital, built in 1826 as the Oxford Lunatic Asylum. Just the
change language shows how far we've come in accepting mental illness.
It's difficult to find people willing to talk about mental illness.
Most don't want to expose themselves to ridicule – to be considered a
"freak". And those who've stopped cutting want to forget their unstable
period and move on.
Dallat is a rare, brave voice willing to buck the stigma and talk about her difficult history.
"The more people talk about it the more you feel you can open up
without being judged," Dallat told me as rain pelted the large windows
in her Belfast studio.
"I can talk about [self-harm] because I am completely over it, and if
there's anything I can do to help other people stop, I want to do it.'' Click here to view Dallat's personal website.
People and Power - Out of the Shadows: Overcoming Mental Illness
Black Lives Matter UK Protesters Shut Down London City Airport
Some
people really don't like facts, preferring to be swayed by feeling,
hearsay, assumption, and whatever comes along to affirm their own world
view. It would be interesting if it didn't have so much capacity to do
damage.
Friends of the Earth were called racist and all sorts of things
yesterday by the keyboard warrior contingent for supporting the Black
Lives Matter protest at City Airport. Get the magazine, the app and full web access from $1 a week
Facts may not be very good at changing people's minds but we are not
yet so deeply into a post-factual society that we shouldn't at least
consider them. Here's an honest to God, straight up and down fact:
We have just witnessed a record-breaking 14 consecutive months of the hottest global temperatures
since records began, with vanishing Arctic sea ice and the bleaching of
the Great Barrier Reef just the latest reality we have to face.
Scientists say we have to go back 120,000 years before we find hotter
temperatures than those currently recorded and are now predicting sea
level rises of 10 feet by 2065. Think of some of the largest cities in
the world and where they are—Rio, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai—to
realize what sea level rises will mean.
Climate scientists, governments, civil society and anyone else
thinking rationally recognize that the impact of our carbon pollution
will mean failing agriculture, greater food insecurity, more intense
droughts and floods, record-breaking super typhoons and hurricanes,
increased water shortages, more extreme weather. These elements lead to
the forced displacement of people, and an increase in conflicts, and
this is happening now. Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, left 7,000 dead and 2 million homeless. Floods in Pakistan in 2010 affected 20 million people. This year's heatwave in India and Pakistan hit 51°C, while in the Sahel (the sub-Saharan region of Africa) drought has affected 23 million, and left 3.5 million displaced.
Just one tropical storm, Erika, which hit the Caribbean island of
Dominica last year, put back development gains by 20 years. And all this
is happening at an average temperature of increase of 1°C.
It's hard to put an accurate estimate on how many lives are lost each
year to climate change, or how many communities destroyed. Some figures
suggest up to 700,000 additional deaths per year, although climate change fans every existing inequality in the world.
Who are these people who are dying, and who is responsible? It's the
greatest injustice of climate change, that those who are the least
responsible for causing the climate crisis, are the first to suffer. The
poor, the marginalized, the indigenous communities are on the
frontline—and they are overwhelmingly people of color in developing countries.
And where it is richer, more developed countries dealing with
wildfires, such as those in Australia, the U.S. or the floods in Europe,
they invariably have more resources to deal with the impact.
Here are some more facts—just 10 percent
of the world's population are responsible for 50 percent of emissions,
while the poorest 50 percent are responsible for only 10 percent of
emissions. No guessing where most of that first 10 percent live. The
reality is that rich countries in the West have grown wealthy from
burning fossil fuels, and now other countries are using the same dirty
development pathway to do the same. An average citizen in the U.S., with
just 5 percent of the world's population, still has a per capita income
of $41,064 and pollutes 17.3 tonnes
of CO 2 . India, with 18 percent of the global population have average
of $3,148 per capita income and its citizens are responsible for 1.4
tonnes. The world's poorest countries—the so-called least developed countries—constitute
11 percent of the global population but have only a per capita income
of $1,461, and the average CO 2 output across Africa is 0.9 tonnes.
Political decisions are being made for those whose voices are
listened to, and it takes protesters such as those in Black Lives Matter
to advocate for those whose voices are ignored.
The ink on the Paris Agreement isn't dry, but politicians agreed to
keep temperature increases to below the critical 1.5°C guardrail. To
prevent a breach of that, we can only pollute at the same rate as we are
doing for another six to 10 years. In a fair world, rich countries in
the West would have decarbonized decades ago. But the harsh truth is
that it's incompatible with preventing a breach of 1.5°C and even the
2°C guardrail to build new airports, or to progress more dirty energy
sources such as fracking.
So the Black Lives Matter protestors were absolutely right to say that climate change is killing black people.
They are absolutely right to put the spotlight on airport expansion.
Globally aviation emissions increased by 71.6 percent between 1990 and
2012, the same volume as the CO 2 emitted by Germany. If aviation was a
country, it would be the world's seventh largest emitter. That's why the
protest happened, and that's why we need to listen to their message. Asad Rehman is a climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
Photo Essay
Vanished from the maps, the village of El Gosbah or the village of
the “blacks” is situated in the remote southern parts of Tunisia.
Despite its population of five thousand inhabitants, one witnesses the
absolute lack of infrastructure (roads, transport, water supply etc.)
and complete absence of state institutions.
A primary school, a small hospital where a doctor comes once per
week, tiny groceries with small quantities of seasonal goods, three
mosques built at the community's expenses and two coffee shops accompany
a scenery of a handmade, sparsely populated village where one can find
nothing but the extremely necessary. The men of El Gosbah spend most of
the year in unemployment, waiting for summertime when they hunt seasonal
jobs, usually as bodyguards, in the island of Djerba. Still perceived as slaves' descendants by their
compatriots due to their black skin, men of Gosbah blame racism for
unemployment and they often have to migrate for work to Libya. Lacking
alternatives, youngsters kill their time drinking coffee, playing cards
or in Publinets, connected on Facebook. School dropout
consisting a common phenomenon, women of all ages become the main
providers of the family as the majority of them embarks on a
15-kilometre daily journey to the beach in order to collect babouch, as
Tunisians call clams, gaining 2-7 euros for six hours’ manual labour.
At the end of their long day, women prepare the meal and gather to drink
tea and watch Bollywood soap operas. Doors are always open and the sense of collective
life lies in the heart of the community. Faraway from the urban centres,
some people in Gosbah ignore completely what elections are while some
households have not paid electricity bills since the Tunisian Revolution
in 2011. People of Gosbah feel “exiled and unwanted”, yet they are very
attached to their land which they often call janna, 'paradise' in the Tunisian dialect.
Social exclusion, economic marginalisation and a
life inscribed in the narrow frontiers of a world full of divisions;
locals sing about their experiences through a local music genre, Tayfa,
a unique self-taught style which only passes from generation to
generation among the men of the village. The Tayfa leader is the only
one who can read and write and the rest of the band, being illiterate,
have to memorise the lyrics. A modern “Romeo and Juliet” drama occurred a decade
ago when a “white” daughter fell in love with a “black” shepherd,
triggering a war of hatred between “white” and “black” neighbours. That
story still haunts the locals' narrations about El Gosbah. Thus,
geographic and social isolation, lack of education and racism regularly
leads to consanguineous marriages. Having lived for some time with the
locals, women often silently portrayed to me what words were unable to
convey: their suffering due to their darker skin colour and the destiny
that this same colour would reserve for their daughters.
Jenny is a
freelance journalist currently based in Tunisia. She has studied Law in
the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and holds a Master's
Degree on "Global Media and Postnational Communication" from the School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. She
speaks Greek, English, French, Spanish and collaborates with Greek and
international media. Contact: jennytsiropoulou@gmail.com
As the celebrations of
this remarkable achievement began to quieten down, people got ready to
enjoy the benefits of liberty - especially those to do with fairness,
human rights and equality.
And indeed, many of those benefits did follow; even though many
Tunisians continue to feel economically marginalised and the country
faces security problems, for the most part the repression that was such a
feature of the Ben Ali years has gone. Tunisia is widely regarded as
one of the few successes of the Arab Spring.
But not all Tunisians would agree. Five years on from the revolution,
the country's large black minority - roughly about 15 percent of the
population - say they have yet to fully experience the freedoms that
their fellow citizens enjoy. They say that racial abuse and
discrimination are still widespread in a society that is supposed to
have done away with inequity and prejudice - and that the authorities
are failing to take action. People & Power sent filmmaker Nada Issa to investigate. FILMMAKER'S VIEW
By Nada Issa
Racism is, to varying degrees, a problem for almost every society in the world.
In
the West, Islamophobia appears to be on the rise, fuelled by public
anxiety over the influx of refugees into Europe from the Middle East and
North Africa.
In the United States too, politics appears to be
ever more polarised. A year which has seen Donald Trump's highly
controversial and, some would say, openly xenophobic views edge him ever
closer to the Republican Party's presidential nomination has also borne
witness to numerous reports and leaked videos of alleged police
brutality against members of the country’s black community.
But
what sets Tunisia apart from these examples is the fact that racism,
though clearly evident at almost every level of society, is rarely, if
ever, publicly acknowledged. In Tunisia, racism is shrouded in a blanket
of denial that rarely permits anyone to see it with clarity. A desire
to remove this shroud and shine a spotlight on this deep-seated
intolerance gave me the impetus to make this film.
As our
investigation would reveal, discrimination is a shockingly everyday
occurrence for black Tunisians. Although no official statistics exist,
around 15 percent of the country’s population is believed to be black,
while the majority of the remainder regard themselves as "white". To
some outside observers, this labelling might appear strange given the
country’s unique and rich African-Arab identity, but it is part and
parcel of the way Tunisians think of themselves and, apparently,
compartmentalise those around them.
Five years on from the revolution, the country's
large black minority say they have yet to fully experience the freedoms
that their fellow citizens enjoy [Al Jazeera]
In 2011, Tunisia shook the world as daily street protests eventually
led to the toppling of the government, a vanguard for the other Arab
Spring protests that erupted successively in countries across the
region. Black and white Tunisians stood shoulder to shoulder on the
streets calling for the fall of the Ben Ali regime, demanding democracy
and a new, more inclusive political chapter in their nation’s history.
But though revolution may have brought about change for many white
Tunisians, the rights and freedoms of black citizens seem to have been
forgotten - or at the very best to have been selectively granted and
protected.
Among the legislative reforms of the past five years
was Act 21 which states that all citizens are "equal before the law
without any discrimination."
On the face of it, this might appear to guarantee equal opportunities
for all Tunisian citizens irrespective of racial and ethnic heritage,
but many black critics argue that it falls woefully short in protecting
them from prejudice.
They believe an additional constitutional or legal coda to
criminalise racism, which remarkable is currently not defined in law, is
now the only way to bring an end to widespread discrimination in public
life - as well as silencing the casual racism which pervades the
streets of towns and cities across the country. The lack of such a law,
they say, means that perpetrators of hate crimes, even when such cases
are reported, are never brought to justice.
Black Tunisians
have long lived on the margins of their society. Although it was one of
the very first territories in the world to abolish slavery and provide
legal emancipation in 1846, traces of the slave trade's legacy linger
on. This is perhaps most visible in the south of the country, where many
black families still bear the names of their ex-slave owners preceded
by the term "Atig", meaning "freed from".
While filming in
Tunis, we heard rumours that even cemeteries in the rural south were
divided along racial lines. In one town in Djerba, for example, we were
told that the graveyard for black Tunisians is known as the cemetery of
the "Abeed", meaning slaves. Meanwhile, the final resting place of the
local white community is referred to as "Ahrar", meaning free. It was
also alleged that, in parts of the south, segregation along racial lines
was so extreme that entire towns were designated exclusively for whites
and others allotted only for occupation by black families.
Racism is shrouded in a blanket of denial that rarely permits anyone to see it with clarity, the author explains [Al Jazeera]
To investigate just how accurate these claims were, we travelled to
the region with one of our contributors, a prominent Tunisian
anti-racism campaigner. Approaching the town of Sidi Makhlouf, we met
fierce resistance from the local police who had somehow heard we were
coming and clearly did not want us to document the realities of life in
their community.
Once we managed to get past them, we soon
discovered why. Hard though it is to believe, we found that in this town
separate buses were used to transport white and black children to
school – a practice that seems more reminiscent of 1950s America or even
apartheid-era South Africa. Members of the local community we spoke to
said this practice had begun some years ago when a local mixed-race
couple got married and aroused the fury of the area's "white" majority.
Now they don't want their children to mix with those from black
families.
But this isn't just a rural phenomenon. In the capital, Tunis, many
of our black contacts told us that racism was evident in everything from
"the looks people give you" to the menial jobs most black people were
offered. On a number of occasions we ourselves witnessed white Tunisians
addressing black citizens using derogatory terms such as "Wasif"
(servant) or "Kahlouch" (blackie) - which are equivalent to the "N" word
used by racists in the West, in their expression of bigotry and
contempt. These words often weren't muttered quietly either - in one
football match we went to see, the black referee was unashamedly
subjected to a loud barrage of deeply offensive racist insults from
watching supporters.
Yet perhaps this is the moment when the
shroud of denial is finally begin to lift. Racism in Tunisia has
recently gone from something to be denied and ignored to becoming the
subject of regular street protests.
Discrimination permeates school life, the workplace and the street,
but there is now at least a glimmer of hope as Tunisia's small but
increasingly vocal civil rights movement gains momentum. Indeed we
followed one group as they delivered a plea for help to Tunisia's human
rights minister. His promises to act - though a little light on detail -
were at least a sign that some in authority are now beginning to
listen.
The rights of black Tunisians have gone unaddressed since the revolution [Getty]
Date of publication:
10 June,
2016
Comment: Transitional justice in
Tunisia should extend to those who continue to be excluded from society,
writes Conor McCormick-Cavanagh
Something is rotten in the state of Tunisia, although you
wouldn't know it without digging deep. On the surface, Tunisia is seen
as a shining example of democratic evolution in the Arab world.
It
is true that Tunisia has made great strides since its 2011 revolution.
Rival political parties, Nidaa Tounes and Ennahdha, are governing as a
coalition based on compromise. Tunisia's constitution is also the most
progressive in the region.
However, some areas of the country's progress have stagnated. One in particular - minority rights - needs a major boost, as the rights of black Tunisians
have gone completely unaddressed since the revolution for citizenly
dignity. Without an honest examination of racial discrimination and
attempt to improve treatment of its black citizens, Tunisia will be
selling itself short in the years to come. Munathara debate kicks off conversation about birth certificates
The Munathara Initiative, a pan-Arab debate program, recently hosted a
debate in Tunisia about minority rights in the Arab world. Tunisia is
the perfect venue for such a debate, as in 1846, it became the first
Arab country to abolish slavery.
Two
teams jousted back and forth, debating minority rights. The most
notable moment came when Rania Belhaj Romdhane, director of Mnemty, an anti-racism NGO in Tunisia, produced the birth certificate of a black Tunisian.
Rania,
who is black herself, showed the certificate to Abdelbari Atwan, who
was debating against her as part of the anti-minority rights side.
Atwan, a journalist with celebrity status in the Middle East, originally
hails from Gaza and not Tunisia.
On the certificate, the word chouchane which in Tunisian
Arabic translates to "owned by" is written next to the name "Hamrouni".
In other words, it reads "property of Hamrouni".
Without
an honest examination of racial discrimination and attempt to improve
treatment of its black citizens, Tunisia will be selling itself short in
the years to come
Abdelbari told Belhaj Romdhane that if such a practice of racial
discrimination exists, then he would raise the issue with President Beji
Caid Essebsi. Belhaj Romdhane declined the offer, stating that she
could handle the matter herself.
Despite her rejection, Atwan still obtained a copy of the document. Speaking to The New Arab,
he said, "I consulted with four journalists and found nothing racist in
the document." Atwan visited Essebsi and spoke about "the economic
situation and the call for a national unity government." However, he
never raised the issue of the document because he saw "no discrimination
in it".
When asked if racial discrimination is a problem in Tunisia, Atwan
refused the claim, "Maybe there are a few cases of racism, but it is not
generalised. It is being exaggerated." Bigger problems to deal with
Atwan believes that there are "much bigger problems in the Arab
world" and this is a common opinion among policymakers in Tunisia. Of
course, there are major problems. As President Essebsi said recently,
the three main problems are "corruption, unemployment and terrorism". It
is hard to disagree; yet those like Essebsi who are saying this, have
never experienced racism in their lives.
This begs the question, is Atwan correct? Is the birth certificate discriminatory or is racism just an exaggerated problem? A history of slavery in Tunisia
Birth certificates like the Chouchane Hamrouni one are held by many
black Tunisians. Not all black Tunisians hail from slave ancestry, yet
those with the "chouchane" format have ancestors who received this name
when they were purchased by slaveowners in Ottoman Tunisia. White slaves
also existed, as criminals and kidnapped Europeans were often forced
into slavery.
Najwa Younes, a journalist and researcher of the history of black
Tunisians, helped clarify the ambiguity surrounding names of former
slaves. Younes, who identifies as "brown-skinned", told The New Arab:
"Upon emancipation, white slaves dropped the names of their previous owners: They just kept the last names abid meaning slave or atig
meaning former slave. Other emancipated white slaves even kept the last
names of their owners, such as "Mamlouk", without the possessive
preceding it. Many black slaves, however, were forced to keep "property
of" plus the name of their previous owners."
'People
in the cities don't see racism as a generalised problem because they
identify blacks as sub-Saharan foreigners' says Myriam Amri
In other words, the names of black Tunisians solely indicated them as
property of prominent families. The black Tunisians who submitted these
certificates to Mnemty wanted to both change their official names and
raise awareness that this practice still exists.
Atwan was not aware of this practice, nor the fact that in certain
towns in southern Tunisia, public school buses are segregated, one bus
for whites and one bus for blacks. In response, Atwan said, "They should
be thankful. They are lucky to have two buses." Should black Tunisians really be thankful?
Black Tunisians comprise up to 15 percent of the population, but only
one black Tunisian serves in parliament. According to Rania Belhaj
Romdhane, in certain parts of the country, such as the small town of Gosbah in Medenine, wesfan or slaves are separated from ahrar or freedmen in racial segregation.
It is worth noting that these egregious examples of racial
discrimination are by no means widespread. They only exist in small
communities in southern Tunisia. In fact, Article 21 of Tunisia's constitution "guarantees freedoms and individual and collective rights to all citizens".
However, without a specific article guaranteeing equality to all
people regardless of race, more insidious racism, like the issue of
names, will continue to exist throughout the country. Insidious forms of racial discrimination
In "Tunisia’s Dirty Secret", a short Al Jazeera
documentary showing racism in Tunisia, a black Tunisian named Hamza
walked a day in the streets of Tunis wearing glasses with a hidden
camera. In the footage, one man walks by Hamza and asks, "Slave, have
you been kicked out from your house?" while another walks by saying
"have a shower you lazy bastard".
In fact, words like chouchane or kahloush - a
derogatory way to refer to black people - are still used quite
frequently, either in jest or as actual labels. For many black
Tunisians, chouchane represents not just a name, but a form of constant humiliation.
Tunisia can and should be a leader in the fight to attain racial equality
Speaking to Al Jazeera interviewers afterwards, Hamza says
that he hears many racist insults in the streets of Tunisia. "It's like
someone's piercing your heart", he admits.
Myriam Amri, a graduate student at the School of Anthropology at LSE,
believes such racial discrimination is by no means exceptional. "People
in the cities don't see racism as a generalised problem because they
identify blacks as sub-Saharan foreigners. They don't see it as a
problem between one Tunisian and another. Black Tunisians almost don’t
exist." Hope for a future of equality
In the future, Tunisia can and should be a leader in the fight to
attain racial equality. Across the world, people look to it as a role
model. Transitional justice in post-revolution Tunisia does not just
extend to those who were explicitly persecuted under the regime, but
also to the individuals and communities who were and continue to be
excluded from society.
Tunisia first needs an article added to its constitution,
specifically preventing discrimination based on race. On top of this, it
should be possible for individuals with such names to change them
easily.
Belhaj Romdhane remains hopeful. "We need to guide people to learn to
become more accepting. Parents can start by teaching their children to
appreciate differences."
Conor is a journalist based in Tunisia. His work has been
published in the Huffington Post, Middle East Eye, and Al-Monitor. He
also works in the Tunisian education field to promote cross-cultural
understanding.
أذنت السلط القضائية بالمحكمة الإبتدائية بتونس مؤخرا إلى اعوان
الإدارة الفرعية للقضايا الإجرامية بالقرجاني بمهمة مواصلة البحث في ملف
قضية تتعلق بموت مستراب فيه لإيطالي كان عثر عليه ميت في المنزل الذي كان
يقيم به في لافايات بالعاصمة
و وفق صحيفة الأخبار الأسبوعي فقد أبلغ جيران الشيخ الإيطالي البالغ من العمر 70 سنة عن عدم خروجه من المنزل منذ أيام من دخوله هناك
و تولت الوحدات الأمنية إقتحام المنزل ليعثروا عنه جثة هامدة تمت معاينتها
من قبل مساعد وكيل الجمهورية و أحد قضاة التحقيق بالمحكمة الإبتدائية بتونس
و قد وضعت الجثة على ذمة الطبيب الشرعى بمستشفى شارل نيكول بتونس العاصمة
لفحصها و الكشف عن سبب الوفاة و حسب نفس المصدر فقد تم فتح بحث تحقيقيا في
الغرض من أجل القتل العمد
و أمكن لأعوان مركز نهج كولونيا من ضبط شابيين كانا على علاقة بالهالك و
يقيمان معه في شقته و قد إعترف أحدهم بأنه على علاقة مريبة مشبوهة بالهالك
نافيا أن يكون قد أزهق روحه.
Part of the speakers of ADAM Association seminar on Black
TunisiansTunisians from all social categories gathered in gathered in
Maison de la Culture Ibn Khaldoun, in downtown Tunis on June 12 to
attend “Blacks in Tunisia: We Are All Tunisians. We are Children of
Adam.” The event was organized by the first Tunisian black association
called “ADAM Association for Equality and Development.”The conference is
the first of its kind in Tunisian modern history to address the issues
surrounding the black community. The history and challenges met by the
community include denial of their role in Tunisian society, a lack of
recognition, discrimination and racism.The speakers at the conference
discussed ways of addressing the issue of racial discrimination in
Tunisian society. Chawki Tbib, the head of the Tunisian Lawyers
Association urged black Tunisians to report about racist incidents or
discriminatory acts against them to any Tunisian lawyer.ADAM reiterated
its support for the upholding of fairness and development among
Tunisians irrespective of race. They strive to work towards achieving
the equality of black Tunisians with their “white Tunisian”
counterparts.Taoufik Chairi, chairman of ADAM, highlighted the need for
the recognition of blacks in Tunisian culture and society.Chaouki Tbib,
the head of the Tunisian Lawyers Association and president of the
Tunisian Association for Citizenship admitted the presence of racism
against blacks in Tunisia. “Racism is pervasive in Tunisian society: it
exists in our jokes, traditions, dance, customs and even the refusal of
mixed-race marriages,” Tbib stressed.On the other hand, Tunisia has an
official history of working against racial discrimination. In January of
1846, Tunisia abolished slavery, becoming the first Arab nation to take
the step. Tunisia has also signed international treaties to combat
racism, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fight
Against all Types of Racial Discrimination in 1948. In 1958, Tunisia
signed an agreement criminalizing racial discrimination.“Tunisian law
does not discriminate between Tunisians on the basis of race,” Tbib
said.Tbib went on to urge black Tunisians as civil society members to be
more active in cases of racial discrimination by reporting any racial
incident to a human rights association, organization or lawyer. He also
warned of the danger of “the trivialization of racism and racial
discrimination in Tunisian society” and suggested committees to defend
black Tunisians in the same vein as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People in the USA and SOS Racisme in
France.Abdelhamid Larguèche, a Tunisian historian who worked extensively
on the black presence in Tunisia also spoke. Larguèche co-authored the
Tozeur Declaration in 2009 with Martinique poet and philosopher Edouard
Glissant, and Salah Trabelsi, a French-Tunisian historian based in
France. The book condemns slavery in the Arab and Muslim world and
remembers the dark past of Arab and Muslim countries, who were involved
The CNN Freedom Project
wants to amplify the voices of the victims of modern-day slavery,
highlight success stories and help unravel the tangle of criminal
enterprises trading in human life.
(CNN)When
Kieu was 12, her mother asked her to take a job. But not just any job.
Kieu was first examined by a doctor, who issued her a "certificate of
virginity." She was then delivered to a hotel, where a man raped her for
two days.
In 2013, the Freedom
Project went to Cambodia with Oscar-winning actress and UNODC Goodwill
Ambassador against Human Trafficking, Mira Sorvino.
The result was "Every Day in Cambodia: A CNN Freedom Project
Documentary," which looked at child sex trafficking in the country.
In
Svay Pak, a notorious child sex trafficking hub in Phnom Penh, Sorvino
met Kieu, who was then around 14 years old. She had been rescued from
sex trafficking by Agape International Missions (AIM), a non-profit for trafficked and at risk children and teenagers.
Kieu
told of how she had been sold aged 12 by her mother to a Khmer man of
"maybe more than 50" who had three children of his own, Sorvino
explained in her Cambodia journal:
"The price set in advance for her virginity: $1,500, though she was
ultimately only given $1,000, of which she had to give $400 to the woman
who brought her to the man. Her mother used the money to pay down a
debt and for food for the fish they raise under their floating house --
their primary income source.
"Beforehand,
Kieu said, 'I did not know what the job was and whether it was good for
me. I had no idea what to expect. But now I know the job was not good
for me.' After she lost her virginity to the man, she felt 'very
heartbroken.' Her mother supposedly felt bad too, but still sent her to
work in a brothel. Kieu said she did not want to go, but had to. She
said, 'They held me like I was in prison.'"
She
was kept there for three days, raped by three to six men a day. When
she returned home, her mother sent her away for stints in two other
brothels, including one 400 kilometers away on the Thai border. When she
learned her mother was planning to sell her again, this time for a
six-month stretch, she realized she needed to flee her home.
Her
story is all too common in Svay Pak; she was just one of the girls
whose stories were told in the film. Fast forward to 2015 and "Everyday
in Cambodia" was named "outstanding documentary" by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation, winning a Gracie Allen award.
Sorvino
says the film has raised awareness of the issue of child sex
trafficking in Svay Pak and Cambodia, helping to raise funds for AIM to
build a school that, when completed, will offer hope for more than 1,000
children in the region.
"Primary
and especially secondary education is extremely important in preventing
trafficking," she says. "It allows children to develop critical thinking
skills to be able to defend themselves from traffickers and to have the
skills that will enable them to have gainful employment to be able to
support their families in other ways than being sexually exploited."
AIM also now works with an "incorruptible" police SWAT team to raid brothels where children are working.
But
Sorvino adds that it's not just about helping the victims. "The demand
side really needs to be addressed," she says. "If people weren't trying
to buy child sex it wouldn't be being sold."
Photo Essay
Vanished from the maps, the village of El Gosbah or the village of
the “blacks” is situated in the remote southern parts of Tunisia.
Despite its population of five thousand inhabitants, one witnesses the
absolute lack of infrastructure (roads, transport, water supply etc.)
and complete absence of state institutions. 
