SACW #2 | 1 May 03 | Women's Rights Special

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire #2 |  1 May,  2003

[ ALERT FOR ACTION: in Defence of the Indian Historian Romila Thapar
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html ]

---------------

#1. Rockets attack on project on women's development in Pakistan
#2. Pakistan: Campaign against 'Un-Islamic' Practices Picks Up 
(Muddassir Rizvi)
#3. India: Shariati Nefazi Islami dress code for girls in Kashmir
#4. Europe: [Forced Marriages and Desis] The Runaway Bride (Aisha Lab)
[Related material: Forced Marriages Are Driving Some Women to Self-Immolatio=
n]
#5. Indian Women Criticize 'Fair and Lovely' Ideal (Nicole Leistikow)
#6. India: The Sangharsh Sabha (April 24, 2003) highlighted the 
crucial linkages between food deprivation and declining status of 
rural women
#7. USA: A Model Minority (Kamalika Banerjee)
#8. India: Swaraj: Women's crusade for water in the desert
#9. Call for Contributions: Essays on Violence Against Women

--------------

#1.

The Mercury News
Posted on Mon, Apr. 28, 2003

Rockets hit office of European Union funded project in Pakistan, no casualti=
es
By Riaz Khan
Associated Press

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -Two rockets hit a European Union-funded project 
that has been pushing women's development in the backward and remote 
corners of northwest Pakistan, police said Tuesday.
There were no casualties in the assault on the office late Monday and 
the only foreigner -- an Italian national -- who had been living 
there left the district of Dir before the outbreak of the war in Iraq 
for security regions.
Dir, which is roughly 200 kilometers (120 miles) northwest of 
Islamabad, is a deeply conservative region of Pakistan. Its religious 
leaders have encouraged attacks on international organizations, 
particularly those that press for women's rights or employ women.
In recent years, radical Islamic leaders in the area have tried to 
close down international aid projects in Dir, and have scrawled 
graffiti on walls warning women not to leave their home and 
threatening to kill foreign workers.
On Monday two rockets slammed into the Dir Kohistan Area Development 
Project office, police spokesman Zahid Khan said Tuesday. A portion 
of the building burned to the ground. The organization provides 
health and education to women as well as assistance to farmers.
The attack comes as the organization was recruiting women workers for 
its educational programs for girls and women.
``But the local elders had strongly opposed this project,'' resident 
Khaista Gul said.
The district of Dir also is a stronghold of the religious coalition 
that rules in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and which came 
to power on a strident anti-U.S. platform.

_____

#2.

PAKISTAN: Campaign against 'Un-Islamic' Practices Picks Up
Muddassir Rizvi

A snowball effect appears to be underway - with conservative elements 
in Pakistan's federal government limping back into action - after 
religious parties won control of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) 
bordering Afghanistan last year and recently Islamised its laws.
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=3D17556

_____


#3.

The Times of India, APRIL 23, 2003
New militant outfit imposes dress code on J&K girls
M SALEEM PANDIT
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=3D44=
287512

_____


#4.

Time Magazine, May 5, 2003 | Vol. 161, No. 18

The Runaway Bride
By AISHA LABI | BRADFORD

BETWEEN WORLDS: Noor, born and raised in Britain, was forced last 
year to marry a distant cousin she'd never met, and then taken to the 
Netherlands

Noor Khan awoke one morning last September to a knock on her bedroom 
door. Several people, most of them strangers, stood clustered 
outside. It was Noor's wedding day, and she was the last to know.

A relative visiting from Amsterdam pushed forward in introduction her 
son, a pleasant-faced young man named Munir (like Noor's, his and 
other names have been changed to protect Noor's identity). This was 
Noor's husband-to-be. Noor's brother Ali embraced her, squeezing so 
tightly it hurt. "Don't embarrass me," he whispered. But when Noor, 
then 17, objected, he exploded. "I'll kill you. I'll do it right now, 
I don't care," Noor says he shouted. Munir and his companions went 
downstairs and Noor began sobbing uncontrollably.

Munir's mother handed Noor a beaded red salwar kameez - the tuniclike 
top and leggings worn by women in northern India and Pakistan. "Put 
this on," she instructed. Faced with Noor's unrelenting tears, she 
tried to reassure her, promising that her son would make a good 
husband. But when Ali returned a short while later, the outfit still 
lay beside Noor on the bed. He threatened to kill her if she didn't 
change within five minutes. "I was so frightened," she says, "I just 
did it."

The nikah, the contractual part of a Muslim wedding ceremony when the 
bride and groom agree to the marriage, took place in Noor's bedroom. 
An imam came to oversee the proceedings, but Noor refused to answer 
him when he asked for a second time if she consented. A third failure 
to do so would stop the proceedings, so Ali took her aside and 
repeated his threat. Noor appealed to her father, who had just 
returned from one of his frequent visits to Pakistan, but he did 
nothing. Her body heaving with sobs, Noor quietly said yes. 
"Congratulations," the imam said. "You're married!"

Arranged marriages are not uncommon in immigrant communities across 
Europe. They are rituals faithfully carried over into a new, 
Westernized lifestyle, sometimes generations after immigration. 
Defenders of the practice argue that the resulting matches are often 
more successful than self-made marriages. But every year, hundreds of 
arrangements deteriorate into forced marriages, founded on emotional 
or physical coercion. It is an intensely private battle, an extreme 
manifestation of a complicated culture clash - religious vs. secular, 
old vs. new, East vs. West - that occurs in smaller ways all over 
Europe every day.

In Britain, where at least a thousand women are forced into marriage 
each year, most of the families, like Noor's, have South Asian 
backgrounds. Some are Hindu, others are Sikh or Muslim. Zafar Ali, 
who chairs the U.K.'s Slough Race Equality Council, concedes that 
"there are, and always have been, a number of pressurized marriages," 
but insists such cases would be condemned by "95% of all Asians and 
Muslims." In France, coerced brides tend to be of North African 
origin; in Denmark, most come from the large Turkish community. While 
one Europe is mesmerized by "reality" matchmaking TV shows, another 
is quietly enforcing an ancient, nonnegotiable version.
Women are often told that their failure to enter into a match will 
shame the family. "It's a culturally specific form of domestic 
violence that is far more common than people realize," says Hannana 
Siddiqui, director of Southall Black Sisters, a women's resource 
center outside London. But it's only in the past five years or so 
that social workers, judges and other professionals have begun to 
recognize these situations for what they are. Southall Black Sisters 
handles about 300 cases a year, and the figure is rising. The West 
Yorkshire Midlands Police, whose jurisdiction includes several cities 
with large Asian populations, has had an officer, Philip Balmforth, 
dedicated to the problem since 1995. He deals with about 200 cases a 
year.

In extreme incidents, women who resist their families pay with their 
lives. In 1997, the murder of Rukhsana Naz, a 19-year-old 
Anglo-Pakistani who had fled an arranged marriage, was one of the 
first cases to focus attention on forced marriage. More recently, in 
January, Sahda Bibi, 21, was stabbed to death on her wedding day in 
Birmingham. Bibi was marrying the groom of her choice with her 
parents' consent, but people close to the case believe that she had 
reneged on an earlier arranged match. A relative wanted in connection 
with the murder flew from England to Pakistan hours after the 
stabbing and has so far eluded capture. Weeks later, another young 
Anglo-Pakistani woman, Balqis Akhtar, was murdered in her family's 
home village in Pakistan. Her father is alleged to have confessed to 
shooting her for refusing to go through with an arranged marriage.

Like other first-generation immigrant children, Noor lived in the 
narrow gray space between the old country and the new. She grew up in 
the northern city of Bradford, home to 90,000 ethnic Pakistanis, 
Bangladeshis and Indians who first arrived in the 1950s to work in 
the thriving regional textile industry. Noor lived at home with her 
parents. Her life revolved around school, where she was preparing for 
exams, her friends and a blossoming relationship with her first 
boyfriend. She was especially close to her mother. "I could talk to 
her about anything, tell her anything," says Noor.
I don't know you, you're a stranger, you're not my husband.
Every day, Noor negotiated a culture gap, trading in some customs and 
holding onto others. Traditional in some respects, Noor's parents 
also took steps to ensure that she felt at home with British culture, 
and sent her to a school that was not predominantly Asian. "They 
wanted me to have English friends," she says. Unlike many Muslim 
girls in Bradford (and her own mother, who always wore a scarf in 
public) she does not cover her hair, and the Western clothes she 
favors are modest yet fashionable. Her accent features the elongated 
vowels of northern Britain, but she speaks in Urdu with her family.

Last spring, Noor's life began to splinter when her mother died after 
a brief illness. Her father soon went to Pakistan, leaving Noor in 
the care of her brothers, one of whom is Ali, who began to run the 
household in a much more authoritarian way. In September, Ali 
suddenly announced that a relative from the Netherlands was coming to 
visit. That's when Noor's nightmare began.

The visitor shocked Noor by mentioning that Noor was to marry her 
son. When Noor protested to her brother that she was too young to 
marry, Ali began dropping ominous hints about Asian girls who had 
been killed by their families for refusing to obey similar dictates. 
Although Ali had never hurt her, he'd had a few run-ins with the 
police, Noor says, and she believed he was capable of violence. For 
two days, her brothers would not allow Noor to leave the house. 
"Every time I went downstairs and said I'm going to the shop or going 
to see my friends, they said 'No, we'd rather you stayed inside.'" 
Terrified, Noor barely left her room. Still, she couldn't believe 
that the threatened marriage would happen - and certainly not that 
very week.

The morning after the ambush nikah, Ali woke Noor, handed her a 
bridal dress and told her they were expected at the wedding hall in 
two hours. A beautician arrived to do her makeup, but Noor's tears 
made her job difficult. "She had to keep wiping my face and then 
applying the makeup again," says Noor. The rest of the day, the 
celebration of the marriage, was a blur. At one point Munir leaned 
over from the chair beside her to ask why she was crying. "Because I 
don't know you, you're a stranger, you're not my husband," she 
replied. He turned away and continued talking to his friends. After 
the party, Ali embraced her, saying, "I don't know when I'll see you 
again." The remark struck her as odd, but Noor's immediate worry was 
the wedding night ahead.

Noor's clothes had been sent over to Munir's sister's house, and her 
suitcase was in an upstairs bedroom. Her sister-in-law told her to 
get changed, so Noor took off her gown, put on her lilac-colored silk 
pajamas and sat on the bed, rigid with apprehension. "I was so 
scared, because I knew that no one of my own was there and I was with 
strangers," she says. When Munir eventually came in, he made a few 
attempts at physical contact, but Noor pushed him away. He protested 
that he was her husband and could do what he liked, but soon fell 
asleep. Noor lay awake most of the night, too afraid to doze for 
long. The next day brought yet another surprise. "Pack your things," 
Munir's mother told her. "We're going to Holland tomorrow." Noor 
followed her new family through the airport in a daze. "I was just so 
scared, so scared," she says.

Noor's new home was a four-bedroom house on the outskirts of 
Amsterdam, where Munir lived with his family. On Noor's third morning 
there, her father-in-law asked her to prepare a meal. Noor, showing a 
glimpse of her old self, told him that she couldn't cook and that he 
should ask his own daughter to do it. Except for a single 
conversation with an aunt, Noor was not allowed phone calls. "After 
five days, I was so depressed, I felt like killing myself," she says. 
Munir's advances became more determined, and Noor was exhausted from 
lack of sleep.

After Noor had been there for about a week, she was home one 
afternoon in a nearly empty house when her sister Aziza called. "I'd 
tried to ring and they'd told me that she was out, even though I 
heard her shouting that she was there," Aziza recalls. They spoke for 
a few moments until Noor's father-in-law forced her to put the phone 
down. "I didn't want to get married, and I'm going to run away," Noor 
told him. The family decided to consult with Ali by phone. He 
threatened to get on the first flight to the Netherlands and kill 
her. According to Noor, her father-in-law told Ali that he and his 
family would support whatever course of action Ali took.

Noor sat and waited for what seemed like hours, pleading with her 
father-in-law and expecting her brother to burst through the door. A 
knock finally came, but it was the Dutch police. "I was so happy, so 
relieved, I just stood there. I wouldn't even move to go with them," 
she says. The police told her to gather her things.

Aziza had overheard Ali's end of the conversation in Bradford. 
Although she had never discussed it with Noor, she too had been 
forced into marriage several years before during a trip to Pakistan. 
"I didn't know how unhappy she was; we never talked about it," Noor 
explains when asked why, given her sister's experience, her own 
marriage came as such a shock. "I didn't talk about it with anyone," 
says Aziza, who returned to the U.K. without her husband. But she 
resolved to rescue her sister. "I'm going to get you out of there, 
don't worry," she told Noor during their brief exchange. Aziza 
eventually got in touch with Balmforth, the West Yorkshire community 
officer for forced marriages, who in turn contacted the Foreign 
Office.

The law is a woefully blunt instrument when it comes to domestic 
violence of all kinds. Some have suggested tweaking immigration laws 
to reduce forced marriages. Legislation introduced by Denmark's 
right-leaning government last May raised to 24 the minimum age at 
which a spouse can sponsor a partner for immigration. But that kind 
of broad-brush approach only undermines basic civil liberties, says 
Siddiqui of Southall Black Sisters. After the fact, police can invoke 
a range of laws to extract women from forced marriages. (Forcing 
someone into marriage is not a crime in the U.K., but since the cases 
often involve underage brides and violence, related charges like 
child abduction, assault or unlawful imprisonment can be applied.) 
But after marriage, most women or girls are too ensnared to seek help.

Balmforth, who has worked on more than 2,500 forced-marriage cases, 
is empowered to act only when a specific request has been made. And 
he still sometimes encounters cultural landmines: "People do say that 
[because I'm not Asian] I just don't understand. I tell them there's 
nothing in the Koran that says forced marriage is allowed."
Prevention would be far better, of course. And there are the first 
sputtering efforts of such a campaign. The Community Liaison Unit of 
the Foreign Office deals with some 200 forced-marriage cases a year, 
many of which involve the repatriation of a U.K. national who has 
been taken abroad against her will. Tying the Knot?, an educational 
video produced by the unit, has been screened at dozens of schools. 
"Marriage is your choice," the voice-over intones, adding that "If 
you find that you are being forced into marriage, you can get help." 
Teachers can potentially learn to spot signs that girls are being 
forced into marriage, says Fawzia Samad of the Community Liaison 
Unit. A sudden loss of interest in schoolwork, for example, can be 
telling. Why bother to study if you know your school days are about 
to end?

Efforts to help women escape forced marriages still suffer from a 
lack of organization and funding. In June, the Foreign Office will 
sponsor a conference on forced marriage with representatives from 
eight European countries, Turkey, the U.S and Canada. But any action 
governments take is susceptible to accusations of cultural bullying. 
It is perilously easy for white Western Europeans to reflexively 
judge all arranged marriages - forced and voluntary - as wrong. Last 
year, U.K. Home Secretary David Blunkett clumsily suggested that, in 
the interest of integration, British Asians should try to find 
partners in Britain rather than entering into arranged marriages with 
spouses from abroad. Several Asian community leaders were outraged. 
Others, like Manzoor Moghal of the the Muslim Council of Britain, who 
defends arranged marriages that "happen with the free will of the 
young people," conceded that Blunkett had a point.
After five days, I was so depressed, I felt like killing myself.
In reality, as is so often the case for children of immigrants, life 
usually becomes a series of compromises - made day by day, 
individuals sacrificing more or less autonomy in order to stay 
connected to their families and maintain a slippery sense of cultural 
identity. The choices can be diabolical.

After spending her first night of freedom at a police station in 
Amsterdam, Noor flew back to the U.K. She was initially housed in a 
women's shelter near London. She soon left to stay at a friend's flat 
in Bradford but, unable to contribute enough to the rent, moved to a 
hostel for battered and homeless women after a few months. Bradford 
is small enough that Noor often runs into people she knows and sees 
family members from afar. But for an 18-year-old without a diploma or 
a salary, it is hard for her to imagine how to create a life anywhere 
else. She is trying to get a job, but has had little luck. Her only 
source of funds is a fortnightly allowance of $100 in government aid, 
a third of which goes to the hostel. A year ago, she hoped to someday 
go to university, but she does not talk of that anymore.

Noor's marriage was never valid under English law, since the 
statutory notice was not given to civil authorities and there was no 
registry service. But if she chooses someday to have a Muslim 
wedding, she would have to have her first marriage annulled or 
dissolved by a Shari'a court. And the rest of the slate is not so 
easily cleansed. Noor has stayed in close touch with Aziza, but 
resisted any real contact with the rest of her family. Then she heard 
that her brother Ali was hospitalized. Despite everything, she rushed 
to visit him last week. Groggy with medication, Ali seemed pleased to 
see her. So has all been forgiven? "No," says Noor. "Too much has 
happened." Though she hopes relations with her family continue to 
improve, she knows that what happened last year means things will 
never be the same. And so Noor remains torn between two worlds.

o o o

[ Related material]
Death by Fire
=46orced Marriages Are Driving Some Women to Self-Immolation
By Leela Jacinto ABCNews.com (Dec 11, 2002)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/forcedmarriage021211.html

______

#3.

Women's eNews
April 29, 2003 [Run Date: 04/28/03]

Indian Women Criticize 'Fair and Lovely' Ideal

By Nicole Leistikow
WeNews correspondent

Skin lightening is coming under increasing criticism in India.

NEW DELHI, India (WOMENSENEWS)--Two attractive young women are 
sitting in a bedroom having an intimate conversation. The 
lighter-skinned woman has a boyfriend and, consequently, is happy. 
The darker-skinned woman, lacking a boyfriend, is not. Her friend's 
advice? Use a bar of soap to wash away the dark skin that's keeping 
men from flocking.

Hindustan Lever Limited, one of India's largest manufacturing and 
marketing conglomerates, discontinued two of its television 
advertisements for Fair and Lovely Fairness Cold Cream this month, 
after a year-long campaign led by the All India Democratic Women's 
Association. Increasing public criticism may be initiating a change 
in cultural attitudes towards skin whitening in India, a country 
where the fairness industry accounts for 60 percent of skincare 
sales, bringing in $140 million a year. The company is the Indian 
subsidiary of Unilever PLC, based in London.

In a memo to India's National Human Rights Commission, Brinda Karat, 
general secretary of the women's association, calls one of the ads 
"discriminatory on the basis of the color of skin," and "an affront 
to a woman's dignity," because it shows fairer women having greater 
job success based on their sexuality.

=46air and Lovely, one of Hindustan Lever's "power brands," is marketed 
in over 38 countries. Its frequently-aired ads typically show a 
depressed woman with few prospects gaining a brighter future by 
attaining a boyfriend or job after becoming markedly fairer 
(emphasized by several silhouettes of her face lined up dark to 
light). On its Web site the company calls its product, "the miracle 
worker," which is "proven to deliver one to three shades of change."

The ad targeted by the women's association shows a woman, whose 
father had lamented not having a son to support the family, landing a 
well-paying job as an airline attendant after using the product.

Hindustan Lever failed to respond to All India Democratic Women's 
Association's complaints, first sent in March and April 2002. The 
women's association then appealed to the Human Rights Commission, 
which passed its complaints on to the Ministry of Information and 
Broadcasting. The government recently issued notices of the 
complaints to the company. Karat credits this intervention, rather 
than any "sudden awakening to the feelings that women have when they 
see those ads," with triggering the company's about-face. "We're not 
for heavy-duty censorship," she said, but "when the companies don't 
respond we have no alternative."

=46airness as an Asset

If there is evidence that public opinion has changed, it is not to be 
found in the Indian matrimonial ads, with their "grooms" and "brides 
wanted" sections that families use to arrange suitable alliances. 
These ads, hundreds of which appear in India's daily newspapers, 
reflect the country's remarkable diversity in their attempts to 
solicit individuals with the appropriate religion, caste, regional 
ancestry, professional and educational qualifications, and 
frequently, skin color.

Even in the growing numbers of ads that announce "caste no bar," the 
adjective "fair" still regularly precedes professional 
qualifications. A typical example shows that having a medical or 
graduate business degree is only part of the package: "Wanted really 
b'ful fair medico for h'some smart Doctor."

"Fair skin is considered an asset in India," said Rachna Gupta, a 
38-year-old part-time interior designer. That's why, once a month, 
she goes to a busy south Delhi salon to have Jolen Creme Bleach 
("lightens excess dark hair" the box says) slathered over her face as 
a fairness treatment. "It's not good for the skin," Gupta said, "but 
I still get it done because I am on the darker side and it makes me 
feel nice. Aesthetically, it looks nice."

However, the number of Indians who share Gupta's opinion that lighter 
skin is more beautiful may be shrinking. Sumit Isralni, a 22-year-old 
hair designer in his father's salon, thinks things have changed in 
the last two years, at least in India's most cosmopolitan cities, 
Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Women now "prefer their own complexion, 
their natural way," he said.

Isralni says he prefers a more "Indian beauty" himself. "I won't find 
my wife to be fair, I won't judge her on that," he said.

Sunita Gupta, a beautician in the salon where Rachna Gupta gets her 
treatments, is more critical. "It's just foolishness!" she exclaimed. 
The premise of the ads that women could not become airline attendants 
if they are dark-skinned was wrong, she said. "Nowadays people like 
black beauty."

She goes on to cite dusky Indian female film actors Kajol Devgan and 
Rani Mukherjee as examples of her conviction, "If you are dark, then 
dark is the best."

Health Concerns Over Lightening Grow

The awareness that whitening products can damage the skin is growing. 
To respond to health concerns, "Fair and Lovely" has come out with an 
"ayurvedic" formula, a term referring to a well-known system of 
Indian herbal medicine. And at an upscale salon in Delhi, at a chain 
also owned by Hindustan Lever, Puja Sharma stresses to potential 
customers that her lightening facials are all-natural, using milk and 
fresh fruits like tomato and papaya. However, at four to six times 
the price of Rachna Gupta's monthly bleaching, this option finds 
fewer takers.

Even Gupta, a steadfast bleacher for over 15 years, admits the 
danger. "Two years back it was quite popular," she said. "But now I 
think they're focusing on less bleaching. It could harm the skin if 
it's strong."

So she checks the concentration of ammonia and continues her routine. 
"You have a small tingling kind of a feeling," she said. "It doesn't 
hurt too much."

Battling for Public Opinion

Betting that the fairness craze in India will continue, American and 
European companies are fighting for their market share. Popular 
western brands Avon, L'Oreal, Lancome, Yves Saint-Laurent, Clinique, 
Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, and Revlon, offer whitening products. 
In addition, cheap knockoffs like "Cure and Lovely" are making the 
rounds.

Meanwhile, the Delhi-based Center for Advocacy and Research, which 
monitors media and conducts surveys on public opinion, has accused 
the industry in general of "unfair trade practices" and "using a 
social stigma to sell their products."

On March 11, Hindustan Lever, shortly after pulling its ads off the 
air, launched its "Fair and Lovely Foundation," vowing to "encourage 
economic empowerment of women across India" by providing resources in 
education and business. Sangeeta Pendurkar, the company's skincare 
marketing manager, announced that the company believed millions of 
women "who, though immensely talented and capable, need a guiding 
hand to help them take the leap forward." Presumably into a fairer 
future.

Nicole Leistikow is a freelance writer and news editor for 
Inthefray.com, currently based in New Delhi.

=46or more information:
Hindustan Lever Limited--Fair and Lovely-the miracle worker:
http://www.hll.com/HLL/knowus/personalpro_skincare_fairnlovely.html

All India Democratic Women's Association:
http://www.aidwa.org/aidwa/

Hindustan Lever Limited--Fair and Lovely Foundation:
http://www.hll.com/hll/archivecontent/PressRelease/PRFLFoundation.shtm

_____


#4.

[The Sangharsh Sabha (April 24, 2003) organised by the All India 
Democratic Women's Association highlighted the crucial linkages 
between food deprivation and declining status of rural women as 
experienced by the mass of rural women and expressed in numerous 
struggles for food and work
See Articles below: ]

- AIDWA'S inspiring Sangharsh Sabha for a new food policy
By Indu Agnihotri
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/aidwa290403.html
- Text of Sangharsh Sabha Declaration
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/aidwaDecl290403.html

_____


#5.

Swaraj: Women's crusade for water in the desert
Express News Service
New Delhi, April 23: A SPECIAL screening of Anwar Jamal's film Swaraj 
marked more than just the celebration of a successful struggle. 
Wednesday evening was a celebration that over 300 women panchs from 
village panchayats across India decided to put together at the Andhra 
Pradesh Bhawan, the venue where the film was screened.

The screening was meant to be a force that these women could draw 
strength from. It was also meant to fire their imaginations and 
reiterate their belief in themselves. And for the women panchs who 
travelled to Delhi to attend the screening, this is exactly that 
happened.

Sitting in the audience, one could hear these women tell each other, 
''Aisa hi karna chahiye. Shakti aise hi milti hai (This is what one 
should do. This is how one gets strength.)

The film, based in a small village in Rajasthan, is a real life 
account of four women in the desert who want to change things. 
Harassed at the hands of Thakurs and the ruling chiefs, these four 
women decide to bring water to their parched village themselves. The 
four dig up a well and implore the administrators to connect their 
village to a water line.

While the women struggle through their crusade, they are beaten up by 
husbands at home, are forced to give up on their family and even 
ostracised. The end result, the village gets water but Leelavati, the 
heroine of the struggle is killed at the hands of the local mafia 
that controls the sale of water.

The Indian Institute of Social Sciences (IISS), that made the 
screening possible, carefully chose the day of the screening.

Shejo Singh, screenplay writer and executive producer of the film 
said: ''On this day today in 1997, Leelavati, the protagonist of our 
film, was murdered.She had gone on to be elected a counsellor from 
Madurai, where today they are celebrating her martyrdom." "Today also 
marks the anniversary of the 73rd Amendment empowering women. There 
couldn't have been a better occasion," Singh added.

_____


#6.

India Currents,
Apr 18, 2003

A Model Minority
Kamalika Banerjee

The first time her husband hit her, Rohini Nambiar thought it was a 
one-time transgression on his part. But very soon, yelling and 
hitting became regular affairs in their home. Every time it was 
because Rohini had done something to "provoke" him-spent a little too 
much on their credit card, spoke too long with her mother in India, 
or had gone out with her girl friends when she shouldn't have. And 
every time it ended the same way, with him apologizing to her and 
blaming it all on the "stress at work." Outwardly, of course, the 
Nambiars were a dream couple. He was rising up the corporate ladder; 
she had a pretty good job of her own; they had just moved into a 
bigger house in an upscale neighborhood of Los Angeles; their son was 
attending a private school. "It took me six years to muster up enough 
courage to say to myself that I was no longer going to put up with 
this," says Nambiar. So one day she packed her bags and left her 
husband's million-dollar home. "It wasn't easy especially since we 
had a son, but the biggest hurdle I faced was convincing my friends 
and family that this was happening at all." Her friends like many 
others thought that domestic violence did not exist among South 
Asians, and certainly not among educated and prosperous South Asians 
like the Nambiars.

Nalini Shekar, Program Director of Maitri, San Francisco Bay Area's 
leading organization fighting domestic violence among South Asians in 
the area is not so surprised. "A common misconception is that 
domestic violence takes place only in poor homes, when the fact of 
the matter is that it cuts across all socio-economic groups," she 
says. "The poor have less private space, so if there is any violence 
in the house, it becomes public knowledge very quickly. The really 
difficult cases are those which involve the very rich living in gated 
communities and leading 'respectable' lives." Maitri's clients 
accordingly range from 17 to 70; from women who have experienced 
abuse for the first time to women who have lived with violent 
partners for decades; new immigrants as well as second generation 
Indian-Americans; uneducated women as well as highly educated 
professional women; non-English speakers to savvy, articulate and 
very cosmopolitan women, adds general secretary Mukta Sharangpani.

This completely dispels the myth that the more educated and 
financially independent a woman is, the easier it is for her to stand 
up for her rights. For one thing, there is the social stigma-the 
higher you are on the social ladder, the greater is the fall. Second, 
the more a woman is in control of her life in public space-a high 
level of education and perhaps a high-paying job-the more in denial 
she is likely to be about her lack of control in private space. The 
result? Years of torture, misery and shame before she comes to terms 
with the fact that what is happening in her home is not her fault, 
and that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot set things straight 
by herself.

Neerja Patel speaks from experience when she concurs with Shekar. 
Patel, a second generation Indian-American and an executive in a 
public relations firm in New York City was in an abusive relationship 
with her boyfriend for three years. "In the beginning, everything was 
perfect. My friends adored him, and even my parents who were 
initially upset that I was not going in for an arranged marriage, 
took to him," she says. But pretty soon, Patel found that the charmer 
had a darker side to him. "He was a control freak, and every time he 
thought he was losing control over me, he would get upset, and more 
often than not, our fight would end in him hitting me." Although a 
voice at the back of her head kept telling her to get out, Patel was 
scared that if the truth got out, she would not be able to face the 
world.

But is physical violence the only kind of abuse inflicted on the 
woman? "Domestic violence, according to U.S. law is defined as all 
kinds of physical, emotional, and financial abuse in an intimate 
partner relationship," says Shekar. Emotional abuse, unlike physical, 
can be very difficult to define because its concept differs from 
woman to woman. What is common, however, is the increased isolation 
the batterer subjects the victim to, as also the repeated accusations 
of provocation, and the assaults on the battered woman's self esteem 
by loading on the blame. So it can be anything from isolating her 
from friends and family to restricting her movements, taking away her 
credit cards and driver's license, and even not letting her use the 
telephone.

And what about sexual violence? It remains the least articulated part 
of the equation, according to Shekar. "For instance, marital rape is 
often an accepted form of behavior in the South Asian community," she 
says. "It is simply seen as the man exercising his marital rights, 
but what most don't know is that in the U.S., it is construed as 
sexual abuse and thereby punishable by law." In most cases, however, 
sexual violence is part of an overall atmosphere of abuse, says 
Sharangpani. "We have had cases of sexual violence, which were always 
accompanied by other forms of violence, and so it was easier for our 
clients to address those relatively less 'intimate' areas of conflict 
and figure out how they wanted to deal with the relationship."

"We have seen cases of sexual abuse, forced prostitution, forcibly 
attempting to marry off minor daughters etc.," she admits. The highly 
publicized Lakireddy case in Berkeley, CA had brought a lot of these 
issues to the forefront, but as Shekar points out, it is almost 
always impossible to unravel them for the simple reason that they are 
so well hidden. "A woman may be brought from India as cheap labor and 
then sexually exploited on the side," she says. "But she doesn't go 
to the authorities because for one thing she is not aware of the laws 
in this country, and secondly, she is scared of losing her visa." A 
case like this, however, would not fall under domestic violence, 
Shekar points out, but under sexual abuse, which is again governed by 
very strict laws.

And finally the burning question: How common is domestic violence 
among South Asians in North America? Very common, according to both 
Shekar and Sharangpani. They feel that a lot of cases still go 
unreported because of issues of guilt and shame-cultural issues that 
riddle the community, that still stigmatize the woman and hold her 
responsible for the breaking of a family as well as other logistics 
such as immigration. "But the fact that Maitri alone logged over a 
1,000 calls last year, and works with an average of 65 clients in a 
month must mean that the model minority is not so perfect after all," 
concludes Sharangpani.

(Some names have been changed on request to maintain privacy.)

Immigration and Battery

Many domestic violence cases go unreported because of immigration 
issues. Here are a couple of INS provisions that might help dispel 
the fear surrounding immigration and battery.

Under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed by Congress in 
1994, the spouses and children of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent 
residents (LPR) may self-petition to obtain lawful permanent 
residency. The immigration provisions of VAWA allow certain battered 
immigrants to file for immigration relief without the abuser's 
assistance or knowledge, in order to seek safety and independence 
from the abuser. Victims of domestic violence can call the National 
Domestic Violence Hotline on (800) 799-7233 or (800) 787-3224 [TDD] 
for information about shelters, mental health care, legal advice and 
other types of assistance, including information about 
self-petitioning for immigration status.

=46or women who do not fall in the above category, i.e., their spouses 
are not citizens or green card holders, the U visa may be the answer. 
The U visa is a three-year non-immigrant visa that enables victims of 
crimes to remain in the U.S. if they are willing to assist in an 
investigation or prosecution of the perpetrator of the crime. After 
three years, the applicant can apply for a green-card provided she 
meets certain eligibility requirements. An applicant for the U visa 
must prove that she has suffered substantial physical or emotional 
abuse as the result of criminal activity such as rape, kidnapping, 
domestic violence, slavery, assault, and sex slavery.

The U visa was created by President Clinton in October 2000 as part 
of the Trafficking and Crime Victims' Protection Act. However, there 
are still no implementing regulations for the visa, which means that 
advocates are unable to fully utilize its protections. As soon as the 
current administration issues these regulations, lawyers will be able 
to follow the newly established procedures for victims of crime.

Disconcerting Facts

In a study entitled "Intimate Partner Violence Against South Asian 
Women in Greater Boston," published in the April 2002 edition of the 
Journal of the American Medical Women's Association, Anita Raj of 
Boston University and Jay Silverman of Harvard University claim that 
40 percent of the 160 South Asian women they surveyed in communities 
throughout the Boston area in 1998 were victims of "male-perpetrated 
intimate partner violence." Of those women, 90 percent had been 
abused within the past year. Nearly 75 percent of the women reporting 
abuse were married, more than half (51.6 percent) had children, and 
two-thirds of those who reported physical abuse also reported sexual 
abuse.

South Asian Domestic Violence Organizations
[...].

{ Full Text at : 
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______

#7.

Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 10:26:23 -0400
=46rom: "Erin Mahoney"

Dear Moderator,

I [...] would like to invite the participants of your list to 
contribute articles and essays to our human rights magazine.

Seeking ACTIVISTS and ACADEMICS to write ESSAYS on Violence Against Women

If interested, email: emahoney@cceia.org

Human Rights Dialogue, a semiannual publication of the Carnegie 
Council on Ethics and International Affairs, is seeking short essays 
for its Fall 2003 issue.  In the coming issue, Human Rights Dialogue 
explores the effectiveness of the human rights framework in defining 
and eradicating violence against women.

Throughout societies worldwide, women are beaten, battered and killed 
because of their subordinate status as women.  They are killed for 
dishonoring relatives, having sexual relations outside of marriage, 
choosing a partner against parental wishes, or seeking a divorce. 
Women face acid attacks and dowry-related murders. They incur rape 
and battery in the home and in civil strife.  This violence not only 
threatens women's lives, it severely limits women's health choices, 
decision-making in the home and in society, participation in 
governance, education and overall economic and social well being. 
Evolving often from women's lower status in society, gender-based 
violence is endemic and affects woman in every corner of the globe.

Over the past decade, many mainstream human rights organizations and 
women's rights advocates have sought to eliminate gender-based 
violence with a human rights framework.  Proponents of the human 
rights approach argue that this framework offers activists an 
international frame of reference within which they can place their 
existing agenda.  The framework also offers linkages with other 
women's organizations and oppressed groups in their country and 
across the world.  It serves to legitimize women's rights at the 
national and international level, thus offering activists constrained 
by their governments with a set of international instruments and 
tools of advocacy.  The human rights approach is also useful in that 
it separates violence from cultural beliefs or tradition by defining 
harmful practices as acts of violence in violation of basic rights to 
life and to be free from degrading, cruel and inhumane treatment.

However, many women's rights activists have argued that the human 
rights framework is limiting in practice.  Critics argue this 
universal set of rights may be too broad and all 
encompassing-overlooking the need for specific and identifiable 
women's rights to address gender-based violence.  They question the 
notion that women can unite under a global banner of human rights, 
citing conflicts of interest even at the national level in regards to 
many issues such as class and race.  Others question the efficacy of 
a framework that has historically focused on civil and political 
rights-overlooking the connections between economic and social rights 
and violence against women.  The traditional human rights approach 
has also been faulted for emphasizing rights in the public sphere 
while neglecting to address rights in the private sphere-where women 
are most vulnerable to violence.   Another challenge in addressing 
this issue with a human rights framework is the legal approach that 
human rights is often associated with does little to address the 
cultural and societal norms that propagate this violence. And often 
activists using this language are discredited as westernized and 
anti-tradition.

=46or the past two years, Human Rights Dialogue has focused on the 
popular legitimacy of an international human rights framework. In the 
coming issue, we are interested in descriptive accounts of how 
activists are responding to violence against women. We are looking 
for critical perspectives on whether and how the human rights 
framework is a useful tool in addressing gender-based violence.  We 
are also interested in how activists are defining violence against 
women, the strategies they are using to fight it and the challenges 
they are facing in doing so.

Submissions are especially welcome from (but not limited to) 
activists or practitioners grappling with violence against women in 
the context of fundamentalism, armed conflict, poverty, health 
crises, and democracy. Essays should seek to address one or more of 
the following questions by analyzing a concrete case study in the 
author's country or institution of which he or she has first-hand 
knowledge:

=A7 Have you found the human rights framework a useful advocacy tool 
for addressing violence against women? If so, what specific human 
rights and human rights instruments are you using in your work?
=A7 Are there specific ways the women's movement can push the human 
rights framework to be more useful in addressing this issue?
=A7 Does a human rights approach offer a clear definition of violence?
=A7 In your work, how do you label violence against women? Do you see 
this instead as gender-based violence or do you use another approach? 
Why?
=A7 How do you address cultural and religious norms that propagate 
violence against women?  Is it effective to find sources within 
religion or tradition to eliminate violence against women? Does the 
human rights framework help or hinder you in accomplishing this aim?
=A7 Is gender violence more readily justified or accepted as a cultural 
norm or tradition than other human rights issues such as race 
discrimination? How do you address this in your work?
=A7 Are there different roles for local and international human rights 
organizations? How can they compliment each other?
=A7 Are you increasing your focus on international institutions, 
foreign governments or transnational actors and their role in causing 
human rights abuses? If so, how are you attempting to hold them 
accountable?
=A7 To what extent is your advocacy group working with other actors 
such as anti-poverty groups, labor unions, health organizations and 
even national governments to address problems related to violence 
against women?
=A7 Is it useful to connect violence against women to other rights 
issues such as democracy or to other forms of violence such as armed 
conflict or caste violence?
=A7 Does your organization find it preferable to connect violence 
against women to issues of children, family or motherhood? Why or Why 
not?

Submissions should be no more than 1200 words and written in English. 
We seek essays written in an engaging, informal, and testimonial 
style.  We do not seek articles that are academic in tone or include 
footnotes.  Contributors are encouraged to use interviews in their 
essays.  Please see http://www.cceia.org/themes/hrd.html for previous 
issues of Human Rights Dialogue.

Publication in Dialogue is competitive.  Authors whose submissions 
are selected for print must be prepared to respond to edits and 
queries.  Submissions that exceed the stated word length will, due to 
space constraints, be shortened. The authors of selected essays will 
be asked to provide us with a biography, contact details for the 
organizations that they are affiliated with as well as for those 
mentioned in their articles, and if possible a photograph of 
themselves. Please also be prepared to provide photos or art to be 
considered for publication alongside the article. An honorarium of 
$100 is awarded to authors whose work is selected for publication. 
The deadline for submissions is July 18, 2003. 

We encourage those planning to submit to contact us about their plans 
for their articles as soon as possible.  Interested parties should 
direct their inquiries to:  Erin Mahoney email: emahoney@cceia.org or 
tel. 212-838-4120 or fax:  212-752-2432.

About the Carnegie Council and the Human Rights Initiative
The Carnegie Council, based in New York City, is a nonpartisan, 
nonsectarian organization dedicated to research and education at the 
intersection of ethics and international affairs. The goal of the 
Carnegie Council's Human Rights Initiative is to engage new and 
diverse voices from around the world in global dialogue and mutual 
learning around human rights concepts and action, with the goal of 
exploring how the human rights movement could be better configured 
intellectually and operationally to cope with the challenges of 21st 
century.  The underlying assumption being explored is what we have 
termed "the human rights box":  namely, that the human rights 
movement is constrained by a set of historical and structural 
circumstances that have enabled the human rights framework to gain 
currency among elites while limiting its advance among the broader 
population of the world. Participants' testimony, working knowledge, 
strategies, analysis and reflections are shared through the regular 
publication of our Human Rights Dialogue.

Please contact us or consult our website, www.cceia.org, for more informatio=
n.


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