Women's Views on News |
- Don’t turn a blind eye to domestic violence
- Father acid attack victim appeals for help
- Big Brother getting too nosy?
| Don’t turn a blind eye to domestic violence Posted: 14 Dec 2012 07:19 AM PST
Charity Women’s Aid, are launching a cutting edge advertisement in selected UK cinemas that makes use – for the first time – of 3D technology to raise awareness of domestic violence. The advert, ‘Blind Eye‘, uses 3D stereoscopic technology to allow the viewer to change the story simply by closing one eye. The scene is a woman preparing dinner, and the audience can switch between her on her own and her with her violent partner depending on which eye they close. Regular WVoN readers will know only too well the depressing statistics on domestic violence, but just as a reminder: ・ 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime, often repeatedly. These figures do not take into consideration sexual attacks or emotional abuse. This very intense advertisement has been created by ad agency WCRS with MPC Creative. It lasts 65 seconds and will be shown before selected 3D screenings of ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ from 14 December. Ending with the strap line “Will you turn a blind eye?”, Women’s Aid hopes to highlight the idea that we don’t have to ignore domestic violence. Teresa Parker, press and publicity officer for Women’s Aid, said "I think…that we’ll actually be able to raise the issue of domestic violence to people who aren't aware of it at all or who don’t want to talk about it, who find it uncomfortable, like many people do." This project uses pioneering technology to create a completely new viewing experience that draws in and involves the audience in an innovative way. Chris Vincze, the director of MPC, believes that this "gives the audience a really interesting experience, because it makes them involved in the film, it makes them complicit in turning a blind eye, [and] giving the audience the ability to choose will mean it has more effect on them." The concept is intricately tied to the technology and I expect that this will have a profound effect on anyone seeing it over the next few weeks. To find out how people react, you can follow it on twitter at #BlindEye. You can donate to Women’s Aid by texting ‘EYE’ to 70300 to donate £3. Women’s Aid will receive 100 per cent of your donation.  |
| Father acid attack victim appeals for help Posted: 14 Dec 2012 04:59 AM PST
Four men threw acid over 15 year-old Tuba Tabussum as she walked home from school. Her only crime, her father writes, was refusing to engage in conversation with them. Tuba suffered extensive burns to her face and body, has lost the sight in one eye and is in so much physical pain she cannot even speak. Her father says the family has run out of money for any further treatment of Tuba’s horrific injuries. Tuba's story is merely the latest in the history of acid attacks on women in developing countries. Inderjit Kaur was attacked last December by a man whose marriage proposal she had turned down. Inderjit’s family have also exhausted their finances on her treatment and the lawyers they have hired to fight for compensation have either been inefficient or unwilling to fight the case properly. A report on acid attacks in India, Bangladesh and Cambodia has described acid attacks as 'gender-based violence', and says that "acid attacks are perpetrated against women who transgress gender norms that relegate women to subordinate positions". This is exemplified by the Pakistani Taliban's recent use of acid attacks as a means of preventing girls from getting an education. CNN reported last month that two girls in the city of Parachinar suffered severe facial burns after an attack by the local Taliban. Chillingly, the local leader of the Taliban said they would target any girl seeking an education in the same way "so that she [will] not be able to unveil her face before others". Impunity for perpetrators is a big problem. The same report found that in Bangladesh between 2000 and 2009, there were only 439 convictions for acid-based violence, although 2198 attacks were reported. However, at the other end of the scale is the story of an Iranian victim – blinded in an acid attack – who was granted the legal right to blind her attacker as 'qisas', a form of retributive justice in Sharia Law. After protests from human rights groups, Ameneh Bahrami decided to 'pardon' her attacker and sought financial redress instead. However, her story raises the issue of what constitutes a proportionate response to acid attacks. Although the West prides itself on more progressive attitudes, which mean acid attacks are far rarer than in countries such as India, Pakistan and Iran, there have been some notable exceptions. Earlier this year in Montreal, Tanya St-Arnauld suffered burns to a fifth of her body when her partner threw a corrosive fluid over her during a 'domestic dispute'. In the UK, former model Katie Piper has become a renowned spokesperson for victims of acid attacks, after her ex-boyfriend arranged for an associate to throw sulphuric acid on her face in 2008. Danny Lynch, who also raped and stalked Piper, set up the attack which caused Piper to lose her eyelids, most of her nose and part of one ear. She has since had nearly 100 operations to reconstruct her face. Piper's ordeal exemplifies how acid attacks can be part of a pattern of abusive and controlling behaviour by men who will not take 'no' for an answer. Danny Lynch and Stefan Sylvestre have since received life sentences for the attack, described by the sentencing judge as 'pure, calculated and deliberate evil'. In a touching link between Piper and acid attack victims in the developing world, the ground-breaking treatment which Dr Mohammad Jawad performed on Piper’s face is now being used to treat acid attack victims in Pakistan. And other positive changes are occurring. Acid attacks in Bangladesh halved between 2002 and 2009 after new legislation restricted acid sales and brought in tougher punishments and a no-bail policy for perpetrators. And although acid attacks remain a horrifying reminder of how women are punished for resisting male control, it is encouraging to see how some fairly minor legislative changes can bring about serious results. For the sake of Tuba Tabassum, Inderjit Kaur and the many women like them, we must continue to raise awareness and to name and shame the men who carry out acid attacks, and urge other countries to follow Bangladesh's lead in ensuring perpetrators face justice. To donate to the Acid Survivors Trust International, click here.  |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2012 01:00 AM PST
Contemplating the Christmas card issue recently – to post or to email – it occured to me that one reason the price of stamps has been increased to such ridiculous sums could be so we all take to email because it is easier to intercept electronic media than to steam envelopes open. Probably is - I’ve never tried. And after a healthy dose of The Hour, and its blackmail storyline, it clearly doesn’t have to be just state power misusing personal information that we should be worrying about. But it is state power that is being discussed at the moment: no doubt cases of state-employed individuals misusing information they acquire will hit the courts in due course. But first things first. In Britain a former Whitehall intelligence chief said that clear guidelines must be introduced in law to allow the security services and police to intercept social media such as Facebook and Twitter while avoiding the “chilling effect” of state surveillance. Sir David Omand, former director the government’s electronic eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, and Whitehall’s former security and intelligence coordinator, said that the explosive growth in social media has provided criminals, paedophiles and terrorists with a “secret space”. And he said the ability of state security agencies and the police to intercept social network communications such as tweets must be placed on a clear legal footing. A report entitled #Intelligence, published by the think tank Demos and co-authored by Omand, said existing laws regulating the interception of communications by security agencies and the police needed to be overhauled to meet the new challenges and opportunities presented by social media. The report was published amid huge controversy over government plans to extend the monitoring of phone calls, emails and internet traffic to social media and Skype. Discussions on this issue are ongoing in the UK, with the Guardian reporting this week that home secretary Theresa May says she is ‘determined’ to push through ‘vitally important’ surveillance laws despite opposition from deputy prime minister Nick Clegg. Earlier this year the head of an international media watchdog warned that governments across the world – including those in the US and UK – were posing a threat to internet freedom through “hasty” legislation passed due to ‘security fears’. Dunja Mijatovic, the representative for freedom of the media for the 56 countries that make up the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said that both democratic and transition governments in her remit were often acting against openness in the media and on the internet. “The obsession to control the internet is showing we are not heading in the right direction, and the countries of the west are not immune to criticism – I have already raised Acta [an international intellectual property treaty that has been likened to Sopa, a US anti-piracy bill] with the president of the EU parliament.” Mijatovic became the OSCE representative for freedom of the media in 2010, after a career built around setting up regulation for free media in transition countries, including in her native Bosnia, after the collapse of communism. She concluded that ultimately it is civil society – the media and activists – who keep the media and internet free, and said this was not yet established in many transition countries. Citing the huge online campaign against the US legislation against intellectual property violations, she said: “These showed an engaged civil society can stop these actions." And in August, the Australian Parliament passed a new cybercrime bill that increased the powers of law enforcement to require Internet service providers to monitor and store their users' data. Australia’s privacy advocates were up in arms. One of them uses the pseudonym Asher Wolf. She is a 32-year-old who has built up a following on Twitter for tweeting news about WikiLeaks and the Occupy movement and she cares deeply about online privacy. A friend of hers, @m1k3y, tweeted that in light of the new legislation, maybe now was the time to have an "install-the-crypto-apps party," referring to the programs for computers that help protect a user's privacy. Wolf half-jokingly agreed: "Let's get together in the backyard with some chips," she said, "let's have a CryptoParty.” Less than four months later, there have been more than 30 CryptoParties held worldwide, many in the West, but also in Manila, Cairo, and on November 27, Tunisia. The concept of CryptoParty is simple: people get together to learn how to use tools to better protect their privacy. Originally, Wolf says, the idea behind CryptoParty was selfish. It was about her wanting to learn how to protect herself better online. "I wasn't thinking about Tunisia when we did this," she said. "I'm just doing it because when I look at pictures of LOLcats to relax at 2 a.m., I really don't like the idea of thinking, well, everything I look at and every conversation I have with my friends in Europe, that every part of me that's special or private gets handed to somebody in some banal bureaucracy somewhere," she said. "I want something more for my life, for my child's life. And this is my way of pushing back."  |
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