Women's Views on News |
- Sex workers’ murders spark worldwide protests
- The protests in Turkey are ongoing
- Campaign to end victim blaming launched
| Sex workers’ murders spark worldwide protests Posted: 24 Jul 2013 08:09 AM PDT
The killing of Dora Ozer and Petite Jasmine sparked demonstrations in 36 cities across four continents. Ozer, a trans woman, died in Aydin, Turkey, on July 9 after being stabbed by a client. Jasmine was killed by her ex-husband on July 11 in Sweden. She was an activist for the rights of sex workers, and the mother of two children. Sex workers, their families, friends and supporters gathered outside Turkish and Swedish embassies on July 19 demanding an end to stigma, criminalisation, violence and murder. There was a protest in London and others took place in Brighton, Sheffield and Edinburgh. The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) said: "Those two tragic deaths should be a wake-up call for all of us: human rights defenders, feminists, LGBT activists, policy makers and anyone who refuses a world where people – because they are selling sexual services – are seen as less worthy of human dignity and respect and therefore more likely to be seen as unfit mothers by the state, or to be the victims of brutal and heinous crimes." ICRSE said discrimination against trans women in Turkey is such that often the only employment route open to them is sex work. And Sweden, known for being a leader in gender and sexual equality, is criticised for its paternalistic attitude to sex work. A 1999 law criminalises the clients and aspects of sex workers’ work and support structures. Petite Jasmine had lost custody of her children to her ex-husband who was known to be violent, because she was a sex worker. Green Left, based in Australia, said: "In considering all sex workers as victims and all clients as abusers, the Swedish state denied women who sell sexual services any kind of agency. “This paternalistic approach, aggressively promoted to other countries including Australia as "protecting women", actually leads to an attitude that infantilises women and discredits women’s choices and experiences. “It ultimately leads to many human rights violations. “Women caught selling sex have their children taken away from them, are kicked out of their homes and see their experiences denied.” Kate Gould, writing in the Huffington Post said: "Under Turkish law prostitution is legal if carried out in a regulated brothel and by registered sex workers, but many are being closed down by local governments keener to appeal to a moral majority than to consider the safety of those working in the sex industry. This forces sex workers out of the comparative safety of brothels and onto the streets. “The stigma faced by transgender people in Turkey is such that many can find work only in the sex industry. Here they are forced to work illegally due to regulations that state that only women can register as sex workers. This leaves them unable to work in brothels and, therefore, at greater risk of attack." A recent article in The Guardian reported on a change of attitude towards sex working in Edinburgh where police have stepped up their raids on saunas. A bill which would have made the purchase of sex illegal failed to get through the Scottish Parliament last month, but sex workers are worried that there is now a tougher policing approach in the capital which marks the end of a "don’t look, don’t tell" approach. Scot-Pep, an organisation promoting social justice and inclusion for sex workers, questions whether the motive of the Edinburgh raids was for health and social reasons. Scot-Pep says it is “very concerned about reports we received from women involved in the raids and question the assertion that this is about keeping people safe. Is it safe to instill fear amongst sex workers of police and social services? We remain extremely concerned as to whether this is a taste of things to come in light of Rhoda Grant MSPs attempt to introduce a bill to criminalise the purchase of sex." The Guardian article attempted to put both sides of the debate on whether to legalise or criminalise prostitution, quoting Linda Thompson on the Women’s Support Project, Glasgow, who supported the attempt to outlaw clients buying sex. “There is this rhetoric of the woman who is empowered by sex work, but we recently heard from a young woman who has said this almost destroyed her. “The way she put it was: “Who wants to hear from an unhappy hooker, who was the happy one? The pro sex-work lobby frame prostitution as a positive choice and if it didn’t work out for you, you made the wrong choice,” said Thompson. Gould, in the Huffington Post article counters: "Dora Ozer chose to work in the sex industry, but she didn’t choose the conditions under which she did so. “As they were for Petite Jasmine and the hundreds of thousands of sex workers like them, those were determined by a state and society wilfully blind to her rights.”  |
| The protests in Turkey are ongoing Posted: 24 Jul 2013 04:36 AM PDT
Guest post by Zeynep Talay, a writer and sculptor born in Istanbul and now living in London. The ongoing Turkish protests have left us enlightened and emboldened. The overseas interest has waned but our protests continue amid a brutal government crackdown and give us reason to smile. On 25 June, three weeks after the Gezi Park protest started, an American friend sent me an email. He asked me whether I was OK, and hoped that the protests hadn’t “affected me in a negative way”. There was something in his tone that suggested that he thought the protests were already in the past, the camp in the park having been liquidated on 15 June. He was wrong; they have continued ever since. Why? Because five people have died, more than 8,000 have been injured, and 11 people have lost an eye; because prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to cut down thousands of trees all over Turkey to build shopping malls, hydro-electric power stations and skyscrapers; because whoever criticises him – journalists, students, teachers who join a trade union – is in danger of ending up in jail and if they are a woman, being sexually harassed; because doctors who treated the injured and lawyers who represented protesters have been arrested and beaten; because those responsible for the deaths of protesters have not been brought to justice; and because Erdoğan’s rhetoric has encouraged machete- and stick-wielding AKP thugs on to the streets whose attacks on us – with the police standing by – go unpunished. What has happened since the night the police drove us out of the park and fired tear gas into hotel foyers and hospitals? On 17 June the famous standing man appeared in Taksim prompting a wave of standing people all over the country and briefly, around the world. The same day, Çarşı, the group of Beşiktaş football supporters that has played a major role in the protests, made a call: “From now on we will meet in Abbasağa Park in Beşiktaş; if they throw us from here, we will go to Maçka Park; if they throw us out of there we will find another.” Since then there have been forums in about 20 parks all over Istanbul, and in many other cities. I hadn’t been to Abbasağa Park before, even though I was born in Istanbul, nor did I spend much time in Yoğurtçu Park in Kadıköy, across the Bosphorus, even though I lived there for a year. What are people doing in these forums? There is a platform, a microphone, and a chair person. Between 9pm and midnight anyone can go to the platform and talk about anything he or she wants. In the first week (starting from 17 June) many people made moving speeches, though not about unfamiliar things. After one week or so some experts started to come: lawyers, doctors, media people. Then workshops began: for children, filmmakers, women, lawyers. Photography exhibitions documented the police brutality that we refuse to forget. Apart from that, if something outrageous happens, we march, at any time of the day. We marched in Kadıköy the day the police officer who shot Ethem Sarısuluk in the head was released on bail; a couple of thousand became tens of thousands as people came out of their houses to join us. We marched when we learned that people had been kept in custody illegally. We marched to the headquarters of the ATV channel to protest against their silence over their non-coverage of the protests. On 22 June we marched to the Taksim Square to lay carnations for our friends who died, and for the policeman who died falling from a bridge while chasing the protesters; a beautiful, peaceful scene, but still the police attacked and drove people out. The next Saturday, 29 June, we gathered in front of Galatasaray high school and marched to Taksim because two days before, in the village of Lice near Diyarbakır, the gendarmerie killed a Kurdish youth, one of a crowd protesting against the building of new gendarmerie stations. Again the police attacked us. The following day we went on the LGBT march along Istiklal Caddesi. On 6 July we organised a water fight (a Turkish tradition on that day) so the police could save their water cannons, but once again we were attacked, and chased into the surrounding neighbourhoods, where the police began randomly arresting people sitting in cafes. I came back to England several days ago, having participated in the protests from the beginning, and wish to carry on here. At least I can write. I can write about what happened, and why. I can also find out how people here – people from Britain, people from Turkey – are reacting to the protest and how events are covered in British media. I can discover for instance that there has been little coverage of Turkey since 15 June. Maybe one or two things but that is all. I understand that there are other problems in other parts of the world, that the TV in particular likes spectacular images, but there are plenty of them being posted from Turkey every day – maybe the BBC and the newspapers should take a look. I wrote back to my American friend to tell him that, far from affecting me in a negative way, the protests have changed me, and thousands of others, for the better: we have got used to tear gas and are no longer afraid of water cannons, I have been reunited with friends I hadn’t seen for years, met new and interesting people, given shelter to others, discovered Istanbul parks I didn’t know existed, seen the inside of mysterious old buildings, learnt something about human rights, and persuaded my parents that when they hear words like “gays”, “lesbians”, and “transvestites” they need not be afraid. And I have discovered that I won’t let my country be taken from me. This article first appeared on the Comment is Free page in The Guardian on 20 July 2013.  |
| Campaign to end victim blaming launched Posted: 24 Jul 2013 01:09 AM PDT
Earlier this year The Everyday Victim Blaming network launched its campaign to confront and challenge the constant victim blaming in the media of victims of domestic and sexual violence and abuse. Victim blaming forces survivors of violence – mental, emotional and sexual – to take responsibility for the abuses perpetrated against them and allows perpetrators to refer to an infrastructure that shields them from blame and therefore accountability. The group aims to compile observations and comments submitted by individuals, professional bodies and organisations working with victims of violence to create a profile of victim blaming in the media and in society at large. Everyday Victim Blaming is aware that in order to eradicate putting the onus on victim to prevent the abuse rather than perpetrator from committing it a cultural shift must occur. And they are only too aware that societal change is not easy, but it does happens. With persistence and dogged determination, they say, they can succeed. Use of language such as 'provoked', 'troubled relationship', 'driven to it' and 'extenuating circumstances', or referring to victims as drunk or intoxicated, or to violent murders as 'isolated incidents' perpetuates the myth that women and children who are victims of violence are complicit in the abuses committed against them. Victims are not responsible for the choices that are made by those that abuse them. The only people responsible for violence and abuse are violent abusers. Submissions on the website are varied and wide ranging. They including identifying storylines and characterisations in television programmes that contribute to a culture of victim blaming. One recent concern was a Hollyoaks storyline about a single mother who was assaulted and who was blamed for her young child's illness in her absence. Devastating instances of blame in personal situations are hosted also by the website. A young woman who was sexually assaulted by a friend was described by her boyfriend as 'trying it on', that she had 'messed up' and that she was naive not to have foreseen the attack. Everyday Victim Blaming responds to these submissions with the all-important 'we believe you', by reinforcing the fact that the sole blame for assault lies with the perpetrators and by referring victims to help. Submissions of language that aggravate victim blaming are greatly encouraged, and the network presses for the elimination of such terms as 'alleged',' date rape' and 'private matter'. Part of the campaign and the website looks at victim blaming within and as a result of legal justice systems. One cases of acute alarm is that of Norwegian woman Marte Dalelv, raped while on a business trip in Dubai this year. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison for 'crimes' that include a charge of sex outside of marriage after she reported the assault to the authorities there. She was also fired by her employer. In the UK a court case involving a gang in Oxford that kidnapped and raped girls, the young victims were accused of consenting to the assault and of lying. Victim blaming discourages victims from discussing abuse and seeking help, and directly affects their mental wellbeing and esteem. It is imperative that it is stopped. If you wish to submit an opinion on victim blaming, a personal story, identify a miscarriage of justice or simply show your support for the campaign, click here. You can also follow the campaign and contribute at the official twitter page.  |
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