Persepolis

I've just watched Persepolis, a film about the modern history of Iran through the eyes of a girl. I really enjoyed it's warmth, humour and tragedy.

Watch it if you haven't already. I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

I think that it is an inspiring film about female solidarity and the importance of family life in the face of adversity. I loved Marjane's grandmother.  If only we all had someone like that in our lives to tell us how it is.  Persepolis gives us a glimpse of what it must be like growing up in a country ravaged by war and atrocity.

Many women grow up in fear of war, violence, abuse, and internalise the trauma that we have experienced. What this film does beautifully is show us that our similarities are greater than our differences, whether they be cultural or religious. Womankind knows no national boundaries.  Under the veil there is a woman that we can reach out to and understand.

Maybe we should have a page on here about great feminist films. I'd love to hear some suggestions.

MALI - WOMEN CALL FOR INCREASED PROTECTION & PARTICIPATION IN RESOLVING CONFLICT

“This occupation is the cruelest one that the Malian people have had to undergo, nowadays women are deprived of all liberties and even the choice of a husband is dictated to them by the occupying forces,” says a displaced woman* living in Bamako and originally from Timbuktu – a city occupied by armed groups today. “Even worse, the woman is married to several men against her will. Nowadays our children can no longer go to school,” she added.

Mali is currently experiencing an unprecedented security, political and humanitarian crisis, threatened by armed conflict in the north of the country which is having a direct impact on the population, and especially on women and children. The country has had to face radical armed groups such asAnsar Dine, Mali’s northern rebel MUJAO and Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – groups that have taken control over the northern part of the country where they enforce a strict interpretation of the sharia as well as restrictions, especially targeting women.

“The city of Gao has recorded the worst cases of gang rape or rape by an individual and such crimes are still being perpetrated. How to help these innocent victims on whom the occupation has taken a heavy toll? Nowadays in Gao everything belongs to these people who lay down the law and wreak havoc uninhibited,” says another woman from Gao, a city located in the north-east of the country, now residing in Bamako. She deplored the “cruelty” of the armed groups targeting women in particular.

“As for the populations who have remained in the occupied areas, their daily existence has become a nightmare: enforcement of the sharia with no tangible proof; stoning and amputations are performed. At present, young girls and boys are forcibly enrolled in the armed groups or are indoctrinated to become jihadists,” she explained.

According to the UN, instability and insecurity have driven more than 250,000 Malians to flee to neighbouring countries – not to mention the 174,000 other displaced persons within the country itself. Given this alarming state of affairs, the women have made a list of their demands, entitled “Appeal from the women of Mali.”

On 20 October, Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, visited the country and met with female leaders supported by UN Women and the UN system in Mali in order to hear their proposals and demands aimed at helping to resolve the conflict.

Assembled in Bamako, the capital of Mali, approximately 40 female leaders together with officials from the Forum of Malian civil society organizations participated in the discussions.

Saran Keïta Diakité, President of women’s peace and security network REPSFECO/Mali, was among the 40 women leaders who presented their recommendations for resolving the conflict. Photo Credit : REPSFECO/Mali

“Though they are the main victims of the various crises that Mali is experiencing, women are still not very much involved in the various bodies managing the transition,” stressed Mrs. Diakité.

The concrete recommendations made by the women at the meeting were strong.

“We, the women from civil society in Mali (…), demand the following at the decision-making level: at least 30 per cent female representation in all bodies for crisis management and post-crisis management;  participation in political and institutional governance, security and the electoral process; capacity-building in terms of mediation, negotiation, prevention, conflict-management and peace-consolidation; advocacy by the UN Secretary-General in favour of reparation for the harm suffered by rape victims as well as their care; and immediate implementation of a support fund for the self-empowerment of the women of Mali.”
A copy of the appeal was handed over to the Deputy Secretary-General, who assured that the message from the women of Mali would be carried to the highest level and that he would follow the situation closely.
UN Women is also setting up a psycho-social and economic assistance programme for displaced women and young girls affected by the conflict.
*The names of the women have been withheld for their safety and security.

WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

UN Women - http://www.unwomen.org/2012/11/women-of-mali-call-for-increased-protection-and involvement-in-resolving-the-conflict/

Julia Gillard is no feminist hero

John Pilger gives a his view on the Australian Prime Minister:

She has been praised for standing up to sexism but Australia's prime minister is also rolling back rights.

The Guardian's description of Australia's opposition leader Tony Abbott as "neanderthal" is not unreasonable. Misogyny is an Australian blight and a craven reality in political life. But for so many commentators around the world to describe Julia Gillard's attack on Abbott as a "turning point for Australian women" is absurd. Promoted by glass-ceiling feminists with scant interest in the actual politics and actions of their hero, Gillard is the embodiment of the Australian Labor party machine – a number-crunching machine long bereft of principle that has attacked and betrayed Australia's most vulnerable people, especially women.

Shortly before Gillard's lauded rant against Abbott, her government forced through legislation that stripped A$100 from the poorest single parents – almost all of them women. Even Labor's own caucus reportedly regarded this as "cruel". But that is nothing compared with Gillard's attacks on Aboriginal people, who remain Australia's dirty secret, suffering preventable diseases such as trachoma (blindness in children), which has been eliminated in much of the developing world, and scourges that hark back to Dickensian England, such as rheumatic heart disease, even leprosy. I have seen Aboriginal homes in which 30 people are forced to live, because the government refuses to build public housing for them. Indigenous young people are incarcerated in Australian prisons at five times the rate of black South Africans during the apartheid era.

Gillard has continued with gusto the authoritarian and mendacious 2007"emergency intervention" designed to push Aboriginal Australians off their valuable land and box them into "hub centres": a version of apartheid. She and her indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, have implemented this inhumanity in defiance of international law. In a speech last year, Gillard, like most of her predecessors, blamed the victims of Australia's unresolved rapacious past and present. I have just spent several months in Aboriginal Australia; and the views I have gathered from remarkable, despairing, eloquent indigenous women of Gillard and her "feminism" are mostly unknown, ignored or dismissed in this country. Watching Gillard address the UN last month and claim that Australia embraced "the highest ideals" of human rights law was satirical, to say the least. Australia has been repeatedly condemned by the UN for its racism.

Gillard came to power by plotting secretly with an all-male cabal to depose the elected prime minister, Kevin Rudd. Two of her conspirators, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, sought inspiration in the US embassy where Gillard enjoyed an unusually high approval rating. This was understandable. Her views on aggressive war might be described as neanderthal if they were not Victorian; referring to the dispatch of Australian colonial troops to Sudan in 1885 to avenge a popular uprising against the British, she described the forgotten bloody farce as "not only a test of wartime courage, but a test of character that has helped define our nation and create the sense of who we are". Invariably flanked by flags, she uses such guff to justify sending more young Australians to die in faraway places, essentially as American mercenaries – more soldiers have died under her watch than that of any recent prime minister. Her true feminist distinction, perversely, is her removal of gender discrimination in combat roles in the Australian army. Thanks to her, women are now liberated to kill Afghans and others who offer no threat to Australia. One Sydney feminist commentator was beside herself. "Australia will again lead the world in a major reform," she wrote. A passionate supporter of the Israeli state, Gillard in 2009 went on a junket to Israel arranged by the Australian Israel Cultural Exchange during which she refused to condemn Israel's blood-fresh massacre of 1,400 people in Gaza.

With political trickery reminiscent of the former arch-conservative prime minister John Howard, Gillard has sought to circumvent Australian law in order to send refugees who arrive by boat to an impoverished hell on isolated Pacific islands, such as Nauru. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, these people are "90% genuine refugees". They include children who, as government studies show, go insane in such confinement.

Australian feminism has a proud past. With New Zealanders, Australian women led the world in winning the vote and were at the forefront of the struggle for equal pay. During the slaughter of the first world war, Australian women mounted a uniquely successful campaign against a vote for conscription – known as "the blood vote". On polling day, a majority of Australians followed the women. Now that's feminism.

The Guardian 15th October