Towards equality

Louise Nousratpour
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Morning Star

BRITISH REPORT: LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR listens to women giving inspiration in the fight against sexist and racist oppression.

WOMEN campaigners drew inspiration from revolutionary Venezuela at the weekend as they united for social justice at a north London conference, stressing the link between rape, race and violence and the chronic poverty generated by capitalism.

Saturday's Rape, Race, Prostitution conference, organised by the Global Women's Strike, brought together hundreds of working-class women from all over the world to discuss ways to stamp out rampant violence and gender inequality.

The gathering provided a forum for people to share their accounts of being on the receiving end of violence and brutality and the institutionalised racism and sexism
that women often face when they try to raise their grievances with the British authorities.

It highlighted the achievements of women's active roles in revolutionary Venezuela and upheld its progressive gender laws as a model which campaigners should press the British government to adopt.

GWS speaker Selma James stressed the link between the issues raised and their common root - poverty generated by the capitalist system.

"Behind the scenes of racist attacks, the witch-hunt of Muslims, false arrests, deaths in custody and atrocities of war, are women organising a fightback," she declared.

Scores of militant women speakers showed that this was true. They lambasted the government, judiciary, police and some voluntary agencies for, at best, failing to do their job.

As a result, over 200 women are killed each year by a violent partner or ex-husband,
while rape convictions are shamefully low at 5.3 per cent. In Suffolk, where five prostitutes were recently murdered, it is even lower, at just 1.6 per cent.

Asylum seekers, who fled rape and torture only to be smeared as liars and threatened with deportation by the British government, spoke out against the harsh immigration laws.

Somalian mother of eight Bilan Mohamud spoke of the repeated racial abuse that she and her family had been subjected to by neighbours in north London. Each time they alerted the police, officers treated the matter as a neighbour dispute and arrested her husband for "threatening" the neighbours.

"The attacker punched me in the face and broke my nose, while shouting 'fucking refugee, fucking nigger, go back to your country'‚" she recalled.

Melanie Khan recounted the grotesque violence that her pregnant friend recently suffered at
the hands of Brixton police in south London. She said that officers beat her and subjected her to a vicious sexual assault while she was in custody.

"Now she is the one facing trial for assaulting a police officer," Ms Khan said, asking: "Who do we turn to for help when the police and other authorities show signs of institutional racism and sexism, over and over again?"

Conference demanded stronger, swifter, action, including dismissal against racist and sexist police officers, the judiciary and rogue public bodies.

The audience was urged to pressure their local MPs to sign an early day motion, presented by Labour MP John McDonnell, which aims to improve women's legal rights.

Conference also tackled the devastating impact of the government's "nazi" anti-terror laws at home and the so-called "war on terror" abroad.

Maryam Ahmad, whose husband is
facing extradition to the US, described the "trauma and terror" suffered by Britain's Muslim community, while Tahrir Swift of the Iraqi and Arab Media Watch highlighted the plight of Iraqi women under occupation.

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