‘We Have Been Invaded by Fascists’

Viktor Marunyak, the ‘sheriff’ of Stara Zburievka in southern Ukraine, survived abduction and torture at the hands of Russian occupiers. He tells New Lines why his native Kherson region will never be controlled by Russia

A woman from Kherson arrives at Zaporizhia Center for displaced people accompanied by a woman with dog who went to Kherson to rescue her / 

Rick Mave / Sopa Images / LightRocket via Getty Images


Olga May 25, 2022

May 25, 2022

Viktor Marunyak, a village head of Stara Zburievka in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, has been known not only as one of the longest-serving mayors, but also as a movie star. His international visibility helped save his life after he was abducted by Russian soldiers during the invasion of Ukraine.

Marunyak was one of the protagonists of “Ukrainian Sheriffs,” a documentary directed by Roman Bondarchuk, winner of several international awards and Ukraine’s 2016 Oscars entry. The movie tells a story of a remote village in the Kherson region, 50 miles from Crimea, where two local men assume the functions of “sheriffs” because the police rarely come to the village to settle disputes. They are given this mandate by the village head, Viktor Marunyak, who trusts them to enforce law and order.

Marunyak, a historian by education, has been reelected as a mayor of Stara Zburievka four times since 2006, thanks to his efforts to reform the village and fight corruption. When the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, Stara Zburievka immediately fell under occupation. For the first several weeks, things were quiet: Russians mostly bypassed it. In mid-March, the invaders came to Stara Zburievka knocking on people’s doors, looking for local collaborators willing to help install the Russian administration there.

On March 21, Marunyak’s 60th birthday, they knocked on his door too.

“Russians arrived at my house in the evening in several cars. They said they will take me with them, and then will bring me back home,” Marunyak told New Lines. “They took me to a building in the village where three local men have already been detained. They were young boys and they had signs of beating. Russians asked me to confirm that these boys were from our village. They started interrogating me about local ‘sabotage groups’ and weapons storages. For some reason, they were obsessed with the idea of finding a lot of Kalashnikovs. When I didn’t answer, they just beat me up.”

Marunyak wasn’t released the following morning, nor in the next three weeks. He was held by Russian occupiers first in Stara Zburievka and then in Kherson, where he was beaten and tortured for his refusal to collaborate.

“The first night, they didn’t let us lie down, we slept on our feet,” he said. “A Russian soldier prevented us from speaking to each other. They [the Russians] stripped us naked and made us freeze for two or three hours. They tried to suffocate us by putting their hands on our necks: and only released their grip when someone was about to pass out. They pressed pistols to our heads and threatened to shoot us.”

The torture continued in Kherson, where Marunyak was taken on the fourth day after his kidnapping. He was put in a basement of a pre-trial detention center, where Russians already held about 30 other people, some from his village. There, he and other arbitrarily detained Ukrainians were again interrogated, beaten up and tasered.

As a result of the beatings and torture by Russians, nine of Marunyak’s ribs were broken. “It was hard to sleep because of the pain. I was trying to do some exercises, to take deep breaths, but it was getting more difficult every day.”

“The hardest thing during torture was not to lose my mind. Your body and your brain react in very unexpected ways,” Marunyak recalls. “It was very hard when I was put in solitary confinement. I didn’t know which day of the week it was. What helped me was concentrating on thoughts about my family, that I had to survive to see them.”

While Marunyak was in captivity, Russians visited and searched his house several times. They took away everything, from their modest savings to food and socks. They also interrogated and pressured his wife, threatening to harm their children who live outside the Kherson region.

Similar things are happening across Stara Zburievka and elsewhere in the region, Marunyak said. Russians are going door-to-door, hunting and kidnapping Ukrainian officials, activists, journalists, veterans of war in Donbas and even people who rented their houses to Ukrainians soldiers of the 57th Infantry Brigade, which was stationed in the Stara Zburievka village before the Russian invasion.

“My story is not unique, these human rights abuses are happening on a large scale,” Marunyak said. But his story is unique in a sense that he was eventually released, unlike many other Ukrainians arbitrarily detained by Russians. According to the assessment of Natalia Bimbiraite, a human rights defender who fled Kherson after the Russian invasion and is currently helping to evacuate people from there, about 200 people, including local officials, journalists and teachers, have been abducted by Russians in the region so far. The whereabouts of many of them are still unknown.

Filmmakers who made “Ukrainian Sheriffs” and knew Marunyak personally sounded the alarm about his kidnapping at the international level. “We immediately wrote a letter to the head of Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, contacted Ukrainian and foreign journalists and filmmakers,” Darya Averchenko, the producer of the film, told New Lines. She reached out to international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, and her colleagues from the U.S. film industry wrote about the kidnapping of Marunyak in the media. Marunyak is sure this international outcry was fundamental to secure his release.

“After three weeks in detention, on April 12, a young Russian intelligence officer in a mask told me that he had no orders to keep me detained and that I was free. But on one condition: I had to return to the village, do my duties and inform them about anyone who organizes protests. It was clear for me that Russians wanted to keep me ‘on a short leash’. But I had no desire to work for them so I decided to flee.”

In early May, after being treated for pneumonia and broken ribs in a local hospital devoid of most medicines because of a Russian transport blockade, Marunyak was able to escape from the Kherson region. Filmmakers helped to raise the money and volunteers took him and his wife out via a safe route bypassing Russian checkpoints.

“It was a real special operation to take them out,” says human rights defender Natalia Bimbiraite who helped to secure Marunyak’s evacuation to a safe location in Ukraine. “Basically, we took the last available escape route from the Kherson region, because all other ways have been blocked by Russians.” After transiting through Odesa, Marunyak has now safely made it to Latvia, where he stays with the family of a filmmaker from the “Ukrainian Sheriffs” team.

“I want as many people as possible to know my story, and to know that we [Ukraine] have been invaded by fascists,” Marunyak said. Temporarily away from his village, he hopes to be back soon. “I am in touch with the people from the village and I plan to continue my work for its development. It’s all my life.”

Marunyak is worried about the fate of two of his “sheriffs” from Stara Zburievka. “One of them has joined the Ukrainian army and is currently fighting in the east. But there is no connection with another one; I know he was hiding [from Russians] in a village, in a forest, in a cemetery. I hope he managed to escape.”

What did his experience of life under occupation and in detention teach him? Marunyak reflects on his conversations with Russians who held him. “Russians and Ukrainians are from different planets. They are surprised that streets in our villages are lit, that there are WCs and showers in our houses. They are surprised that we have a decentralized system of governance, that mayors and village heads are elected, not appointed, that there is no top-down hierarchy when everyone follows orders from above.”

Marunyak says he thinks this bottom-up organization will ultimately be a decisive factor in Ukraine’s victory. Like he and his fellow “sheriffs” who took the initiative in their own hands to establish order in their village, many Ukrainians are voluntarily contributing to the resistance effort. In the city of Kherson and across the region, people are still taking to the streets protesting against Russian occupation, despite arrests and kidnappings. Those who do not go to protest sabotage the occupation authorities, preventing them from taking full control over the region.

“Russians were unable to organize a bogus referendum on the self-proclaimed Kherson Republic because the local population was totally opposed to it,” said Natalia Bimbiraite. “People took to the streets on April 27, when Russians planned to conduct it, and disrupted these plans. The ‘Crimea scenario’ is impossible in the Kherson region.”

Marunyak estimates that only 10 to 15% of the local population supports the occupation forces. Russian attempts to annex the Kherson region will not be legally recognized and the occupiers will struggle to govern here, he said.

“In fact, Russians use repression because they are afraid of us. Those sent to Kherson are scared to death of fighting with the Ukrainian armed forces so they take revenge on civilians,” he said. “I am sure Ukraine will be able to recapture the Kherson region. People are waiting for the Ukrainian army to come and liberate them. There is already an insurgency movement against the occupiers, even in my village.”

Olga Tokariuk is an independent journalist based in Ukraine

https://newlinesmag.com/

In India, the War on Journalists Is All-Encompassing

As the government mistreats the press, ordinary people are now joining in blaming reporters for violence and mayhem

Zeba Warsi

June 6, 2022

Children of journalists march for freedom rights 

/ Tanmoy Bhaduri / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

An unsettling, eerie silence engulfed the streets of Khajuri Khas two days after the riots. The neighborhood is a Muslim ghetto and was one of the worst hit in the anti-Muslim violence that erupted in Delhi in late February 2020. Fifty-three people were killed, a majority of them Muslims.

I walked through lanes covered in ashes. The air was thick with the toxic smell of burned refrigerators and charred vehicles. Broken pieces of furniture lined the streets. I stepped over a lone, bloodstained slipper and a half-burned notebook. I remember noting that about 30 houses in Khajuri Khas were burned down. Shops belonging to Muslims had been specifically targeted. It was day three of the violence, and parts of the city were still burning.

As a journalist, my presence set off ripples of resentment. “The media instigated the riots. Are your prime-time news anchors happy now?” asked a 50-year-old man who sat outside a three-story house that was gutted. Two teenage girls — his daughters — were wailing inconsolably. They had escaped the previous night when the rioters attacked this lane. Now they returned to see their home destroyed. “My daughter was going to get married next month. Now we’re left with nothing. Are your bosses happy now?” he asked.

I could feel a tight knot in my stomach. He was not the first riot victim I met that day who believed the media had played an active role in instigating the hate and bigotry that culminated in these riots.

While the exact timeline remains unclear, the roots of the riots lie in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). The 2019 act, which amends the original Citizenship Act dating to 1955, excludes Muslims from the subcontinent from seeking fast-track citizenship. For months Muslim women, student activists and liberal groups protested against the law for being anti-Muslim. In the run-up to the riots, mainstream media networks ran a blitzkrieg of evening TV debates labeling protesters as “anti-nationals,” “paid foreign agents” and even terrorists.

I remember many conversations with colleagues who were covering these protests. We could see this coming. “It is only a matter of time before the propaganda and polarization channeled by big media networks translates into violence,” a senior journalist once told me. I was reporting at the protest sites for over two months and witnessed rising apprehension among protesters. When a leader from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued an ultimatum to the police that the police clear out the protesters or the party and its followers would, it was only a matter of hours until violent mobs descended on protest sites. The media is complicit in the bloodbath that followed, several protesters later told me.

And this hostility toward us continues. In April, several journalists were attacked by a mob at a Hindu right-wing rally in New Delhi. Five of them had to be escorted by police for their protection; of these, four were Muslim. At the rally, Hindu supremacists who had earlier been accused of similar hate speech delivered anti-Muslim verbal attacks. Arbab Ali, a reporter with Article 15 — an independent news website — tweeted that he was attacked by the mob because of his Muslim identity: “They asked us our names. They called us Jihadi,” he wrote.

When I decided at the age of 12 to be a journalist, I believed that it was the way I could serve my country and its people. To this day, I continue to struggle with my stubborn idealism. It’s an internal conflict where my innate optimism is challenged by the harsh realities of being a journalist in India. I have tried seeking comfort in the little impacts that my own stories could achieve. I had to continue doing my part. But with the growing self-censorship by mainstream media networks, even ordinary acts of reporting the truth start to feel like a battle. After more than seven years as a reporter in India, where the press is being muzzled, one thing is clear: In the India of right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, journalists either join the cacophony of government propaganda or are silenced.

Curtailing of press freedom is part of Modi’s larger campaign to control India by fueling anti-Muslim sentiments. In August 2019, Modi revoked the special status of Kashmir and brought it under the direct control of his government. Kashmir was also placed under the longest internet shutdown ever recorded in a democracy, from August 2019 to March 2020, right after the abrogation of its special status. The region continues to face internet interruptions regularly. India is the global leader in internet shutdowns, imposed as a repressive method to quell dissent, according to the latest report by digital freedom monitoring agency Access Now.

Journalists in Kashmir, India’s only majority-Muslim state, are disproportionately affected by frequent summons to local police stations and background profiling, among other forms of censorship. According to a story published in The Wire, in the past two years at least 40 Kashmiri journalists have been called for “background checks,” summoned to explain their work and social media conduct. Several Kashmiri journalists are also barred from traveling abroad as per the report. At least six Kashmiri journalists have been formally charged with terrorism.

Journalists who refused to be silenced found themselves under attack. Fahad Shah, an independent journalist and editor from Kashmir, was charged under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA), an anti-terrorism law that can put him in jail for two years without trial for reporting on the government’s crackdown on the Muslim community in Kashmir. Shah is the editor-in-chief of The Kashmir Walla (TKW), a website known to be the last voice of independent local journalism in Kashmir. He has also freelanced for the international press including The Guardian, Time, Foreign Policy and The Nation. Before being charged under PSA, Shah faced a campaign of harassment for his reporting.

After his release, he has been arrested by local police and granted bail by courts three times since February. “Every time he got bail from courts, the police would arrest him again in a different case. They have really been after him,” a close friend and colleague of Shah told me.

In this year’s run-ins with the law, Shah was first arrested on Feb. 4, reportedly after filing a story about a gunfight that took place in May 2020 in which a 17-year-old was killed. In the report, he quoted the police as well as the teen’s family, who said that he was not a militant. He was charged with sedition and “glorifying anti-national content” and spent more than 20 days in jail before being released on bail. “He had become very weak after the first time. And now, there’s no hope for a bail,” his friend told me.

A month before Shah’s first arrest this year, another journalist from TKW, Sajad Gul, was detained under PSA for reporting on anti-government protests in the Kashmir Valley. Shah wrote editorials against Gul’s arrests on his website, and that irked the establishment, his colleagues told me.

Shah’s first arrest was a marked escalation in the Indian government’s assault on press freedom in Kashmir. Despite civil society outrage and condemnation from national and international watchdogs like the Editors of Guild of India, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, the state went ahead with its arrest.

“No one thought that the government would go this far. Fahad didn’t believe things could get this bad,” his friend said.

But things did go from bad to worse. Shah was no stranger to state monitoring and press censorship. He, like other Kashmiri journalists, learned to navigate his job through the muddy waters of everyday surveillance and indirect intimidation from government agencies in Kashmir. But his arrest has led to fear among journalists in the valley who have retreated into silence. I spoke to several Kashmiri journalists who are now refraining from “making too much noise” and trying to avoid being noticed for their work. Many of them have moved to New Delhi and other cities. My Kashmiri counterparts know all too well the price they have to pay to be a journalist in the conflict region.

Aakash Hassan was driving back from a reporting assignment in Srinagar, Kashmir, when he got a call from a familiar number, one he knew to be that of a local law enforcement agency. He wasn’t surprised, as it was only a few days before that he had published a story about the Indian government’s crackdown on information in Kashmir. “I have been summoned and questioned at least a dozen times by local police in the last two years,” Hassan told me.

This is what we call the Kashmir pattern. Journalists are called for “background checks” or “routine verifications” often after they publish a story that is critical of the government. The call is not made in direct reference to the story, but covert hints do the job.

“They ask all sorts of questions: Who am I writing for these days, questions about my family, my bank account details, my family’s bank account details, what are my siblings doing and how much property does my family own,” Hassan said. “Sometimes they warn in vague terms to be careful about what I write.”

In another recent assault on journalistic freedoms in Kashmir, the local administration issued an order requiring all journalists to “register” with a government department to be able to report freely out in the field or online. For Hassan, it was the shutdown of the Kashmir Press Club that dealt a big blow. To the average person, it looks like a rundown government building and smells of old rotten paper, but for journalists in Kashmir, it was the last safe space in Srinagar where they could meet and discuss their stories. When I was there in 2018, it was newly established but had already become a refuge for local independent journalists like Hassan. “More than anything else, it was a solidarity group where I knew that someone would speak up if something bad were to happen to me,” Hassan told me. “Despite the harsh circumstances under which journalists in Kashmir operate … it was the only place where we could exchange reporting notes, talk about the threats we face and just be there for each other.”

Last year, in the early hours of Sept. 9, the residences of four Kashmiri journalists were raided by local police investigating a case charged under the anti-terror law Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). “The manner in which these raids were conducted, it looked as if we were terrorists and not journalists,” Hassan said.

As things escalate in Kashmir with Shah’s most recent arrest, the pattern seen in Kashmir is being replicated in the rest of India. Siddique Kappan, a Muslim journalist from the southern state of Kerala, has been languishing in jail over two years now. He was on his way to report on a story about a heinous rape in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh when he was arrested by local police and later charged under an anti-terrorism law on charges of sedition. Kappan has reported on the CAA protests and the rise of Hindu nationalism, much like me and many of my colleagues. He also used to write about the illegal incarceration of activists under the UAPA, the same law that’s being used against him. Raihanath, Kappan’s wife, believes he was arrested so as to intimidate all journalists from pursuing any story against the government. “The government wants to instill fear among journalists and civil society groups. Siddique was targeted because he is a journalist and a Muslim one at that,” she told me.

In this war on journalism, we are being attacked not only through intimidation tactics but also by a systematic assault from government sympathizers and their social media army. Online threats and social media harassment is a package deal for female journalists in India. Over the years, I’ve conditioned myself to ignore them, often not even reading the bile that’s thrown at me for simply doing my job. But earlier this year, the online trolling took an uglier turn.

This past New Year’s, I woke up to a series of messages from friends and colleagues in India informing me that my name and picture had appeared in an “online auction” on a fake website hosted by American tech platform GitHub. It left me disgusted and angry. These men offered me and nearly 100 other Muslim female journalists and activists up “for sale” and described us in derogatory terms. This was the second such fake “online auction” of outspoken Muslim women held by individuals who represent the support base of the ruling party. The first time, the police made no arrests, emboldening the perpetrators to do it again.

In a patriarchal country like India, targeting women is seen as the apt way to humiliate a community. As a journalist, I don’t let my religious identity come in the way of my reporting. But in India, where the Hindu right dominates, it’s an identity that I am constantly reminded of and targeted for. Muslim women like me were targeted because we either had covered stories that are critical of the government or have been vocal critics of government policies, especially the citizenship law. The motive was to shame us into silence. Since this was the second such “auction,” law enforcement agencies were driven into action not so much by the government but by the outrage that followed. Five men, ages 18 to 25, have been arrested so far.

Other colleagues face worse. When Rana Ayyub is not being quizzed by Indian police and tax authorities, she is slapped with communal slurs and threats of death and rape by Modi’s supporters, many of whom the prime minister follows on Twitter. In her columns for The Washington Post, Time magazine and other international publications, Ayyub takes on Modi and his government, calling out the dangers of Hindu nationalism, Islamophobia and the attack on press freedom. Ayyub is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized journalists from India, which means she is also one of the most viciously abused. Ayyub has had at least three criminal lawsuits filed against her in addition to an investigation into her finances, launched by Indian tax authorities. She says the threats and intimidation — both by the government and its “troll army” — have intensified ever since she began writing for international media. Her being a Muslim journalist often means that the online harassment escalates to pure vitriol.

It has taken a toll on her mental health, and she hit rock bottom. “It is brazen and the intimidation gets to be a lot, it gets really overwhelming. Recently, I was borderline suicidal when I called up my psychiatrist and lawyers. But then I reminded myself, this is exactly what they’re trying to do to you,” Ayyub said. Despite the sustained campaign against her, Ayyub considers herself one of the “luckier” ones.

“One thing that separates me from Siddique Kappan is privilege. I do have the privilege to have a psychiatrist. I do have the privilege to have a great lawyer,” Ayyub acknowledged.

Following the latest case filed against Ayyub alleging misappropriation of funds collected during the pandemic for her charity work, the United Nations Special Rapporteurs issued a statement urging the government to “halt all retaliation attacks” against her, calling the case “judicial harassment” and drawing a sharp response from India. Ayyub has denied all allegations, calling it a smear campaign. The case, which is now being investigated by India’s top financial regulatory agency, was filed by the founder of a Hindu nationalist NGO.

For independent journalist Neha Dikshit, the online threats turned real. On Jan. 27, 2021, Dikshit tweeted that there had been an attempt to break into her house two days earlier. She revealed that she had been stalked since September 2020 and that the stalker threatened her with “rape, acid attack and death.” Prior to this incident, Dikshit was often targeted by Modi supporters on social media with hateful and misogynist comments.

An investigative reporter, she was awarded the 2019 International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists for her work exposing extrajudicial killings by Indian police. But back in India, there have been attempts to intimidate her through police complaints. In 2016, two criminal defamation cases had been filed against Dikshit by Hindu right-wing organizations affiliated with the ruling party for reporting that Modi’s ideological Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang (RSS), a Hindu right-wing voluntary paramilitary organization, was involved in the trafficking of tribal girls for the purpose of indoctrination in India’s northeast. There is another more serious criminal case of inciting communal hatred against her for her journalistic work. “For the past five years, I have had to travel to another state and appear in court hearings. There are legal expenses and travel costs that one has to bear in addition to the mental toll it takes,” Dikshit told me in a phone interview.

Dikshit said she has also made previous governments unhappy with her work and had received legal notices, but Modi’s government has normalized this trend of entangling journalists in court cases that take years to resolve. The objective is to ensure journalists exercise self-censorship to avoid these legal hassles.

The police don’t act on the complaints filed by journalists. When someone broke into Dikshit’s home, after innumerable phone threats by the perpetrator letting her know he was closely watching her every move, she reported the incident to the police. But there has been no update in the case since. In the past 25 years, there have been only two convictions in cases of attacks on journalists, Dikshit said.

Modi’s government has carefully crafted a new strategy to intimidate “unfriendly” media with bogus criminal or terror charges, according to Siddharth Vardrajan, editor of The Wire, an award-winning independent media outlet that has fiercely criticized the establishment. There are five police cases filed against The Wire, Vardrajan and three of his reporters. “I don’t recall in the last 20 years that I’ve been a journalist to see criminal cases of this kind be filed against reporters. Journalists were harassed in the past too, but what’s happening now is that if the state doesn’t like a particular story, then it’s quite happy to unleash the police against the reporter,” Vardrajan said.

That journalists like Dikshit and Ayyub are on the radar of Hindu extremists is no secret, and the complaints filed by them should be given due urgency. Threats of this kind have been known to turn deadly. On Sept. 5, 2017, Gauri Lankesh, a left-leaning journalist who was highly critical of Hindu nationalism, received a wave of death threats and then was shot dead by assassins “trained” by the Hindu extremist organization Sanatan Sanstha. Four years on, 18 people have been arrested in connection with her murder, but there have been no convictions.

I have witnessed firsthand how attacks on journalists have escalated rapidly over the past three years. As I remember Lankesh, I am forced to confront the possibility that many of my colleagues risk their lives for the work they do. We have been forced to accept the threats, hate, harassment, government censorship and intimidation as a part of being a journalist in India. We shouldn’t have to.

The aftermath of the Delhi riots left me with a feeling of resentment toward the normalization of anti-Muslim rhetoric and government propaganda, which was evident during the coverage of the protests and the riots. The pandemic and the Indian media’s reportage only made it worse. Television news networks have been highly effective in propagating Modi’s message to the masses. Most big networks, especially Hindi news channels with millions of viewers, have a prime-time news anchor who unabashedly advances anti-Muslim racism. In the past few years, a large section of television news networks played a big role in propagating hate and bigotry in an already polarized India.

At the start of the pandemic in early spring 2020, many big media houses were quick to blame a Muslim congregation for the initial spread of COVID-19. The government also released COVID-related data specifically about the congregation, isolating that particular community. The media played into the government’s narrative and amplified it. Headlines flashing “Corona Jihad” became a new catchphrase. Unverified videos of men wearing skullcaps and spitting in public places were used on air, instigating hate against minorities and sparking attacks on Muslim street vendors in different parts of the country.

That’s when I decided to take a break from mainstream media in India. I needed to step away; I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve put thousands of miles between me and that rhetoric, but it doesn’t help in reducing the anger and helplessness I continue to feel every time another journalist in India is arrested or when another mainstream media network fuels hate. My internal conflict rages on. On one hand, I feel an enveloping cynicism that my side is losing the war on journalism. On the other are my idealism and a call that I need to work harder than ever. While it may be one of the most challenging times to be a journalist in India, it is also the most urgent. And when I look at the courage and resilience of my colleagues back home, I am reminded why I chose this profession. We have to do our part.

Zeba Warsi is a New York-based Indian journalist

https://newlinesmag.com/

‘A Happy Marriage Begins by Crying’: Kyrgyzstan’s Tradition of Kidnapping and Raping Brides

How pioneering young women are trying to put an end to a violent 12th-century tradition from the steppes of Central Asia

Art protesting violence against women in Kyrgyzstan.

 Courtesy of the artist Tatyana Zelenskaya

Mauro Mondello

https://newlinesmag.com/

Aisuluu was returning home after spending the afternoon with her aunt in the village of At-Bashy, located 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the Torugart crossing into China. “I remember it was 5 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday. I had in my hands a paper bag full of samsa [a dough dumpling stuffed with lamb, parsley, and onion]. My aunt always prepared them on weekends,” she told New Lines, withholding her last name for fear of reprisal.

“A car with four men inside comes in the opposite direction to mine. And all of a sudden it … turns around and within a few seconds, comes up beside me. One of the guys sitting in the back gets out, yanks me and pushes me inside the car. I drop all the samsa there, on the pavement. I scream, I squirm, I cry, but there is nothing I can do,” she added.

The man who kidnapped her will soon become her husband. At the wedding, Aisuluu will discover that she was not even the woman he had intended to kidnap for marriage. But in the haste of having to return home with a bride and after wandering the streets all afternoon, the man decided to settle for the first “cute girl” he saw and kidnap her. This was 1996, and Aisuluu was a teenager. Today she has four children by her kidnapper-turned-husband, with whom she remains as a wife.

It has been so ingrained in Kyrgyz society that it has become an accepted norm, complete with proverbs to console its terrified victims one generation after the next.

Known as Ala Kachuu, or take-and-run, the brutal practice of kidnapping brides finds its roots in medieval times along the steppes of Central Asia. It has been so ingrained in Kyrgyz society that it has become an accepted norm, complete with proverbs to console its terrified victims one generation after the next.

The Ala Kachuu has been banned in Kyrgyzstan for decades, but the law is ignored by most of the population and the authorities in a context that continues to see women subjected to domestic violence and abuse. The law was tightened in 2013, with sentences of up to 10 years in prison for those who kidnap a woman with the intention of forcing her into marriage (previously it was a fine of 2,000 soms, about $25 U.S.). But the new law has not curtailed the practice, and prosecutions have been rare.

“A happy marriage begins by crying,” goes one Kyrgyz proverb, ignoring the tears of anger and terror that mark the start of a marriage for Ala Kachuu brides.

The Ala Kachuu is practiced in all the countries of Central Asia, but it is especially common among the rural villages on the hard mountainous territories of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, where it is most common.

The data collected from the Women Support Center, an organization that fights for gender equality in the country, indicates at least 12,000 marriages celebrated and consummated every year against the will of the bride. Men kidnap women, they say, to prove their manhood, avoid courtship (considered a tedious waste of time) and save the payment of the kalym, or dowry, which can cost the groom up to $4,000 in cash and farm animals.

After the kidnapping, which in some cases can be consensual when a couple wishes to speed up the process of dating and honor tradition, the brides are taken to the house of the future husband. The in-laws welcome the woman and force her to wear the jooluk, a white shawl that certifies submission to the new family. Then comes the wedding. You can rebel, of course, but most of the girls kidnapped, around 80%, decide to accept their fate, often on the advice of their parents.

Refusing marriage after spending the night in the house of an unknown man amounts to a social stigma that is difficult to erase, a shame that the girl and her whole family live with forever. The future husband rapes the young woman shortly after having kidnapped her (it is estimated that there are 2,000 rapes preceding marriage a year), thus condemning her as his wife, for returning to her family after that would be a deep mark of shame. Fleeing brides also risk further violence and even death.

One such bride, Aizada Kanatbekova, 26, was found strangled to death in a field in early April, two days after being forcibly loaded into a car with the help of two passersby. The kidnapping unfolded in daylight in the city center of the capital, Bishkek, an alarming indication that this practice is not limited to the most rural areas of the country.

Altyn Kapalova, a writer, artist, activist and researcher at the University of Central Asia in Bishkek, lamented the lack of legal protection for women. “A police station is not a safe place for a woman seeking help. If a woman goes to a police station to report a kidnapping, they laugh at her, tell her it’s not their business, to go home and settle it with her family,” she said.

In 2018, one gruesome case highlighted authorities’ callous attitude. The victim, Burulai Turdaaly Kyzy, a 20-year-old medical student, was killed while in a police station by the man who had kidnapped her. He fatally stabbed her, then carved her initials and those of another man she had planned to marry into the woman’s body. The officers had left the two of them alone in the waiting room.

The perpetrator was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. But activists lament that the majority of violence against women still goes unpunished. “The problem is one of culture, of education, and not of laws,” added Kapalova, who has been receiving constant threats since 2019, after having organized the first feminist exhibition in the history of Kyrgyzstan. Called the “Feminnale,” the exhibit is on display at the Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts in Bishkek.

Kapalova pointed out that since most Kyrgyz women marry during adolescence, their youth and low level of education make them that much more vulnerable to domestic violence. “In fact, girls remain forever in a low educational context; their world is one in which a man can do everything and violence becomes a daily part of their life, something to be accepted without protest and suffered in silence,” she said.

Perhaps one of the saddest examples of the extent to which girls can be relegated to the margins of society in Kyrgyzstan is an examination of the disparaging girl names that remain popular in some parts of the country. “Kyrgyzstan is full of girls called Zhanyl or Burul, which in Kyrgyz means ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘I sinned,’ ” said Kapalova. These are “newborns whose only fault was being born female and therefore punished with names that represent them as God’s mistakes not to be repeated,” she added.

Art protesting violence against women in Kyrgyzstan. 

Courtesy of the artist Tatyana Zelenskaya

According to data from the UNICEF office operating in Bishkek, the percentage of girls ages 15 to 19 who become pregnant in Kyrgyzstan is among the highest in the world, while 13% of marriages take place before the age of 18, despite being prohibited by current regulations. The Kyrgyz government has no specific plans to combat violence against women or the phenomenon of the Ala Kachuu.

Indeed, the new president, the nationalist Sadyr Japarov, has instead included in the country’s new constitution, passed in a referendum on April 11, 2021, a passage that recalls the values of morality and tradition, seen by many as a tacit endorsement of Ala Kachuu.

The introductory prologue of the new constitution underlines the importance of the spiritual and cultural foundations of Kyrgyz society: “following the traditions of our ancestors, continuing to live in unity, peace, harmony with nature, based on the precepts of Manas the Magnanimous.”

This is a passage that replaces the introduction of the old 2010 constitution, which instead focused on the need to fight for the construction of a democratic, free and independent state. There is also a new article, number 21, that mentions “development of the culture of the people of Kyrgyzstan with the preservation of customs and traditions,” a reference that aims to cement traditional values and that was read by many as a change of priorities, toward the erosion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, if they were in conflict with traditional values.

Kyrgyz women have not always benefited from the traditions of their ancestors, as is the case with the practice of Ala Kachuu.

The main voices of dissent against the government’s pivot toward arcane tradition come from disparate activist initiatives. One such voice is Tatyana Zelenskaya, an artist who works in collaboration with the NGO Open Line Foundation, which supports victims of bride kidnapping through counseling and legal advice. Zelenskaya created the drawings and graphics of Spring in Bishkek, a game for smartphones that aims to convince girls that kidnapping is not a tradition but a crime.

In just over six months, the app has already recorded over 130,000 downloads, an extraordinary success, given that developers had set a goal of 25,000. In the game, the user witnesses the kidnapping of her best friend and must free her, while messages with suggestions prepared by psychologists, journalists and activists appear on the screen, as well as real telephone numbers that can be used in cases of emergency.

“The idea behind the game is to make the girls understand that they are masters of their own destiny. This is why we transform them into heroines capable of rebelling and changing the course of things,” Zelenskaya said. “It may seem unimportant, but for a generation of women who grew up with the idea that nothing is possible without a man’s approval, unhinging this concept is difficult.”

Also among the voices of dissent is a dynamic group of eight Kyrgyz women ages 18 to 24 who are shaking things up. They plan to launch into orbit the first satellite in the history of Kyrgyzstan. “We will be ready for launch by autumn 2022,” said Kyzzhibek Batyrkanova, who is the eldest in the group. “A nanosatellite will go into orbit, a CubeSat with basic and limited functionality, capable of receiving and sending a signal. We have been working on it for some time, building it entirely, piece by piece: technology, programming, mathematics, physics, up to welding,” she added.

Batyrkanova directs the operations of the “Kyrgyz Space Program,” an initiative that receives no help from Kyrgyz institutions but is funded by private donations. For the technical elements, the all-woman team managed to establish collaborative relationships with foreign universities and with NASA, securing advice about the construction of the satellite and participating in conferences and educational trips.

All eight women are studying aerospace engineering while carrying out the construction of the CubeSat. They travel to remote areas and give seminars to school kids, especially girls, in the basics of engineering, mathematics, science and technology. They also share personal stories of “emancipation.”

She does so “because I was like them, a young girl whose highest aspiration was to find a charming prince,” said Anna Boyko, who oversees the physics and programming courses for the group. “Then I took part in two weeks of training in a computer company … (and) after two days they all realized that I was much better than my male companions with computers.”

Mauro Mondello is a Sicilian freelance reporter, author, documentary filmmaker and 2020 Yale World Fellow

August 2, 2021

Change won’t appear overnight in many states if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Workers at a family planning clinic watch an abortion rights march in Chicago on May 14, 2022. 

Scott Olson/Getty Images

THE CONVERSATION
Published: June 3, 2022

Individual states and some cities are taking legal steps to either limit or allow abortions, gearing up for what will likely be a fierce national battle if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the constitutional right to abortion.

The Supreme Court is set to soon release a final verdict on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one month after a leaked Supreme Court draft majority opinion showed it could reverse Roe v. Wade.

But a ruling – likely to come sometime in June or July 2022 – will be only one important step in the ongoing national abortion saga. While 13 states, including Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, have “trigger laws” that would almost immediately restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, the legal future for abortion in 10 states is uncertain.

As a professor of health law, public health law and medical ethics, I think it is important to understand that it may take time to see the full effects of a Supreme Court decision at the state level.

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Many states have laws regulating abortion already in place, while other states are moving to expand or restrict abortions. Oklahoma, for example, approved a new law on May 26, 2022, that bans most abortions after a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected – usually around six weeks after conception. The only exceptions are cases of reported rape or incest, or a need to save the pregnant woman’s life.

In Austin, Texas, lawmakers are working to pass a law that would decriminalize abortion within city limits. Towns in Nebraska and elsewhere have also approved local regulations that ban abortion. While state laws can override these rules, local ordinances can still limit where abortion clinics can operate.

It’s key to keep in mind, though, the legal process at the state level can involve not only the legislature, but courts and state governors, which creates a complex and sometimes unpredictable outcome that could take months or years to resolve.

What’s at stake

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that considers a Mississippi law called the Mississippi Gestational Age Act. This 2018 law prohibits most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with medical emergencies or fetal anomaly as exceptions.

The Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, establishing that women have a right to get an abortion before a fetus could survive outside of its mother’s womb – typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy. After this time, states could choose to restrict abortion – as long as there were exceptions to preserve the life or health of a pregnant woman.
State-by-state decisions

Now, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Mississippi law and overturns Roe v. Wade, states would regain power to regulate abortion.

This would result in a new patchwork of state laws across the U.S. that would take time to be approved and implemented.

State legislatures may review old state abortion laws that predate Roe v. Wade, for example. State Supreme Courts could also review existing or new laws on abortion.

There’s already been a growing gap on this issue across states. In 2018, many states began passing new laws to either make it harder or easier to get an abortion.
States may restrict abortion access

Many states are now working to not entirely ban abortion, but rather to change the point at which someone can get an abortion during pregnancy.

Currently, only three states – Alabama, Arkansas and South Dakota – plan to entirely ban abortions, with the exception of a medical emergency.

The picture is more nuanced in different states. Some states have trigger laws that would make it illegal for someone to perform an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

Texas already enacted a law in 2021 that makes it illegal for someone to perform an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

Legislators in other states, like Arizona and Florida, also recently approved laws that restrict abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Some federal courts have challenged these kinds of restrictions. In over a dozen states, including Kentucky, a federal court blocked state laws in April 2022 that restricted when someone can get an abortion. But overturning Roe v. Wade could allow these laws to take effect, or could produce more legal battles to block the law or revise it.

Every state would still permit exceptions, such as for medically necessary abortions or health emergencies. Each state’s exception would differ slightly.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to soon release its decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

States may expand abortion access

An estimated 21 states, though, would continue to have few limitations on getting abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

There is also growing momentum for some states to make it easier to get an abortion, by allocating taxpayer funding for abortion services, for example, or mandating insurance coverage with no additional cost.

In recent years some states, such as Maine, Illinois and Virginia, have changed their laws to allow medical professionals who are not doctors, like nurses, to perform surgical abortions.

Eight states, including California, New York and Washington, have laws that guarantee the right to get an abortion.

Seven states, including Colorado, Oregon and Vermont, have no limits on when a pregnant woman can get an abortion.

Some states, meanwhile, have state abortion laws predating Roe v. Wade that they may to revisit. Michigan, for example, has a 1931 law that makes providing an abortion a felony, unless it is done to protect the life of the pregnant person.

A Michigan court blocked enforcing this law on May 17, 2022, even if the court overturns Roe v. Wade. This means the Michigan Legislature may revise the state law, which could take months.

If the Supreme Court indeed throws the question of abortion back to states, the outcome of Dobbs v. Jackson could be the starting point for states to navigate a wide range of new abortion laws.

Author 

Katherine Drabiak
Associate professor of health law, public health law and medical ethics, University of South Florida

Connecting the dots between Roe v. Wade, sex workers and bodily autonomy

by Natasha Darling

rabble.ca

June 3, 2022


The same people who criminalize sex work, criminalize other “serious offences” against sexual norms such as medical treatment for trans people and access to abortion.

 Credit: SHYCITYNikon / flickr

The last couple of years have been rough in terms of bad news all around: a global pandemic, numerous assaults on democracy, climate change, police brutality, war in Ukraine, inflation. To add to this dumpster fire, leaked documents show that Roe v. Wade is on its way to being reversed in America. This reversal will overturn constitutional protections for abortion in the U.S.

Last week, Canadian Blood Services announced that they would no longer ban blood and plasma donations from sex workers Instead, they would only accept donations from sex workers who haven’t seen a client in more than a year. On the surface, these two events seem unrelated. Today, I would like to connect the dots, and talk about how sex workers, bodily autonomy, and reproductive rights are interconnected.

(Spoiler alert: the answer to any rhetorical questions below is always patriarchy. Always.)

Let’s start with the Canadian Blood Services news. Until now, sex workers (and our clients) were banned from donating blood and plasma for life. Now they are recommending that Health Canada approve a one year ban from the person’s last time engaging in sex work either as a provider or a client. They will be considering eliminating any ban in the future.

The 45 year old ban for life is based on an erroneous assumption that sex workers, due to their profession, are somehow more at risk of having bloodborne diseases such as HIV/AIDS or STIs. Here are the facts: a 2001 study reports that 90 per cent of sex workers in Victoria B.C. used condoms during anal or vaginal intercourse with clients. Moving forward to 2021, the UNAIDS Global Update found for the age 15-49 demographic in Western and Central Europe and North America, sex workers account for only 0.4 per cent of new HIV infections. So not only is the ban not based in science or reason, but what exactly is exchanging sex for money? Which sex acts do they mean? What definition are we going by?

The same powers that be who oppress women, oppress sex workers. Blood bans reinforce rigid heteronormative values. The ban for men who have sex with men was only reversed last year and will only be allowed without restriction in September. Such policy decisions make outcasts out of marginalized groups.

At the height of the pandemic, all strip clubs in Ontario were closed due to a moral panic concerning outbreaks in Toronto clubs, at the same time as bars and pole dancing studios remained open. Now the town of Newmarket, Ontario has voted to ban massage parlors, a decision that disproportionally affects and discriminates against Asian sex workers. We are either painted as vectors of disease, or victims of human trafficking– never as grown ass women who made a choice. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: decriminalization is key for healthier outcomes for sex workers.

Everyone should have the right to do what they wish with their body, and sleep with whomever they please (the usual disclaimers about consent and age apply, of course). Everyone should have access to free, science based sexual education. What is the harm of learning about your body, consent, and safe sex? How on Earth did it take three attempts until Canada banned conversion therapy? While we’re on the subject, I apologize if I’m stepping on religious sensibilities, but publicly funded schools should be teaching sex ed. We shouldn’t settle for a public education system that sets up our kids to have kids of their own before they’re ready. We shouldn’t settle for a public education system that doesn’t teach consent and healthy relationship skills.

The same people who criminalize sex work, criminalize other “serious offences” against sexual norms such as medical treatment for trans people and access to abortion. Why, in the U.S, were only married women allowed access to the pill until the 1970s, when it was approved by the FDA in 1960? And why is it still so expensive?

Again, these are instances of grown ass women making the best choice for themselves at that time. Is it really a choice if you can’t access sexual education and birth control to begin with? Is it really a choice when in many jurisdictions worldwide, the possession of a condom could result in a prostitution charge?

Abortion bans have the biggest implications for marginalized women. Poor women, racialized women, migrant women, and rural women have less access to abortion to begin with. Under a ban, they would have even less health care options because they can’t afford to travel elsewhere. They are far less likely to be able to afford a lawyer if they face criminal charges in place where abortion is criminalized.

Analogously, marginalized sex workers are less likely to be able to afford a lawyer if they face criminal charges related to their work. More and more, we live in a system designed to make criminals where there is no crime. It’s the war on drugs, rebranded, and there are more potential criminals to catch. Exciting times for law enforcement, but not for the rest of us.

At times like these, many Canadians like to breathe a sigh of relief and express gratitude that things are better here than in the U.S. And yet – in Ontario, migrant workers have no provincial health coverage. Farms are isolated. There is next to no public transit. Even in urban centres, you have to pay out of pocket. There is often a language barrier. Abortion care for migrant women is only possible largely to due to mutual aid (if you would like to donate money towards abortion access and sexual health services, I recommend donating to Choice in Health Clinic. They help support migrant workers, and are sex work allies.). Nationwide, due to a combination of geography and poor policy, abortion access is patchy.

I don’t want to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I would much rather be naked and glistening on a stage. Some may disagree with my choice to live outside the bounds of conventional morality, but that should still be my choice to make.

Repeat after me: Sex work is real work! Abortion is healthcare! My body, my choice!

How Islam Settled Roe v. Wade Centuries Ago

Equating its repeal to ‘Shariah’ drags Muslims into a culture war they do not deserve

Anti-abortion advocates kneel and pray outside of the Supreme Court during the March for Life / Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Rashad Ali

Anna Lekas Miller

As soon as the news broke that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, familiar — and troubling — Islamophobic tropes began to emerge in the discourse.

“America’s Taliban really hates women and minorities,” wrote Daily Beast editor Naveed Jamali on Twitter, harkening back to late September when dozens of commentators, including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, started referring to Texas lawmakers as the “American Taliban” — a trope that Muslim leaders are still trying to come back from.

Meanwhile, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah gave it his own comedic twist: “All across the country, women in places like Missouri or even Texas will have the same abortion rights as women under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Think about it. We just evacuated people out of Afghanistan, and now we are going to evacuate them out of Tennessee?” he quipped — up until this point walking the fine line between humor and accidental Islamophobia. “After all these years of the right screaming about Shariah law, it turns out they were just jealous.”

Never mind the fact that this comparison is insulting to Muslims — it is also blatantly false. Rather than point out the hypocrisy of the way that the far right has spent the past 20 years criticizing the Taliban for its record on women’s rights only to turn around and enact its own brand of religious fundamentalism, this commentary misses the mark and lands as a lazy insult, akin to “you crazies are even crazier than those brown crazies!” It unwittingly drags Muslims into the so-called “culture wars,” hurling them into the fray of the right wing’s crackdown on LGBTQ and women’s rights, their faith no more than an argument to prove a point.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Muslims have had their faith exploited as a political pawn in bipartisan politics. Sometimes it is left-leaning Democrats who uphold them as an underrepresented minority in a sea of white supremacy, all the while refusing to take account of their faith and values that might not as cleanly line up with their agenda. Other times, it is the Christian far right that superimposes its conservative viewpoints onto them as fellow people of faith, assuming their faith-based politics will align.

Some conservatives are taking the bait. Jordan Peterson, who is openly suspicious of modern science, also conveniently believes that the truth and wisdom found in religion are the guidance that lost young men need in the world. He believes this so much that he has even defended anti-democratic, Salafi preachers. Other Muslims — even some scholars — have adopted the extreme far right stance that abortion is the equivalent of murder.

Ironically, these views could not be further than the actual Islamic views on abortion—which are extremely diverse, and historically a subject of constant debate and consideration across schools of thought, from fringe Islamic jurists to the mainstays of Sunni and Shia scholarship. Often it is considered from both a religious and practical standpoint — guided by the hadith (the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and acts) but also informed by someone’s ability to give birth, and any complications that a pregnant woman might face. It is hotly debated — but it is the presence of this debate — and the breadth of nuance among different schools of thought — that makes it so different from the polarizing forces of the U.S. culture wars that is driving the debate to the brink of absolutism.

If Muslims are going to get dragged into this particular front of America’s culture wars, it is time to set the record straight. There is no debate today in Muslim-majority countries about the permissibility of abortion when the mother’s health is in jeopardy, which means that abortion remains an integral and noncontroversial part of women’s health. Modern states may grapple with social and moral dilemmas when the abortion is elective, but there is a rich tradition of Islamic law to draw on that has addressed many of the questions with which the U.S. Supreme Court is grappling.

According to Islamic tradition — and the view of the majority of Sunni Muslim scholarship — life begins not at the moment of conception nor even in the first stage of development (known as the “nutfa,” or drop) nor with the presence of the “alaqa” (that which hangs) or the “mudgha,” which literally translates to a clump of flesh that looks like chewed skin. Rather, it is the “khalqan” that describes the moment that it becomes a separate creation. This is the moment that the Archangel Gabriel breathes a soul into the embryo, creating a connection with God and the universe that gives it life. According to the hadith, this moment happens at 120 days — or approximately four months — into the pregnancy. While Islamic scholars are known for debating scripture at length, the idea that a cluster of cells does not become a person until the soul meets the body is widely agreed upon, a rare moment of almost absolute consensus.

Based on this idea, Muslim scholars largely agree that abortion should be illegal after 120 days into the pregnancy. However, it is the debate surrounding abortion before the 120-day mark where it becomes interesting. According to the Hanafi School of thought — one of the four major Sunni schools of Islamic rite and religious law — abortion should be permissible so long as there is a sound reason for the abortion. In contrast to today’s conservative positions, some Hanafi scholars permitted abortion without any restrictions at any point. Traditionally, reasons have often been a fear of being unable to provide for the child, such as the case with a lack of wet nurses or the presence of other children that depend on the mother’s milk. “Zina” or sex outside of marriage also falls into this category — and on the Indian subcontinent, there is a fatwa from the prominent scholar Ahmad Raza Khan that states that abortion is fine for a single mother and maybe even better given social stigma. It is also permissible in cases of rape. Meanwhile, the Shafi school didn’t need a reason at all.

Others are more restrictive, such as some scholars within the Shafi and Hanbali schools popular in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, as well as prominent Shia schools, which typically limit abortion to up to 40 days after conception. Other schools, like the Maliki, forbid it entirely. But it has never been compared to murder — and, even in most conservative views, it is permitted if it is needed to save a woman’s life. This is theologically justified as being a “lesser of two evils,” according to scholars such as the late chief cleric of Egypt’s Al Azhar institution Mahmud Shaultut, Syrian cleric Mustafa al-Zarqa and Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Meanwhile in the United States, the pro-life movement has a long history of referring to abortion as murder, even in instances where it could save a woman’s life. Roe v. Wade pushed back against this narrative by establishing that foetuses are not people under the U.S. Constitution. Now that it could be repealed, politicians like Louisiana state Rep. Danny McCormick are jumping on the opportunity to push forward legislation that would establish that fetuses are unborn children whose right to life is protected by law, making abortion — no matter how soon after conception — a homicide. It follows a troubling trend that has seen a woman in Texas handed over to the police after needing to go to the hospital following a self-induced abortion, though charges have since been dropped.

It doesn’t stop at abortion, either. Last year, a woman in Oklahoma was convicted of manslaughter after she suffered a miscarriage and was sentenced to four years in jail. Prosecutors said her methamphetamine use caused the miscarriage; the defense argued that other factors could have been at play. Now that the right to life is being reconsidered in the Supreme Court, pro-life groups are starting to push the narrative that emergency contraception — or as it is commonly known, Plan B — is akin to an abortion pill. Recently, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told the House floor that Plan B kills a baby in the womb once a woman is pregnant, a statement that reproductive health advocates have long demonstrated to be a lie. Meanwhile, Idaho state Rep. Brent Crane recently gave an interview in which he announced that he is considering a state law to ban both emergency contraception and intrauterine devices (IUDs). These moves arise from the worst nightmares of an assault on reproductive freedoms, and no comparison to the Taliban is needed to make this point.

Needless to say, miscarriage and birth control are treated much differently in Islamic jurisprudence. One of the most famous stories involves the seventh-century second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, summoning a woman to his court and then learning that, upon his summons, she suffered a miscarriage. Consumed with guilt, he consulted the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law and the would-be fourth caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who had high stature and reverence in the court and whose opinion he respected. As the caliph expected, Ali told him that he needed to recognize that he held a position of power, which inevitably colored his summons, even when that was not his intention. Ali argued that Umar should pay the woman an indemnity to compensate for her miscarriage. It is a legal decision that went on to form the basis for determining that should a woman miscarry due to circumstance, it is her right to be compensated for being harmed. Islamic jurists also considered that the father should also have the right to compensation. However, the famous conservative jurists from the 14th-century Ibn Taymiyya and 19th-century Deobandis, the scholars of the Indian subcontinent that allegedly gave rise to the Taliban, ruled that as long as both the man and woman agreed with each other, it would not be necessary.

As for birth control, most attitudes were relatively liberal. While bearing children was often seen as the preferable outcome of sex, contraception was largely seen as normal as was the idea that it is God’s decree to give people control over when they start a family. Still, some treated it as “makruh” (undesirable), as it interfered with building a family, which was seen as the preferable path, the one more conducive to building the Muslim community or umma.

One of the most entertaining examples of this particular attitude comes from 12th-century historian Ibn ul-Jawzi’s book “Talbis Iblis” (The Trappings of the Devil), in which a man sleeps with a woman outside of marriage, then discovers that she has fallen pregnant. When he confesses his sin to a compatriot, the compatriot asks why he did not practice coitus interruptus. “But isn’t coitus interruptus undesirable?” he asks. His compatriot laughs. “Didn’t it reach you that adultery was forbidden altogether?”

In Islam, discussions about abortion or miscarriage have traditionally been legal — not moral — debates. While opinions varied, most conversations were grounded in an intellectual effort to consider the practicalities of a pregnancy in addition to the Quranic narrative and hadith. While “ensoulment” is the moment life begins, a mother’s life is just as important as that of the unborn child, allowing for most an abortion even after 120 days if the mother’s life was in danger, a view that values the woman’s life in ways alarmingly missing among some parts of the “pro-life” movement in the U.S.

Americans themselves often have mixed views about abortion. A recent Pew Research study found that the majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in some cases and illegal in others, yet the far right evangelical movement, along with those making the nation’s laws, has plundered this debate of any common sense or nuance. Instead, they are paving the way forward for an absolutist view by which people are arrested for homicide for undergoing or providing abortion or suffering a miscarriage.

So again, rather than smear the Christian far right as “no better than the Taliban,” pro-choice advocates in the United States could turn to the Islamic tradition — and for that matter, the Bible itself — for an example of how religiosity doesn’t always have to be diametrically opposed to a person’s right to choose. While a terminated pregnancy — whether an abortion or miscarriage — was given value in Islam, either legally or financially, it was never treated as “munkar” (an absolute religious evil), and those seeking them were never seen as morally repugnant. As the well-known Islamic scholar Imam al-Izz bin Abdul-Salam explained in his two-volume work, moral goodness or even awareness of something that is beneficial is rarely an absolute or without its negative consequences, and not every religious injunction is rational or moral.

What might it look like if we applied this kind of flexibility to the abortion debate in the United States? While we are discussing religious edicts that were devised before the nation-state, many of these edicts have been revised to inform Islamic law today, meaning that many people across the Middle East are able to access legal and safe abortion, as long as it is early in the pregnancy. With this in mind, it is useful to think about how this holistic approach to the intersections of faith and an unwanted — or unsafe — pregnancy could be applied to the abortion debate in the United States. A wet nurse might not be as much of a concern in the age of baby formula and breast pumping, but a person’s finances, or whether or not they will have to raise the child as a single parent, are just as important to a child’s future and a parent’s ability to provide for them. An unplanned pregnancy can get in the way of a young person’s plans to pursue an education, putting dreams on hold, often forever. Enjoying the right to choose can make the difference between raising a child in poverty or in comfort, between a person being satisfied with their choices or living with regret. When it comes to abortion, traditional Islamic authorities have much to teach us about being both “pro-choice” and “pro-life.”

Rashad Ali is resident senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Anna Lekas Miller is a London-based journalist, covering borders and migration

May 20, 2022

Working 24/7 to save baby manatee orphaned in Colombia
Agence France-Presse
June 15, 2022

Tasajerito the manatee was found lost and orphaned in a Colombian swamp last September 

Juan BARRETO AFP

Last September, Tasajerito the manatee was found lost in a Colombian swamp, just three days old and separated from his mother.

Nine months later, the baby sea cow weighs as much as an adult woman and is bottle fed round the clock by doting aquarium staff.

Though much stronger now, Tasajerito's prognosis is still touch-and-go, said Angela Davila, a veterinarian at the Rodadero Aquarium in Santa Marta in northern Colombia, near where he was found.

"Tasajerito is... still considered critical," Davila told AFP. "He appears strong, he appears lively and to be feeding well, but things can change in a heartbeat."

Rescued by fishermen, Tasajerito was brought to the aquarium with little hope of survival.

A search for his mother proved fruitless

Now safely ensconced in a dedicated pool at the aquarium, he has clung to life -- increasing his consumption of a special vitamin-boosted milk formula six-fold in a few months.

Juan BARRETO AFP

Today, Tasajerito measures over 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) in length and weighs 53 kilograms (117 pounds).

Yet, he is still "a newborn," said Rodadero marine biologist Julieth Prieto, who noted that manatees are raised by their mothers for five years and suckle for half that time.

"This makes the rehabilitation process... a challenge because we have to meet those needs that the mother usually provides," she said.

'Vulnerable' species

Tasajerito's human foster parents are also teaching him to float, dive and swim.

To be released into the wild one day -- hopefully in about two years' time -- he will have to grow to between three and four meters in length and weigh some 600 kg.

The American Manatee species (Trichechus manatus), to which Tasajerito belongs, is listed as "vulnerable" to extinction on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, its population of some 10,000 individuals on the decline.

Threats include residential and commercial development, aquaculture and shipping lanes, with watercraft strikes responsible for a large number of deaths, according to the IUCN.

In Colombia, hunting by humans is a major threat, as are hippos -- a foreign species introduced by drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, who imported some as pets in the 1980s.

The hippos now number more than 100, competing for food and space with manatees.

The manatee is one of the world's largest aquatic mammals, and according to Prieto, fulfils "irreplaceable ecological functions" in its population area that stretches from Brazil's east coast all the way to the southeastern United States.

Seasonal migrants, they help keep rivers and water channels clear, devouring as much as 50 kg of aquatic plants each every day.


"If this species were to become extinct, we would have to dredge to restore water flow between rivers, swamps and the sea," Prieto said.

© 2022 AFP

Ginni Thomas corresponded with John Eastman, sources in Jan. 6 House investigation say


By Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Emma Brown
WASHINGTON POST

June 15, 2022 

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, moderates a panel discussion during the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and lawyer John Eastman, who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to three people involved in the committee’s investigation.

The emails show that Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, two of the people said. The three declined to provide details and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The committee’s members and staffers are now discussing whether to spend time during their public hearings exploring Ginni Thomas’s role in the attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, the three people said. The Washington Post previously reported that the committee had not sought an interview with Thomas and was leaning against pursuing her cooperation with its investigation.

The two people said the emails were among documents obtained by the committee and reviewed recently. Last week, a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn more than 100 documents over to the committee. Eastman had tried to block the release of those and other documents by arguing that they were privileged communications and therefore should be protected.

Thomas also sent messages to President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and to Arizona lawmakers, pressing them to help overturn the election, The Post has previously reported.

While Thomas has maintained that she and her husband operate in separate professional lanes, her activities as a conservative political activist have long distinguished her from other spouses of Supreme Court justices. Any new revelations about Thomas’s actions after the 2020 presidential election are likely to further intensify questions about whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases related to the election and attempts to subvert it.

In January, the Supreme Court rejected a request by Trump to block the release of his White House records to the House committee investigating Jan. 6. Clarence Thomas was the only justice to dissent, siding with Trump.

Lawyer John Eastman, left, speaks alongside Rudy Giuliani, then a personal attorney to President Donald Trump, at a rally of Trump supporters in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

Ginni Thomas did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did Eastman or his lawyer. A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions for Clarence Thomas.

A Jan. 6 committee spokesman declined to comment.

Eastman, who once served as clerk for Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court, outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in legal memos and in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Pence, The Post and other outlets have previously reported. Eastman has said that Trump was his client at the time.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered Eastman to release numerous documents to the committee, rejecting privilege claims Eastman had asserted. In April and May, Eastman turned over more than 1,000 documents to the committee.

In a 26-page ruling last week, Carter addressed another 599 documents that Eastman sought to shield. Carter ruled that more than 400 of those documents were protected by attorney-client or other privilege and should not be released.

But he ordered the remainder, including correspondence with state legislators and documents related to alleged election fraud and the plan to disrupt the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, be turned over to the committee last week and early this week.

Carter described some of the documents in more detail than others.

He ordered Eastman to turn over documents regarding three December 2020 meetings of a group that Eastman described as “civic minded citizens of a conservative viewpoint,” including messages from a person Carter described as the group’s “high-profile leader” inviting Eastman to speak at a meeting on Dec. 8, 2020. The meeting agenda indicates that Eastman discussed “State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.”

“The Select Committee has a substantial interest in these three meetings because the presentations furthered a critical objective of the January 6 plan: to have contested states certify alternate slates of electors for President Trump,” Carter wrote.

It is not clear what the group is or who its high-profile leader is.

Carter also ordered the release of part of a Dec. 22 email written by an attorney he did not identify. The attorney encouraged Trump’s legal team not to pursue litigation that might “tank the January 6 strategy” by making clear that Pence did not have the ability to intervene in the counting of electoral votes. “Lawyers are free not to bring cases; they are not free to evade judicial review to overturn a democratic election,” Carter wrote.

And the judge ordered the release of several communications that shared news stories or tweets.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas repeatedly pressed Meadows to overturn the outcome, according to text messages obtained by The Post and CBS News. After Jan. 6, she told Meadows in a text that she was “disgusted” with Pence, who had refused to help block the certification of Biden’s electoral college victory. She wrote, “We are living through what feels like the end of America.”

During that same post-election period, Thomas also pressed Republican lawmakers in Arizona to help keep Trump in office by setting aside Biden’s popular-vote win and to “choose” their own electors, The Post has reported, based on documents obtained via a public records request. Thomas sent the emails via FreeRoots, an online platform designed to facilitate sending pre-written messages to multiple elected officials.

In an email on Nov. 9, just days after media organizations called the race in Arizona and nationally for Biden, Thomas sent identical emails to 27 lawmakers in the Arizona House and Senate urging them to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” The email claimed that the responsibility to choose electors — which belongs to voters under Arizona state law — was “yours and yours alone,” and claimed that the legislature had the “power to fight back against fraud” and “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”

In a follow-up email to one of the recipients, state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, Thomas described the email as “part of our campaign to help states feel America’s eyes.”

Bolick (R), who provided Thomas with links she could use to report any fraud she had experienced in Arizona, previously told The Post that she received tens of thousands of emails after the election and that she responded to Thomas in the same way she responded to everyone else.

On Dec. 13, the day before presidential electors were scheduled to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory, Thomas emailed 21 of those lawmakers plus two others. “Before you choose your state’s Electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said. It linked to a video of a man urging swing-state lawmakers to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”

The next day, Democratic electors in Arizona cast their votes for Biden. Republican electors met separately and signed a document declaring themselves to be the state’s “duly elected and qualified Electors.” More than a dozen Arizona lawmakers signed on to a letter to Congress for the state’s electoral votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted.