Muslims join to demand police reforms, back black-led groups

By MARIAM FAM

In this Sept. 24, 2019 file photo, Farhana Khera, president and executive director of Muslim Advocates speaks during a House Committee on the Judiciary‚ Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship and Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations joint hearing on the administration's 'Muslim ban' on Capitol Hill in Washington. In the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody, dozens of American Muslim organizations have come together to call for reform to policing practices, and to support black-led organizations. “These demands are a floor for our groups and not a ceiling. Some would call for much more,” Khera said in response to e-mailed questions. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
In the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody, dozens of American Muslim organizations have come together to call for reform to policing practices, and to support black-led organizations.

“The victimization of unarmed Black Muslims has a long and troubling history,” said a coalition statement signed by more than 90 civil rights, advocacy, community and faith organizations. “As American Muslims, we will draw on our diversity, our strength, and our resilience to demand these reforms because Black lives matter.”

Proposed changes include prohibiting racial profiling and maneuvers that restrict the flow of blood or oxygen to the brain, such as choke holds; making it legally easier for prosecutors to hold law enforcement accountable; and redirecting police funding “into community health, education, employment and housing programs.”

The statement also calls for establishing “a federal standard that use of force be reserved as a last resort, only when absolutely necessary” and after exhausting all reasonable options.

“These demands are a floor for our groups and not a ceiling. Some would call for much more,” Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, one of the statement’s co-conveners, said in response to e-mailed questions. “We’re also urging all American Muslims to call their members of Congress right now and to demand a stronger response from them.”

Like members of other faith groups, many Muslims in America have joined in the outrage unleashed after Floyd, a black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck. Groups from multiple denominations across faiths have publicly called for action against racism and aligned with the goals of peaceful demonstrators.

In street protests, statements, sermons and webinars, American Muslims have rallied against racism and discussed reforms.

“Muslim American organizations are committed to advocating at all levels to put an end to excessive use of force which has led to the murders of countless Black Americans,” said Iman Awad, legislative director of Emgage Action, one of the statement’s signatories. “Our message is that we will continue to fight but most importantly uplift the work being done by our Black leaders.”

Muslims in America are ethnically and racially diverse and Floyd’s death has also reinvigorated conversations about the treatment and representation of black Muslims in their own faith communities.

“I’m hopeful and heartened by the number and diversity of groups that have signed on,” said Kameelah Rashad, president of Muslim Wellness Foundation, also a co-convener. “That says to me that there’s at least recognition that we as a whole can no longer separate Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, surveillance, and violence. People are reconciling with the notion that means our struggles are intertwined.”

Now, she said, is the time for action


In this Jan. 13, 2015 file photo, Kameelah Rashad, president of Muslim Wellness Foundation, demonstrates outside the U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia. In the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody, dozens of American Muslim organizations have come together to call for reform to policing practices, and to support black-led organizations. “I’m hopeful and heartened by the number and diversity of groups that have signed on,” said Rashad. “That says to me that there’s at least recognition that we as a whole can no longer separate Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, surveillance, and violence." (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)


“It’s vital that non-Black Muslims develop a respect for the resilience and resistance of Black people.”

The statement said: “Black people are often marginalized within the broader Muslim community. And when they fall victim to police violence, non-Black Muslims are too often silent, which leads to complicity.”

Moving forward, American Muslim communities must make space for black-led organizations, Awad said.

Also, “we must commit to having leadership positions which reflect the diversity of our faith community,” she said. “We cannot be successful until we have all voices represented at all levels within our organizational structures and our communities must do better.”

The statement said the demands represent only a “down payment” on needed reforms.

“If this deep-seated discrimination cannot be done away with through reform, then these systems will need to be abolished and re-imagined entirely.”
__

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Amazon, IBM, And Microsoft Won’t Say Which Police Departments Used Their Facial Recognition Technology
Activists are worried about several key questions that remain unanswered.

Caroline Haskins BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 12, 2020

Idris Solomon / Reuters
Demonstrators protest against anti-Black racism in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, in New York City, June 11.

This week, IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft pledged to restrict or eliminate law enforcement’s access to facial recognition technology. Those announcements received lots of accolades, but they left many key questions unanswered. None of the companies disclosed how many police departments used their facial recognition technology — or might be using it currently.

On Monday, IBM said it would stop offering, developing, or researching facial recognition. Amazon followed suit on Wednesday, saying it would impose a one-year moratorium on selling its facial recognition technology, Rekognition, to police. And on Thursday, Microsoft announced that it would not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States, “until we have a national law in place.”

But activists who have been fighting against facial recognition were not satisfied with the announcements. On Thursday, Myaisha Hayes, campaign strategies director for MediaJustice, said in a statement, "We have no doubt that Amazon’s announcement is no more than a political stunt meant to quell widespread momentum and demands for the corporation to stop profiting from our oppression and cut ties with all law enforcement agencies."

Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, added in a statement, "Amazon needs to end their role in the assault on Black lives. This means ending their surveillance partnerships with over 1,350 police departments, cutting ties with ICE, and joining IBM in ending all research, development, and sale of their facial recognition software. Anything less is unacceptable."

Spokespeople for IBM and Amazon declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Microsoft told BuzzFeed News, “We do not sell our facial recognition technology to US police departments today, and until there is a strong national law grounded in human rights, we will not sell this technology to police departments.”

Several questions remained unsettled after the announcement:
None of the three companies committed to restricting police access to other kinds of software. Microsoft powers the New York Police Department’s Domain Awareness System, which organizes street camera footage, license plate photos, 911 call data, and other police information.

Only IBM said it would halt research into facial recognition. Microsoft and Amazon have not made that commitment.

Microsoft and Amazon both called for national legislation to regulate law enforcement’s use of facial recognition, but gave no further details.

It’s also unclear whether Amazon and Microsoft’s commitments would be binding outside the United States.

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Many Police Departments Have Software That Can Identify People In Crowds

Caroline Haskins · June 12, 2020

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Ellie Hall · June 12, 2020

Amazon Is Suspending Police Use Of Its Facial Recognition Tech For One Year

Caroline Haskins · June 10, 2020



Caroline Haskins is a technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

LGBTQ Americans Just Won A Massive Civil Rights Victory At The Supreme Court

A majority of justices ruled that an employer violates federal law when they fire someone for being gay or transgender.

Dominic HoldenBuzzFeed News Reporter

Zoe TillmanBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC, June 15, 2020

Saul Loeb / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday issued its most sweeping decision ever to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, finding that a federal ban on sex discrimination in workplaces also protects employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Despite same-sex couples winning the right to marry in 2015, firing workers for being LGBTQ has remained legal across much of the United States, since federal law does not specifically name sexual orientation or gender identity as protected classes, unlike race or national origin. In a 6-3 decision, the court held that a federal law prohibiting workplace discrimination based on "sex" — Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — applied to cases involving LGBTQ workers.


"Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear," Justice Neil Gorsuch — one of President Donald Trump's appointees to the higher court — wrote in the majority opinion. "An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."

Monday's decision will have a ripple effect across the nation, particularly by banning workplace bias in dozens of the country’s Republican-controlled states, which never enacted state laws banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

Title VII states that it's unlawful for employers to refuse to hire someone, to fire a worker, or to otherwise discriminate based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." Gorsuch wrote that Congress may not have been thinking about sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination when lawmakers included the term "sex" in that part of the Civil Rights Act, "[b]ut the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands."

"The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex," Gorsuch wrote.


Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan joined Gorsuch's decision. Justices Brett Kavanaugh — Trump's other appointee to the court — Samuel Alito Jr., and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The Justice Department under Trump had argued against interpreting Title VII to apply to workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, reversing course from the Obama administration. Trump has touted the confirmation of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as a political win and means of advancing the broader conservative agenda — which has included rolling back legal protections for LGBTQ people — but Monday's decision highlights the fact that once judges and justices are confirmed to the federal bench, they enjoy lifetime tenure and are not beholden to the positions of the president who appointed them.

The decision comes less than a week after the Trump administration announced it was adopting a rule that would allow health providers to deny services to transgender people.

Gorsuch rejected arguments by the employers that as long as they treated all LGBTQ employees the same, it couldn't be "sex"-based discrimination — the employers had argued, for instance, that they could have a blanket policy of discriminating against LGBTQ people as long as they treated men and women the same. But Gorsuch wrote that discrimination based on sexual orientation was ultimately about penalizing a man for being attracted to men and a woman for being attracted to women, and that gender identity discrimination was about punishing based on the sex they were identified with at birth.

"Any way you slice it, the employer intentionally refuses to hire applicants in part because of the affected individuals’ sex, even if it never learns any applicant’s sex," Gorsuch wrote.


Alito wrote in his dissent that Gorsuch had tried to present the majority's decision as being in line with an approach to conservative legal decisionmkaing known as textualism — rooting decisions in the text of the law and not other factors like legislative history or policy preferences — "but no one should be fooled."

The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday stems from three cases that debate Title VII’s meaning — turning on the question of whether whether anti-LGBTQ discrimination is based in a person’s “sex.”


The first involves a woman fired from a Michigan funeral home for coming out as transgender. Aimee Stephens — who died May 12 — had presented as a man when she started her job in 2007 at R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes in Michigan. Six years later, after Stephens announced plans to wear women’s clothes, the owner, Thomas Rost, fired her.

In siding with Stephens, a 49-page opinion led by Judge Karen Nelson Moore of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found she raised a valid Title VII complaint: “The unrefuted facts show that the Funeral Home fired Stephens because she refused to abide by her employer’s stereotypical conception of her sex.”

One of the two gay rights case before the Supreme Court is Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in which Gerald Bostock claims he was fired by the county for being gay. His Title VII claim had been dismissed by lower courts.

Bostock’s case was consolidated with a lawsuit filed by Donald Zarda, who sued his employer, Altitude Express, alleging the skydiving company terminated him for his sexual orientation in violation of Title VII. With support from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that handles civil rights disputes, Zarda prevailed at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found that a gay man wouldn't be targeted if he were instead a woman dating a man; thus he faced discrimination because of his sex.


"A woman who is subject to an adverse employment action because she is attracted to women would have been treated differently if she had been a man who was attracted to women," the majority wrote in an opinion led by Judge Robert Katzmann. "We can therefore conclude that sexual orientation is a function of sex and, by extension, sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination.”

Like other courts in Title VII cases, judges based pro-LGBTQ decisions in part on the landmark Supreme Court case Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins — a 1989 dispute in which a cisgender female employee claimed she wasn’t promoted because she didn’t appear feminine enough; the Supreme Court found that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also bans sex stereotyping in the workplace. Another key Supreme Court case cited by lower courts is Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., a 1998 case in which the Supreme Court found that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also prohibited workplace harassment in the case of a man who was perceived to be gay.

But in arguments last year, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court those older cases did not apply and sex discrimination cannot be construed broadly to include LGBTQ workers because, as a general matter, it is legal for sex-segregated rules to exist, such as restrooms and dress codes.

The issue of restrooms has been particularly thorny. During oral arguments in October 2018, several justices wondered what consequences ruling for Stephens would have on using bathrooms — such as transgender women using bathrooms that match their gender identity — as well as implications for women’s sports. ACLU national legal director David Cole, who argued on behalf of transgender workers, said a bathroom or sports policy was not an immediate issue before the court. But he said forcing transgender people to use facilities that clash with their gender identity would "impose a discriminatory injury."


The Trump administration disagreed, arguing that sex discrimination occurs only when “similarly situated” individuals are treated differently — not comparing a gay or transgender person to a straight or cisgender person.

Gorsuch dismissed the bathroom issue entirely, writing that the fight over Title VII was about workplace discrimination and not those other issues — "we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind."

For gay workers, the Justice Department said, “An employer who discriminates against employees in same-sex relationships thus does not violate Title VII as long as it treats men in same-sex relationships the same as women in same-sex relationships.”

Lawyers for Clayton County in the Bostock case added that Congress had not intended to protect LGBTQ people under Title VII, saying that “the original public meaning of the term ‘sex’ at the time Congress adopted Title VII in 1964 was the trait of being male or female, not sexual orientation or homosexuality.”

The case for Stephens was brought in the name of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a largely autonomous federal agency that championed her cause. But once the case reached the Supreme Court, per typical procedure, the solicitor general at the Justice Department took over to represent the government. In Stephens’ case, this meant government lawyers now argued it was legal to fire her — taking the opposite position as the EEOC even though it is representing the agency. LGBTQ advocacy lawyers stepped in to make her case.

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Dominic Holden · Sept. 26, 2017

PRIDE MONTH VICTORY

SCOTUS Justices rule LGBTQ2 people protected from job discrimination

UNDER TITLE VII CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 1964 

THE ONE THE REPUBLICANS OPPOSED UNDER 

GOLDWATER AND STILL OPPOSE

By MARK SHERMAN

The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, early Monday, June 15, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects LGBT people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.

The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.

JUSTICES ROBERTS AND GORSUCH JOINED THE CLASSICAL LIBERALS

Full Coverage: U.S. Supreme Court

“The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity,’” Alito wrote in a dissent that was joined by Thomas.

The outcome is expected to have a big impact for the estimated 8.1 million LGBT workers across the country because most states don’t protect them from workplace discrimination. An estimated 11.3 million LGBT people live in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA law school.

The cases were the court’s first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement and replacement by Kavanaugh. Kennedy was a voice for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States. Kavanaugh generally is regarded as more conservative.

The Trump administration had changed course from the Obama administration, which supported LGBT workers in their discrimination claims under Title VII.

During the Obama years, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had changed its longstanding interpretation of civil rights law to include discrimination against LGBT people. The law prohibits discrimination because of sex, but has no specific protection for sexual orientation or gender identity.



In recent years, some lower courts have held that discrimination against LGBT people is a subset of sex discrimination, and thus prohibited by the federal law.

Efforts by Congress to change the law have so far failed.

The Supreme Court cases involved two gay men and a transgender woman who sued for employment discrimination after they lost their jobs.

The federal appeals court in New York ruled in favor of a gay skydiving instructor who claimed he was fired because of his sexual orientation. The full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 10-3 that it was abandoning its earlier holding that Title VII didn’t cover sexual orientation because “legal doctrine evolves.” The court held that “sexual orientation discrimination is motivated, at least in part, by sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination.”

That ruling was a victory for the relatives of Donald Zarda, who was fired in 2010 from a skydiving job in Central Islip, New York, that required him to strap himself tightly to clients so they could jump in tandem from an airplane. He tried to put a woman with whom he was jumping at ease by explaining that he was gay. The school fired Zarda after the woman’s boyfriend called to complain.

Zarda died in a wingsuit accident in Switzerland in 2014.

In a case from Georgia, the federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled against Gerald Bostock, a gay employee of Clayton County, in the Atlanta suburbs. Bostock claimed he was fired in 2013 because he is gay. The county argues that Bostock was let go because of the results of an audit of funds he managed.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Bostock’s claim in a three-page opinion that noted the court was bound by a 1979 decision that held “discharge for homosexuality is not prohibited by Title VII.”]

Aimee Stephens lost her job as a funeral director in the Detroit area after she revealed to her boss that she had struggled with gender most of her life and had, at long last, “decided to become the person that my mind already is.” Stephens told funeral home owner Thomas Rost that following a vacation, she would report to work wearing a conservative skirt suit or dress that Rost required for women who worked at his three funeral homes. Rost fired Stephens.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled that the firing constituted sex discrimination under federal law.

Stephens died last month.



LGBT workers protected under civil rights law, rules US top court

LGBT workers are protected against discrimination at work, the US Supreme Court has ruled. Two conservative judges, including Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch, sided with the four liberal justices for a 6-3 verdict.


The US Supreme Court decided in a historic decision on Monday that a key provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects workers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) against job discrimination.

The court ruled in a 6-3 vote that federal protections against workplace discrimination against employees because of a person's sex, also covers sexual orientation and transgender status.

The ruling was authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Chief Justice John Roberts, another conservative, along with the court's four liberal justices, joined Gorsuch's opinion.

US Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch (52) became the youngest Supreme Court appointee since Clarence Thomas in 1991, who is still on the bench

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

"Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the ruling.

The cases were the court's first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement and replacement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Kennedy was a voice for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States.

kw/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)

Date 15.06.2020
Related Subjects Discrimination, LGBT+ rights, LGBT+
Keywords LGBT, LGBT rights, discrimination, sexual discrimination, Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3do9k

Bill C-16: Canada’s New Federal Human Rights Legislation
Published on 2017 · 07 · 11 by Julian

On Thursday, June 15th, 2017, after over a year, Bill C-16 passed its final reading. This legislation – sponsored by Liberal Party MP Jody Wilson-Raybould who currently serves   was Canada’s Minister of Justice – is now in effect. It added gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act along with related protections in the Criminal Code of Canada. Put simply, it is now illegal in areas of federal jurisdiction to discriminate against someone because of their gender identity or expression.

Not only has legislation protecting gender identity and gender expression now passed at the federal level, most provinces and territories in Canada now also include protections in their own human rights legislation. The Northwest Territories’ government was the first in the Canada to include gender identity protections in its Human Rights Code though gender expression still remains unprotected there. British Columbia’s Human Rights Code was amended in July 2016 to include gender identity or expression as protected grounds.

https://www.ambitgenderdiversity.com/2017/07/bill-c-16-canadas-new-federal-human-rights-legislation/

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says a return-to-work bonus should replace a weekly $600 unemployment boost

FAKE ECONOMIST PLAYED ONE ON TV

DEMAND EMPLOYERS INCREASE WEEKLY WAGES 

BY $600

CONTINUE THE UNEMPLOYMENT BONUS UNTIL THEN

IN 2020 KUDLOW PLAYED TV DOCTOR
IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE CORONAVIRUS




KUDLOW HAS ONE ECONOMIC FORECAST
FOR THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
NO MATTER WHAT

Inside Seattle’s ‘Autonomous Zone’
Following violent clashes with Seattle police, 

PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES VS TEAR GAS, RUBBER BULLETS, PEPPER BALL'S

Black Lives Matter protesters have occupied a police-free zone in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood while they negotiate with local officials. 

WSJ’s Jim Carlton reports on the mood there and how protesters would like to move forward. Photo: Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

How 1999’s WTO Protests Influenced the Policing of Protests Today

Violent confrontations between police and protestors during the 1999 World Trade Organization conference changed the way police respond to protests in the U.S. Here’s how we got to the militarized police tactics we see today. 

Eric Draper/Associated Press

AMLO MACHISMO 

This Woman’s Partner Choked Her On The Street During Quarantine — Days After Mexico’s President Said Domestic Violence Calls Are “Fake”For thousands of women in Mexico, the pandemic has meant a double threat: the risk of getting infected by the coronavirus and the danger of being quarantined at home with an abusive partner.
Karla Zabludovsky BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Mexico City Posted on June 13, 2020

Sipa USA via AP International Women's Day in Mexico City on March 8, 2020.

MEXICO CITY — On May 22, M.F. walked out of the doctor’s office into the bright afternoon sun and told her partner she wanted to be alone for a while. His insults and dirty looks had been particularly intense that day.

But he wouldn’t have it. As their two young daughters watched, he pulled M.F. by the hair into a waiting taxi. She fought back and he started to choke her.

M.F., who asked that only her initials be used for fear of retaliation by her partner, yelled for help at the people who had started to crowd around the car. One of them called the police. After a standoff with her partner, who threatened to take their eldest daughter, 5, with him, the cops took M.F. and the girls to a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Central Mexico.

“I didn’t even have a peso,” said M.F., who lost her job at a garden nursery last month, during a telephone interview. “I didn’t know where to go.”

For thousands of women in Mexico, the pandemic has meant a double threat: the risk of getting infected by the coronavirus, and the danger of being quarantined at home with an abusive partner. Many have been forced to flee.

And yet, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — whose government last year was forced to backtrack on a planned budget cut for domestic violence shelters after criticism from human rights groups — has dismissed reports of rising rates of violence, saying last month that 90% of 911 calls by women are “fake.”

In March, there were 26,171 calls to 911 related to violence against women, a record high since the hotline was launched. And Línea Mujeres, a support program for women in the capital city, recorded 2,338 calls between March and May — when the quarantine was already in place in Mexico — up from 735 during the same period in 2019.

It’s not just calls. The number of women who traveled to the 60 locations that make up the National Network of Shelters to seek help during March and April was up by 77% compared to the same period last year, according to the network’s director, Wendy Figueroa.

As confinement measures are extended, Figueroa said that women affected by domestic violence are less likely to seek help as their abusers prevent them from communicating with friends and family.

“When lockdown is lifted, we are expecting a huge demand in shelter services,” said Figueroa.

M.F. and her partner began dating six and half years ago. But when she got pregnant, “the little happiness we had ended.” It started with shoves but soon escalated to kicks, straight into her belly. It only got worse from there.

Last year, M.F. went to the police to report him. The cops took down her statement and waved her away. They didn’t mention the option of leaving him and going to a shelter. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever hear from the authorities again.

She didn’t.

So M.F. sought refuge with her parents.

Her partner came to her parents’ house a month later, explaining why he had attacked her. He “complained that I hadn’t been cleaning often enough, that the girls were dirty, that I wasn’t serving him properly,” said M.F. “They believed him. They defended him. They gave me back to him.”

According to the United Nations, violence against women is a “shadow pandemic,” preceding the coronavirus, with 243 million women and girls ages 15–49 sexually or physically abused by an intimate partner around the world between April 2019 and the same month this year.


Nurphoto / Getty Images
Protesters hold signs of disappeared and killed women during a march to commemorate the International Women's Day, in Ciudad Juarez, on March 8, 2020.
Earlier this year, several high-profile cases of gender-based violence, including the killing of a 7-year-old girl, caused outrage across Mexico. On March 8, thousands of women marched down the capital’s main thoroughfare demanding an end to femicides, or the hate killing of women. The next day, women participated in a nationwide strike, disappearing from offices and streets, to show what the deeply machista country would look like without them.

Then the coronavirus hit, and many women had no choice but to shelter in place with their abusers. M.F.’s partner, a gardener, started losing jobs from clients who worried about the spread of the coronavirus.

M.F. lost work too, after orders at the nursery where she worked dried up. At home, she kept fighting with her partner over his lackadaisical approach to the virus — he refused to wash his hands and continued hanging out with groups of people. Two people close to him fell ill with COVID-like symptoms, and M.F. feared that she and her daughters would be next.

She didn’t know that she didn’t deserve that treatment, or that shelters existed, and M.F.’s trust in the authorities had nosedived after she first reported her partner last year.

Meanwhile, López Obrador kept dismissing reports of rising violence against women during quarantine. In April, his government suspended funding to shelters for Indigenous women fleeing domestic violence. The following month, during one of his daily, hourslong press conferences, López Obrador said there hadn’t been an increase in reports of violence against women.

“Machismo exists, but so does a lot of fraternity within families,” said López Obrador, a self-described leftist who allied with a right-wing, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ party during his presidential run.

Activists say that statements like these, coupled with attempts at defunding resources for women who suffer violence, underscore how official state policy is misogynistic and sends abusers the message that they are likely to get away with their criminal acts.

It was just a few days after López Obrador’s statement on the “fraternal” bonds within families that M.F. went to the doctor’s office with her partner. They had gone to get the results of a test that signaled a potential tumor in her abdomen. But M.F. was worried about the spread of the coronavirus, too, so she asked the doctor about COVID-19 and what symptoms to look out for.

It was then that her partner shot her a death stare, so M.F. cut the appointment short and they walked out. That’s when he attacked her for the last time — M.F. couldn’t take it anymore, so she went to the police, and from there to the shelter.

She spent the next 15 days isolated in a room with her daughters, a precaution in case they had been exposed to the virus.

Stories like M.F.’s are all too common in Mexico. “This is a matter of public safety, of national security and of social injustice,” said Yndira Sandoval, a women’s rights activist and a member of the We Have Other Data campaign, a movement that pushes back against López Obrador’s often flippant statements on domestic violence.

“And the pandemic makes it all the more evident.”

In an attempt to address the issue of domestic violence, the government released a 30-second video last month. In it, a woman throws up her hands in annoyance after her partner accidentally drops a pile of plates.

“Count to 10, and pull out the white peace flag,” says a narrator.

The publicity campaign targeting potential abusers was immediately mocked in Mexico.

“Who made this campaign? A man?” tweeted María Salguero, founder of the National Femicide Map, a database of femicides.

Meanwhile, the killing of women continues, even as large swaths of the population remain sheltered at home. At least 144 femicides were committed between March and April, according to official data. An additional 1,014 women were killed during that time, though their cases were not recorded as femicides.

Rights groups warn that as the quarantine is extended, women trapped at home with abusive partners will become increasingly isolated, their communication channels cut off.

And officials continue to downplay the problem. This week, the governor of Puebla State, in Central Mexico, said that some of the women reported missing turned out to be hanging out with their boyfriends. He did not provide evidence.

M.F. doesn’t know where she’ll go after the shelter. If the police can guarantee that her partner won’t go near the house they shared together, she’ll go back there. But if that proves impossible, she’ll have to vanish.

“So be it, I’ll find somewhere else,” she said. “I’ll hide from him.”



Karla Zabludovsky is the Mexico bureau chief and Latin America correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in Mexico City.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Nuclear powers are modernizing arsenals: SIPRI

Swedish research institute SIPRI has highlighted a worrying trend among nuclear powers: countries are modernizing their nuclear assets. Researchers have warned of a "new nuclear arms race" without an arms control regime.


Despite a global drop in nuclear arms, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday warned that countries are modernizing their arsenals, representing a worrying trend for arms control.

"At the start of 2020, the nine nuclear-armed states — the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — together possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons," SIPRI said.

According to the report, that figure was down by 465 compared to 2019. The US and Russia, which possess 90% of the world's nuclear arms, were largely responsible for the decrease.

'New nuclear arms race'Washington and Moscow are still adhering to the New START treaty that limits the number of deployed nuclear arms, although the accord is set to expire in February 2021. Neither country has committed to renewing it.

"In 2019, the forces of both countries remained below the limits specified by the treaty," the report said. However, they "have extensive and expensive programs underway to replace and modernize their nuclear warheads, missile and aircraft delivery systems, and nuclear weapon production facilities."

The New START treaty effectively extended Cold War-era arms controls on nuclear arms between the two countries. But researchers warned that an end to the arms control agreement could herald a new era.

"The loss of key channels of communication between Russia and the USA … could potentially lead to a new nuclear arms race," said Shannon Kile, director of SIPRI's nuclear arms control program.

Read more: US boosted nuclear arms budget by billions, report says

Modernizing arsenals
China, the third-largest holder of nuclear arms behind the US and Russia, isn't part of the treaty, which observers believe is a central motivating factor behind Washington's unwillingness to recommit to the accord.

The SIPRI report said that China has taken significant steps to modernize its arsenal, including expanding its capabilities in classic military domains.

"China is in the middle of a significant modernization of its nuclear arsenal," said SIPRI researchers. "It is developing a so-called nuclear triad for the first time, made up of new land- and sea-based missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft."

Experts believe the US is holding out in order to bring China into a new agreement limiting deployed nuclear arms. However, China has suggested it would not join talks to reduce its strategic weapons.

Other nuclear powers in the process of modernizing their arsenals include France and the UK.

After the death of George Floyd, Africa mobilises against police violence
Issued on: 13/06/2020 - FRANCE24/AFP

Family members of people killed by Kenyan Police protest in front of the Kenyan Parliament against police brutality in Nairobi on June 9, 2020. © Patrick Meinhardt, AFP

Text by:Romain HOUEIX

If the death of George Floyd has sparked a worldwide protest movement, Africa is not to be outdone. In Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, demonstrators are taking to the streets. Others would like to see their leaders tackle the issue more firmly, in solidarity with their "African-American brothers".

The death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed by a police officer on May 25 in Minneapolis, has become a global symbol. That case of police violence sparked a worldwide wave of anti-racist protests, with marchers chanting the slogan "I can't breathe" - the last words spoken by the 46-year-old. Demonstrations have also erupted in Africa, calling on African leaders to address their own problems of police violence, which often go unpunished.

A particular resonance in South Africa

In South Africa, the movement's other major slogan, "Black Lives Matter", has a special resonance in a country scarred by apartheid and still torn apart by sharp racial inequalities.

On June 8, at the call of the radical-left party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), more than 100 people gathered outside the US Embassy in Pretoria to protest racism, police violence and the US President Donald Trump.

The EFF now kneeling outside the USA Embassy in Pretoria for 8 minutes and 40 seconds against the death #GeorgeFloyd in America at the hands of White Police officers. The #CollinsKhosa family is also here. #sabcnews pic.twitter.com/MetKNxrgc9— #TheLordOfTheMedia (@samkelemaseko) June 8, 2020

EFF supporters paid tribute to Floyd by taking a knee and observing 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence, the time it took for him to die under the knee of a police officer. "Enough with police brutality on our black bodies," EFF leader Julius Malema told the crowd, standing next to the wife of a man recently killed by the South African Army enforcing the Covid-19 lockdown.

Kenya against police violence

In Kenya, portraits of George Floyd plaster the walls of Nairobi. And on the same day as in South Africa, about 200 people demonstrated against police violence in the Mathare slum in the capital. Police violence has claimed at least 15 lives in Kenya since a curfew was imposed to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

The crowd consisted mainly of young people and mothers carrying placards with the names of friends, neighbours or sons killed in recent years in police operations. "Stop Killer Cops," or "Save Our Future," were their slogans.

#JustIn |√ #Kenya: Demonstrators attend a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.#BlackLivesMatter#Nairobi#GeorgeFloydFuneral #GeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/2oIbjwb244— JUST IN | World (@justinbroadcast) June 10, 2020

The Kenyan police are regularly accused by human rights groups of excessive use of force and extrajudicial executions, particularly in poor neighbourhoods. In April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the police of imposing curfews "in a chaotic and violent manner, from the beginning", sometimes by whipping, beating or using tear gas to force people off the streets.

The organisation cited the case of a 13-year-old boy, Yassin Hussein Moyo, who died in Nairobi on March 31 after he was shot while standing on his balcony by police enforcing curfew in the street below his house.

A new scandal erupted on June 10 with the viral release of a video in which a woman suspected of stealing was tied up and dragged behind a motorcycle. Three policemen were arrested.

Another rogue officer:

IPOA launches probe into assault of a suspect in Olenguruone. Video shows woman being dragged, tied on a motorcycle.

Police claim Mercy Cherono was assaulted by a mob.

Mercy said to be a member of a gang that stole from officer’s house #JKLive pic.twitter.com/wsZMjXI0Qk— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) June 10, 2020

"Three officers were yesterday arrested ... following circulation of a video depicting a woman being whipped & dragged on a motorbike in Kuresoi South Sub-County," the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said in a statement.

"The suspects are in lawful custody helping with further investigations into the matter," it added.

Ghana and Senegal pay tribute to George Floyd

On the Corniche des Almadies in Dakar, facing the ocean that separates Africa from the United States, 50 people - the maximum allowed because of Covid-19 - representing various associations of Senegalese civil society, gathered to pay tribute to George Floyd in this highly symbolic place: the Corniche is soon to house the Slavery Memorial.

Senegalese kneel during a Black Lives Matter gathering following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, in Dakar, Senegal June 9. REUTERS/ Zohra Bensemr#GeorgeFloyd#blacklifematters pic.twitter.com/BK9l3eApdz— Abdulsatar Bochnak (@AbdulsatarBoch1) June 10, 2020

The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, was one of the first heads of state to respond to the murder of George Floyd.

"Black people, the world over, are shocked and distraught by the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in the United States of America.... It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism," he wrote in a statement posted on Twitter on June 1 with Floyd’s face on a black background. "We hope that the unfortunate, tragic death of George Floyd will inspire a lasting change in how America confronts head on the problems of hate and racism."

#GeorgeFloyd #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/LOIcKLcB5i— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) June 1, 2020

Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou said Thursday that the death of George Floyd was "the symbol of the old world that must be changed", during a video conference with his peers in the African Union. “Our conference must condemn this heinous act without reservation.”

The African Union addresses the problem

The Chadian Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, was very quick to react to George Floyd's death, calling it a "murder" as early as May 29. In a statement, he said he "strongly condemns the murder of George Floyd that occurred in the United States at the hands of law enforcement officers".

“Recalling the historic Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU) Resolution on Racial Discrimination in the United States of America made by African Heads of State and Government, at the OAU’s First Assembly Meeting held in Cairo, Egypt from 17 to 24 July 1964, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission firmly reaffirms and reiterates the African Union’s rejection of the continuing discriminatory practices against Black citizens of the United States of America,” the statement continued.

On behalf of the entire @_AfricanUnion family, I condemn in the strongest terms the murder of #GeorgeFloyd at the hands of law enforcement officers in the United States of America. See my full statement here: https://t.co/LslbVFrWHN— Moussa Faki Mahamat (@AUC_MoussaFaki) May 29, 2020

The Chadian diplomat was referring to the very first OAU conference of July 1964 in Cairo, in which the iconic leader of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, participated as an observer. He delivered a pan-African speech to "his African brothers and sisters" on the discrimination suffered by African-Americans on the other side of the Atlantic at that time.

Some intellectuals, however, see it as opportunistic for the continent's leaders to take up the problem in this way. Among them is the Cameroonian economist Célestin Monga, who called on African politicians to put their own houses in order first.

While he commended the "(anger and indignation) of African political leaders over the assassination of George Floyd and police brutality in [the United States]" in a tweet, he said he wished "they would be just as quick to issue condemnations when our police and soldiers are martyring our citizens on a daily basis".

Reviving the pan-African dream

A hundred African writers hope that the repercussions of George Floyd's murder will lead to the revival of the pan-African dream. In an open letter, they call for Africa to be a "refuge" for its diaspora.

"We ask that African governments recognize our alliance and ties with our brothers and sisters across borders, from America to Brazil and throughout the rest of the diaspora. Let them offer those who choose it a refuge, a home and citizenship in the name of pan-Africanism," the African authors urged.

"We note with dismay that what Malcolm X said in Ghana in 1964, namely that 'for the 20 million of us in America who are of African descent, this is not the American dream, this is the American nightmare', remains true for 37 million (African-Americans) in 2020."

This article has been translated from the original in French.