” Women have been denied, dispossessed, devalued.
Women have been made invisible, excluded, erased.
It is to this invisibility, to this disappearing that we speak,
of female-foeticide, infanticide, dowry killings in India, rape all over the world,
female genital mutilation in Africa, honour crimes in the Arab world,
trafficking and sexual violence in Asia,
nuclear waste dumping and testing in the Pacific
inviting the women to tell their stories.”
I got a chance to be a part of World Court of Women Against War for Peace conducted on 26th November 2015 at Mount Carmel College Bangalore. It was an altogether different experience hearing the testimonies of women who have borne witness to the most grotesque faces of warfare. The whole session gave me an understanding that women in all cultures and societies have been marginalised and silenced in different ways. The tears and narratives of the women, their pain, their devastation and destitution lead me to rethink and reimagine. The interview I conducted with Sue Wildfinch and Liz Khan, Women in Black, from UK gave me a chance to hear women who have been central to many significant movements for peace and justice and are therefore refinding new transformative visions for violent times.
Women in Black is a world wide organisation which Sue defines as a network against militarism, violence and patriarchy. When I asked her the opinion about NATO, she said, ” It started after the II World War in 1947. It developed to be a new way of defending communism but actually its not. NATO was seen as something which protects people from communism and Russia”. She further explains how there was fear in the minds of people about Russia. People believed, she says, ” NATO is going to save us from communism and we are going to be capitalists. America is particularly protecting its capitalism. US and UK are instrumental in using the word NATO to attack Afganistan, Iraq and other countries”. Sue quotes, “Women in Black Movement
Black is the colour that we wear,
Black, the colour that speaks our resistance
Silence is the language that we speak
Silence, a language that voices our anguish”
In Iraq none of us protested against NATO, says Liz. She further continues telling how Iraq was attacked by America claiming that they possessed weapons of mass destruction and they supported terrorism. She also points , how the Americans made use of the oil from Iraq. The supreme interest of NATO was nothing but to ensure the interests of US.
When I asked Liz, whether this network attempts to address the gender nature of violence, she said, “yes, it is against violence, militarism, war and patriarchy. And when I asked her about the stand of men in these issues, she replied, ” I think it is women who suffer in particular. Men who goes to warfare are killed first and then women are drawn to all sort of atrocities including rape. Women are much more likely to get oppressed trying to look after their children. And there are millions whose ravaged lives bear mute testimony to the violence of these wars. The displaced and dispossessed indigenous people who have become refugees in their own lands; the increasingly vulnerable women who are being made victims of new forms of violence- raped as part of military strategy and ethnic cleansing, trafficked in times of wars, burnt for dowry in the flames of consumerism, stoned to death in honour crimes as part of reconstructed traditions.”
When I asked her the opinion about WikiLeaks and the people like Julius Ascender Nadine, she replied, ” I think it is just wonderful”. She spoke about the telephone conversation. ” So when suddenly so much came out, the world started believing. Its not just our telephone or your telephonic conversation but the latest conversations including the economic deals. So it is wonderful. On one hand we have WikiLeaks trying to expose America and on the other there is India trying to get recognition in front of America”.
Sue further explained her thoughts about India’s stand in all these affairs. ” Prime Minister Narendra Modi was welcomed in London, soon he will be invited to America too because everyone is interested in trade relations and now a days its all money that matters”.
The entire programme which included the testimonies of women from different parts of the world and different strata’s of society and also of life for me was like a step towards re-imagining the jurisprudence from within civil society in which we are able to creatively connect and deepen our collective insights and understanding of the context in which the text of our everyday realities is being written. We need to imagine justice, differently.
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