Statement Supporting Topless Tunisian Feminist

[Image from change.org] [Image from change.org]

Statement Supporting Topless Tunisian Feminist

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was published by FEMEN on 22 March 2013.] 

19 year old Tunisian Amina who posted a topless photo of herself bearing the slogan “my body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honour” has been threatened with death.

Islamist cleric Adel Almi, president of Al-Jamia Al-Li-Wassatia Tawia Wal-Islah, has called for Amina’s flogging and stoning to death saying Amina’s actions will bring misfortune by causing “epidemics and disasters” and “could be contagious and give ideas to other women…”

We, the undersigned, unequivocally defend Amina, and demand that her life and liberty be protected and that those who have threatened her be immediately prosecuted.

On 4 April 2013, we call for an International Day to Defend Amina.

Amina represents us all.

On the day and beyond, groups and individuals can join in by highlighting her case, posting topless photos of themselves and their activism on social media sites, signing a petition, Tweeting #Amina, writing letters in her defence, and more.

On 4 April, we will remind the Islamists and the world that the real epidemic and disaster that must be challenged is misogyny – Islamic or otherwise.

Signed:

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Egyptian Nude Photo Revolutionary
Alina Isabel Pérez, Filmmaker
Amanda Brown, We are Atheism Founder
Annie Sugier, President of Ligue du Droit International des Femmes
Arash T. Riahi, Film Director
Caroline Fourest, Writer and Journalist; most recent film: “Our Breasts; Our Arms
Darina Al-Joundi, Lebanese Actress and Author of “The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing
Deeyah, Music Composer and Filmmaker; most recent film “Banaz: A Love Story” about an honour killing
Elia Tabesh, Iranian Women in Support of Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar
Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran
Fariborz Pooya, Iranian Secular Society
Farzana Hassan, Writer
Fatou Sow, President of the Groupe de recherche sur les femmes et les lois au Sénégal
FEMEN
Fiammetta Venner, Filmmaker and Writer
Greta Christina, Writer and Blogger
Houzan Mahmoud, Spokesperson of Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq
Inna Shevchenko, FEMEN Spokesperson
International Committee against Execution
International Committee against Stoning
Jacek Tabisz, President of Polish Rationalist Society
Joseph Paris, Radical Cinema
Kareem Amer, Egyptian Blogger
Kian Azar, Communist Youth Organisation
Marian Tudor, President of Romanian Association for Workers’ Emancipation
Marieme Helie Lucas, Algerian Sociologist and founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue
Maryam Namazie, Campaigner and Spokesperson for Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran and initiator of Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar 
Mina Ahadi, Spokesperson of International Committee against Stoning  and International Committee against Execution
Nadia El-Fani, Tunisian Filmmaker; most recent films “Neither Allah nor Master” and “Our Breasts; Our Arms
Nahla Mahmoud, Sudanese Researcher and Human Rights Activist
Nina Sankari, President of European Feminist Initiative Poland and Secularist
Richard Dawkins, Scientist
Rumy Hassan, Writer
Safia Lebdi, Co-founder of Neither Whores nor Submissives
Secularism is a Women’s Issue
Soad Baba Aïssa, Women’s Rights Campaigner
Sohaila Sharifi, Iranian Women’s Rights Campaigner
Sundas Hoorain, Pakistani Human Rights Lawyer
Tarek Fatah, Writer
Taslima Nasrin, Bangladeshi Writer

For more information on the International Day to Defend Amina, contact:

Maryam Namazie
email: maryamnamazie@gmail.com
web: http://www.maryamnamazie.com/
blog: http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/

Inna Shevchenko, FEMEN
e-mail: femen.ua@gmail.com
web: http://femen.org/en

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412