feminist blogs

[...]On Tuesday word emerged that Iran's leading women's magazine has been ordered to close.

Iranian censors shuttered Zanan Magazine, a reform-minded feminist magazine active in promoting women's rights for the last 16 years. Authorities revoked its license and folks in Tehran say there's no hope for appeal.

Managing director Shahla Sherkat was once a hardline supporter of the Iranian government but became disillusioned after the Iran-Iraq war. Zanan managed to survive previous crackdowns by cautiously avoiding general politics and focusing on women's issues.

But that didn't work, apparently.

According to preliminary reports it was banned for portraying a negative image of women in Iran, but no official word has emerged yet.

The Iranian Journalists Association condemned the closeure. In the past two years, 40 periodicals including Zanan have been banned across the country by the Press Supervision Board, which is controlled by hardliners.[...]

More than 1,600 people, including Holocaust survivors, attended the service at the Philharmonic Hall.

The service marked the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp but victims of other atrocities were also remembered.

Leaders of several faiths listened to personal testimony and called for an end to genocide throughout the world.

Dr Rowan Williams and Sir Jonathan Sacks signed a Pledge Against Genocide in the form of a large mural.

'Mass graves'

The ceremony included personal testimony from survivors and relatives, poetry, music and speeches.

Among the speakers was the Reverend Leslie Hardman, who helped to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a British solider.

Kay Fyne, from Liverpool, spoke of her memories of being taken to the camp as a child.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and a 100-strong community choir performed for the event which explored the Jewish experience of the Holocaust with the theme, Imagine: Remember, Reflect, React.[...]

'Never forget'

The Muslim Council of Britain ended its boycott of the event. It had wanted more recognition of atrocities in other parts of the world, such as Bosnia and Chechnya.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears introduced a video-message from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in which he urged people to "never forget" the Holocaust.

The service ended with the performers trooped out of the hall singing We're All in the World Together, holding candles as they filed out.

Christine Shaw, of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said the event aimed to "reflect on the lessons society can learn from the Holocaust and other genocides in an effort to tackle the intolerance and prejudice that still exists in the UK today".

Karen Pollock, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told BBC Radio Five Live it was important to make what had happened in the past relevant to today.

"The fact is that racism still exists, that genocide is taking place in Darfur, and genocide has happened since the Holocaust, for instance Cambodia [and] Rwanda.[...]

SANTA MARIA QUIEGOLANI, Mexico - Women in this Indian village high in the pine-clad mountains of Oaxaca rise each morning at 4 a.m. to gather firewood, grind corn, prepare the day’s food, care for the children and clean the house.

But they aren’t allowed to vote in local elections, because — the men say — they don’t do enough work.

It was here, in a village that has struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for mayor — despite the fact that women aren’t allowed to attend town assemblies, much less run for office.

The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn’t a “citizen” of the town. “That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women,” said Valeriano Lopez, the town’s deputy mayor.

Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as “use and customs,” which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America.

“For me, it’s more like ‘abuse and customs,”’ Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National Human Rights Commission. “I am demanding that we, the women of the mountains, have the right to decide our lives, to vote and run for office, because the constitution says we have these rights.”

Lopez acknowledged that votes for Cruz were nullified, but claims they added up to only 8 ballots of about 100 cast in this largely unpaved village of about 1,500 people.

Cruz says she was winning — and wants the election to be annulled and held again, this time with women voting.

Men over 60 also can't vote
But the male leaders are refusing to budge. “We live differently here, senor, than people in the city. Here, women are dedicated to their homes, and men work the fields,” Apolonio Mendoza, the secretary of the all-male town council, told a visiting reporter.

Cruz has received some support from older men, who by village law lose their political rights when they turn 60. Some younger men also say the system must change and give women more rights.

At a recent meeting of several dozen Cruz supporters, most of them voteless, women in traditional gray shawls recalled being turned down for government aid programs because they weren’t accompanied by a man.

Martina Cruz Moreno, 19, said that when her widowed mother sought government-provided building materials to improve her dirt-floor, tin-roofed wooden home, village authorities told her, “Go get yourself a husband.”

As a woman, Eufrosina Cruz is not only barred from being mayor, but from participating in the “community labor” that qualifies male villagers as “citizens.” Those tasks include repairing roads, herding cattle, cleaning streets and raising crops.

“I’d like to see the men here make tortillas, just for one day, and then tell me that’s not work,” said Cruz, describing the hours-long process of cleaning, soaking, cooking and milling the corn, shaping the flour into flat disks, and collecting the firewood to heat the clay and brick hearths on which most women cook.

During all-important village festivals, women are expected to cook for all the male guests. But instead of joining them at the table, Cruz says, they are relegated to straw mats on the floor. Clothes are washed by hand, and while most homes have some form of running water, it’s often only a single spigot.[...]

She traveled to the nearest city to enroll in school, live with relatives and support herself through odd jobs, eventually graduating from college with a degree in accounting.

She is single, and in a village culture where most women wear skirts, she wears pants. Because her village has no formal jobs for women, she works as a school director in a nearby town, and returns to Quiegolani most weekends. That, authorities say, disqualified her from running for mayor because she wasn’t a full-time resident. But the man who won the race also works outside the town, and there are questions about how much time he actually spends here.

Cruz views the residency issue as a pretext, noting that authorities have also banned female candidates and anybody with a college degree from running. She said she has followed the use and custom rules as much as she was allowed to, carefully fulfilling lower-level duties that function as a means of testing people’s devotion to their village. For four years, she “carried the Virgin” in a religious procession through the town, and has helped fund or organize other festivities.[...]

“I am not asking anything for myself. I am asking on behalf of Indian women, so that never again will the laws allow political segregation,” Cruz wrote to the commissioners, who may take months to investigate the case, and who could recommend that state authorities protect women’s rights to vote or hold office. She says she’ll go higher, to federal electoral authorities, if necessary.

Change tied to Zapatista rebellion
In Mexico, many local governance rules date to before the Spanish conquest and weren’t given national legal recognition until a 2001 Indian rights reform was enacted in the wake of the Zapatista rebel uprising in Chiapas.

The law states that Indian townships may “apply their own normative systems ... as long as they obey the general principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals, human rights, and particularly the dignity and well-being of women.”

Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the Indian villages operating under the law don’t let women vote, putting human rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported recognition for Indian governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the women’s cause.

Cruz now travels alone from one government office to another, always carrying an armful of calla lilies. “This flower grows a lot in the village. Even though we don’t water or care for it much, it flowers,” she explained. “It is a symbol for us Indian women.”[...]

Cruz says she isn’t against all customs in her village. She prefers its bipartisanship to political party rivalry because it encourages close-knit Indian communities to stick together and underpins their survival.[...]