Women in the asylum twilight zone

Ronit Lentin

Susan (not her real name) was granted leave to remain in Ireland three weeks before she took her own life. An asylum seeker from Nigeria, Susan was the parent of Irish citizen children. After she had her last child in 2004 she broke her back and suffered severe mental health problems. Several of her children were taken into care and the family was moved from one direct provision hostel to another. Towards the end of her short life, the hostel wanted her to move out; Susan had difficulties finding accommodation and eventually found herself in a B & B where she ended her life on Friday 18 September.

Unlike many other women residents of Ireland’s direct provision hostels, which can only be described as holding centres, Susan never contacted AkiDwA, the Migrant Women’s Network, whose members counsel at least four women asylum seekers each day (however, her case was brought to AkiDwA’s notice). ‘The women we see are in a very bad state’, says AkiDwA’s national director Salome Mbugua. ‘There are many attempted suicides – every week brings new tragedies.’ Continue reading “Women in the asylum twilight zone”

Cry freedom

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Ronit Lentin

israel-criticism1

Last week, when Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of political science, published an article in The New York Times arguing that boycotting Israel is the only way to make any progress towards justice for Palestine, Israelis and Jews all over the world called for his dismissal. Their excuse for opposing boycott is ‘academic freedom’.

Yet, as philosophy professor in Tel Aviv University Anat Matar reminded Ha’aretz readers, only when well-heeled Israeli academics begin to pay a real price for the continuous occupation of Palestine, will they take genuine steps towards ending the occupation. Continue reading “Cry freedom”

Veiled threats?

Ronit Lentin

France considering banning full veil
France considering banning full veil

Five years after the French parliament passed a law forbidding children from wearing the headscarf or any other “conspicuous” religious symbol in schools – read forbidding Muslim girls from wearing the veil in public schools, the French government has recently indicated it was prepared to legally ban the burka. In guise of defending Muslim women from what is seen as a ‘submissive act’, the French government spokesman Luc Chatel argued that women’s rights were compromised by the garments, suggesting that the government is seriously considering bringing in legislation to prohibit full veiling in France .

It seems that only several thousand French Muslim women, out of a Muslim population of five million, wear full veils, which politicians have described as ‘walking coffins’. This assumes that all Muslim women are coerced into wearing the veil, though research has shown that outside countries where veiling is mandatory, such as Afghanistan or Iran , Muslim women veil for a variety of mostly political reasons. Some veil in reaction to their more assimilated parents, others in response to the westernisation of society; and for many others veiling spells not deprivation but rather freedom from male harassment. Continue reading “Veiled threats?”