Global Roundup: Cameroon Women Protest, Malaysia LGBTQ+ Protesters Detained, Bulgaria Anti-Violence Protests, Chinese Feminists & Online Spaces, Queer History Podcast
Curated by FG Contributor Samiha Hossain
FILE - A woman shops at the Mvog Ada market in Yaounde, Cameroon, Jan. 29, 2022.
Hundreds of women and activists marched in the capital of Cameroon Monday, calling for an end to the country’s separatist crisis and for the government to provide more help to reduce the high cost of living. The march coincides with the observance of Pan African Women’s Day. The women listened or sang along with the song “Family Love” by singer Kareyce Fotso. The song urges families to sincerely love each other and be united as they try to overcome difficulties caused by several crises Cameroon is experiencing.
The separatist war in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions has killed about 6,000 people and displaced 700,000 others. Anne Anaba, one of the coordinators of Monday’s march, says poverty and hardships triggered by armed conflicts and unprecedented spikes in commodity prices have impacted families, with women being the most affected..
Cameroon women say besides the armed conflicts, they are finding it extremely difficult to cope with the rising prices of goods— which they blame on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The government says since the Russian war began in February 2022, prices of rice, wheat, fuel and fertilizer have increased by between 40 to 60%. Kiven Juliet, the president of Wheat Farmers in Cameroon’s Center region, says she followed the Russia-Africa summit on July 27 when Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will begin free deliveries of 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain to some African countries. But Kiven says Cameroon can ensure sufficiency by growing its food at home.
I heard during the Russia-Africa summit that Russia will be giving wheat to African countries free of charge, but that is not what we want. Our governments should give subsidies for farmers to buy fertilizers and produce the wheat themselves. -Kiven Juliet
(David McNew/Getty Images)
A representative for Malaysia’s government has described being queer as “a perverted lifestyle” following the arrest of eight LGBTQ+ advocates protesting in the country. The statement made on Tuesday read: “Any effort to promote and normalise a perverted lifestyle that contradicts Islamic teachings and human nature, such as LGBT, is completely unacceptable. Efforts to block the spread of such perverse beliefs must be carried out earnestly and in concert.”
Last Saturday, the protesters held a pro-LGBTQ+ gathering outside the Sogo Kuala Lumpur shopping centre. They held placards that read “Only God can judge”, “Being gay is not a crime”, “Down down Syariah court” and “Gay people are not criminals and being gay is not a crime”.
The protest came just a week after British indie band The 1975 had a show cut short in Malaysia after frontman Matty Healy took aim at the Malaysian government’s anti-LGBTQ+ stance. Healy’s actions were criticised by local LGBTQ+ activists, who described his onstage antics as “giving white saviour complex” and said the incident could put the country’s queer community in even greater danger in the run-up to Malaysia’s state elections.
Investigations are ongoing following the protestors being released on bail after being held for two days. A court hearing is expected to be set in September. The protest comes as Malaysia’s government continues to crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community, with queer people facing arrests and having to endure forced conversion therapy in what officials term an attempt to stem the “spread of LGBTQ+ culture in society”.
Image: Alexandar Detev/DW
CW: violence against women
A brutal assault on an 18-year-old woman and the leniency shown to her assailant sparked outrage and protests across Bulgaria this week. "Not a single woman more!" was the rallying cry at protests in over 20 cities across Bulgaria this week when thousands of Bulgarian men and women took to the streets on the last day of July to protest violence against women. Marching side by side and shouting slogans, many of the protesters held up banners in blood-red ink calling for an end to violence against women in the home, on the street and at the hands of their loved ones. There were also calls for a judicial overhaul, a change in legislation and better protection for women.
The latest wave of protests was triggered by the case of an 18-year-old woman who was assaulted by her ex-boyfriend. The woman says that he attacked her with a knife, broke her nose and shaved her hair off. The assault was so severe that she needed 400 stitches. However, news of the assault only reached the general public a month later when a woman close to the family of the victim alerted the media. The court ruled that since the woman had suffered no permanent disfigurement and her life had not been in danger at any point, the accused was guilty of inflicting a minor injury. The assailant was released, even though he was on probation for an earlier, similar crime at the time of the hearing.
News of the case triggered a wave of outrage that has not been seen in Bulgaria for a long time. On the streets and on social media, there was disappointment and anger about what is perceived as both the inadequate response of the judicial system and a general tolerance of domestic violence in Bulgarian society.
I am here because the same thing happened to my granddaughter a while back. They never sentenced her attacker. He has since left the country. No one knows where he is now. -Women at demonstration
The original forensic examination conducted after the attack was partly to blame for the assailant walking free because the resulting report classified the young woman's injuries as minor. After the public outcry, the deputy district prosecutor and the doctor responsible for the original forensic report have left their posts, and orders for a second medical examination have been given. The accused was also arrested for a second time when the prosecution discovered that he had, before the attack, sent death threats to the victim — a criminal offence in Bulgaria.
Another of the protesters' key demands was that current legislation be changed. The Bulgarian parliament will reconvene on August 7 for an emergency plenary session to introduce amendments to the penal code. The goal is to agree to harsher sentences for minor and moderate bodily harm and to make psychological abuse a criminal offence, which is not the case at present.
A woman (R) wearing a face mask uses her mobile phone at a subway station in Beijing on April 11, 2020.WANG ZHAO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Chinese feminists have to fight harassment and government censorship to carve out space online.
Journalism student Zhang Wei was standing on a subway platform in Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China, last month, when she caught sight of a man crouched down, appearing to take a photo of her. Turning on her own camera, Wei confronted him and demanded to see his phone, which he handed over, showing that there were no images of her on it. Wei warned him not to film people in public, and later posted about the incident online, suggesting that the man might have deleted photos he took and accusing him of “shameless behaviour.”
After the man’s son, Deng, saw the post, he contacted local police to complain, and Wei eventually issued a public apology, saying she had made a mistake. For days after, her name was trending on Chinese social media, with many calling for her to be prosecuted for libel and expelled from university. When administrators decided not to act, multiple businesses said they wouldn’t hire Sichuan University graduates in future.
Feminist voices are not as strong as they were 10 years ago. Nowadays, with censorship being so severe, it’s hard to really say anything online. -Ai Xiaoming, documentarian and former women’s studies professor
At the same time that Wei was going viral, the BBC released a documentary exposing the Japan-based Chinese owner of a website selling illegal videos of women being assaulted on public transport across East Asia, including in China. Discussion of it was swiftly censored on the Chinese internet, while state media framed the issue as solely a Japanese problem. Past surveys found that more than 40 percent of women respondents said they had been harassed or worse on public transport in China.
The stifling of women’s voices is taking place amid a rollback of rights nationwide, as China’s leaders attempt to tackle a falling birth rate after decades of restricting the number of children women could have. New restrictions have been placed on the right to divorce, along with limits on “non-medical” abortions, and young women have faced growing pressure to become mothers.
Posts attacking feminists or encouraging harassment are common on bulletin-board services like Tieba and Hupu. A recent analysis by The Globe and Mail found thousands of posts on Tieba discussing “fishing” expeditions in which men target feminists online and try to trick them into saying something embarrassing or sharing personal images and information. Xiaoming said it can often seem like misogynist voices are louder online, but this is because those who disagree have often been “forcefully silenced.”
Daryl Allen (left) and his partner Jonathan in 1988. (Dan Wylie)
A new podcast pays vivid tribute to the late playwright Daryl Allen, 30 years after he life was cut short by complications from HIV/AIDS. Dane Stewart, a Canadian queer oral history enthusiast and a playwright himself, learned about Allen when a man he befriended after the 2016 Pride Parade in Montreal gave him an old unproduced script of Allen's that had been written with a typewriter, thinking that perhaps Stewart could do something with it.
The podcast, Resurrection, has been released weekly over the course of this summer, and it is an extraordinary journey through queer history as it was lived by one man (Allen) and pieced together by another (Stewart), some 30 years later.
I started this project to help my generation understand how — whether we realize it or not — our queer communities, our sexual identities, are shaped by what Daryl went through. But this project has become about more than the AIDS crisis because Daryl was more than the AIDS crisis. He was a whole person. -Dane Stewart
The script that Stewart received was for a play called Mustang Zero-One, a semi-autobiographical story about Allen's time serving in Thailand with the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. He also received hundreds of pages of handwritten love letters Daryl wrote to the man whoh gave Stewart the script. Using the letters, Stewart tracked down Allen's surviving family and his loved ones, travelling to Kansas and San Francisco.
Despite all his struggles, Daryl still found joy in his life. He would love with a reckless abandon, always jumping in with both feet, never afraid. By the time the 80s rolled around, he lived openly as a bisexual man, always unabashedly himself. He knew he had limited time on this earth and he wasn't going to waste it trying to be something that he wasn't, just because certain people in society were going to judge him. -Dane Stewart
As the podcast's final episode makes its way out into the world, Stewart hopes that its audience also finds themselves learning from Allen's story. Stewart has hopes specifically for Resurrection's queer listeners.
I hope they're able to learn from Daryl the same lessons I did: embrace this messy, difficult, beautiful, queer life. Embrace who you are, live authentically, and love as deeply as you can. -Dane Stewart
Samiha Hossain (she/her) is a student at the University of Ottawa. She has experience working with survivors of sexual violence in her community, as well as conducting research on gender-based violence. A lot of her time is spent learning about and critically engaging with intersectional feminism, transformative justice and disability justice.
Samiha firmly believes in the power of connecting with people and listening to their stories to create solidarity and heal as a community. She refuses to let anyone thwart her imagination when it comes to envisioning a radically different future full of care webs, nurturance and collective liberation.