In Bogotá during Colombia’s national strike, two women hold placards that say, “We didn’t give birth to children of war” and “They got firearms, we got fire in our soul” / credit: Antonio Cascio
“Far too many women are fighting—not only for their rights, but for the rights of all,” says Yomali Torres, an Afro-Colombian activist. The 26-year-old joined throngs of women in the streets of Colombia over the past month to demand an end to patriarchal oppression at the hands of a U.S.-backed neoliberal state.
Women’s presence in Colombia’s national strike—both as activists and as victims—has caught the world’s attention. Many have spoken out against police violence and sexual abuse during the current demonstrations. This, however, is not a new issue. Police, armed forces and illegal groups have used women’s bodies as weapons of war for decades.
The strike, which marks its 1-month anniversary today, continues unabated. It started as a response to a tax reform project that would have devastated middle- and low-income households. Yet, this is not the core of social discontent among Colombians. This is clear as the strike continues, even after the president called on Congress to withdraw the tax reform bill.
At the end of 2019, Colombia saw mass mobilizations of diverse sectors of society, who expressed their discontent with the government of President Iván Duque. Among the criticisms were his ineffective economic, social, and environmental policies, the lack of implementation of a peace treaty with militant group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the numerous assassinations of social leaders, among others. According to Colombian state agency Investigation and Accusation Unity (Unidad de Investigación y Acusación), 904 leaders were assassinated between December 2016 and April 2021.
Gender Violence
Historically, conflict and social inequalities have most affected women. Violence and sexual abuse are commonly wielded to gain control over the territories women and their communities inhabit, as well as their natural resources. The High Commissioner for Human Rights released a document in 2005 indicating 52 percent of displaced women reported having suffered some type of physical abuse and 36 percent had been forced by strangers to have sexual intercourse.
A group of protesters from the first line stand behind their homemade shields during a Bogotá demonstration as Colombia’s national strike continues. Among them, the “First Line Mothers,” a group of mothers who stand together against police violence / credit Antonio Cascio
In a context of multiple violations of human rights—including extrajudicial killings, disappeared persons, torture, arbitrary detentions and use of firearms—gender violence continues to be deployed against the population during the national strike. Colombia’s Department of Protection of Citizen’s Rights has reported 106 cases of gender violence, of which 23 are acts of sexual violence.
With slogans such as “The revolution would be feminist, or it will not be,” “Not one less,” and “With me, whatever you want—but with her, nothing,” protesters have rejected violence against women, while drawing attention to gender inequalities.
One of the cases that has generated widespread indignation involved a 17-year-old girl from Popayan, who committed suicide after having been arrested by police. Before taking her own life, she wrote a statement accusing four members of the riot police of sexual assault. The girl had posted on Facebook police only released her after learning she was the daughter of a police officer.
Feminist Groups and their Demands
Women have taken to the streets, demanding equal access to education, healthcare and employment. They have assumed leading roles as human-rights observers, front-line defenders and community organizers. As a result, human rights groups—formed mostly by women—have suffered acts of intimidation and violence.
Silhouette of a woman in front of a fire on the streets of Bogotá during Colombia’s national strike / credit: Antonio Cascio
“We received death threats from the riot police. They told us they did not want us alive,” says Isabella Galvis of the Waman Iware Human Rights Collective. “At the moment, we do not have guarantees. They are using firearms during the protests, which is illegal under Colombian law.”
Feminist organizations move ahead despite the challenges, having organized multiple events. On May 10, a coalition of 173 feminist groups presented a list of proposals during the current crisis.
These proposals included:
A call for negotiation including all groups involved in the protests,
an exercise of justice regarding human-rights violations, and
a universal basic income that prioritizes women affected by the pandemic, among others.
The Women Who Are Most Vulnerable to Inequalities and Violence
Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples have been affected—directly or indirectly—by racism during the protests. Calí, the city where police have exercised the most repression, has experienced the highest number of deaths during the strike. It also has the highest concentration of Afro-Colombian communities, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics.
An Afro-Colombian woman standing on the first line during a demonstration in Bogotá held during Colombia’s national strike / credit: Antonio Cascio
The high level of inequality puts Calí at the center of these protests. Afro-Colombian people contend with uneven opportunities in the areas of education, healthcare and employment. That means the reforms the government has proposed would strongly affect Afro-Colombians, and women in particular.
“We are here commemorating Afro-Colombians today. We want to fight for our future and our rights,” explains Maria Niza Obregón, a 17-year-old Afro-Colombian girl, who supports the protests. “We want to live, not to survive.”
A clear example of this was the fate of the government’s health reform, which sank after the first 20 days of protests. The regions with the highest concentration of Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples also have the poorest health systems in the country, according to a report by organization Así Vamos en Salud.
Yomali Torres, a 26-year-old member of Afro-Colombian human-rights and peace organization Cococauca, denounces the lack of hospitals and specialists in her territory on the Pacific Coast of Cauca.
“If someone has chest pain, the patient has to be transferred to Calí or Popayan,” Torres says. “If we do not die, it is thanks to ancestral medicine.”
Afro-Colombian women have been particularly outspoken during the national strike, especially in Calí.
Torres condemns the violations of the rights of women, and of the Colombian population in general.
“In one way or another, we are taking advantage of the strike to demand justice for all of the women who have been raped, beaten and disappeared,” Torres says.
The United Nations states Indigenous and Afro-Colombian women have been affected disproportionately by the violence derived from the conflict. “Among 3,445 cases of murder in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian individuals, 65.5 percent were women,” the UN reports.
As a sign of indignation, the community of Guapi organized on May 7 an event called, “The Last Night.” With traditional cultural expressions, they commemorated those who have given their lives fighting for the rights of Afro-Colombians and the entire country. This celebration was carried out with artistic representations of graves and singing alabaos, or ancestral songs for the dead.
A month after the first call for a national strike, the different sectors of society are far from calling off the protests. This comes even as protesters’ blockades have generated a shortage of goods in certain communities. As Torres says, “We will not give up, because boats are not arriving with goods. Historically, we have felt hunger for more than 200 years. For us, this is not a real challenge.”
Natalia Torres Garzongraduated with an M.Sc. in Globalization and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, United Kingdom. She is a freelance journalist who focuses on social and political issues in Latin America, especially in connection to Indigenous communities, women and the environment. With photographer Antonio Cascio, she founded the radio-photography program, Radio Rodando. Her work has been published in the section Planeta Futuro from El País, New Internationalist and Earth Island.
Claudia Amikwa (left) and Shepheline Achuo live in Adagom, the refugee settlement in southeastern Nigeria where about 5,000 Cameroonians reside / credit: Philip Obaji, Jr.
MAMFE, Cameroon—One Saturday morning in March 2021, 17-year-old Beatrice* and 19-year-old Patience* stepped out of a single-room apartment they shared to buy food near the Adagom refugee settlement in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.
That’s when a young man they knew as “Mr. Patrick” approached them.
He asked the teenagers if they were interested in moving to the United States to work as caregivers for a monthly salary.
The two wasted no time in accepting the offer, which came with the condition that they would have to work in a bar in Cameroon, their home country, for at least a year to earn enough to make the journey.
“We immediately began to pack our bags and, after two days, we left for Cameroon,” Beatrice, now 19, said. “We were excited to hear that our stay in Cameroon was temporary and, after a year, we would be traveling to America.”
A little over three years ago, both women, who used to live close to each other, fled their homes in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Akwaya after soldiers stormed their compounds and began to burn houses as the war between English-speaking separatists and government forces in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions intensified. After spending days struggling through thick forests and grasslands, they arrived in Nigeria in November 2019, quickly seeking refuge in the Adagom refugee settlement, where about 5,000 Cameroonians now live. The site is on the outskirts of Ogoja town in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.
For the two days this reporter spoke with the petite women, they were dressed in the same outfit: Blue jean trousers and faded t-shirts. They also appeared emaciated.
According to sources this reporter interviewed, trafficking of adults and children has become rampant as a war rages in Cameroon between the Francophone government and Anglophone forces.
Map of Cameroon-Nigeria border depicting cities of Calabar, Mamfe and Oguja / map: Google; illustration: Toward Freedom
‘We Just Had to Leave’
Both women fled Cameroon on their own, leaving behind relatives, some of whom later fled to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Cameroon’s southwest and to other refugee settlements in southeastern Nigeria.
An Emergency Food Security Assessment that the United Nations conducted a year ago found more than 80 percent of Cameroonian households in refugee settlements and those in host communities are “severely or moderately food insecure.” Three in four refugees may be engaging in child labor and survival sex, according to the UN.
Beatrice and Patience, who spent three years at Adagom on a $2-per-day allowance they earned, jumped at the chance of paid jobs in Cameroon and an eventual trip to the United States.
“At Adagom, we only earned money during planting and harvesting seasons and, once these seasons are over, we go back to begging for survival,” Beatrice said. “When we heard there was something better waiting for us outside Nigeria, we just had to leave.”
Beatrice and Patience had no time to tell anyone they were going.
They arrived in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Mamfe alongside Mr. Patrick, who drove them in his red Volkswagen Passat car. That is when the women said they met a couple of other girls from the same refugee settlement in Nigeria at a bar where they quickly began to work as waiters. Later, they labored as cooks when a restaurant was added to the bar, which was run by three young men, including Mr. Patrick himself, according to the women.
“Behind the bar is a three-bedroom apartment, where everyone who worked there lived,” Patience said. “At some point it was only us (Beatrice and Patience), who remained as workers at the bar. The other two girls we met there were taken away from the apartment one morning.”
Less than a week after they arrived, each of the three men began to make advances at them, demanding sex and threatening to lie to Cameroonian authorities that the teenagers worked for the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF) one of the two biggest armed English-speaking separatist groups.
“They said if we didn’t do what they asked us to do, they’d make our lives miserable,” Patience said. “We had to choose between doing what they wanted or having our lives turned upside down.”
Fearing that they could lose everything that was offered to them and even end up in jail, they gave in. Within weeks, the teenagers were pregnant. But after they gave birth to two boys in February, the traffickers took away their babies. They told the women that they needed to prepare for their trip to the United States and that U.S. authorities wouldn’t admit them if they went with children.
But the trip never happened. Instead, the bar closed in April and its owners fled with the babies.
“They sent us to the market one afternoon to buy baby toiletries and when we returned, we found that both the bar and our apartment had been locked,” Patience said. “The men had left with our children.”
Not having anywhere to stay, a Mamfe trader whom Beatrice and Patience often bought baby toiletries from took both of them into her home, where they remain for now.
Water spouts at the Adagom refugee settlement / credit: Philip Obaji, Jr.
‘No Mother Can Rest Until She Finds Her Child’
The women have solicited help from local activists and a Nigerian NGO to find their babies.
“We reported the incident to the police in Mamfe but haven’t heard anything positive from them since then,” Beatrice said. “We also informed [local] pastors and human rights activists, and they’ve been going ‘round the [southwest] area, asking people if they know anything about the men who took the children.”
A senior police officer, who was unauthorized to speak on the matter, told Toward Freedom human trafficking is growing in the city and traffickers are hard to track.
“They receive protection from armed groups,” the officer said. These groups control certain areas in the southwest. “[The police] isn’t equipped enough to engage these elements.”
In Nigeria’s Cross River State, from where Beatrice and Patience were trafficked, authorities explained policing in Adagom is difficult because of its distance from the state’s capital, Calabar, about 304 kilometers (188 miles) south of Adagom.
“Things can only change if funding improves,” said Godwin Eyake, who heads the Cross River State command of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
A local NGO is helping Beatrice and Patience find their sons by visiting orphanages and writing advertisements.
“It’s hard when you are not sure where the babies were taken to,” said Salome Gambo, a researcher at human-rights group Caprecon Development and Peace Initiative. “We are doing what we are doing just in case it happened that the children were trafficked to Nigeria.”
Gambo admitted recovering the children will be difficult.
However, for the mothers of the babies, there’ll be no stop in their search.
“We will not rest until we find our children,” Patience said. “No mother can rest until she finds her child.”
*Names have been changed
Philip Obaji, Jr., is a journalist based in Nigeria. He won the Future Awards Africa Prize in Education in 2014, and the Future Awards Africa Prize for Young Person of the Year in 2015. Follow him on Twitter at @PhilipObaji.
Editor’s Note: The following was originally published by the Grayzone.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:Welcome to The Grayzone.It’s Max Blumenthal.
Protests inside Iran triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was picked up by Iran’s morality police on the grounds of supposed indecent exposure, have drawn massive international attention.Media around the world are following these protests, and on social media the hashtag surrounding Mahsa Amini’s name has generated more attention and retweets than almost any hashtag in Twitter history.
So how much of this international response is authentic?And how much of it is related to genuine concern for Iranian women—and not long-standing Western desire for regime change in Tehran? To better understand this issue, I spoke to a woman inside Iran. Her name is Setareh Sadeghi. She is an independent researcher, a translator, a teacher, and a Ph.D. She lives in the city of Esfahan.
Setareh Sadeghi, let’s talk about you and your own political views before we get into some of the details of these protests and the campaign behind them.
You studied the U.S. Civil Rights Movement as part of your Ph.D., and you’re also a student of propaganda [analysis]. Where do you situate yourself within the Iranian political spectrum, and specifically do you support women protesting the morality police and issues like the hijab?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, yes, as you mentioned, I finished my Ph.D. in American Studies, and I studied propaganda analysis as part of my Ph.D. dissertation, and the rhetoric of social movements as well.So, I have always been supportive of the Iranian government as a whole—the notion of an Islamic republic—but I have also been critical towards a lot of the things that happen in my country, like many of the other people who live here.
So, for the issue of hijab, as someone who believes in hijab and has always practiced it, I am totally against the morality police.By the way, in Farsi, the word that we use for it is the “Guidance Patrol,” but in English it’s usually referred to as the morality police, and I’m totally against it. I have been a part of the people, especially women, who took it online and used hashtags to talk about how they do not believe in the morality police even though they believe in hijab. And this is not something new. It has been in place from many years ago, but it’s become more significant this year.
So, even before these protests and before the tragic death of Mahsa Amini, people were talking about it online and I was also one of them, because I saw this was totally unacceptable. And even in my personal life—because I have friends who do not believe in the hijab and they don’t want to practice it, or they practiced it in a way that did not fit the standards of the Islamic Republic’s law of the dress code, and they were stopped by the morality police. In at least three cases that I remember, I would just go talk to the morality police and tell them, as someone who believes in hijab, I am totally against what they’re doing, and this is not the way they should enforce the law. Because it’s not always that they… the morality police don’t always arrest people. Their main job was to go and tell people. But even that, I’m totally against it and I don’t think that’s something that works, mainly because a lot of people who live here believe in some sort of dress code. I think as a woman, I think that’s not something that people should tell us. Like, I believe in law and order, but also, I don’t like being told those details, like how to dress and how to appear in public.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:So, what is the role of the morality police and how much public opposition is there to this unit of the security services? And are they known for being as brutal as they’re currently being portrayed?
SETAREH SADEGHI:Well, yes, they are known as being brutal because Iranian women don’t find it acceptable—not necessarily because everything that they do is brutal, but some harsh treatments are an integral part of the way they enforce the hijab law. But it’s also that, while I think a lot of people are against the morality police, it’s not that everyone is against the mandatory hijab law. So, these are two things that should be studied differently. A lot of people, I mean, there are different surveys, and different surveys in different provinces show a different percentage of people believing in obligatory or mandatory hijab, and I think that’s something that has to be dealt with based on the local culture of each province.
And that is also reflective of how the protests are going on, for example, in my hometown, because it’s considered more conservative and more traditional. The protests there are very much smaller than what you could see in other cities, for example, in Tehran or Rasht or other cities where the protests were significant compared to what is going on in my town. So, yeah, there are also people who believe that the morality police should be in place but the methods that they’re using should be different.
So, I think if you want to categorize women and people who live inside Iran, we have people who are totally against the mandatory hijab. They don’t believe in hijab at all and, obviously, they don’t believe in morality police. We have people who believe in hijab, but they don’t believe in the morality police or the mandatory hijab. We have people who believe in hijab, and they believe in the morality police, but they don’t believe in the methods that they are using. And that also creates a collective of people who are against the morality police but, again, based on how they feel towards it, their participation in these protests is different.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, let’s talk about the issue of Mahsa Amini. What do we know about her death?Most people in the West who are following this believe she was beaten to death by the morality police in police custody. Has that been established as the case, and is that the understanding even of the protesters in Iran?
SETAREH SADEGHI:Not really. I mean, even a lot of those Western media outlets corrected their headlines or started using different terms, referring to the case when the CCTV footage of the moment when Mahsa Amini fell and went into a coma was published. So, a lot of people believed that footage, about how some people said that she had bruises on her legs when she was taken to hospital, which shows that there was a beating. But the footage clearly shows that she was in good health conditions when she was there, based on what we see.
An investigation has been ordered. The files all are not yet published.There are talks about it, but there’s not a final statement by the state. The last thing that they have said is that the probe shows that there was no beating involved. They even released the CT scans of her brain and, as I said, there was CCTV footage. So, while there are protesters who believe that the beating happened, there are also a lot of protesters who think that it did not happen. But the fact that a young woman died in police custody only because of violating the dress code is something unacceptable, no matter what exactly happened in police custody.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: You’re in Esfahan, which is a large city in Iran, outside of Tehran. Most of the protests, as far as we know, have been centered in the capital of Tehran, and you have been receiving a wave of death threats for reporting that the protests in your city were very small and that the protests have not spread to key Iranian cities. Is that still the case?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, because I have already blocked a lot of people, and because the person who started those threats, as someone who knew me in person, at this point I can say that I haven’t received any new threats. But it was because I appear on different media and I have talked about Iran as a political analyst, I’ve always received insulting or sometimes death threats. But this time it was really unprecedented, as it was started by someone who knew me in person and had my personal information, and even the number of the people who attacked me was really huge.
And it started with the Independence Farsi account on Instagram, publishing a snippet of my interview and disregarding all the criticism that I had against the morality police, the crackdown on everything, and just saying that I lied about the number of the people participating in the protests, or the fact that these protests are much smaller than the ones that we witnessed, for example, in Esfahan in 2019. But at the same time there were a lot of people who were totally against even the Islamic Republic. But I mentioned that, and they verified it and they said that they were part of the protests, and that’s true. It was not significant because, as I said, Esfahan is a conservative and more traditional city, and people take to the streets on different issues.The morality police are, I guess, not the number one issue for people who live here. And I talked to my friends who don’t observe the hijab completely or according to the law, and they said that this is really not their number one issue, and so they don’t want to be part of the protests.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. We’ve seen large protests over the price of food or economic issues in Iran that were totally ignored in Western media. So, what do you make of the response in Western media, not just Western broadcast media but social media as well? The Mahsa Amini hashtag is one of the most popular hashtags in history, as you tweeted. It’s as if there are no other issues in the entire world. Do you think the outrage that we’ve seen on social media is authentic, or something that is being encouraged or pushed by Western—specifically NATO—states, the same way that there was a massive social media amplification campaign around the so-called Arab Spring?
SETAREH SADEGHI:Yeah, that’s true. I mean, social media has never been a true reflection of what’s happening in different societies, especially not Iranian society, because Twitter is blocked here, and a lot of people do not have access to it. So, the number of Iranian users on Twitter is not significant because they use other [platforms]. For example, Instagram. Before these protests Instagram was not blocked, and a very large proportion of the population had Instagram accounts, especially because they also used it for selling products and they had their businesses on it; especially a lot of women run their own business on Instagram. But Twitter is very different and it’s something that is known by Iranians. Even those who are on Twitter, they know that it’s very different from the realities on the ground. And it’s surprising how when there was, especially in those towns where the protests were met, the crackdown on it was really severe and a lot of people couldn’t even use the hashtags, [but then] broke a record, which tells us that there is something that doesn’t come from Iran.
And there is a history of fake hashtags and fake accounts and trolls on Twitter, trying to portray Iran in a different way, and it’s not only about a protest. There are other cases. For example, there was a time when, if you posted anything positive about your life in Iran, you would be attacked by these trolls, because they said that you are normalizing Iranian people’s misery, as if there is no normal life in Iran and the only thing that you are allowed to post online about Iran is just all the problems and the grievances. They attacked a university professor for only posting pictures of him[self] inside a cafe in Tehran, for example.
So, we also have the case of Heshmat Alavi, who apparently is a Twitter user who posts against the Islamic Republic on Twitter. And it’s interesting that when Trump withdrew from the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal], he mentioned that the JCPOA is facilitating Iran’s crackdown on its people or on certain issues, and two Washington Post journalists asked for a source. And the source that Trump offered was an article written by Heshmat Alavi. And an MEK defector later also talked about how the camp in Albania, the MEK camp in Albania, uses its members to start hashtags and make them a trend, and they’re paid to post about it.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:Just quickly, for those who don’t know, the MEK is the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is a U.S.- and Saudi-backed opposition movement, dedicated explicitly to regime change in Iran and replacing it with its cult-like leader, Maryam Rajavi. They have been based in Albania under the watch of the US military and U.S. intelligence, and it’s there that they maintain a troll farm, as you said, to spin out hashtags against the government in Iran. And this account, Heshmat Alavi, apparently was a sock puppet run out of this troll farm.
SETAREH SADEGHI:Yeah, that’s what the investigation shows. And even for the recent hashtag, the historical hashtag trends about Mahsa Amini, a few Iranian users track them and try to find out where those hashtags come from. And then you see a lot of users just posting nonsense, like alphabets and then using the hashtags, and right now I think it surpassed a hundred million times the hashtag words in Farsi and in English, and they come from a limited number of users. I think it’s less than 300,000 users that have been using the hashtags, but it already has the historical trend on Twitter.
And it’s interesting how, as you said, the protests in 2019, because at that time they were also really huge in my neighborhood. And in Esfahan I did not see any reflection of it online, because usually, like that protest was more by the working class and the middle class because it had economic causes, and it affected a larger proportion of the population. So naturally it was bigger, but you wouldn’t hear about it 24/7 on mainstream media or on social media. But this time, it’s a social issue, and it’s a very important issue for women, but at the same time it’s not really as big as the previous protests that we had. But we already have a historical record of hashtags for it, so it totally shows that it’s not reflective of what is actually going on in Iran.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, The New York Times is also reporting that the US State Department and its allies are trying to get communication gear into Iran. However, much of the noise about these protests appears to be coming from the outside. Because of an issue that Westerners can relate to, we’re deluged with identity politics here and we don’t have large economic protests here in the United States anymore, outside of maybe some union activity, some strikes. This is a case of the weaponization of identity, and obviously a real issue, as you point out, a real issue with the morality police may be not at the top of the agenda but something that upsets a section of the population in Iran.
But outside much of the noise is being made by Iranian exiles or expats, and one of the key voices who’s emerged in U.S. media, cable news media, is a figure named Masih Alinejad, who I’m sure you know. She’s been backed by the U.S. government, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts with the Voice of America, which is the U.S. government’s global broadcasting system. She’s met with former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Recently she cooked up a phony plot in coordination with the U.S. government and the FBI, claiming that the Venezuelan security services were going to kidnap her and take her on speed boats to Iran. It was one of the most ridiculous plots I’ve ever heard, and it was widely reported in U.S. media. Now she’s back. So, what do you make of Iranian expats kind of taking the mic and becoming the voice of the Iranian public?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, I wouldn’t mind. Obviously, Iranian women would be very happy if those in exile really wanted to be a voice for women inside, but the thing is they are just echoing the voice of, I would say, a minority and just a section of the population in Iran that they agree with.
I think they also believe in the Western liberal notion of freedom for women, and not the notion—they don’t really care.I’m not talking about everyone, obviously, but some of these people who are given a voice and whose voices are amplified over the voices of women inside Iran, they’re just repeating the Western notion of freedom for women.And they do not understand that women in Iran can have a different notion of freedom, and [that] they have other priorities when it comes to women’s rights and women’s activism.
And a lot of women here are working towards that.They are organizing, they are using online campaigns to pursue Iranian women’s rights.But these voices from outside really make our struggle more difficult. Instead of, for example, calling for the U.S. government or the EU to lift sanctions on Iran that are hurting ordinary Iranian people and making it more difficult for women to find, for example, job opportunities or to just be an active part of the society, they are calling for their own notion. They’re calling for something that they believe would be liberating for Iranian women, but that’s not necessarily the case for the majority of Iranian women. And I personally find it kind of insulting, because it is like you are disregarding and discrediting Iranian women.
Iranian women inside Iran are very powerful. A large proportion of Iranian women—or the majority of Iranian women, actually it’s a high percentage—go to colleges and they’re highly educated. We have women in business, we have women in medicine and universities, and women are a very active part of the society, so they know how to pursue reforms. For example, there is this case. You can see online that there is civil disobedience happening inside Iran without any hashtags or calls from outside, and it is helping women here. For example, in my town, riding a bicycle for women was not by law forbidden, but culturally there were a group of extra conservative religious people in Esfahan who were against riding bicycles for women, and they were calling for that to happen, they were saying that we’re not going to allow that. Women did not take to Twitter to talk about it. They did not make a fuss about it and start running a protest. What they did instead was, a lot of women, many of them in full hijab and full covering, started riding their bicycles through the city.And now it has become an absolute normal scene in my city, and those conservative groups cannot oppose it anymore. This is how civil disobedience and pursuing reform works. Because a lot of the things we see, for example, that the government is actually imposing or implementing comes from the fact that there is a large proportion of the population that believes in those things.
So, we need education; it’s a progress, it’s a process of reforming and educating women and educating men about women’s rights. It doesn’t happen by a hashtag revolution and just taking to the streets. And then it’s very easy for these protests to get violent, and there are people who abuse it. It starts with slogans for women’s rights, but it ends up with slogans against establishment and calling for the overthrowing of the establishment. So, a lot of women don’t want to be a part of that simply because they see how this is hijacked, how this is exaggerated by Western media and social media as well. And so, they see the realities, and they see those reflections, and they don’t want to be a part of it. But they do their job for seeking reform and educating their family members and being an active part of this process of bringing change to their society.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, aside from the Iranian expats who were getting a lot of attention and speaking out on behalf of all Iranians, you have major celebrities sharing the Mahsa Amini hashtag. What do you make of the participation of celebrities, Hollywood stars, and recording artists? And how much do they really know about the situation inside Iran? Are they getting anything wrong?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, while I hope a lot of them have the good intention of supporting Iranian women—and it’s only out of ignorance, not that they have been paid or supported by the U.S. government to do that—I think it’s very hypocritical, because they didn’t talk about how sanctions have been hurting Iranian people and Iranian women and taking opportunities away from them. For example, as an academic, like a lot of my colleagues have experienced that their papers, their academic publications are not even considered, only because they come from Iran. That’s also a form of injustice. I mean, that affects only the academia in Iran, but sanctions affect ordinary people. They are really affecting ordinary Iranians and making it impossible, for example, people with cancer to provide their medicines, to find their medicines. A lot of medical companies refuse to sell Iran medicine, citing U.S. sanctions, because there are a lot of European companies who just do not want to stand against the U.S. pressure to abide by these sanctions, so they just refuse to sell medicine. It’s not always directly from those companies; it’s also because of the international sanctions on Iranian banks that make it impossible for Iran to buy those medicines. So, there are a lot of factors involved that are making it impossible. So, I personally—and I’m sure a lot of people—find it really hypocritical.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, you mentioned some violence taking place. We’ve seen police officers be killed and a number of deaths, as well as what appears to be armed clashes on the Iranian-Iraqi border. Are these protests turning violent, and are they being infiltrated by violent elements who actually have very little interest in women’s rights?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Yes, that’s unfortunately the case. Iranian women rightfully wanted to protest and take to the streets and make a statement to the state, which I think they have already made, but there were elements who infiltrated it and started violence, like attacks on public property, even on people’s property. They burned people’s cars, there were shootings, and a lot of people have died in these protests, many of them who were women. And it’s not everyone died because of police shootings or police crackdowns. A lot of those people died because of the thugs and mobs that were involved in these protests. And obviously, like you said, they don’t care about women’s rights. They have another agenda to follow.
And this is also another reason a lot of women who maybe initially were protesting took a line to talk about that, that this is absolutely not what women want, and it’s not supporting women’s rights. But there were also, like I said, peaceful protests going on, and they didn’t receive crackdowns, obviously, because they weren’t as violent. In universities and on different streets where people just were peacefully protesting without burning things down. But with those infiltrations, it became very difficult to keep them peaceful.
And, also, you asked me about the Kurdish environment, right?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, Mahsa Amini was Kurdish, and many of the protests have taken place in Kurdish areas, if I’m not incorrect. So, how is the Kurdish issue influencing these protests?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Yeah, well, it appears that one of Mahsa Amini’s cousins was a member of one of these Kurdish separatist movements which have also carried out terrorist acts, but obviously she had nothing to do with these people. But this cousin abused or exploited his relation[ship] with Mahsa Amini, to say that this was to [be] portrayed as an ethnic issue. But Mahsa’s family, including her uncle, spoke out and said that ‘This has nothing to do with our ethnicity. We are Kurdish, but this is about Iran and women’s rights. It has nothing to do with our ethnicity. This involves everyone.’
But different leaders of Kurdish movements inside Iran and outside, like the ones in Iraqi Kurdistan as well, started saying that they were planning for the protests, and they called for people to take to the streets.And even the slogan that has become popular for this movement, which is translated into “Women, Life, Liberty,” that’s a popular Kurdish slogan. And it’s beautiful and people relate to it, but even the slogan came from these Kurdish ethnic groups that were involved, and by now one of the cities at the border witnessed attacks on police stations by some of these Kurdish elements. And Iran started—because they were funded and armed from outside Iran, from Iraqi Kurdistan—Iran also started attacking their bases in Iraq. And just recently, just yesterday, a lot of people, at least, I think about 11 people died in these attacks. But the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] has made it clear that they won’t stop until they just back down.
And I think it’s also important to know that I have Kurdish family members and they do not see themselves a part of it at all. So, it’s not about the ethnicity. It’s about a group funded by outside sources wanting to exploit these protests and break a rock on Iran and the society.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, those Kurdish separatists on the Iraqi side of the border are part of the Barzani clan, right?Which has been historically backed by the U.S. and armed by the U.S.
SETAREH SADEGHI: Yeah, and Mossad at some time. Yeah, that’s true.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And the Israeli Mossad.
SETAREH SADEGHI: Yeah, that’s why. And Iranian people have a really bitter memory of their activities in Iran. They have killed a lot of people within the Kurdish region. And they have been given a platform by, for example, BBC Persian and other propaganda by the British government and the U.S. government, which, again, doesn’t resonate with what’s going on in Iran and makes a lot of Iranians angry, because it’s really not about ethnicity at all. I mean, Mahsa Amini’s family made it very clear that they consider themselves Iranian before anything and it’s really not about ethnicity. But these people are totally disregarding that. They don’t care about the hair case or the case of women; they’re just exploiting it to create chaos inside Iran and make it very difficult for Iranian people to take part in those protests because they can be easily exploited.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And we saw rather small protests in Cuba in 2021 backed by the U.S., staged by people who’d been involved in US embassy programs, be exploited by the Biden administration to justify not returning to the normalization deal that the Obama administration had hashed out with the Cuban government. Do you think these protests will have a similar effect, and will provide the Biden administration with justification for not returning to the JCPOA Iran deal that the Obama administration and the Iranian government agreed to?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Absolutely. And not only that, I think it gives more justification for the US government to impose even more sanctions on Iranian people, which, as I said, and the UN also acknowledges that the unilateral coercive measures by the United States are hurting ordinary people in Iran, especially women.I mean, they’re taking a lot of opportunities away from women.So, yeah, that’s why this is another reason for me, for example, and a lot of people in Iran and a lot of women inside Iran, that if these protests are going to lead to more sanctions, which seems to be the case already, they don’t want to be a part of this.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And do you think that these protests and the attendant violence could prove destabilizing to Iran’s internal security or expand in any way?
SETAREH SADEGHI: Well, by now the protests are almost finished and everyone is talking about how there are no longer massive protests. And even on outlets, especially Persian-speaking TV, for example, like BBC or Manoto or VOA Persian, they tried hard to say that the protests are still going on.And I was checking the hashtags today and there are still millions of hashtags for what’s going on in Iran, but if you go on the streets and just walk around, even in Tehran by now there’s really nothing significant happening. In Esfahan it’s almost over. It’s very insignificant, and that’s something that you will hear from a lot of people who live here, and actually in certain neighborhoods, if you walk you would never see anything. I had a friend of my family saying that if a tourist comes to Iran at this time and they go walk around Esfahan, they will believe that whatever they heard on social media or mainstream media was absolutely fake. That’s how normal life is just going on in Iran, and things are gradually going back to normal. Even the Internet crackdown eased today, and that’s why I’ve been able to do this interview.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:Well, looks like at this point the medium is the message. Setareh Sadeghi, thanks so much for joining us at The Grayzone and keeping us informed.
SETAREH SADEGHI:Thank you for having me and giving me a platform, as someone who lives in Iran, to have a voice.
The left-wing candidates of the Pacto Histórico coalition ticket in Colombia celebrated a win Sunday evening in Bogotá / credit: Evo Morales / Twitter
Editor’s Note: This article was updated at 7:40 a.m., June 20.
JUNE 19, 2022—Celebrations took place this evening as people took to the streets of Colombia after left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro was deemed the winner of the second-round election. This victory makes his running mate, Francia Márquez, the first Afro-descendant woman who will serve as vice president once the term begins in August.
The Pacto Histórico coalition candidates won more than 50 percent of votes. Petro’s competitor, Rodolfo Hernández, conceded the election.
“I called Gustavo to congratulate him on his victory and offer him my support to fulfill the promises of change for which Colombia voted today,” Hernández tweeted. The millionaire ran on the League of Anti-Corruption Governors ticket and had been likened to a “Colombian Trump” for his brash manner. “Colombia will always count on me.”
Llamé a Gustavo para felicitarlo por el triunfo y ofrecerle mi apoyo para cumplir con las promesas de cambio por las que Colombia votó hoy. Colombia siempre va a contar conmigo.
— Ing Rodolfo Hernandez 🇨🇴! (@ingrodolfohdez) June 19, 2022
Aminta Zea, a U.S. citizen who observed the elections today, documented Colombians in the southern city of Calí embracing each other, jumping, waving flags and honking horns.
Beautiful to see Colombianos celebrating Petro’s historic win in Cali. Just see for yourself. What a huge and important shift not only for Colombia but also for Latin America and the world!! pic.twitter.com/WC7QQ1e1tp
Petro’s first tweet came within an hour of the announcement.
“Today is a holiday for the people. Let […] celebrate the first popular victory. May so many sufferings be cushioned in the joy that today floods the heart of the Homeland,” he tweeted. “This victory for God and for the People and their history. Today is the day of the streets and squares.”
Hoy es dia de fiesta para el pueblo. Que festeje la primera victoria popular. Que tantos sufrimientos se amortiguen en la alegria que hoy inunda el corazon de la Patria.
Esta victoria para Dios y para el Pueblo y su historia. Hoy es el dia de las calles y las plazas.
Márquez attracted many voters because her campaigns for both president and vice-president prioritized lifting out of poverty and oppression the country’s historically marginalized groups. She won the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism.
“This is for our grandmothers and grandfathers, women, youth, LGTBIQ+ people, indigenous people, peasants, workers, victims, my black people, those who resisted and those who are no longer…” she tweeted. “Throughout Colombia. Today we start writing a new story!“
Esto es por nuestras abuelas y abuelos, las mujeres, los jóvenes, las personas LGTBIQ+, los indígenas, los campesinos, los trabajadores, las víctimas, mi pueblo negro, los que resistieron y los que ya no están… Por toda Colombia. ¡Hoy empezamos a escribir una nueva historia!
— Francia Márquez Mina (@FranciaMarquezM) June 19, 2022
What’s Next for Latin America?
This victory marks a shift in the Western Hemisphere. While left-wing revolutions and candidates have over the decades swept states like Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Colombia remained a militarized U.S. ally.
At least one observer had dismissed Petro’s earlier comments against the Bolivarian revolutionary process underway in Venezuela as a way to distance his popular left-wing campaign from a neighboring country many in Colombia have seen as a failure.
Congratulations came pouring through from officials and former officials in Bolivia, Mexico and other states.
Felicitamos al pueblo de Colombia, al hermano @petrogustavo, flamante presidente electo y a la hermana @FranciaMarquezM, primera vicepresidenta afrodescendiente de la historia de ese país por su indiscutible triunfo en las urnas. Es la victoria de la paz, la verdad y la dignidad. pic.twitter.com/fmC8fxvxGA
Los conservadores de Colombia siempre han sido tenaces y duros. El escritor José María Vargas Vila relataba que los dictadores de su país "mojaban en agua bendita su puñal antes de matar". 1/3
Felicito a Gustavo Petro y a Francia Márquez, por la histórica victoria en las elecciones Presidenciales en Colombia. Se escuchó la voluntad del pueblo colombiano, que salió a defender el camino de la democracia y la Paz. Nuevos tiempos se avizoran para este hermano país. pic.twitter.com/FxodCn9Uqx
In May, the United States invited Colombia’s defense minister to Washington to announce Colombia as a “major non-NATO ally.” The South American country’s closest access point to the Atlantic Ocean is the Caribbean Sea. The $4.5 billion in military arms and training the United States has poured into Colombia now remains a question for the incoming left-wing pair that have remarked on changing relations with the United States. Meanwhile, paramilitary violence throughout the countryside, as well as death threats to Petro and Márquez, threaten to amplify tensions in Colombia.
The Petro-Márquez Agenda
While his millionaire competitor—Hernández—claimed to be of the people, Petro said he would call a national emergency upon entering office to address hunger in Colombia. Joblessness, empty bellies and dangerous housing plague the country. The situation prompted last year’s month-long national strike.
Petro had been criticized for announcing he would end oil and gas exploration as well as phase out fossil fuels as a way to address global climate change and transform the economy. Coal and oil shipments account for almost 40 percent of the country’s exports. His announcement worried the industries.
Afro-Colombian activist and community official Victor Hugo Moreno Mina was with Márquez when armed men shot at their group during a meeting in a rural area on May 4, 2019. He said in the following exclusive interview with Toward Freedom that many areas of Colombia’s economy, as well as the societal structure, need to be transformed.
The Petro-Márquez win comes six years after peace accords were signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), which agreed to put down arms to end decades of violence. Rodrigo Londoño, a former FARC-EP commander, hailed today’s results as a victory for the peace process.
The second-round election was marked by reports of irregularities, as was the first round held on May 29.
Alejandra Barrios, director of Misión Observadores Electoral (MOE), an independent agency that coordinates domestic and international election observers in Colombia, reported some ballots had been marked off before voters had a chance to choose a candidate.
Voter intimidation and threats were cited for low turnout during the first round.
AfroResistance, an organization that supports Afro-descendant women and girls in the Americas, brought delegations into the country to observe both rounds.
“It was [a] clean and fair election in Colombia. Democracy won. Black people won,” the organization tweeted.
