Day 16-Int'l Human Rights Day-Moving on from Justice for Nadine

At the end of 16 days of blogging to eliminate VAW, today was Int'l Human Rights Day. Today Global Voices has an interesting discussion of the Elders and their new Campaign, Every Human has Rights. BTW, I hope that Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elder, and Grameen Bank President, Dr. Md. Yunus will consider giving Cyclone Sidr devastated borrowers --predominately women--a longer break from their micro credit debts-payments than until March.

Take Back the Tech wants us to revise & recast /or take steps to feministing Wikipedia by adding our research & sources. I hope that any posters will do this carefully and mindfully b/c Wikipedia can be a very powerful resource. Unfortunately too many students in my classes are just cutting and pasting Wikipedia as their own work without doing the necessary research and work. I hope that people who have built my bridges and did my surgery have not just looked it up on Wikipedia.

For those who have been following the Justice for Nadine saga (and ignoring the many other cases of domestic violence and VAW in our own communities), I strongly encourage you to read Abdul Kargo's concluding and profound essay (and esp the last three paragraphs): Lessons Have Been Learned. Now it’s Time to Pick up the Pieces and Move On., on this saga, and also in response to 157 comments (including 3 by me) on his earlier post, What's a Woman's Worth Meaured Against.

He concludes: "Accept that it happened. Acknowledge that it was terrible. Then pick up the pieces and move on. That’s what I intend to do."

My concluding remarks--on this case until he's arrested and had his day in court: alleged abuser and rapist Sajid Huq, is still a fugitive, wanted by New York City on these felony charges. The warrants for his arrest remain open. Until there is justice & safety for Nadine and other abused women from their abusers, none of us will be safe from the Sajid Huqs of the world.

I hope that all who have participated in this saga will reach out to one another and their communities to end this violence-adda-gossip and support those activists and ordinary people who are doing the hard-difficult-everyday work in this area.

****Check out a new resource from January 2008: New Blogsite OUT AGAINST ABUSE to educate and organize the South Asian Community about domestic violence-gender abuse--please read, comment, and discuss this resource!****


Last but not least:

• Please check out the today's and earlier VAW posts on Bangladesh from Our View (English) and Amader Kotha blogs (Bangla). These young women (and men) give me hope.
• Best wishes e doa to Sheikh Rumana for her surgery & tara tari recovery so she can return to her work for women migrants' rights
  
• To Shawn about making a difference btw, the voting is still open on his contest video.....'To Phil, From Bangladesh'--and in second place.
• All those bloggers who have posted on VAW and the 16 Days Campaign
  
• Those unnamed, cannot be named for their safety, and not so famous people doing the hard work to make sure that all of us have human rights

As for me, it's been a long 16 days, I have a satchel of seminar papers to mark, and Take Back the Tech kittens to feed.