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Why were women’s demands taken out of the Manifesto for the European Day of Action for the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers? We are writing from the Eritrean Women’s Group. We feel very bad that the demand for immediate resources for women and children was left out of the Manifesto: this is wrong. Women are life: without women there is no life. If the women aren’t there, the children don’t survive, there is no next generation. If the rights of women are abused, so are men’s rights. For 9 months we carry everyone, and forever after we look after and feed everyone, but our work and struggle is left out, and that is not correct. Women are the hardest workers, the main carers and contributors to survival. We are daily getting food, health care, schooling for our children, working in the field, every place women are working without rest. In Africa and other countries some of us are also soldiers in liberation struggles, we go to war, we get injured and killed, and so do our children. Some of us were involved in politics in Eritrea and that is why we had to flee. We were fighting for our rights, fighting not to be trapped at home with nothing, daily suffering violence or being put down and told we were nothing and needed nothing. Some of us were in prison for years because of our political activity. At our asylum hearings here, when we talk about what we have suffered, in most cases nobody listens, no one speaks for us, or give us any respect, and they show us hard faces. In one of our cases, the Home Office solicitor held up the hand of our sister saying, “Does this look like the hand of someone who’s been in prison?” Many women have been raped by soldiers or forced to sell our bodies in exchange for offers of freedom. Being raped, abused and tortured in prison and being disrespected and refused help when we escape, are examples of the sexism women suffer and why we are so angry. This is why we say women’s rights must be everywhere. Respect for women must come first of all, because we do most of the work everywhere in the world, in the house, outside and in politics – everywhere it’s women. Women are always helping men, but men often don’t recognise it. And men are much stronger because of women’s help, but they often don’t recognise that either. This is sexism. We women are not animals, not excess material to be put aside or removed; we need food, housing, medicine and doctors, everything in life, the same as everyone else. These are political demands, and what we all need, because if women are safe, all the world is safe. Is politics not about changing the world so that we all get what we need? Why then are we told that our demands for our needs are ‘not political’? This is why the demand about resources for women and showing the work we do, must be part of the Manifesto. Otherwise the Manifesto is not for us, not representing us. Who is it for then? Who decides what is ‘political’, the men? A grandmother in our group says: “I’m 60 years old, I don’t want to be out in the cold, but I will be out for 31st January Day of Action. I’m not resting at home. The next generation must not suffer like me but move forward and be raised up. We must stick together. For 3 months I had no house, but our group, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Congolese, Comoros, Ugandan and other women, developed and mobilised and women got stronger. We went together to the Refugee Council. They tried to throw us out but we stayed together and myself and other women got re-housed.” We women are not less political, but our politics are often more practical and concrete. We don’t like abstractions, we like words and actions that speak about our situation and struggle for survival and justice. We are tired of men living off our hard work and then telling us that they are more political than we are. We won’t accept it. Elsa K (Eritrea) Khadija M (Congo) All African Women’s Group, 30 January 2004 |