Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

I personally never forget that I was tortured by a police state that was supported by the major Western powers. I was threatened with inserting a baton in my rectum while I was being beaten and completely naked. I remember the names of my torturers, the police station … And it was only for expressing my ideas and being an activist. At the time, others were subjected to even much worse torture. A few were killed.  I too am ‘deeply and gravely concerned’. The Israeli military practice is just one example Related Rape suspects shouldn’t face criminal charges – poll

Dozens of Indian workers freed from 'slavery' in Italy Related “Italy’s Sikh Slaves” Italy’s Migrant Boot Camp Raped, beaten, exploited Migrant workers in Spain

The treatment of Palestinian women, in particular the rapes and sexual aggression which they have endured since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

UN experts appalled by human rights violations

Rape and sexual abuse are not just a by-product of war but are used as a deliberate military strategy, says Amnesty. “Women are seen as the reproducers and carers of the community…  Therefore if one group wants to control another they often do it by impregnating women of the other community because they see it as a way of destroying the opposing community." — Gita Sahgal, Amnesty International “Such attacks are an assault on the integrity of individual women as well as their communities. They are a form of public desecration; they are often a deliberate attempt to humiliate enemy men for failing to protect ‘their’ women.”

James Baldwin   once noted : “Whatever you see in other people is what you see in the mirror … everybody knows, or every writer knows … no matter what I may be describing, I am describing myself.” Israel’s routine depiction of Hamas as barbaric, sadistic torturers brings the searing truth of Baldwin’s words sharply into focus. “Worse than ISIS”

It is like that ‘motto’ we heard a few times after 9/11 2001: “We have to fight them there, so they don’t come here.” Paying Africa’s brutal militias to lock up migrants

Borders ensure that poor people will never have the same freedom of movement as corporate capital. Rape as weapon Related The Darién Gap

A practice that exists in ‘peripheral’ as well as in ‘advanced’ capitalist power relations. Sexual abuse on Kenyan tea farms Related Italy: raped, beaten and exploited Spain: ‘If you don’t want to work like a slave, you’re out’

“By the end of the day American forces had killed 347 to 504 unarmed Vietnamese women, children and old men, and raped 20 women and girls, some as young as 10 years old. The massacre at My Lai was not the only time American troops committed war crimes against Vietnamese civilians, but it was the single worst instance; its severity, its cover-up and the eventual trial of just a handful of the unit’s leaders became a synonym for the entire American war in Vietnam. Rape became such an endemic problem in Charlie Company that one member of its Second Platoon, Michael Bernhardt, assumed that every woman Lieutenant Calley’s platoon came across would be raped within moments. The events at My Lai became public a year later. Several officers were brought to trial in 1971, but only Lieutenant Calley was convicted. He was released from prison in 1974.” Source: The New York Times Wrath of the centurions

Focus on suffering of Syrian women inside and outside of Assad’s prisons

The oppressive state is a macho rapist

"These brave women fighting for freedom, equality and justice face increasing challenges, amidst a violent, Islamic fundamentalist backlash. After 30 years in power, Al-Bashir and his regime have powerful socio-economic, religious and militarised allies throughout the region – and now these forces are working together to fight back against change in Sudan." "Sudan's women face backlash from Islamic fundamentalists"

What happened in Manitoba, a Mennonite colony in Bolivia ten years ago?

Although global media outlets like the  Economist  have made the case that the Rohingya of Burma are the “ most persecuted people in the world ” for several years at this point, their plight has yet to fully register around the world. Does that mean that what's been happening to the millions of Syrians is not persecution? The assertion above does not say "the most persecuted ethnic group." I don't understand the criteria used here and not questioned or at least qualified by the Economist and Jacobin editors. The Catasrophe of the Rohingya

The healthy French society Have we seen titles like " The Harvey Weinteins of France "?

"The growth of large-scale migration is after all part of the system of corporate globalisation that took hold in the past 30 years and widened inequality both within and between countries. It's also been fuelled by 15 years of western wars and intervention from Afghanistan to Somalia. And in Eastern Europe, the exploitation and migration of low-waged and skilled workers has been central to the neoliberal model imposed after 1989." Seumas Milne, the Guardian online, 01 January 2013 Italy as an example ' Migrants are more profitable than drugs' Raped, beaten, exploited

To those "Westerners" who want "to liberate" other women and men. To the Jolies who are proud of NATO.  "Two in five women in the UK say they have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour at work and only a quarter of them reported it,  a BBC survey has found ." Add to that precarity, and banning of unions in many workplaces. Sexual harrassment in UK workplaces

Immigrant men are not mentioned here! Sweden: a 'men-free' music festival

Not heroes, but monsters