SPECIAL PROGRAMS ON FIRE NEXT WEEK
1. FIRE's program for Wednesday, March 10th, 1996.
Repeat of the program with Paulina Diaz Navas, an indigenous Bribri
woman from Costa Rica.
"Mine Is A Voice That Will Not Be Silenced."
A Success Story About The Use of Shortwave Radio in The Defense Of
Indigenous Woman's Struggle To Keep Her Ancestral Land In Costa Rica.
by Maria Suarez Toro - FIRE.
It was January 19, 1995 when FIRE received a phone call from Paulina, a
Bribri - Cabagras indigenous woman from the Province of Puntarenas in
Costa Rica. Death threats by a transit police made her call Feminist
International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) to denounce that he wanted to take
her inherited ancestral land away from her. Paulina said she called FIRE
because two years earlier, in 1993, she was on a live broadcast on
FIRE's Tent at the Fifth Interdisciplinary Congress in Costa Rica, and
saw how the word spread very quickly on shortwave.
"This is Paulina Navas calling FIRE from the town of Bolas in Buenos
Aires. I want to go live on the air on FIRE, because I have received a
death threat." She told us and the listeners that Jose Joaquin Tensio
Alfaro had threatened her with a gun, trying to take her land away from
her through the imposition of fear. Paulina narrated the story of her
family's seventy years of resistance to keep their land. Her father and
brother, both dead now, left her the land she grows as a single woman.
"When I was 12 years old, my father was put in jail through blackmail, so
that in the meantime, the land could be taken away from us. He was a
Bribiri who did not even speak Spanish. It did not work. Now when he is
dead, they are after me. Now a days" she said on that occasion "my land
is surrounded by land belonging to big owners. Because my land belongs to
me, a single woman, they feel I am vulnerable enough to have it taken
away by them. My father died only two years ago."
The town of Bolas, Buenos Aires in the Province of Puntarenas in Costa
Rica is her home town. It is the land of the Bribri - Cabagras indigenous
peoples who migrated from Talamanca in the Atlantic Coast when
colonization pushed them out of the coastal lands and into the inner
mountains of Costa Rica.
Once again, Paulina felt that the lands that belong to her and her
peoples were threatened. She tried to take the case to the local Court
in 1994. But according to her testimony on FIRE, the policemen
intimidated her neighbors, trying to make them sign to testify against
her. Paulina stated that nonetheless she had received the support of the
women in her town, but that her female neighbors had been subject of
sexual harassment as a means of intimidation. "They are afraid to leave
their houses or testify", she stated "I want the case to be denounced
beyond the community".
On that occasion, besides the live broadcast, FIRE has taken the case to
the OMBUDSPERSON's Office in Costa Rica, and also to women's groups and
human rights organizations world wide.
A year after that call, FIRE contacted Paulina Diaz Navas again, to
follow up on the case. This is what she told FIRE on February 24, 1996:
"Those were very difficult and hard times year ago... I was fighting for
our land rights and for indigenous women's rights. We have a legacy to
give to the next generation: the story of how we defended our lands."
Paulina shared the results of her struggle: "For three years I had been
subject to sexual harassment by a police officer because he hated my
parents. He persecuted me and harassed me verbally. Today, I can affirm
that he is no longer a policeman, and we did it! The transit police that
threatened me to death last year, I can tell you today that he is in
prison. Today, my ownership of the land I inherited from my family is
mine and is respected! We indigenous women have to be respected; our
right to our lands; our indigenous women's rights to work the land has to
be respected. "
How it happened is what she narrated on FIRE's microphones. "There were
women's organizations that listened to me in your media. I am satisfied
today, because the tears at the time [last year] have become something
good... It was thanks to the denunciation last year in your program that
the Minister of Security, Juan Diego Castro, responded. He sent me the
letters that were sent to him by international women's organizations on
behalf of my rights. He sent a Colonel to investigate the case, and they
saw that I was right to fight for my land. He sent orders to the local
police that is now in office here, telling them that they hand to protect
my land rights."
"I am thankful to those organizations, because they accompanied me and a
little path to justice was opened for me to tell people what I was going
through. Today I am respected in my land rights, and no police can
harass me. Mine is a voice that, so long as I am alive, no one will
silence in denouncing this and other violations of our rights."
On that occasion, FIRE requested letters of solidarity, and they were
effective. Today if you want to celebrate her achievements and that of
her peoples, you can write to her (in English or Spanish) at the
following address:
Paulina Diaz Navas
Bolas, Buenos Aires
Puntarenas Province
Costa Rica.
FIRE also wants to announce that it has recommended Paulina's name for
one of the 1996 International Rural Women's Creativity Award which will
be granted to ten women by the Women's World Summit Foundation in Geneva.
We request you send letters of support to the following address:
WWSF
P.O. Box 2001
1211 Geneva 1,
Switzerland.
and copies of the letters to FIRE at Radio For Peace International.
2. FIRE's program for Thursday, March 11th, 1996.
Repeat of the program with Carol Vlassoff of The U.N. World Health
Organization.
On January 22, 1996 FIRE received a visit by a member of the U.N. World
Health Organization. Carol Vlassoff came to FIRE because the WHO area of
research in tropical deseases is planning to implement a radio cum
pictorial material project which they are calling the Healthy Women
Counselling Guide. The project aims especially at reaching illiterate
women in rural Africa.
Carol, who works in that project, was live on the air on FIRE. She
talked about the work of the WHO, and the specific project. "I am from
Canada but have worked in Geneva at the World Health Organization for the
past eight years. Our research places emphasis on the perspectives of
people themselves, understanding the disease, and the way people
understand it and deal with it. Malaria is the one we work with most.
Particularly the interest now is to look at how women understand disease.
They are usually left out of the picture in the dialogue about health. We
want to find out about it, and there is hardly any information about it.
We want to figure out how to reach women with more information."
Asked about the experiences in WHO that made them realize the importance
of women's participation in the definitions and strategies in their work,
Carol shared her memory of a meeting convened by WHO in Geneva who were
interested in developing messages related to health, to reach women, to
empower women. So the participants were mostly women who knew how to work
with women in different parts of the world. "The meeting began in the
typical WHO fashion: everyone sitting around a table, everybody with name
tags, then a formal presentation by one of the Assistant Directors, we
told the participants what our objective were of the meeting, and then we
asked each one to introduce themselves."
Carol, described how, as the presentations went along, the WHO staff
began to feel an almost hostile atmosphere, and wondered what the problem
was all about. "Half way through the presentations, a very well known
feminist that works with UNIFEM stopped the round of presentations and
told us that we were doing this the wrong way. She explained that she
could present herself, but that this was not why they came, that they
have their own objectives, and wanted WHO to listen to them. This was the
first time in WHO that anyone had dared to voice their own opinion and
what their objectives were in coming to a meeting. Over the week we had
many people from the Organization filtering in, because they had heard
that this was a very unusual meeting. From that process we learned not
just about women's health ad issues, but how do you actually conduct a
meeting that is meaningful. At the end of the meeting the women did not
tell us what we should do, they recommended that we go and ask women
themselves and ask them the questions that we were asking the group of
experts!"
Asked about the reason why the World Health Organization had chosen radio
to do the kind of outreach that had been suggested to them, Carol
explained what followed in WHO after that first meeting. "Research
projects were developed Nigeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone, after advertising
in 16 African countries. According to the suggestions that came out of the
meeting there was to be anthropological research where the researchers
could develop all kinds of qualitative research technique. When we met
with the researchers to assess the results. Although there were differ-
ences in the countries, overall the messages that came from the women
were very similar! One thing that we realized is that women have a real
wealth if information themselves. They know a great deal, because health
is their work throughout the world. So we found out that what we needed to
do was to find out a way of having our information meet with theirs, and
to realize all the constraints they have, that does not have to do with
lack of knowledge. Because of that, they combine all different kinds of
strategies! In the research we also asked people what they listened to.
They talked about meeting in groups, face to face, but they all said that
they listened to and liked radio, but the one thing they did not like
about the radio is that they could not ask question to the radio. But we
know now with FIRE and community radios, that radio can be very inter-
esting for women. This is one of the things that appeals to us about
radio. Women can do it themselves!"
Carol talked about what she has found out about women in radio in
Africa, Carol said that AMARC' initiative for women's radio in Africa,
where they will broadcast in the languages of the peoples, will link them
beyond national boundaries because people speak those languages across
countries. "The South African experience is very interesting because
they combine television, radio and written material to work health
issues. They accompany the programs with booklets about it, and place
them in the clinics and elsewhere. Then people take the written materials
home also. The other advantage is that women can copy the tapes and take
them to their communities to listen to."
Carol thanked FIRE and the audience, and requested of the audience to
write to her at the World Health Organization with suggestions of
materials, articles and experiences about the combination of radio and
written material to work in women's health.
She can be reached at WHO. E-mail address is <vlassoffc@who.ch>. You can
also request their material.
FIRE will be participant in the working session convened by WHO and women
from Africa to begin next May 29 in Geneva, Switzerland. We also welcome
you ideas to take to the meeting.
We can be reached at PO Box 88, Santa Ana Costa Rica.
E-mail: <fire@sie.expreso.co.cr>
3. FIRE's program for Friday, March 12th, 1996.
A program about the First Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human Rights
held in Costa Rica last November 24, 1995.
The activity formed part of the follow-up for implementation of the
Platform for Action adopted in Beijing last September. The 4th United
Nations World Conference on Women produced positive results and
achievements, but it also left some matters still to be resolved and
overcome.
Among the positive results is one that has to do with the recognition
that women's rights are human rights. This was not new, considering
that the United Nations recognized that at the World Conference held
in Vienna in 1993.
But the fact is that The Vatican and other fundamentalists wanted to
backtrack from it by promoting a narrow definition of universality of
human rights to include only those human rights that are already in the
traditional international definitions of human rights.
Women's rights as human rights would have been watered down if The
Vatican's position had been adopted. Women celebrated that this did not
happen. However, doubt continues as to how the accords and resolutions
reached at the IV World Conference will be implemented to impact
positively on women's day to day lives, and especially how they can be
translated into compliance with human rights.
The signs of a possible backtracking by the government of Costa Rica
became very clear to women in this country when, in the public meeting to
report about the results of the Conference in China, Alicia Fournier,
head of the Governmental Delegation to Beijing said that "in Costa Rica,
the results will be implemented in accordance with our traditions and
culture."
It was against this background, that feminists, women's human rights
activists, and traditional human rights NGOs in Costa Rica decided to
undertake immediate action to guarantee no backtracking in this issue.
They decided to organize the first ever Tribunal on Violations of Women's
Human Rights in the country. The public event held in The Lawyer's Guild
of Costa Rica had as an objective the promotion of a wider knowledge
and understanding of the gross violations of women's human rights which
affects in many ways the lives of women in Costa Rican society today.
The 22 testimonies presented gave evidence of the fact that Costa Rica's
traditions and culture have excluded women from the enjoyment of full
human rights. However, Costa Rica holds an international and regional
prestige for its record of respect for traditional human rights, peace
and formal democracy. The country is known internationally as the Central
American Switzerland. The voices of women about the exclusion of their
rights have been silenced in this global image.
Maria Eugenia Dengo, an elder in Costa Rican politics since the 50s,
testified about the history of Costa Rican women's political
participation, affirming with ample indicators, that "women have been at
the forefront of every major struggle in Costa Rica's history, for
example to overcome dictatorships during the last century, and to include
social and economic rights for peoples during the liberal revolution in
1948, yet when it came down to who was going to govern, women were put
aside, or at most, were placed in secondary, non-decisive political
positions."
Livia Cordero Gene testified to having been a prisoner of conscience
from 1991 to 1994 without due trial, and was finally acquitted in 1994.
She gave evidence of political persecution of women because of
participation as a peace activist and human rights defendant. She was
imprisoned under this accusation of terrorist actions, when all proven
activities showed nothing else than human rights and peace activism.
For the women testifiers, democracy without women's participation in
political decision-making is no democracy at all.
Seven women testified about the horrors of domestic violence, and the
lack of administration of justice in their cases. More than 2,000 cases
of domestic violence have been presented by other women between the date
of the Tribunal and the 8th of March, 1996.
For them, until there is an end to violence against women there is no
peace. The open war against women in Costa Rica is also allowed by the
legal system when it fails to respond to due process and administration
of justice.
There cannot be a good record of respect for human rights without an end
to gender based violence, for this in itself is a human rights issue.
A case presented by the San Jose Women's Police Station Coordinator,
Zayra Salazar, was that of "Maria" -pseudonym for a woman now dead -
whose husband first stabbed her nineteen times. When she denounced him
formally, the court judged the act as a minor offense. He later killed
her, of course. Impunity teaches men that they can escalate into higher
levels of violence against women, and get away with it.
Another was the case of Olga, a street girl subject to abuse by her
step-father when she was six, thrown to the streets by her step-mother
after the girl took the case to court, abused by men in the streets when
she was 9, and sexually harassed by police officers who picked her up
from the streets of San Jose. The testimony affirmed the conclusions of
research done in Nicaragua and Brazil. The recent studies show that
children of the street are not the sole product of lack of economic and
social rights, but that many take to the streets to run away from
domestic violence and abuse.
Other testimonies at the Tribunal gave evidence of racism in Costa Rica
when Loraine Powell, an Afro-Costa Rican women, told her story of
harassment in the workplace at a local university, and the use of racist
language against her to disregard her formal complaint at the workplace.
Ethnocentrism in the multiple forms of denial of indigenous women's
rights was presented by native Costa Rican Marina Lopez; a case of
discrimination on the basis of sexual preference was also presented at
the Tribunal, and also two testimonies of invisibilization of women in
the arts.
Carmen Bustos Bustos presented her case about denial of reproductive and
holistic health of women by the multi-national corporations who sell and
use toxic fertilizers, banned in the USA, in the banana plantations in
Costa Rica. She had seven miscarriages while she worked in a plantation
between 1967 and 1976, and suffers terrible pains today, even after
having left the plantations long ago.
The male banana workers who became sterile because of the use of PBDC
recently received indemnization by the companies that produce and
distribute the product, in a non-judicial arrangement when their case
was about to be presented in the Courts in Texas.
Yet the cases of women banana workers were not included in the legal
suit, because the damage to women's fertility has not been proven. About
it Carmen said "I had four kids after I left the plantations, and they
each have the same symptoms I have had since then: permanent headaches,
pain in my bones, and other skin problems."
Organized by the Costa Rican Commission of Human Rights, the Institute of
Women's Studies at the National University, The "Women, Justice and
Genero" of the U.N. Institute for the Prevention of Delinquency, The
Earth Council, The Collective "25th November", The Central American Human
Rights Committee and Feminist Radio International Endeavour, the Tribunal
documented violations of women's human rights committed by private actors,
private institutions, and the State.
The testimonies highlighted violations in the fields of personal
integrity rights; social and economic rights, emphasizing labor rights
among others; health rights; discrimination from a variety of causes like
race, ethnicity, sexual preference and disabilities, and also
discrimination in the political participation of women.
Both as individuals or as groups, the women presented their cases before
a Court constituted by 6 Judges of Conscience. The Judges were women
who, through life or professional experience, have developed expertise in
this field, and have come to be recognized nationally and internationally
for their struggle in the promotion and defense of women's human rights
in Costa Rica and world wide.
Among them was the Coordinator of the Obudsperson women's department,
Ligia Martin. 12 honorary judges also formed part of the Court. One of
them was Radika Coomaraswamy - U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence
Against Women, and Elizabeth Odio, also Judge of the Tribunal on War
Crimes in Former Yugoslavia.
The Judges issued a statement and series of recommendations on the
cases, based on national legislation and International Human Rights
Instruments with regard to women and human rights that the Costa Rican
Government has signed and ratified, yet is not acting in compliance with
them.
The Declaration highlights four levels of responsibility for the
violations of women's human rights in Costa Rica: "the international
community when it fails to respond to women's claims for solidarity and
cooperation with Costa Rican women's struggle for justice, peace and a
democracy that includes women. The State, be it through its actions or
omissions, all of which requires a total revision of the way in which the
law is conceived and applied.... Civil society is also responsible, be it
through actions or omission. All those who hold that they have no
responsibility of violations of women's human rights, because those are
women's issues, are responsible through omission...."
The Declaration states that today, "in addition to violence against
women, we see an intensification of exploitation with the subsequent
increment in the domestic work and labor burden for women; economic
depression with the feminization of poverty, environmental devastation,
genocide, racism and other forms of discrimination, all of which form a
total picture that does not allow us to see these issues as "women's
issues" but of the claim for a universal justice that includes women."
The Judge's statement also declares that "The testimonies have provided
evidence about the fact that impunity and lack of credibility in the
administration of justice in cases related to women have as their result
the lack of due process in Costa Rica. The lack of adequate legislation
regarding violations of women's human rights was evident in all the cases
presented. We also found proof that in the case of girls who suffer
sexual and labor exploitation, as in the cases of black women, indigenous
women, lesbian women, and women with disabilities, the injustices are
aggravated through the invisibilization of such conditions and the lack
of recognition of diversity."
The document produced by the judges recognizes that women have not been
only victims, but also active survivors. "The testimonies presented give
evidence about the fact that women have not relied on legal struggles
alone... but they have designed and implemented multiple and creative
personal and collective strategies, al well as non-formal actions such as
denouncing, resistance, solidarity, education and training, support,
alternative services, self determination of their bodies, empowerment,
mobilization and organization."
Recommendations were also included in the judge's report: "The revision
of administration of justice in the country, in relation to gender based
violence in its multiple form of expression: in the workplace, against
their bodily integrity, and their identity... The revision of public
policies and legislation as related to the executive, legislative and
judicial bodies of government to respond to the protection, promotion and
reconceptualization of women's human rights in Costa Rica... The revision
of the ethics within civil society also, which permits and promotes
subordination and discrimination of women and overall violence against
them."
It also issues recommendations to women themselves, by stating that "We
call on women to multiply their actions of denunciation, resistance,
solidarity, education and training, support, services programs, self-
determinations, empowerment, mobilization and organization in the
construction of a new agenda, that, though our strategies and
negotiating capacities with civil society and the State, can guarantee
full respect for women's human rights."
Concrete actions and commitments is what is needed for the follow-up of
the Platform for Action of the IV World Conference on Women. In this
effort, local tribunals on violations of women's human rights are one of
the many means and strategies that women have used and will continue to
use to prevent U.N. State members from getting away with lack of
responsibility, by stating that they have done enough by approving,
signing and ratifying a few laws. It is time they put their actions where
they put their signature.
It is also time the Costa Rican State and Government assume that Costa
Rica's traditions have included gross violations of women's human rights,
and that women's culture of struggle, resistance and re-construction of
Costa Rica is here to stay until full respect of all human rights become
a reality for women in this sweet-cell-land where women are prisoners of
an international image that is far from including women's human rights.
In a globalized world, images alone do not last long. The full
implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the country is a
great opportunity for the State of Costa Rica to live up to this image.