ARTICLE: War on Women
by Benjamin Zephaniah
(In August 2001 a women's refuge was fire bombed in Mauritius, I was asked by the women who run the refuge if I could help bring this to the attention of as many people as possible, this is an article I wrote, first published in the Le Mauricien newspaper on the 26th. October, 2001).
I know Mauritius well; I've actually been there. After I returned to England people would constantly ask me what is was like, and my reply would often be, 'take some India, take some Africa, and add a bit of Jamaica, that's what it's like'. Of course it's more complex than that but most the time the people who ask these questions do not want to hear complex answers. Having said that, it is true to say that this is exactly what I thought of this Island when I first arrived here, and I was still thinking the same when I left an amazing two weeks later. Yes a week here, ten days there, it's like that everywhere I go as I leap from one country to another trying to make the world a better place through poetry. The truth is a performer such as myself who can sometimes be visiting up to six countries in a month can only get a limited view of what any of these countries are like. But I do hear dissenting voices that can often indicate that all is not as it seems. I remember just after my first performance at the Harbour, I was approached by a young Rastafarian sister who felt that I had been very brave in my efforts to speak out about racism in Britain and elsewhere, 'The white man has oppressed us for too long,' she said, 'but here, it's the Indians who oppress us'. She invited me to sign an old copy of one of my records and bid me goodbye saying, 'increase the Peace'.
Of course I knew that there were racial tensions in Mauritius, Kaya, the musician use to write to me from time to time, and in the politics of the world Mauritius is as important to me as any other land mass. But it wasn't until I had returned to London that I heard of S.O.S. Femmes and the work they do protecting and defending women who are experiencing abuse and violence. A friend of mine praised their work, and knowing how I had had to fight to protect my mother from my father, and of the work I had done around the issue, insisted that I somehow make contact with them. No country is free of violence against women and no country can be proud of the fact that violence against women exist within its borders, but Mauritius should be proud that it has produced women who have been united and determined enough to start an organisation such as S.O.S. Femmes. So it was to my horror that I heard that the battered women's shelter that they run at Moka had recently been attacked and that it has been attacked three times in the last eighteen months. In this last attack five Molotov cocktails (petrol bombs) were thrown through its windows. At the time there were nine women and nine children at the shelter. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt but everyone on the premises was understandably traumatized. It is rather easy to simply say that this is a terrible act and that the perpetrators must be put into jail, questions of a more profound nature must be asked and the seriousness of such an act must be clearly stated. This was an act of terrorism, an act of war, but unlike most terrorists, these people are fighting against those that gave them life. What are their war aims? What would have constituted a victory in Moka that night, the death of eighteen women and children? And why should we believe that those same people would not have attacked the building if their weapons were not more sophisticated? This was not 'just' an angry husband 'letting off ' one night, this was the third attack in eighteen months, these are calculated, cold blooded, militaristic, and well planed attacks on the very people 'real men' should be protecting.
I was also horrified to learn that the location of what is a place of safety for battered and abuse women was known by all. I have a close association with three UK based organisations who work in this area and I know not where any of their safe houses are, I practically bought one some years back that I have never seen, and so it should be. Some may say that a nation should be measured by its ability to protect its most venerable citizens, but nations are made of individuals, and under these circumstances, when men start bombing women, the nation should ask itself what kind of men is it raising.
No nation is free of chauvinistic, violent men, and no one should need to run from them, the 'system' should deal with them, and if the system can't, change it. When I ask why the location of a shelter for women is not top secret, everyone tells me that Mauritius is a place where everyone knows everyone. If this is true then the chances are that many people reading this article will know one of the attackers or at least be a friend of one of their friends. Call me a nosey outsider if you like, but I reckon that if this island community is so closely knit, then war could easily be declared on these terrorists, and it really shouldn't take that long to flush them out. Once they are out the seriousness of their crimes shouldn't be lessoned (if they are related to the women they are terrorising), by somehow classifying their evil deeds as 'domestic'. I have reason to believe that bombing innocent women and children is a war crime, and the idea that an organisation is behind these attacks should not be dismissed, after all these attacks took some organising. It's beginning to smell like civil war. Be they individuals or organised groups one can only wonder why these men are so concerned with oppressing their potential political (if they believe they have a cause) comrades, or their social (if they are related) partners. What are they fighting for, a man's world? A world without women? Boring.
