Where women are killed by their own families

If the headline of this news article would be the only thing showing up, then a lot of people around the world would've assumed that this news article must've been talking about a country where there's Shariah (Islamic law) & where husbands can have up to 4 wives & Islam rules the land etc. All thanks to Western media.

But this news story, although still quite sad & unfortunate, is of the Central American countries where Christianity rules the land. As per the article, top 3 countries in the world where women are most in danger are El Salvador, Jamaica, & Guatemala, & in these countries, Christianity is 80%, 72%, & 87%, respectively.

Now, someone would say, what religion has to do with abusing women. And they would be correct. Religion has nothing to do with how women are treated in the general public. Heck, all major religions pretty much preach the same ideals to run a peaceful & respectful society. But, then, the Western media force feeds the public around the world that Islam teaches its male followers to abuse women.

No, abusing women has nothing to do with Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or any other religion for that matter.

Abuse of women is correlated with the illiteracy, lack of knowledge, special circumstances, & cultural aspects of a society. If a woman is abused in India, that's nothing to do with Hinduism or Islam, but it has to do with how the males are raised to think of women as a sub-species of some sort, or sexual objects, & hence treat them as such. Special circumstance would be as the article suggests that Guatemalan society suffered a 3-decade long war in which men were trained to abuse women. Those men were never re-trained to live in the post-war society as normal humans & hence they abused their own family women. American soldiers went & going through the same thing where they are suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) & hence their loved ones are the ones who suffer the most as a result.

Blaming a specific religion for violence against women does nothing to help a society or women. It actually furthers that violent behaviour & isolate those women in need because religion becomes a target. As we can see, for instance, that clothing choices of Muslim women has become the topic du jour in the Western world of North America & Europe. Banning head scarves won't help any Muslim woman but further isolate that woman, where she might be abused even further, in silence.

Teaching women their value in society & teaching men how women are their equal partners help a society move forward. Respect & gender equality helps a society build a better future. By the way, please keep in mind here that I am not talking about Western feminism but what Islam teaches about gender equality. Western feminism is nothing to do with gender equality. That's taking the balance out of the society & swinging the pendulum way out towards the other end (woman's end) & punish all men in the process.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34978330

Every year an estimated 66,000 women are murdered worldwide. One of the countries with the highest rate of violence against women is Guatemala - so why is it such a dangerous place to be female?

"We are being killed by our fathers, brothers, stepfathers… the very people who are supposed to care for us," says Rebeca Lane, a feminist rapper in Guatemala City.

"Most of us have to live violence in silence so when someone hits us or screams at us we just close our eyes and let go. We have to join other women and talk about it so we know this is not OK, this is not normal."

When Lane was 15, she got involved with an older man who was not only controlling, but also physically & sexually abusive. "He knew what he was doing. He isolated me from my family and friends. I know what it is to live with violence from an early age," she says. The relationship lasted for 3 years.

Now she uses her music to campaign for women's rights. "Poetry saved my life. When I started to write it was vital to my recovery," she says. Her best-known song, Mujer Lunar - Lunar Woman - is a lyrical call for respect for women's bodies, lives & independence.
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Guatemala has the third highest femicide rate in the world (after El Salvador & Jamaica) - between 2007 & 2012 there were 9.1 murders for every 100,000 women according to the National Guatemalan Police. And last year 846 women were killed in a population of little more than 15 million, says the State Prosecutors Office.

It seems the reason for this lies in the country's brutal past. Lane's main inspiration as a feminist activist is the aunt after whom she is named. She never met her father's sister, but her story helps draw a direct line between the social instability of today & Guatemala's 36-year civil war.

Lane's aunt disappeared in 1981 after she joined left-wing guerrillas fighting the military government. Around the time Lane's aunt died, news began to filter out of the rape, torture & murder of tens of thousands of women & girls - mostly from indigenous Mayan communities accused of supporting the insurgents.

More than a decade later, a UN-sponsored report said this abuse had been generalised & systematic - it estimated that 25% or 50,000 of the victims of Guatemala's war were women.

Sexual violence was "at very high levels and used as a tool of war", says Helen Mack, of the Myrna Mack Foundation. "The stereotype was that women were used for sex and seen as an object, to serve families, and this continues today."

Mack's sister, Myrna - after whom the human rights organisation is named - died after she was stabbed in the street by a military death squad in 1990. Myrna had uncovered the extent of the physical & sexual violence the army had used against Mayan communities.

During the conflict, an army of around 40,000 men & a civilian defence force of approximately one million were trained to commit acts of violence against women. When the war ended & these men returned home, they got no help in readjusting.

Mack believes they redirected their aggression towards their wives, mothers & girlfriends - a culture of violence towards women & an expectation of impunity, which still persists today, developed.
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In Mack's experience, it is common for women to be threatened in this way or even killed by their attackers. Violence against women is still considered a domestic matter, she says, despite new laws against femicide & other forms of violence against women. In 2008 Guatemala became the first country to officially recognise femicide - the murder of a woman because of her gender - as a crime.

"The difference in Guatemala between the murder of a woman and of a man is that the woman is made to suffer before death, she is raped, mutilated and beaten," says the country's Attorney General Thelma Aldana.

Aldana is trying to change attitudes towards victims who are often blamed for the abuse they receive. "A few years ago the police and forensic investigators would arrive on a crime scene and say, "Look how she is dressed - that is why they killed her [or] she was coming out of a disco at 1am - she was asking for it."
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"The justice system can do a lot to change culture," she says.

"We asked women to come forward and break the silence. Femicide and other forms of violence against women are now the crimes that are most reported in the country, with an average of 56,000 reports a year - this includes rape, sexual violence, physical and economic violence and murder."

There are now femicide tribunals in 11 of the country's 22 departments or provinces where the judges & police officers receive gender crime training.
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Destroy Their Economic Livelihoods, and They Will Come

As we all heard Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric during the American election drama that "illegal" & "undocumented" immigrants are destroying US. Whether they are indeed "destroying" American economy & the country itself, that's up for debate, but what nobody ever talks about is why there are so many people pouring across the border from Latin & Central America.

I have explored this topic earlier, in my blogs, that one of the many reasons so-called "developing" countries of the world are stuck in "developing" mode for decades, & even centuries, is that the wealthy & developed Global North (i.e. US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia etc.) are actively destroying & deliberately keeping the "developing" countries in the "developing" mode. There are several ways of doing this through economic (subsidies on industries etc.), financial (aid with exorbitant interest rates & conditions), & military (sell weapons) means. Several times, all these are intertwined. For instance, financial aid is provided to a country, which then turns around & buy military equipment from the same countries that gave the aid in the first place. So, the aid is never got used to service the public or improve the country.

In this Real News analysis, Mr. Faux is essentially saying the same thing that the average person from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, or El Salvador is running away from its country & trying to enter US because US made those countries a hell for that average person. The average American is hating that "illegal" Honduran or Guatemalan or El Salvadoran taking away his/her job or whatnot but the fact of the matter is that that average American racist person is the cause for that "illegal" to run away from his/her home in the first place.

If that average American would not have elected or at least protested against its own government's illegal intervention in the internal governmental matters of those Central American countries, then there would be far less, if not none, "illegals" in the US.

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                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTvjSam5yyE

JEFF FAUX, AUTHOR, THE SERVANT ECONOMY: For the last few months, the last 6, 8 months, ... tens of thousands of children have been pushing across the U.S. border between Mexico and Texas in a desperate effort to flee poverty and violence and hopelessness in their countries.

They're overwhelming facilities down there. The detention centers are overcrowded. The immigration service doesn't know what to do with these kids. Some of them get put on buses to be sent to families someplace. It's a mess.

And it's quickly deteriorated into politics, of course. The Democrats and Republicans blame the president. The president says it's a humanitarian crisis, so we have to act, and so we do. But lost in this debate is the question of U.S. responsibility for the basic causes of this tragic immigration to the United States. Immigration politics in the U.S. focuses on the U.S. But ... the question of what to do with people who are arriving here misses the point of how they arrived and why they arrived.
People come from somewhere, and in this case 95% of these children are coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now, this just happens to be three countries, along with much of the rest of Central America, that the U.S. has dominated and controlled for the last hundred years.

ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: Well, exactly what role has U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and Central America played in driving this immigration?

FAUX: ... to answer that question, start with another question. If the United States is skilled in nation building, which it says it is, why are these economies such social and economic disasters? The answer is we have not run these economies for the people there. We have run them for U.S. investors who want cheap labor and their oligarch cronies who provide the cheap labor.

The enforcer of this system--and this is a system that goes back decades--... is the U.S. military. Whenever people there have challenged the rule of these oligarchs and these repressive governments, the United States has run to the rescue of the oligarchs.

In 1954, famously, Guatemala elected, finally, a left-leaning reformer. The first thing that happened was that the United States organized the Guatemalan military for a coup and an attack, and they drove the president out. It was followed by 40 years of savage repression, 150,000 people murdered in that little country over that period of time. Today, the same rich families and the same military control Guatemala.

I was in Guatemala recently, and people told me they were afraid to take a bus, because what happened is that every once in a while, ... armed thugs, would come aboard the bus, shoot the driver, and rob the passengers. A few days later, I was talking to a young man who said no one can get a real job in this country unless they're connected to one of the five or six ruling families, so everyone wants to immigrate to the United States. But it costs $10,000 to hire a coyote take him here. Where are you going to get the $10,000? They borrow it from the criminal gangs. Most of the time, people never make it and they find themselves back in Guatemala owing $10,000 to some pretty bad people. And those criminals, gangs, say, give us the money (this is in his words) or we'll kill your mother, or come work for us. And your first job is to put a mask on, take a gun, go board a bus, shoot the driver, and rob the passengers.

Guatemala is a basket case under the regimes that we have supported.

Same thing in Honduras. 1963, a reformer got elected. We supported a coup to get rid of him. 2009, another reformer gets elected. We support another coup. Now, 2009, the Obama administration publicly said, oh, that's terrible and ... they denounced it, but privately, they paved the way for the military-run government to stay, and the oligarchs once again triumphed.

In 2011--this is only the latest budget numbers that we've been able to uncover--we exported $1.3 billion in military electronic equipment to Honduras. Now ask yourself: what is Honduras--who is Honduras defending itself against? Who is invading Honduras? The answer, of course, is nobody. Now, their rationale is this great war on drugs. In the last 30, 40 years, billions of U.S. dollars have gone to the military in Central America, ostensibly because of the war on drugs. Now, after 30 or 40 years, it's quite clear that the war on drugs is a failure. And the reason it's a failure is because the military that gets all this aid is knee-deep in narcotrafficking. And what's happened now is the combination of drugs, weapons, and poverty is destroying this country to the point where the children are fleeing. The war on drugs in Central America is a failure, but the war of the elite oligarchs on their own people has been a success. And the result are these poor children being driven across the border.

Now, whatever comes of the immigration battle between the Democrats and Republicans, whatever happens to the president's bill, the waves of desperate immigrants from Central America, from other parts of the Caribbean that we have essentially dominated over the last hundred years will not diminish and is never going to diminish unless the United States government and the United States people face the reality that the basic cause of this immigration is rooted in the corrupt regimes that we have supported all these years.

Ending the cycle of gang violence in El Salvador

This article points to a primary reason why violence is so rampant in developing countries & increasing at a fast rate in developed countries, too. The primary reason for youths & young people to join gangs, or simply be involved in street violence, is the spreading hopelessness for their future, which in turn, is happening because of increasing poverty & a lack of respectable work opportunities.

There's a saying that an empty mind is a devil's abode. As long as a person, especially a young one, keep himself / herself busy, they will be happy. Problem is with what are they keeping themselves busy. Is it something constructive or destructive?

Many of these youths are uneducated. It's not because they don't want any education, but because, the education system has become so expensive everywhere around the world that, even in the developed countries of North America & Europe (except a few countries), a youth & his / her family has to think twice before going to a post-secondary institution. Due to economic reasons, if he / she chooses something else over education, then cycle of violence starts. Heck, even if he / she is educated, he / she may still chooses to be involved in violence. And it's for a simple reason that he / she & his family needs food, clothing, & a roof over their heads.

Jobs, even for educated youths, are becoming scarce all over the world. Everywhere it's all about connections & networking. That doesn't help a large swath of young population who may not have the right connections because their parents & friends only know of people who are in the similar circumstances as they are.

Economic situations, the wrong result of capitalism (hoarding of wealth by a few rich individuals), the increasing social & wealth gap between rich & poor are all leading towards more misery & poverty for the billions around the world. Austerity measures in the name of economy is only creating more misery for the poor, while wealth is actually increasing for the rich. Wealthy families are simply sitting on their giant piles of cash instead of investing in the economy to create more jobs, which in turn, is only going to create more work opportunities for the youths.

Many youths, who are already involved in violence, also want to get out of that violent life, but they see no future in earning a honest buck. Because, there's more hopelessness in their future going down that route. In one of earlier posts, ex-convicts in US told how the justice & prison systems is made to trap a convict in a life of continuing violence. No one wants to take a chance on a youth who might have done something wrong in their life. If nobody offers them a second chance, they will of course re-offend & goes back into the for-profit prison system.

Furthermore, if the youths are busy with the right kind of "work", instead of killing & looting their fellow compatriots, they will not only be putting food on their families' table, clothing their kids, & putting roof over their families, they will also be feeling satisfied & fulfilled to be earning compensation from a non-violent line of work. Governments, & of course, the wealthy people, will also be reaping rewards with fewer criminals out on the streets & more tax-paying individuals. It is a win-win result for everyone in a society.

But the problem is how many rich individuals are willing to take that first step of investing in the young populations of their countries?

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33750162

It is Sunday morning in San Salvador & San Rafael hospital's accident & emergency department is full.

People are lying in the corridors on spare hospital beds waiting their turn.

Those who can sit up are in wheelchairs ... .
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June saw 677 murders in El Salvador, more than any other month since the country's civil war ended in 1992.

Juan - not his real name - is lucky not to be another number in those grisly statistics. 37 years old, he runs a recycling business & a carwash. 4 men arrived at his work & opened fire: 40 bullets.

"Thank God just one bullet hit my arm," he tells me from his hospital bed.

Juan says in the 20 years he has had his own business he has never given in to gangs trying to extort money from him. ...

The police never came to see him to find out what happened. And did he go to them to report it?

"What's the point? I don't believe in the system," he says. He is now making plans to leave the country with his wife & 2 children.
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Faith

On the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador, is a factory that is trying to pick up the pieces ... . It is not long after dawn & all the workers at League Central America are gathered outside. Everyone listens intently to a motivational speech followed by prayers.

Once that is over, work begins. Most of the more than 400 employees are sat behind sewing machines, sewing on labels or cutting material that is used to make sweatshirts & shorts.

All the clothes here are branded with American university logos such as Harvard & Brown & sent to the US.

Just over one in 10 are former gang members, from both the rival gangs - the Mara Salvatrucha & the 18th Street gang. You can tell their affiliation by the tattoos that some of them still have. Up until a few years ago, it used to be standard if you were a gang member.

But tattoos apart, they have started new lives here. One of them - I'll call him Jorge to protect his identity - came to work here through a church group. That is a prerequisite to work here.

After years of robbing, extorting, attacking & even killing several people, he decided to give it all up.

"It didn't make any sense, I was bored of it," he tells me. "I was fed up with suffering. I was in the street all the time.

"My daughter was born and I didn't want her to go through the same thing I had gone through."

The only thing left of his gang days is the tattoo. He pulls down his lower lip to show it to me - carved out with a knife, it is inked with the words MS - to mark him out as a Mara. He says though that gang violence is getting worse.

"They go around killing police, soldiers," he says. "It's partly because of the lack of work, the poverty.

"There are lots of former gang members who want to change their lives but they don't have a way out, nobody gives them an opportunity. So they go back to what they used to do."

Jorge was lucky. He is now one of the chief pattern cutters at League Central America & is thankful for another chance at life.

'No choice'

"People join gangs because they have to. They join because they have no other choice," says Carly Gerstman, the development manager at League Central America.

"We've found that they have the motivation and they have the drive and they have the appreciation that, you know, we are bringing them back in and we are giving them this opportunity, and they take it and they run with it."

Company boss Rodrigo Bolanos says businesses need to play a part in solving the cycle of violence.

"The war between the government and gang members is already here, it's already started," he says.

"In the process of suffocating the economy and the country the private companies need to take a position to look for a dignified way out."