Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Women political prisoners – Abuse of – Palestine"

This is the third and final installment of Um Jabr's ““life story,”” earlier segments of which——on village life in pre-1948 Palestine and on the 1948 war and its aftermath——were published in JPS 138 (winter 2006) and JPS 140 (summer 2006). The current excerpts focus on Um Jabr's intense involvement in the prisoner issue that began when two of her sons were in Israeli jails. In particular, her activism took the form of organizing other women to visit prisoners from Arab countries who had no one to visit them on the twice monthly visits allowed. Um Jabr's 36,000-word ““life story”” was one of seven collected as part of an oral history project, as yet unpublished, carried out by Barbara Bill, an Australian who since 1996 has worked with the Women's Empowerment Project of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Ghada Ageel, a refugee from al-Bureij camp now earning her Ph.D. at the University of Exeter in England. The women who participated in the project were interviewed a number of times during the first half of 2001; after the tapes were transcribed, the memories were set down exactly as they were told, the only ““editing”” being the integration of material from the various interviews into one ““life story.”” Um Jabr, who was in her early 70s at the time of the interviews, still lives in al-Bureij camp, where she has since 1950.

Abstract Most divorces in Palestine come about through a private unregulated agreement between the spouses referred to as “ṭalāq bit-taradi” (consensual ṭalāq), often called mukhalaʿa or mubāraʾa. Over the last century, women’s economic rights in the unilateral ṭalāq have increased. At the same time, the number of consensual ṭalāq has risen. While the consensual ṭalāq provides a way out of an unwanted marriage for women, it hardly represents a form of ‘gender equality’. Rather, it is a field where kin-patriarchy is asserting itself through women’s dependence on agnates to reach an agreement and to bear the cost of such divorces. Furthermore, the consensual ṭalāq invites abuse and economic extortion from husbands. As the Islamic shariʿa court condemns such behaviour, our study nevertheless finds that the court facilitates the consensual ṭalāq by setting the bar for litigated divorce too high and by letting time pass.

Descriptive approach via a questionnaire to evaluate the Palestinian woman's image in media at different levels in Gaza strip, Palestine. 530 female university students were drawn from three universities in Gaza strip involving the Islamic university, Al-Azhar university, and university of Palestine. The outcomes of this study show that women have two prominent traits in that media that is self-made and patient, and sacrificing. The other traits include weak and needy. In addition, at the political level, the media has demonstrated interests in the Palestinian media ladies, and shown their roles in covering the Palestinian political news. At the social level, the outcomes have proved that social media networks have contributed in shaping the mainstream supporting the Palestinian woman's social issues. Besides, at the cultural level, they have stated that customs and traditions hinder media from adopting courageous issues treating the Palestinian woman's political and social status quo. Furthermore, at the economic level, media has given an image about the working Palestinian woman's materialistic abuse. In conclusion, the media should not exaggerate in portraying the woman's image in the issues of violence. It is necessary to present a positive image about her and defend her freedom and rights. Moreover, it recommended to support her to be designated in governmental, ministerial and leadership positions, as well as, to cast light on exemplars for successful women in the field of reasoning and knowledge, and set a media plan based on justice and equality.

The nefarious nexus of patriarchy and nationalism that characterized Francoist Spain (1939‐75) made sexualized violence inflicted on the state’s female prisoners an immanently political act. Focusing on En el infierno: Ser mujer en las cárceles de España (1977), the prison memoir of the communist and feminist activist Lidia Falcón, this article draws on theories of trauma, victimhood and memory to interrogate how Falcón navigates questions of (self-)representation and agency through the portrayal of rape and sexualized violence in Franco’s women’s prisons. Rape, for Falcón, is a multifaceted act that violates both the female body and the collective body politic, while the various manifestations of abuse ‐ ‘las modalidades de violación’ ‐ reify sexual and political dominance. By speaking on behalf of the female prison population, Falcón utilizes the collective voice so as to presuppose a collective victimhood that fosters solidarity amongst women and resists subjugation by the masculinist state.

Purpose – This participatory health research project of researchers and women prisoners examined housing and homelessness as perceived by incarcerated women to understand this public health concern and help guide policy. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A participatory research team designed and conducted a survey of 83 incarcerated women in BC, Canada. Using descriptive statistics, the authors examined socio-demographic factors related to social support networks and family housing and women’s housing preference upon release. Findings – In total, 44 percent of participants reported no family home upon release while 31 percent reported lost family ties due to their incarceration. Most vulnerable subpopulations were women aged 25-34, aboriginal women and those with multiple incarcerations. Housing preferences differed between participants suggesting needs for varied options. Further implementation, evaluation and appraisal of social programs are required. Research limitations/implications – This study surveyed one correctional facility: future research could utilize multiple centers. Practical implications – Addressing housing instability among released incarcerated individuals is important fiscally and from a public health lens. Improved discharge planning and housing stability is needed through policy changes and social programs. A social support network, “Women in2 Healing,” has developed from the research group to address these issues. Social implications – Housing stability and recidivism are closely linked: providing stable housing options will lessen the social, fiscal and medical burden of individuals returning to crime, substance abuse, illness and poverty. Originality/value – Housing instability addresses an important social determinant of health and focussing on incarcerated women builds upon a small body of literature.

Objectives: Positive social support is critically important to postprison well-being outcomes. However, researchers and program developers are still trying to understand how to best promote stable and sustainable social support for formerly incarcerated individuals during reentry to the community. We sought to add to the body of knowledge on social support and prisoner reentry by comparing men and women releasing from prison on the quality (e.g., positive or negative) and amount of informal social support. Methods: A random sample of 395 male ( n = 165) and female ( n = 230) releasing prisoners participated in the study. After unadjusted bivariate comparisons, multivariate regression was conducted to identify gender differences in preincarceration social support quality of influence and anticipated number of postrelease support persons while controlling for important covariates such as substance abuse and mental illnesses. Results: Males reported higher rates of negative social support overall, and females reported higher rates of both mixed and positive social support compared to their male counterparts. Older participants reported higher levels of positive support compared to younger participants. Men of color reported significantly higher levels of positive support than their White male counterparts. Overall, women had higher prevalence of behavioral health factors that complicate quality of support. However, there were no differences in gender found for the amount of perceived social support available postrelease in the unadjusted models. Implications: Study findings suggest the need for gender-specific and culturally tailored targets for prisoner reentry programs addressing social support. Possible adaptations for interventions are explored.

Abstract: In the summer of 1906 at the age of twenty-one, Mariia Spiridonova, a Russian Socialist Revolutionary (SR) assassin was transported with five other convicted female SR terrorists by railway from Moscow to the Nerchinsk prison complex in eastern Siberia. Only Spiridonova was known as a martyr-heroine to opponents of tsarism across the empire, however, because national newspapers had published her story of physical abuse by police and Cossacks at the time of her arrest. Patterning themselves after an earlier generation of populist terrorists in the 1870s and 1880s, male and female SR terrorists in the revolution of 1905–07 attempted to kill government officials whom the SR party accused of oppressive actions against helpless civilians. Although SR terrorists expected to sacrifice their own lives as compensation for committing political murder, the tsarist government commuted the women’s death sentences to penal servitude for life. In Siberian imprisonment, Spiridonova and her five terrorist comrades followed the tradition of preceding generations of revolutionaries by joining a ‘socialist collective’ or ‘commune’ of political prisoners with a code of conduct and a shared economy. Male and female socialist prisoners lived by such compacts to prepare themselves for the future revolution and to deepen the political consciousness of their fellow inmates by personal example. Only Spiridonova among the women ‘politicals’ took no visible role in upholding the prison commune but rather lived in semi-isolation as an invalid throughout her eleven years in the Nerchinsk complex. Suffering from tuberculosis, Spiridonova, who had anticipated a martyr’s death on the scaffold, seemingly succumbed to the martyrdom of chronic illness. Yet the fall of the tsarist autocracy in February 1917 did not just liberate Spiridonova from penal servitude but simultaneously restored her health, her energy and her drive to engage in radical politics. Her pattern of revolutionary behaviour thus alternated between active and passive self-sacrifice, the tuberculosis that enhanced her legend of martyrdom apparently waxing and waning according to the degree of her personal freedom.

EXPERIMENTING WITH HUMANS AND ANIMALS: From Aristotle to CRISPR, second edition by Anita Guerrini. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. viii + 208 pages. Paperback; $28.95. ISBN: 9781421444055. *There has been a haunting thought ever since I began to use live mammals for my research in neurophysiology: "Will my descendants accuse me of cruelty towards animals as much as we do to the scientists under the Nazis?" A number of neurophysiologists have been threatened and attacked to stop their research, and, as a consequence, there are few neurophysiologists left using rhesus monkeys along the West coastline of the US and Canada. Research with rats is increasingly of concern to some, and mice might be the next subject of attention. Research staff and students, who are required to remain on budget with their projects, are put under increasing pressure and stress in order to take better care of their laboratory animals without receiving compensation or support. In the meantime, almost nobody seems to care to know how many animals were sacrificed to develop the celebrated COVID-19 vaccines. Are we, biomedical researchers, ever going to have a resolution to this ethical tension around us? Are we going to be viewed by future historians as the heroes of science--or as abusers of living creatures? *Anita Guerrini's Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR does not answer the question. As the author states in the beginning of her book, her objective is to tell the history of "trial and error, prejudice and leaps of faith, clashing egos and budget battles," to help us evaluate "the value, and the values, of Western science," and to "influence the future." In other words, the purpose of the book is not to make ethical arguments or to appraise a certain aspect of historical development, such as the progress of ethical care for human and animal subjects. It is, rather, to reveal the reality that ethical views and sentiments have changed, collided, merged, and contradicted each other across time and political landscapes. *This text poses questions, implicitly and explicitly, to enable us to address some of the issues and challenges we are facing at present. A first question arises from the history of vivisection (chap. 1). Vivisection refers to experimenting with (mostly dissecting) live animals, and sometimes even humans. This appears for the first time in recorded history back in ancient Greece, meaning it was practiced for two millennia without anesthesia, a discovery not made until the eighteenth century. More strikingly, vivisection was done as part of "edutainment" shows in ancient times. Criticism of the practice was not necessarily about the cruelty but rather about the usefulness of the knowledge obtained from dying or dead animals. The rights or well-being of animals were not much of an issue in the ancient age as human dominion was a firmly held belief. Such an ethical view continued to be dominant until early Modernity (seventeenth-century Europe) when human and animal bodies alike were viewed as machines, and animal experimentation began to be accepted as a cardinal method for biomedical sciences (chap. 2). At that time, ethical concerns on the use of animals did arise, but the concern lay rather in the human virtues of kindness and compassion rather than the rights of animals. *Eighteenth-century Europe slipped into a new stage of biomedical science after Queen Mary II of England died of smallpox, from which experimentation with humans becomes central (chap. 3). Inoculation, adopted from the Eastern world with initial suspicions, was slowly gaining credibility through parents who were unwilling to put their children at the risk of falling ill to smallpox. The validation of its effectiveness eventually came about upon testing with the socially marginalized, including prisoners, orphans, patients, and slaves. Yet criticisms around the "science" of inoculation were not made for using the marginalized as test subjects but rather for superseding God's authority to cause one to be ill or healed. While an increasing number of animal experiments were conducted routinely, and mathematical descriptions of the body became of greater interest to scientists, the emerging utilitarian ethics began to awaken Europeans, especially the British, to the suffering of animals. While elevated sensitivity to animal suffering led to "antivivisection" movements in England, experimental medicine and physiology were established as scientific fields. During this period nation-states also began to be involved in science. This was also the time when anesthesia was discovered, and pain perception became an important topic in physiology. Eventually, common beliefs about racial or sexual differences in pain perception were also tested, by experimenting with women and black slaves. *In the late nineteenth century, animal experimentation made a strong comeback as the germ theory of disease was solidly validated by scientists such as Pasteur, Koch, and Ehrlich (chap. 5). As scientists began to conquer many diseases such as anthrax, rabies, syphilis, and tuberculosis, the victory of science quenched the antivivisectionist movement. A number of animals, including rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys, were used to test theories, vaccines, and drugs during this period. At the same time, human experimentation begins to be regulated by states, but the regulation was so elementary that practices were allowed that would not be tolerated in our time. Concerns with animal experimentation reemerged in the twentieth century when polio research, strongly advocated by Franklin Roosevelt, a victim of polio himself, claimed a striking number of rhesus monkey lives (chap. 6). As an example, in the 1950s, the United States imported from India 200,000 rhesus monkeys per year for polio research. Despite the polio vaccine's success, primate research appalled the public, especially when behavioral research on primates revealed the emotional depth and social intelligence of these animals. Animals came to be seen no longer just as machines, but as our cousins who, like us, have consciousness. *The last chapter begins by depicting the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal of 1946, which led to the first written set of guidelines for human experimentation. Up until this time, there had been little consensus or regulation in using humans for experiments, let alone with the requirement that they must be mentally competent, uncoerced, and fully aware of possible consequences. It is hence not surprising that scientists under the Nazis defended themselves against charges of abuse and euthanasia of human subjects by paralleling their conduct with the practices of contemporary American scientists. American practice was exemplified by the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, conducted from the 1930s to the 1970s, in which the United States Public Health Service left four hundred black syphilis-infected males untreated, without telling them that their treatment had been stopped, in order to study the natural development of untreated syphilis. More than one hundred died as a result. Inconsistency in research ethics can also be found in the case of Japanese scientists, who, in contrast to Germans, were pardoned for their research conduct during World War II in return for providing information to the United States. Nonetheless, through the twentieth century until today, the level of public awareness and national regulations on the use of animal and human subjects has been progressively elevated. Yet, accelerated advances in research technology, including the latest breakthrough of gene editing, and expansion of research fields, continue to add complexity to ethical discourses. *I was impressed by Guerrini's vast knowledge of the historical development of biomedical science, including the events that matter to ethical issues around use of animal and human subjects in research. At the same time, she manages to make the book concise. While the book concerns the ethics of animal and human experimentation, it is certainly not an ethics or philosophy book but rather a story book. That is, while the book raises ethical questions in an unbiased manner, the chronological organization of this story does not conveniently lend itself to efforts to systematically examine or establish ethical principles on these matters. Nonetheless, a deeper understanding of the historical background to the different perspectives encountered in these stories enables one to make more-informed assessments of present-day perspectives. The book can be particularly helpful for those who do not have a biomedical background but wish to engage in contemporary ethical discourses, as well as for those who have rarely thought about the issues at all, often under the assumption that science has justly treated human or animal subjects. Finally, reading these accounts from ancient to contemporary times will certainly help one realize that what is the norm today was not necessarily the norm in the past, nor will it be in the future. Therefore, scientists like me need to humbly accept that we will someday be judged; I believe this knowledge will help us use our best conscience in the present. *Reviewed by Kuwook Cha, Postdoctoral researcher in Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4.

During Hurricane Katrina, which struck the US Gulf Coast in August 2005, thousands of men, women and children were abandoned in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP), the New Orleans jail. As the floodwaters rose in the OPP buildings, prisoners were trapped for days in locked cells without food, some standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests, while guards left their posts. Predominantly poor African-American pre-trial detainees, held on minor charges, such as failure to pay court fees, the prisoners were eventually evacuated to various receiving facilities around the state of Louisiana, only to face systematic racial abuse, assaults and further brutality. The experiences of the OPP prisoners lay bare the routine injustices that permeate a system of incarceration that is effectively run as a profitmaking concern.