>From the Vancouver Sun, October 3rd, 2001
We, and this "we" is really problematic. If we in the
West are all Americans now, what are Third World
women and Aboriginal women to do? If Canadians are
Americans now, what are women of colour to do in
this country? And I'm open to suggestions for
changing this title, but I thought I would stick with it
as a working title for getting my ideas together for
making this presentation this morning.
I'm very glad that the conference opened with Tina
(Tina Beads, of the Vancouver Rape Relief Women's
Shelter) and I'm very glad for the comments that she
made, but I want to say also, just (to) add to Tina's
words here, that living (in) a period of escalating global
interaction now on every front, on every level. And we
have to recognize that this level and this particular
phase of globalization is rooted in all forms of
globalization in the colonization of Aboriginal peoples
and Third World people all over the world. This is the
basis. And so globalization continues to remain
rooted in that colonization, and I think, recognize that
there will be no social justice, no anti-racism, no
feminist emancipation, no liberation of any kind for
anybody on this continent unless Aboriginal people
demand for self-determination.
The second point I want to make is that the global
order that we live in, there are profound injustices in
this global order. Profound injustices. Third World
women...I want to say for decades, but I'm going to
say for centuries, have been making the point that
there can be no women's emancipation, in fact no
liberation of any kind for women, will be successful
unless it seeks to transform the fundamental divide
between the north and south, between Third World
people and those in the West who are now calling
themselves Americans. That there will be no
emancipation for women anywhere on this planet until
the Western domination of this planet is ended.
Love thy neighbour. Love thy neighbour, we need to
heed those words. Especially as all of us are being
hoarded into the possibility of a massive war at
the...of the United States. We need to hear those
words even more clearly today. Today in the world the
United States is the most dangerous and most
powerful global force unleashing prolific levels of
violence all over the world.
From Chile to El Salvador, to Nicaragua to Iraq, the
path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood. We
have seen, and all of us have seen, felt, the dramatic
pain of watching those attacks and trying to grasp the
fact of the number of people who died. We feel the
pain of that every day we have bee watching it on
television. But do we feel any pain for the victims of
U.S. aggression? 200,000 people killed only in the
initial war on Iraq. That bombing of Iraq for 10 years
now. Do we feel the pain of all the children in Iraq who
are dying from the sanctions imposed by the United
States? Do we feel that pain on an every-day level?
Share it with our families and communities and talk
about it on every platform that is available to us? Do
we feel the pain of Palestinians who now for 50 years
have been living in refugee camps? U.S. foreign policy
is soaked in blood. And other countries in the West,
including shamefully, Canada, cannot line up fast
enough behind it. All want to sign up now as
Americans and I think it is the responsibility of the
women's movement to stop that, to fight against it.
These policies are hell-bent on the West maintaining
its control over the world's resources. At whatever
cost to the people...Pursuing American corporate
interest should not be Canada's national interest. This
new fight, this new war against terrorism, that is being
launched is very old. And it is a very old fight of the
West against the rest. Consider the language which
is being used...
Calling the perpetrators evil-doers, irrational, calling
them the forces of darkness, uncivilized, intent on
destroying civilization, intent on destroying
democracy...Every person of colour, and I would want
to say every Aboriginal person, will recognize this
language. The language of us letting civilization
representing the forces of darkness, this language is
rooted in the colonial legacy. It was used to justify our
colonization by Europe...
We were colonized in the name of the West bringing
civilization, democracy, bringing freedom to us. All of
us recognize who is being talked about when that
language is used. The terms crusade, infinite justice,
cowboy imagery of dead or alive posters, we all know
what they mean. The West, people in the West also
recognize who this fight is against. Cries heard all
over the Western world, we are all Americans now.
People who are saying that recognize who the fight is
against. People who are attacking Muslims, any
person of colour who looks like they could be from the
Middle East, without distinguishing, recognizing who
this fight is against. These are not just slips of the
tongue that Bush quickly tries to reject. These are not
slips of the tongue. They reveal a thinking, a mindset.
And it is horrific to think that the fate of the world
hangs on the plans of people like that. This will be a
big mistake for us if we just accept that these are
slips of mind, just slips of the tongue. They're not.
They reveal the thinking, and the thinking is based on
dominating the rest of the world in the name of
bringing freedom and civilization to it.
If we look also at the people who are being targeted
for attack. A Sikh man killed? Reports of a Cherokee
woman in the United States having been killed?
Pakistan is attacked. Hindu temples attacked.
Muslim mosques attacked regardless of where the
Muslims come from. These people also recognize
who this fight is against. And it is due to the strength
of anti-racist organizing that Bush has been forced to
visit mosques, that our
prime minister has been forced also to visit mosques
and say, no there shouldn't be this kind of attack. We
should recognize that it is the strength of anti-racist
organizing is forcing them to make those remarks.
But even...but even as they visit mosques, and even
as they make these conciliatory noises, they are
talking out of both sides of the mouth because they
are officially sanctioning racial profiling at the borders,
in the United States, for entrance into training
schools, for learning to become pilots, at every step of
the way. On an airplane, who is suspicious, who is
not? Racial profiling is being officially sanctioned and
officially introduced. In Canada we know that
guidelines, the Globe and Mail leaked, the guidelines
were given to immigration officers at the border, who
to step up security watch is on.
So on the one hand, they say no, it's not all Muslims,
on the other hand they say yes, we are going to use
racial profiling because it is reasonable. So we have
to see how they are perpetrating the racism against
people of colour, at the same time that they claim to
be speaking out against it. And these are the
conditions, the conditions of racial profiling. These are
the conditions within which children are being bullied
and targeted in schools, women are being chased in
parking lots and shopping malls, we are being
scrutinized as we even come to conferences like that,
extra scrutiny, you can feel the coldness when you
enter the airport. I was quite amazed. I have been
travelling in this country for 10 years, and I have never
had the experience that I had flying down here for this
conference. All of us feel it. So this racial profiling has
to be stopped.
Events of the last two weeks also show that the
American people that Bush is trying to invoke,
whoever they are these American people, just like we
contest notions of who the Canadian people are, we
have to recognize that there are other voices in the
United States as well, contesting that. But the
people, the American nation that Bush is invoking, is
a people which is bloodthirsty, vengeful, and calling
for blood. They don't care whose blood it is, they want
blood. And that has to be confronted. We cannot
keep calling this an understandable response. We
cannot say yes, we understand that this is how
people would respond because of the attacks. We
have to stop condoning it and creating a climate of
acceptability for this kind of response. We have to call
it for what it is: Bloodthirsty vengeance.
And people in the United State, we have seen peace
marches all over this weekend, they also are
contesting this. But Bush is (the) definition of the
American nation and the American people need to be
challenged here. How can he keep calling them a
democracy? How can we keep saying that his
response is understandable after Bush of all people,
who stole the election, how can we ever accept that
this is democracy?
Canada's approach has been mixed, it has said yes,
we will support the United States but with caution. It
will be a cautionary support. We want to know what
the actions will be before we sign on and we want to
know this has been Canada's approach. And I have to
say we have to go much further. Canada has to say
we reject U.S. policy in the Middle East. We do not
support it.
And it's really interesting to hear all this talk about
Afghani women. Those of us who have been colonized
know what this saving means. For a long time now,
Afghani women, and the struggles they were engaged
in, were known here in the West. Afghani women
became almost the poster child for women's
oppression in the Third World. And, rightfully so,
many of us were in solidarity. Afghani women of that
time were fighting against and struggling against the
Taliban. They were condemning their particular
interpretation of Islam. Afghani women, Afghanistan
women's organizations were on the front line of this.
But what (did) they become in the West? In the West
they became nothing but poor victims of this bad, bad
religion, and of (these) backward, backward men. The
same old colonial construction. They were in the
frontline, we did not take the lead from them then,
where we could see them more as victims, only
worthy of our pity and today, even in the United
States, people are ready to bomb those women,
seeing them as nothing more than collateral damage.
You see how quickly the world can change. And I say
that we take the lead from Afghani women. They
fought back against the Taliban, and when they were
fighting back they said that it is the United States
putting this regime in power. That's what they were
saying. They were saying, look at U.S. foreign policy!
They were trying to draw out attention to who was
responsible for this state of affairs, to who was
actually supporting regimes as women all over the
Middle East had been doing. Sorry, just two more
minutes and I'll be done. So I say we take the lead
from them and even if there is no American bombing
of Afghanistan, which is what all of us should be
working right now to do, is to stop any move to bomb
Afghanistan, even if there is no bombing of
Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
people have already been displaced, fleeing the threat
of war--you see the power of America here, right? One
word in Washington and millions of people are forced
to flee their houses, their communities, right? So,
even if there is no bombing, we have to bear in mind
how many women's lives have already been disrupted,
destroyed, and will take generations for them to put
back together again.
Inevitably, and very depressing in Canada is of
course, turning to the enemy within--immigrants and
refugees, right? Scapegoating of refugees, tighter
immigration laws, all the right-wing forces in this
community, in this country, calling for that kind of
approach. This is depressing for women of colour,
immigrant and refugee women, anything happens,
even if George Bush was to get a cold, we know
somehow it'll be the fault of immigrants and refugees
in Canada, and our quote-unquote lax border policies.
So I'm not going to say much about it, but I just want
to expose you to how, this...continues to be
resurrected anytime over anything in the world.
In terms of any kind of military action, Angela Davis
(an American activist) asked in the '70s, she said, "do
you think the men who are going to fight in Vietnam,
who are going to kill Vietnamese women and children,
who are raping Vietnamese women, do you think they
will come home and there will be no effect of all of
this? One women in the United States?" she was
asking this in the 70s.
That question is relevant today. All these fighters that
are going to be sent there, we think there will be no
effect? For our women, when they come back here?
So I think that that is something that we need to think
about, as we talk about the responses, as we talk
this kind of jingoistic military-ism. And recognize that,
as the most heinous form of patriarchal, racist
violence that we're seeing on the globe today. The
women's movement, we have to stand up to this.
There is no option. There's no option for us, we have
to fight back against this militarization, we have to
break the support that is being built in our countries
for this kind of attack. We have to recognize that the
fight is for control of the vast oil and gas resources in
central Asia, for which Afghanistan is a key, strategic
point!
There's nothing new about this, this is more of the
same that we have been now fighting for so many
decades. And we want to recognize, we have to
recognize that the calls that are coming from
progressive groups in the Third World, and in their
supporters, in their allies, in the rest of the world, the
three key demands they are asking for: End the
bombing of Iraq, lift the sanctions on Iraq, who in this
room will not support that demand? Resolve the
Palestinian question, that's the second one. And
remove the American military bases, anywhere in the
Middle East. Who will not demand, support these
demands?
We have to recognize that these demands are rooted
in anti-imperialist struggle and that we have to support
these demands. We need to end the racist
colonization of Aboriginal peoples in this country,
certainly, but we need to make common calls with
women across the world who are fighting to do this.
Only then can we talk about anti-racist, feminist
politics, only then can we talk about international
solidarity in women's movements across the world.
And in closing, just one word--the lesson we have
learned, and the lesson that our politicians should
have learned, is that you cannot slaughter people into
submission, for 500 years they have tried that
strategy, the West for 500 years has believed that it
can slaughter people into submission and it has not
been able to do so, and it will not able to do so this
time either.
Thank you very much.
Prof. Sunera Thobani
Transcript provided by the Cable Public Affairs
Channel.
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