Nairobi: Women debate
International Viewpoint 16 September 1985 three hours to put up a really big slogan.
Q. Did the PRT candidates suffer any attacks because of their participation in the election campaign?
A. Yes. A few days after the list of candidates became public, the repression started. Our candidate from the number one district of Mexico City is secretary of a section of the public employees' union. The national
WOMEN leadership demanded the resignation of the comrade. After a huge defence campaign, we managed to get it agreed
'WOMEN SHOULD not be discussing politics but only the issues he could complete his term of that specifically related to women"! This was the slogan of the US delegates office.
Since then there have been and their allies in the run up to and during the third and final UN trade union elections in this more particular sector and we have strength-
Decade for Women Conference and Non-Governmental Organisation ened our position in the union leader-
(NGO) Forum held in Nairobi, Kenya this summer. The theme of the ship.
Decade was 'Equality, Development and Peace' - but it was
The most serious incident occured
'development issues' that the US was particularly enthusiastic to the day before the vote when an independent candidate on the PRT list promote. While government representatives (women and men) met in Mexico City was assassinated by in the prestigious Kenyatta Conference Centre to reach agreement five or six 'unknown' assailants who on the final decade document entitled Forward Looking Strategies', attacked him in a popular quarter of the town. We are certain he was the alternative Forum at the Nairobi University was an enormous killed because he was a candidate.
gathering of 14,000 women (and some men) from all over the world.
It is not unusual for activists in the
The author of the following article was part of the delegation from town or in the countryside to be the London-based SWAPO Women's Solidarity Campaign.
killed like that without anyone claiming responsibility.
Q. What was the attitude of the
PRT with regard to the rest of the
Mexican left?
The PRT proposed a common front for the elections to the rest
This front would have included the PRT, the PSUM the PMT and all the left which was not legalised.
fundamentally change Mexican life because it would an end to the traditional reaction of an important section of workers who, in order to vote against the PRI, vote for the other large bourgeois party,
But the two other parties of the left were not in agreement with our proposal. They preferred to go in the elections. Despite this, the left got a lot of votes. For has 18 million inhabitants, the PSUM, the PRT and the PMT together got almost 18% in some areas and 21% to
29% in others. In several areas of the town the PRT got 5.5% of the votes, the PMT 6.5% and the PSUM, 9%.
Un average the PRI got 3.5% of the rotes in Mexico City, that is nearly votes. The significance of success, which occurred despite the divisions, has now been recognised the three parties and the leading bodies of each have declared that if get members elected to parlia-
ROS YOUNG
The participants in the Forum came from national liberation organisations Liberation Organisation (PLO), the
(ANC), the Front for the National and Socialist Liberation of the Kanaks (FLNKS), and East Timor; from Black women's groups, refugee and migrant indigenous peoples organisations, aid and development agencies, peace movements, lesbian groups and Christian organisations. This was a forum for meeting together, discussing, exchanging ideas, learning and making contacts for future work. It was not a formal conference and had no official relationship with the nearby UN meeting, that government delegates were laboriously plodding through. Nevertheless, the Forum was the most important of the two in that many of the women there were representing grass roots organisations and were who were fighting for their rights as women, as Black people, as the working class and oppressed. And by meeting people who were in struggle, you could really find out what was happening internationally.
Attempts had been made to avoid holding such a forum feared (quite rightly as it turned out) that it could become a platform for attacking US policies. Having failed to stop it going ahead, organisational sabotage became the day to ensure that minimum numbers register and raise funds Kenya. The US had instructed the space allocations to keep the number of potential troublemakers down and exercise strict controls on entry delegates quite a bit of trouble getting into the country. Other women stopped from leaving their own countries, such as Palestinian women from the Israeli occupied territories who were refused travel permits and are now under house arrest. Despite this, women mobilised to get to Kenya in the last few months, having heard that the US was trying to hijack the Women's Council in Angola urged their supporters to attend because the US was planning to send around 2,000 delegates and participants to stop important political issues such as the struggle for Namibian independence being discussed. At the opening ceremony, the organisers admitted that they were shocked at the response. Up to the official closing date for registration in April, only women had officially registered! Other
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their liberation
International Viewpoint 16 September 1985 organisational methods were employed to limit and isolate the debates on apartheid in Namibia and South Africa and Zionism in particular. Over 1,000 workshops took place and it would be interesting to know what priorities were in operation in the allocation of rooms and times -many important workshops were given tiny rooms ...
Without a doubt, the main focus of whether you 'women's issues' as separate from the imperialism, apartheid and racism, against colonialism and neocolonialism, that is 'politics. Women from the Pacific talked about the years of nuclear war that have been inflicted on their people by western governments testing the latest bombs; the Kanak people are fighting for indepfrom French colonialism, Some of the delegates at the Nairobi Forum (DR) the Aboriginal peoples of Australia use of the heav to We the VII and New Zealand for self-determin- around the question of Palestine graphed everyone. An Iranian male ation, basic human rights and for their that the most heated debates took tried to physically attack an Iranian place. To gain credibility, the Zionists woman who was speaking out against exploitation. (from Israel, the US and Europe women from Nicaragua spoke of their support and defence is the national liberation movement tion but that due to their marginalisa- of the Jews' and that any criticism silence women tion in the revolution and the specific of Israel (in relation to Palestine and discrimination they face not being Israel's counter-revolutionary activities recognised sooner by the Sandinistas internationally) to antisemitism. They enlisted Black the US has been able to cynically recruit their people over to the side women from the US to say that the of the counter-revolutionary forces. of Jews was the same as The Guatemalan Junta, with technical oppression against Blacks, and expertise from Israel, are back. practising wholesale genocide on the indigenous Indians (who are 80% of women, others refused to acknowledge population!) in an attempt to the existence of Palestinians. It was expropriate the land for use by the clear that the terms of the multinational companies. had not moved forward since the last
Women face additional oppression Forum in 1975, but support for the armed throughout the "Third World' in the films for attacks on their fundamental right increased since the 1982 Israeli invasto control their own bodies. Widespread experimentation, in particular contraceptive Heavy security mass forced sterilisations are taking place under the cover of medical research and population control. An important aspect of the Forum
The triumph of the Forum was that was the heavy presence of security Kenya anyway. at last at an international women's forces. Armed unif meeting, the liberation movements, patrolled the campus and dormitories Black women, women from all over where Forum delegates were staying; the Third World were in the majority outside every hotel and Forum venue and security checks were made and police workshops women hung around outside many of the to workshops. Plain ck couldn't be silenced. One SWAPO olice were always present woman reported that in a workshop the 'political' workshops looking very on prisons they wouldn't let her talk conspicuous in suits with small triabout experiences in angle badges attached. After women African prisons gave contributions in open debates women running the workshop wanted in the Peace Tent for example, they a discussion on social work within would be pounced on and prisons, rather than confronting why 'what's your name, that was an interprisons exist in the first place and who esting speech, do you have it written down, and where are you from'! In the Is being imprisoned - Black people, the working class, political prisoners. West Papuan workshop Indonesian
As the Forum progressed, it was security police got inside and photo26 all the insisting violi righ bot of i won
( Phil jing and tion Con pris Hei per and and cou agai tort It the
merational Viewpoint 16 September 1985 of Langata women's prison, said to be worse than any of them men's prisons; the forced sterilisations of women in the rural areas and the widespread use of depo-provera; the murders of prostitutes by US servicemen from the US naval base in Mombassa. The heavy political repression has led to vicious attacks on students at the university in recent months (17 died and over one hundred injured as a result of police attacks in February). There is the continuing imprisonment of university students and the lecturer Maina wa Kinyatti and while the Forum was in progress, 12 of the detained 1982 Coup leaders were hanged in prison...
The main lesson learnt in Nairobi is that our struggle for women's liberation cannot be separated nor seen in isolation from the class and race struggle. A longer version of this article is also due for publication in the journal Race and Class. in Asia and women are the worst victims of the same. They have not