FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 25, 2011
Reference: Raquel Redondiez, Chairperson, GABRIELA-USA
Email: chair@gabusa.org
GABRIELA-USA MARKS IDEVAW EXPOSING
ROLE OF THE 1% IN VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Filipina Women’s Alliance IDEVAW Video Slideshow: http://tinyurl.com/gabIDEVAW2011
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoMpZFFLHL8&w=480&h=360]
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — GABRIELA-USA, an alliance of organizations representing Filipino women across the U.S. commemorate Nov 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (IDEVAW) with a slideshow of their members and supporters exposing the role of the 1% in perpetrating violence against women throughout the world.
While domestic violence and rape are what comes to mind as examples of violence against women, GABRIELA-USA is choosing to highlight economic injustice, as well as political repression and human rights violations as more pervasive and systematic forms of violence suffered by women throughout the world. “As women of the 99%, we hold the 1% accountable for the culture and system of violence they perpetrate on women around the world. Hunger and poverty, joblessness and exploitation, evictions, forced migration, lack of housing and healthcare are all part of imperialist plunder and war on the 99% by the 1%,” said Raquel Redondiez, Chairperson for GABRIELA-USA.
As the 99% all over the world are rising up, political repression and human rights violations also continue to rise. This is highlighted in events that occurred just last week when University of California, Davis Police brutally pepper-sprayed student activists of Occupy Davis. Earlier this week was also the 2-year anniversary of the election-related Ampatuan Massacre which took the lives of 57 people, 22 of them women, in the Philippines. To this day, family members of the victims continue to seek justice and recently filed suit against former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for arming and supporting the Ampatuans. “Political repression, human rights violations, and economic injustice continue to be the most pervasive and brutal forms of violence against women. This violence is systematically carried out by the 1% through their private armies, public police, and other state machinery to protect the economic interests of the few, leaving the majority of the world’s population with fewer resources to survive on,” concludes Redondiez.
Women’s activists have marked November 25 as a day to fight violence against women since 1981. On December 17, 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women by Resolution 54/134. The date came from the brutal assassination in 1960 of the three Mirabal sisters, politicalm activists in the Dominican Republic, on orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.