As a consequence of the international blockade of the Gaza strip, underground contraband with Egypt has grown into a real industry. The traffic employs an army of workers, who are ready to put their lives at risk in exchange for a few banknotes.

(Translated from French)

Rafah, Benjamin Barthe, special correspondent

On this August evening, the heat is muggy and intoxicating. A makeshift streetlight sheds a feeble halo of light on an alley of the Shaburah refugee camp, in Rafah, Gaza’s dead end. Hossam and Mohamed Kak, two twenty year-old cousins, are hurrying toward the Egyptian border. After many penniless years, these two young fathers have struck it rich. For the past week, they have been working in the contraband tunnels dug beneath the coils of barbwire and the brick wall that separate the narrow strip of Palestinian territory from the Egyptian Sinai. This activity lures an army of workers, all of which have lost everything because of the blockade of Gaza. They are ready to risk it all in exchange for a few banknotes. “We hadn’t received our salary yet, says Mohamed, a hefty fellow with bulgy cheeks. But the owner of the tunnel had promised to give us a share of the benefit from that night’s load. At $100 per night, we were going to make a nice amount of money.”

On the premises, the Kak cousins meet two colleagues, Youssef, 17 years old, and Mahmoud, 43 years old. Their task is to carry hundreds of bags to the surface. The bags are filled with food destined to the grocers of Rafah, who are anxious to fill up their shelves, as it is the eve of Ramadan. “I asked the boss whether he had checked if the Egyptians had gassed the tunnels, as they had been doing more and more often, claims Mohamed. He answered me that he had gone down there for a smoke and that everything was OK.” Mohamed is the first to enter the pipe. Hossam and the two others follow him, with a ten meters interval between each of them. After twenty minutes in the tunnel, they sense a strange smell. Mohamed yells “gas”, but it is too late. His three companions are paralyzed. He runs back a few meters, and collapses. The rescuers retrieve four victims, out of which he is the only one to be revived. “Thank God he was saved”, says his father, Abdallah. The scene takes place three weeks later, and Abdallah is sitting in the courtyard of his little family house. “The others were less lucky. But I curse the tunnel owners who take advantage of our misery. And I also curse the Egyptian government, which kills our children and doesn’t send out warnings. If they want to stop contraband, let them open the Rafah border.”

“Anfaq”, the tunnels in Arabic… The word fires the imagination of all of Rafah’s damned, and it fuels the legend of this frontier city. Ever since the Israeli army’s withdrawal from Sinai in 1982, Rafah has been divided in two parts, one Egyptian, and the other Palestinian. The first tunnels appear at that time, as if to mock History’s diktats. A conduit dug into the sand, a pulley system, a basin to store the merchandise, and that does the trick. The border zone is so narrow, that a length of a few hundred meters is enough to reach the other side. The entrances to the tunnels are hidden beneath rugs on the ground floors of refugees’ shanties. As the trafficking exclusively involves everyday consumer goods, the Israeli soldiers who are stationed in the Gaza strip are inclined to be less vigilant. Thanks to cigarettes, soap, cheese and clothes, a few cunning Bedouins become rich.

It all gets more complicated when the second Intifada begins in October 2000. The big-wigs of the Palestinian security services confiscate some tunnels to improve their militia’s arsenals. In turn, the armed groups, especially Hamas, follow suit. Underground, Rafah’s transforms itself into a giant gun fair, with Kalachnikovs, antitank rockets, explosives, and even, according to the Israeli secret services, a few Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Tsahal bulldozes hundreds of houses along the border, to no avail. In the summer of 2005, contraband increases all the more that the Israeli army withdraws from the Gaza strip, and, as a consequence, from the Philadelphia corridor that runs along the border. When Hamas seizes power in June 2007, Gaza is quarantined, and the trafficking gains even more momentum.

The number of active tunnels is currently estimated to be approximately 300. The border being 12 kilometers long, one finds a new entrance every 40 meters. The amateurism of the early days has been replaced by a semi-clandestine industry, which yields over $10 million in taxes, collected by Hamas. “If ever there is an earthquake in the area, it will be a disaster, because Rafah’s subsoil is full of holes”, says Abu Mohamed, a grocer who gets all his supplies from the traffickers. “It is the Palestinians’ response to those who want to strangle them”, he adds, standing on the sidewalk in front of his street stall, named Al-Attabeh, after Place Atabeh, in Cairo, where the Egyptian black market flourishes.

At the beginning of the summer, the United States and Israel voiced concern over breaches to the embargo and pressed Egypt to intensify its fight. In a few weeks, with the help of specialized American engineers, approximately thirty tunnels were destroyed. They were dynamited, or sealed with concrete, or else flooded by diverting existing water pipes. Officially, Egypt denies the use of gases and blames fumes that would emanate from the gasoline cans that are transported by the traffickers. Since the beginning of the year, about thirty Palestinians, often young, have died underground in the Rafah area, either by accident, or because of Egyptian repression.

Mohamed, 18 years-old, looks rangy and juvenile, but his eyes are full of arrogance. He is one of these adolescent daredevils who are obsessed with the tunnels. His uncle, a high-profile trafficker, introduced him to the job a few months before the Israeli withdrawal. “In those days, we always worked at night, because we were afraid of army patrols. We had to be perfectly silent; we didn’t even have the right to cough. Nowadays, nobody hides anymore. There are tunnels all over the place”. About two hundred meters from an Egyptian watchtower, a house in ruins shelters Mohamed’s own tunnel. It opens onto a twenty-five meters deep metal conduit. A cradle, which is attached to a portico and activated by an electric winch, takes you all the way down. The pipe is 180 centimeters high and about 400 meters long, and it is built for comfort. It is equipped with lamps, but also a network of intercoms to communicate with the surface. A compressor ensures adequate oxygenation. “When I started to dig, I was afraid, says Mohamed. Now, it has become as natural as taking a shower. With a good team, it takes me just a month to open a new pipe.”

Over the last three years, the list of products that the young tunneller has imported into Rafah is longer than any supermarket’s inventory. Bottles of oil, gasoline cans, wheels of Gouda cheese, scooters, computers, bras, cell phones, car tires, sandals, cigarette cartons, Viagra tablets… His most surprising deal involved a batch of lion cubs and macaques for the Gaza zoo! Or maybe these “four Russian women” who wanted to be reunited with their Palestinian husbands, whom they had met during their medical studies in Moscow… “I have the best pay in the whole Gaza strip, mutters Mohamed, like a satiated professional. At the beginning of the year, at the peak of the cigarette shortage, I made $35 000 in a month. Back then, there were less active tunnels and you could earn up to $1000 a night. With the money, I bought a small piece of land where I will build my house.”

Abdel-Hadi Abu Amra perfectly knows these mavericks that have grown up too fast. He teaches English in a middle school which is built alongside the border. He believes that around one fourth of the institution’s 300 students work in the tunnels. He notices that they are often absent, that they look tired, and that they flaunt the most recent cell phones during recess time. “It’s like drugs, declares the teacher. Once they have tried the tunnels, they can’t stop anymore. I try to talk them out of it, but it’s useless. They answer that their father hasn’t earned a penny in years, and that their only option is to become criminals.” Mohamed the tunneller agrees and smiles knowingly. Every night, he goes up to his room and pretends to go to bed. When he hears his father’s snores, he gets out of bed and opens the window. Then he sinks into the night. The border, the land of imagination, has cast a spell on him.

Six teenage girls sit on a bench in front of a house built with wooden scraps and corrugated roofing sheets at Abossey Okai, a suburb of Accra. From time to time, one of them runs her fingers through her hair and bites her finger nails. Another yawns, followed by a deep sigh from the other. But their boredom would soon be eased.

They have already been sold to pimps in Europe. Next week Wednesday they would be gone, ‘smuggled’ through Ghana’s Kotoka International Airport (KIA) to their pimps.

The Crusading Guide’s eight month-long investigations have uncovered a complex web of thriving human trafficking business in Ghana where the ‘dons’ lure Nigerian, Togolese, Beninois and Burkinabe young girls and sell them into prostitution in Europe after hiding them at secret locations in the Greater Accra and Central Regions of Ghana.

The places where they are hidden include McCarthy Hill, Abossey Okai Zongo, Bethlehem City, Adom City, Budumburam Refugee Camp, Big Apple among others. The girls, mostly minors, are exploited in different ways and employed to perpetrate criminal activities in Europe. They are also often used in pornographic movie acting.

The trafficking of these girls in Ghana has always been shrouded in secrecy for the past years. It however, recently took a dramatic twist as profits soared. The business has been institutionalized as the ‘dons’ now rent apartments and camps to hide the many girls, taking advantage of the lack of enforcement of anti-human trafficking laws.

“In the last few months we have trafficked over one thousand girls mainly from Nigeria and Benin through our Ghana route; the market is very good, the officers understand the business”, said Baba, one of the traffickers who was talking to this reporter disguised as a rich businessman wanting to send some girls to Italy.

Most of these girls end up dying while serving their ‘mamas’ (Queen Pimps). Before they set off for the trip, they are made to swear an oath of secrecy in a shrine, where they promise never to reveal their mission to anyone.

Luisa, (not her real name) one of the many girls who was trafficked to Italy through Ghana, told this reporter in Benin City, Nigeria, that most of her friends died in Italy as they engaged in this sex trade.

“I used to sleep with over 25 men a day. When I became fed up and decided not to work, my madam in Turin (one of her three bases in Italy) beat me up with a belt. She would also starve me and threaten me with deportation.

A lot of my friends died at the Rome and Milan bases where we used to rotate. We went through a lot of mental torture and physical abuse right from Ghana. The traffickers were sleeping with us at their whim. I was raped several times and have undergone several crude abortions”, she continued. At this stage, Luisa then ran her hand through her hair, bowed and showed a big scar in her scalp.

“It was stitched in Milan after Cardozo, one of the foolish men who used to violently rape me, hit my head with a broken bottle’, she narrated at her house in Benin City. Luisa also disclosed how Ghanaian security officials helped her group of 16 girls to cross to Spain, France and Italy.

Luisa’s indictment of Ghanaian security officials is supported by evidence available to the Crusading Guide. Investigations indicated that some security officials at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) had been doing brisk business by illegally charging fees to allow the trafficked girls to use the country’s airport as transit to their destinations in Europe to carry out their sex trade.

Orakwe Arinze, spokesman for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), told this reporter in his Abuja office, Nigeria, that his country was fighting to uproot human trafficking, adding that shelters had been built in the major States in Nigeria where victims are given support and also equipped with skills to move on in life.

Babandede, Director of Investigations for NAPTIP, maintained that his country’s security agencies were on a high alert to weed out traffickers, hence the prosecution of many of them in recent times. ‘We are breaking through their syndicate’, he added.

How some Ghanaian security officers help in the sale

At the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), some Ghanaian Immigration officers charge between 1500 and 1000 dollars per girl before they allow traffickers to carry their victims through.

Many of these officers are said to have enriched themselves through this business, which has been nicknamed ‘abacha’. This reporter has obtained video, audio, and still pictures of many immigration officials not only bargaining with him (reporter) on how much money to take, but also explaining how they share the money with some National Security personnel and Aviation Security Officials stationed at the airport.

This is a short transcript of what transpired between this reporter and two of the officers.

Immigration officer, Kotoka International Airport, Ghana, discussing a trip with six girls to France and the cost (with reporter disguised as trafficker).

Motion picture begins with reporter walking through the bush looking for an immigration official. A tree shows for a while then a hand interrupts the scene as the reporter walks along, billboards of Kotoka International Airport as well as Ghana’s National Flag is shown.

Sounds of vehicles and human voices are heard as the reporter keeps moving until he meets the immigration official. At exactly 6mins 23 sec of motion pictures, the conversation begins as follows:
Reporter: I called the boy; he said they are six so how can you reduce the price for us?

Official: But the six, all of them cannot go at the same time, today two, the next three.

Reporter: That’s why we are saying you have to beat the price down.

Official: If all of them go it will backfire.

Reporter: That’s why we are saying that you have to beat the price down. So, if they are six how much will you take?

Official: We are doing the thing individually, that’s why I’m saying all of them cannot go one day. If all of them go one day the thing will backfire, are you getting me? All of them would not go one day. So today two will go, the next day three will go.

Reporter: So what do you recommend, is it the Emirate Airline which is the best or?

Official: So far Emirates is the best so if they are ready the first batch can go next week Sunday because Sunday I will be for post-departure. But as for Saturday I would have said it should start on Saturday but Saturday, no Emirates. Emirates don’t fly on Saturdays.

Reporter: They will go on Sunday.

Official: Sunday, Monday that is next week, some people can go next week Sunday. Then the next two weeks, Monday.

Reporter: So beat the price down so that I can come and see you maybe on Monday. $1,500 is expensive.

Official: (Raises his voice). Do you know, do you know how much they take? We are even considering you and you say $1,500 is too much, so if it’s too much how much will you give me?

Reporter: Is $1,000, okay so that the six would be six thousand. I would just collect the money one time (two, two, two).

Officer: (looks into the skies) $6,000 (and then calculates). Okay, $1000 for each.

Another official surfaces
Reporter: Chairman, officer, Sir, well done

Official: Den na ekoso (Twi) meaning what is happening?

Reporter: No, I don’t hear. Am a Nigerian man. I wan see you, I use to fly Virgin Nigeria. My sisters want to fly. They want to go to Germany. (Sound is lost interminently). I want to ask can they go from here?

Official: Are you doubting me?

Reporter: As an officer I cannot doubt you.

Official: Me, if you can pay my money am asking I can carry the whole airport to your house. I can carry. Do you want the critical alarm in your house? Chale come on I can do that.

Reporter: I’ll bring it don’t worry.

Official: I shouldn’t worry. Why should I worry, you are coming.

Reporter: Give me your number.

Official: 0242901439.

Reporter: The name is?

Official: Sam.

Reporter: Sammy.

Official: You can call it anything, am Sam.

Reporter: You see we have someone who has been transporting them but the money is too much, we want to change.

Official: How much are they taking, $1000? And you think I will take less than that? I am taking $1500.

Reporter: (sound breaks) My problem is if the visa is genuine. Can you do it?

Official: What’s your problem? Do you have a problem, so come and show it me. Let’s start business.

Reporter: Thank you, okay.

Official: (As he walks away he asks for my name). What’s your name?

Reporter: Uche, I’ll call you.

Official: Don’t fear.

Meanwhile, the child protection, Specialist of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Ghana, Eric Appiah Okrah, in a telephone conversation congratulated The Crusading Guide newspaper on the story. He added that UNICEF would stand by the security agencies and government to prosecute offenders.

On his part, the Counter Trafficking Field Manager of the International Organisation for Migration, Eric Boakye Piasah, said that human trafficking needs to be combated in Ghana. “We have to nail the perpetrators and their collaborators and push them out of Ghana.

My outfit together with others are doing our part. The general public must join to combat this third lucrative crime in the world”.

Dossier on the queen pimps in Italy, Spain and France

While hanging out with the girls from one restaurant to the other and from one Club to the other as part of the investigations, our reporter came across a dossier of phone numbers belonging to both the traffickers and their accomplices. The dossier has been passed on to the various Missions in Ghana to help track the syndicate in the various countries.

TRAFFICKING SYNDICATE BUSTED

17 Girls Rescued In Sting Operation, Busted ‘Don’ Was In Bed With one of the Rescued Girls


At 5. 55 am yesterday a combined team of the Ghana Police Criminal Investigative Department (CID} and the “Crusading GUIDE” smashed one of the hottest human trafficking rings in Ghana, rescuing 17 girls who were on the verge of being sold into prostitution abroad. The girls are between the ages of 19 and 27 years.

The “Crusading GUIDE” after its initial investigations led the CID team to the hideout of one of the traffickers and the girls who were about to be trafficked. Thy were living together with the trafficker in a self contained house at Gbawe a surburb of Accra. One of the girls was found ‘warming’ the bed of the trafficker at the time of arrival, three others hide themselves under a mattress and five others were packed in one small room with light mattresses on the floor serving as their sleeping place.

Passports, birth certificates, passport pictures and other traveling documents were found in their possession. The CID took away these documents for further investigations.

An earlier operation at Abossey Okai, a suburb of Accra yielded similar result with the ‘don’ trafficker confessing that that they were engaged in trafficking the girls to Italy, Spain, France, United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Nine girls were picked up in one room during that operation; some evidence was also gathered when the office of the trafficker was searched by the police. Stella, one of the victims to be trafficked played a critical role in busting the syndicate.

THEIR OATH OF SECRECY TO THE "GODS" AND THE STING OPERATION

‘Stella’ (not her real name) who took this reporter under the name Alhaji Abdul Majeed as her fiancée in the eight-month long investigation helped to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the operations of the trafficking syndicate in Ghana. She frequented many restaurants and night clubs with this reporter.

It was on one of such freaky outings with her to Jokers Night Club (Labadi), one of the hottest night clubs in Accra, that she revealed to this reporter, under the influence of alcohol, the use of rituals by their pimp madam, to bind them to their commitment of working hard and paying for their expenses to Europe.

“We are made to swear in a shrine never to disclose our mission to anybody; we are told the curses will end up killing us or get us into the mental hospital’ if we say anything about the ‘business” Stella disclosed.

Out of a group of twenty girls, Stella had been left by her ‘Trolly’ (i.e. trafficker) to stay in Ghana for over a year. “Any time I tell him is my turn to go, he brushes the idea aside though he has already been payed 6000 euros for my traveling”, Stella revealed that night.

This reporter convinced her that being a big Alhaji that he is, he knew of a powerful Mallam who could undo the rituals and again work the minds of her ‘Trolly’ to take her to Spain. This she readily agreed to.

Stella was made to believe that a concoction would be prepared for her to pour at the office of the trafficker. When the concoction was finally prepared, the reporter went together with her to pour it at the trafficker’s office.

On the day of the sting operation this reporter was out there with Stella at Chic’n’ Liken restaurant when the police appeared. Stella without any hesitation helped in tracking the movement of the traffickers. Orake Arinze of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic In Persons (NAPTIP) said in an interview that victims of trafficking should be treated well and not as criminals. See page 2 for pictures of the operation. Please stay tuned for more.

17 SEX SLAVES RESCUED

Nigerian Govt. Intervenes And Takes The Girls Back Home For Counseling

In a swift reaction to save them, the Nigerian Government, after negotiations with the Ghana Police, has sent the 17 girls who were about to be trafficked into Europe for sex-trade, back to Nigeria for counseling.

This happened through the Nigerian High Commission in Ghana. Two buses were used in transporting the girls to Lagos where they were handed over to the Nigerian National Agency for the Prohibition in Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP).

Speaking in an interview with The Crusading GUIDE from their Abuja office base, the Spokesperson for NAPTIP, Mr. Orakwe Arinze, confirmed the safe arrival of the girls in Nigeria.

“The Nigerian government is grateful to the Ghana government and the entire Ghana Police Service for saving the lives of our 17 nationals. We are touched by your government efforts,” Mr. Arinze said in a telephone conversation.

“Again, we are so grateful to The Crusading GUIDE for its investigations that led to the rescuing of our citizens. They are now on their way to Abuja from Lagos. We are going to counsel them to understand the devastating effects of human trafficking so that they don’t fall victims again”, assured Mr. Arinze.

He told this paper that while in Abuja, the girls would stay under NAPTIP shelters and given some skills after which they would be taken to their various houses and families.

The NAPTIP official added that the fight against human trafficking should be a collective effort of all, calling on civil society to report any suspicious conduct to the Police for further investigation.

“Most of the girls end up being traumatized or maimed for the rest of their lives so let’s all rise up against this deadly crime and bring the traffickers to book”, he concluded.

Meanwhile, the Deputy boss of the Criminal Investigations Department of Ghana, Mr. Ken Yeboah has also confirmed the release of the girls to the Nigerian government.

“We took the necessary evidence we needed to take before the 17 girls were released to the Nigerian Government. I can assure you the Ghana Police has taken this matter very serious and we would ensure that justice is done”, the Deputy CID boss affirmed.

ACP Kwesi Fori, Head of the Public Affairs Directorate of the Ghana Police Service, pledged that his outfit would be working together with The Crusading GUIDE and any other person to fight the illegal trade in future.

He reiterated the fact that the IGP was establishing an anti- trafficking unit solely for investigations and the prosecution of human trafficking ‘dons’.

He also commended the Ivorian Police for their assistance in the release of 33 Ghanaians who were also saddled in the trafficking trade.

The Police spokesperson also affirmed that those in Ghana engaged in internal trafficking would not be left off the hook by the country’s security agencies.

The Crusading GUIDE has picked up signals that the traffickers based in Togo had panicked over the crackdown on their colleagues here in Ghana and were desperately trying to hide any evidence before the Togo Police get on their neck.

“Yesterday 7 girls were moved from Lome by one of the traffickers to an unknown destination because of what happened in Ghana. They are afraid that the Ghanaian authorities would be liaising with Togolese officials for their arrest”, said Kwame Tefle, our source in Togo.

Please stay tuned for more…

IGP ON WAR PATH

Moves Towards The Establishment Of Anti-human Trafficking Unit Within Ghana Police To Rescue More Girls; Immigration Officials To Be Probed.


The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong, has taken swift action to establish an anti-human trafficking unit within the Ghana Police to combat the trafficking of young girls from West Africa through Ghana, for prostitution in Europe.

At a meeting with this reporter and other Senior Police personnel, the IGP reiterated the need to flush out the syndicate responsible in Ghana, stressing that it must be a collective effort of both security officials and civil society to combat the human trafficking menace.

In a separate interview, the Deputy Director of the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID), ACP Ken Yeboah, intimated that his outfit would thoroughly investigate activities of some officials of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) whose names came up in The Crusading GUIDE investigative report on the trafficking of girls to Europe.

ACP Yeboah affirmed that the Police would look into the matter and prosecute accomplices if need be. ‘We are determined in fighting all who are making this illegal trade thrive in Ghana; nobody would be pardoned” he warned.

On the welfare of the 17 rescued girls, ACP Yeboah said that he had liaised with the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs to find a temporary shelter to accommodate them until further notice. He also intimated that the Nigerian High Commission had been notified about the crime since it involves some Nigerians.

When The Crusading GUIDE was in Abuja, Nigeria a few months ago in connection with the story, officials of the National Agency For The Prohibition of Traffic In Persons (NAPTIP), told this reporter that they would send for the trafficked victims to come back to Nigeria. The details of NAPTIP’s intention has already been forwarded to the Ghana Police by The Crusading GUIDE for negotiations in respect of the girls’ repatriation.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its global report, has indicated that more than $32 billion is being generated as profit annually from exploitation of trafficked women, children and men. It has also stated that the lack of harmonized legislative and investigative strategies within the West Africa sub-region was the biggest problem in fighting the canker.

ILO Director in Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Mrs. Sinanzeni Chuma Mkandawire, has tagged human trafficking as “the slavery of the 21st century”. The latest ILO report on forced labour indicates that 2.5 million persons are estimated to be trafficked at any point in time, of whom minimum of one third are trafficked for economic purposes.

Mkandawire underscored that the ILO’s Special Action Programme Against Trafficking in West Africa (PATWA) was aimed at addressing the structural aspects of the demand and supply of forced labour and human trafficking in the sub-region.

It will be recalled that The Crusading GUIDE’s eight-month long investigations into a human trafficking syndicate led to the crackdown of the network, the subsequent arrest of two suspected traffickers and the rescuing of 17 girls who were on the verge of being sold into prostitution in Europe.

Amandi Mohammed, 30, and Kwadwo Boamah Addai, 50, were busted on October 24 and 25, 2007 respectively, in an operation at Abossey Okai and Gbawe, all suburbs of Accra . A third suspect, Mumuni Abdul Latif, alias Tijani, based at Kasoa in the Central Region, bolted away. However, some victims of the dastardly trade were rescued at Gbawe. The names of the girls rescued at Abossey Okai were given by the Police as Gloria Ebrain, Cynthia Emma, Joyce Samuel, Jennifer Peter, Gifty Ebrain, Lovet Issako, Lucy Ugo, Emmanuel Beauty and Nancy Johnson.

Those rescued at Gbawe included Hope Osagie, Princess Ebabulele, Bola Ayodele, Rosemary Yenni, Vivian Joseph, Becky Asoro, Happy Tom and Blessing Samuel. They are aged between 18 and 25.

A search conducted in Addai’s office and residence by the Ghana Police resulted in the retrieval of seven Ghanaian passports, four vaccination certificates, one international driving licence, 59 birth certificates, two Motorola mobile phones, three bank statements, an invitation letter and a Beninois passport bearing the name Affo Kaffi Seibu.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda, Special to CorpWatch
February 25th, 2008

Sickly and malnourished, Kirana Kapito began his working life on a large commercial tobacco estate in Malawi's northern region. The farms sell their produce on the country's auction floors directly to international corporations including Limbe Leaf Tobacco, majority owned by the Swiss-registered Continental Tobacco Company and U.S.-based Alliance One Tobacco.

Kirana is one of 250 million children across the world involved in work that is damaging to their mental, physical and emotional development. Some 57 million of these endangered children live in Sub-Sahara Africa. And with an estimated 1.4 million child laborers, the small, southern African nation of Malawi has the highest incidence of child labor in southern Africa, according to the Olso, Norway-based, FAFO Institute for Applied Social Science.

Kirana was eight years old when he first went to work in the fields. Estate owners transported him and his parents from their home village, Mulanje, along with 45 other families. The truck journey covered more than 1,000 kilometers and ended in the tobacco fields in Rumphi in northern Malawi.

Kirana's mother, Jane Kapito, 45, says the family left home seeking a better life. “Four years later, my whole family is still struggling with poverty. My son has to work as hard as everyone else if we have to afford the basic necessities. The money that my husband and I receive from the tobacco estate is not enough,” she says.

Now 12, Kirana has never been to school. For the past six months, his health has been failing and he can no longer work as hard as he used to. His mother says her little boy is malnourished and therefore contracts different infections easily. The family often goes without a proper meal for up to three days.

“Just in the past two months, Kirana has been afflicted by malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia,” Jane Kapito said. “He's my only child and I am so scared of losing him.”

This family's struggle is repeated throughout Malawi's tobacco industry, where poverty ensures that every member must contribute to the workload.

Virginia Import Now Main Malawi Export

Malawi's sprawling tobacco estates are not only a source of national economic pride, but of lovely pastoral vistas as well. Up close though, the sight of child laborers in the hot fields exposes the ugliness at their core.

Commercial production of tobacco in Malawi goes back as far as 1889, when settlers from the U.S. state of Virginia introduced the crop. In those days “foreign masters” forced the native people and their children to work in the farms for little or no pay. Over a century later, this exploitation continues -- with no end in sight.

Increasingly, critics are demanding that the tobacco companies take responsibility for ending the abuses. Given their key role in Malawi's economy, they wield significant clout. Malawi derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agricultural crops, and the tobacco industry makes up 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Malawi’s exports account for five percent of the world's total tobacco exports and two percent of the world's total production.

But the wealth generated by this resource is not spread evenly across the country. The Malawi Tobacco Control Commission (TCC), a local government watchdog for the tobacco market, estimates that it takes $1 for farm workers to produce a kilogram of tobacco, which they usually sell at $.70 for a loss of $.30 per kilo. Hardworking farmers who cannot make a living turn to child labor. TCC's 2008 campaign is demanding that farmers get a profit at least 15 percent above production costs.

Despite the TCC campaign, farmers and their families are still at risk of losing money on their crops. And this year the farmers' plight may be further exacerbated by heavy rains that are predicted to cut the country's tobacco production by about 3 percent.

Tenant Farmers’ Dilemma

Up to two million Malawians, mostly poor, depend on tobacco and related industries for their income. Virtually all of the up to 900,000 adult growers are “smallholder farmers, tobacco tenants and casual farm workers,” according to a 2006 research paper by the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE), an independent center based at the University of California, San Francisco.

Tenant farmers are allocated a plot of land by the estate owner and required to produce a specific yield. The owners loan the tenants inputs including seed and fertilizer and deduct the debt from future profits -- if any.

The owners are also supposed to supply food rations, but when monthly allocations run out, workers and their children go hungry. Many also lack such basic necessities as medication, proper housing and safe drinking water. Not surprisingly, workers on tobacco estates and their dependants are among the poorest and most oppressed people in Malawi, according to a survey released last December by the Center for Social Concern, a Catholic organization that monitors the welfare of the people.

A minimum of “78,000 children are working on a full- or part-time basis in the tobacco fields, according to the CTCRE study. “Forty-five percent of the child workers are 10-14 years old and 55 percent are 7-9 years old,” the study found. Meanwhile, the tobacco companies have received nearly US$40 million in revenues over four years through the use of unpaid child labor in Malawi.

In 1995, the Malawi government, through the Ministry of Labor in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, started drafting a Tobacco Tenancy Labor Bill to regulate the relations and transactions between the tenant farmers and the landlords.

The bill has been taken through a number of revisions but it has not yet been taken to Parliament.

Supporting Children or Exploiting Them?

Multinational tobacco companies are aware of the public relations implications of profiting not only from tobacco itself, but doing it through the cycle of poverty and child labor. Tobacco companies in Malawi including Alliance One, Africa Leaf (Malawi) Limited, Premium and British American Tobacco (Malawi) are sponsoring the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT). The project, which includes other agricultural industries, is run by Together Ensuring Children Security (TECS), a registered trust set up in 2001 by tobacco exporting corporations operating in Malawi: Africa Leaf, Dimon, Limbe Leaf and Stancom Tobacco.

In 2001, ECLT budgeted US$2 million for a four-year effort to combat child labor. Six years later, in October 2007, the 20 companies within the supply chain of the tobacco industry had ponied up somewhat less than $100,000 of that amount, according to TECS'S corporate newsletter.

The University of California researchers are skeptical of the inherent conflict of interest in having tobacco companies influence social policy. They concluded that in Malawi, transnational tobacco companies are using child labor projects to enhance their corporate reputations and distract public attention away from how they profit from low wages and cheaply produced tobacco.

Others argue that even when useful, the TECS program is a drop in an ocean of poverty. Up to 45 percent of the population is poor, according to the 2007 Malawi Millennium Development Goal (MDG) report. Registered as a Trust under the Trustees Act of Malawi, TECS projects have taken what it calls “a poverty reduction strategy approach” to improve food security, water safety and HIV/AIDS intervention and education.

The trust has built schools, planted trees and constructed shallow wells to address the use of child labor in tobacco farming, according to TECS Programs Director Limbani Kakhome.

While not directly undermining child labor, these programs will eventually bear fruit in better social conditions that will diminish the problem, Kakhome said.

“We are also addressing health issues to ensure that the children don't skip school because of illnesses,” says Kakhome. Once they stay home because they are ill, they are easily taken up by child labor.” It is difficult, he said, to supply the market for child labor once the children are absorbed into the school system, have safe water and are financially secure.

Too Little, Too Late?

It is too late for children like 15-year-old Martha Kalima who dropped out of school at 12 years old to work in the tobacco fields. Pregnant at 14, she continued working in the fields until she gave birth. The father was the 16-year-old son of another tenant farmer.

“There is nothing like maternity leave for tobacco workers,” Kalima said. “No one is entitled to sick leave nor is there transport to hospital. I gave birth at home because it was too late for me to get to hospital.”

Martha is back in the tobacco fields carrying the baby on her back. Chances are slim that she will return to school.

Some 15 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys drop out of school, according to Malawi government statistics. Around 22 percent of primary school age girls never attend school at all, while 60 percent of those enrolled do not attend regularly.

The TECS corporate newsletter confirms that children with few options are pulled from school. Some are “coaxed from the poverty-stricken homes to work in order to keep body and soul together. They are exposed to hazardous environments where they work long hours and do jobs not befitting their ages and they are often beaten and abused.”

That was the fate of 16-year-old Ekari Maliwasa, says she has just returned to her village in the south of Malawi after working for five years in the tobacco estates in the northern part of the country.

“My parents took me with them to work in the tobacco estates in the north [when I was 11] and I only escaped back to my village two months ago after realizing that I was being abused. I am now staying with my elderly grandmother,” says Maliwasa. She says the estate manager beat her whenever he found her resting from the hard work in the tobacco fields. Ekari also went without food or drink for long hours, she said, and was not allowed take a break until she had worked for five hours.

Enforcement of Labor Standards Difficult

Maliwasa's treatment, like that endured by many of Malawi's child laborers, violated not only international standards but also legally binding treaties. Malawi is a signatory to a number of conventions against child labor including the 1973 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 138 which sets a minimum working age of 18, and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 which outlaws child labor.

The country also ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. (ILO has set 2016 as the deadline for countries around the world to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.)

Child labor cannot be ended overnight says TECS Executive Director Bobby Maynard. “You can manage the supply chain to a certain degree but you can't control it fully,” he says. “The problem is that over 80 percent of tobacco is grown with no contracts from the tobacco companies -- as such it is difficult to intervene directly.”

Tobacco companies note that they are involved in policing child labor violations at estates where they have direct control, and that they subscribe to Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), whose first principle is “no child labor.” But their results in curbing the practice have not been impressive.

Relying on British American Tobacco's own internal documents, the University of California study found that, “rather than actively and responsibly working to solve the problem of child labor in growing tobacco, the company acted to co-opt the issue to present themselves over as a 'socially responsible corporation' by releasing a policy statement claiming the company's commitment to end harmful child labor practices, holding a global child labor conference with trade unions and other key stakeholders, and contributing nominal sums of money for development projects largely unrelated to efforts to end child labor.”

International agencies are also involved. Kusali Kubwalo, communications officer for UNICEF Malawi, said the United Nations has joined Malawi's government and several non-governmental organizations to fight the problem from several fronts.

A national “Stop Child Abuse Campaign” aims to break the silence shrouding all forms of child abuse, including child labor.

“The campaign aims to mobilize leadership and a commitment at all levels to prevent and respond to all forms of abuse,” says Kubwalo. “Violations of children's rights take place every day in Malawi and are extensive, under-recognized and underreported.”

She insists that Malawi, as a signatory to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obligated to respect, protect, facilitate and promote the fulfillment of the rights it guarantees.

“This instrument must therefore be translated into concrete legislation, interventions and development programs,” says Kubwalo. “Ratification alone is not enough.”

An interview by Glenda Girón; Photos by Edu Ponces

(translated from Spanish)

The only thing that shines today at the jeweler’s house is the memory of the daily $5.15 he used to earn by picking watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in Texas, United States. When Francisco Linares was deported, in 2007, all he could do was return to his goldsmith trade, working other people’s gold. And so it was until, after suffering a second burglary, he was left with nothing but his tools: a darkened table and a pile of twisted junk. From that moment on, he was no longer able to pay the $17 monthly fee for the house in the outskirts of Santa Ana. The $4 a day that Delmy de Linares earned with her job as a housekeeper was barely enough to pay for the food of their three children and the couple, and the deallocation orders that were slid under the door had started to put pressure on them. At 44, the United States was as necessary to Francisco as a life-jacket to a shipwrecked person. He convinced Delmy to join him in a trip with no guide and no guarantees, in which the only advantage was that he had made it once in the past. Working with watermelons in the North, he must have thought, is more dignifying than working gold in El Salvador.

They said goodbye to their children and to their house on Tuesday, March 26, of the present year. Two days later, they entered Mexico. They were on a bus, travelling down a road in Chiapas, when some agents of the Preventive Federal Police appeared. They made the bus stop and what happened then was that she hesitated, she got nervous, and she wasn’t able to answer the agents’ questions with the necessary promptness. They made her get off the bus. Francisco saw her face of concern and, after thinking about it for a few seconds, he decided to confess about his origin. They were both forced to get off the bus, same as others who did not carry their documents with them and, once stripped of their flags, coats of arms, governments and nationalities, were put all together in one big bag: Central Americans.

It wasn’t that bad this time. They were sent back to Guatemala thanks to the fact that, foreseeing the possibility of being arrested, Francisco had recommended Delmy to say she was from that country. He claimed the same. And, as the Mexican authorities did not bother to confirm the veracity of the statements, they were left in a border point that the Mexicans call Talismán and the Guatemalans call El Carmen. Before that, they had to spend the night in the police station, where he stayed with the men and she stayed with the women. They suffered from hunger and never stopped worrying about each other, but in the end it wasn’t so bad.

It was not a significant setback, and it did not undermine the Linares’ intentions. The same day the Mexican agents left them at the border point, Delmy and Francisco took a bus and made a half an hour trip to the following border point, which is called Tecún Uman and, as opposed to the previous one, is open 24 hours a day. That way, they went on the route that Francisco knew well.

On Saturday, March 1st, they were on a bus again. It was early. At 6 in the morning, they had crossed the Suchiate river, the one that links and, at the same time, separates the two countries, and since the sun was just starting to rise, he thought there would be no one there willing to surprise them. She didn’t speak this time. It was him who, with a fake Mexican accent, asked the driver to let them get off before arriving at the customs control. “Are you going to avoid it?”- Francisco says the driver asked him. An affirmative answer was not enough to quench curiosity. “You don’t have documents?”, the driver asked again; to which Francisco remembers having answered with an irritated: “And why do you think I’m asking you to leave me here?” The driver stopped and the couple got off.

Until that trip, Delmy had never been to the capital city of her own country, San Salvador, which is located only 65 kilometres from her place of residence. But when the sun finally rised on that Saturday, she and her husband had left El Salvador behind, had traveled across Guatemala and were walking through a place known as La Arrocera, in Huixtla (Chiapas). They got off the bus about 500 metres away from the customs control and walked about four blocks in order to avoid it. This is where the darkest part of their story began. Here begins the episode that the Linares couple decided to call “the incident”.

Francisco says that they hurried, and almost ran, in order to escape from them. It didn’t work. In a split second, one of the three uniformed officers jumped in front of them and asked them where they came from, where they were going, whether they were upset, whether they carried any money, whether the ‘old woman’ had any money. They were three. They had shotguns.

In Linares’ house there are several chairs, a couple of beds, a partition wall, and behind the partition wall, a paltry kitchen. Francisco agreed to tell this story on April 22, when the memories were still like open sores. He spoke because he wanted to demand justice. He had spent less than 48 hours in El Salvador. And he kept going back to his part of the incident with gestures and anger.

The agent asked Francisco whether he was upset. “No, I’m happy; I’m happy because I see you. That makes me feel there are no thieves here, nothing bad can happen to me. And at the same time, I’m worried, because you can hand me over to the Immigration Police”, he remembers having answered.

At the beginning, there were three agents, two with “navarone” hats and one with a regular cap. One of them, who had the face covered, passed his gun from one hand to the other. And the one who was talking to Francisco ordered other three men to get closer with a sign. These were wearing dark green shirts and trousers; army green. The last ones stayed with Delmy. The other three, the first men, took Francisco away. They said they would let Delmy go in about 10 minutes and that she would join him then.

With a diplomatic courtesy, Gustavo Gutiérrez, officer in charge of migration affairs in the state of Chiapas, admits that the respect of the immigrants’ rights and the purging of the police forces are “a challenge”, a big one. This way, turning actions into words, what the Linares called “the incident” works for Gutiérrez to size up his challenge. “This is not a case that we could consider as extraordinary; unfortunately, it shows the size of the challenge we are facing”, said the officer.

Francisco ran away from the uniformed men of the Preventive Federal Police. He escaped and hid in a gully. Like in a movie, he says he heard his chasers walking above his hideout, and he heard them say “That guy has gone”. And he stayed there, awake, stucking his head out to see if Delmy appeared. He waited for one day and a half, and she didn’t appear.

Francisco assures he searched for her. He says he wandered around the place where they had been intercepted, and he didn’t find any trace of who had been his wife for more then 25 years. He decided to go on, but the weight of sorrow became too heavy for him to continue toward his dream of working in the picking of watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in Texas, United States.

He hung off the south train –which travels through the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca– and managed to get off safe and sound. Without a cent in his pocket (the six uniformed officers had kept it all), he decided to accept the shelter and food offered by the house “Hogar de la misericordia”, administered by a Mexican priest called Alejandro Solalinde, in the Ixtepec municipality. The nights became tears in there. He spent time alone, because he didn’t like it when his travel mates, who were also broken and exhausted, tried to cheer him up.

His relationship with lights and cameras began in that house. Solalinde gathered his guests and encouraged them to tell their experiences, as in a group therapy. Francisco requested permission to speak, but only to tell the priest that he wanted to talk to him in private. Solalinde is not an unknown person for the media. In the last months, he has been cited by Prensa Libre, Reforma, El Universal, Vanguardia, Noticias de Oaxaca, El Periódico de México and Gatopardo. In all the interviews he talks about violations to the immigrants’ rights, and he has always referred to the immigrants themselves as a source for his complaints. The priest, however, took two days to receive Francisco in private; and Francisco still complains about that.

The chat with Solalinde not only worked as a relief. It also planted the seed of complaint in Francisco’s heart. And the Salvadoran man, who had no news about his wife since the encounter with the uniformed officers, who didn’t have a cent in his pocket and felt totally confused, let that seed grow.

Opening the denunciation process meant going back in his trip to the North. And going back, especially when each step forward has hurt so much, is not easy. Francisco had to come back from Ixtepec, in the state of Oaxaca, to the state of Chiapas. “I agreed to do it only because I had no news about her, and that was a total injustice”, he remembers.

Francisco is a dark-skinned man –as dark as the police officers who took money and wife from him, he says–, with strong convictions, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), father of three children and married to a woman of his same age, 44, who he met when they were small kids and used to play in the España colony, in Santa Ana, also known as La Sucursal del Cielo (a Branch of Heaven).

On March 14, 14 days after the incident, Francisco took part in a press conference. The “Santaneco” goldsmith was sat in front of who knows how many journalists. Because Francisco’s stay in Mexico coincided with that of Jorge Bustamante, Minister-Reporter of migration affairs for the United Nations. After answering to the journalists’ questions, they met in private.

Since December 2006, Bustamante has visited the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, the United States, Guatemala and Mexico as a UN special rapporteur on immigrants’ rights. Bustamante has a PhD. in Sociology and Political Sciences, and has participated in the writing of books like “Decadencia y auge de las identidades”, “Economía fronteriza y libre comercio” and “Frontera y migraciones”. Francisco, for his part, went to school until first grade, was deported from the United States, was eventually part of the Cuerpo de Agentes Metropolitanos de Santa Ana, and owes $1,100 to a friend. With those credentials, they sitted one in front of each other.

“Now go ahead, disguise a couple of your officers with a backpack and make them walk by a customs control with me, and let’s see what happens to them, let’s see if they get robbed or not. You know what happens, but you profit from that. You know that our only crime is to cross through Mexico, and you know we come to make a contribution to your country, because Salvadoran people bring dollars and leave dollars”, Francisco remembers having told the reporter.

Bustamante issued a report of his visit to Mexico. “The special reporter expresses his profound shock before the increasing abuses against immigrant people, especially against those of Central American origin”, are the lines of the document that can be applied to what the Linares went through.

After the meeting with Bustamante in Tapachula, still in the state of Chiapas, Francisco made a formal complaint. At that time, his thirst for justice was huge. That was when missing Delmy appeared.

Delmy arrived at her home on Monday, March 10. She was alone, wearing clothes that someone (who knows who) had given her. The trip from La Arrocera, in Huixtla, to her modest house in Santa Ana took her five days. She had spent the other four days in the jungle.

Delmy starts with her account from the moment the men left her lying on the floor. She went back, undoing the steps she had done with her husband. She walked as far as she could, and then she started asking for money.

She, who had never been outside Santa Ana, had to find a way to survive alone. There was no sorrow to be ashamed of or known people to rely on. “I paid the buses with what the people gave me. Some of the buses charged me and some didn’t”, she says in a low voice.

Unlike her husband, she doesn’t speak much, and she barely smiles. She dries her tears before they start rolling down her cheeks.

The ones who separated her from her husband (the uniformed ones, the ones in green, the ones who had shotguns) held her for four days. They raped her for four days.

She remembers having been fed, but she doesn’t remember what. She remembres having been beaten, but she doesn’t know how much. She knows she was sexually abused, but she knows she wouldn’t be able to reconstruct a face, a scene or a name. She knows about the scar, but not about how they wounded her. “The problem is that when I get cut, I faint instantly”, she explains as if she was talking about a manufacturing defect.

In her hand, Delmy has a golden ring that her husband Francisco forged for her, and she still keeps it because she never took it out of her house in Santa Ana. The place she returned to on March 10: “The first thing I did after getting home was asking whether he had already spoken”.

What Mexican authorities said about Delmy’s whereabouts was that she had been “assured” in a Preventive Federal Police operation and that she had already been released, according to the information gathered by the local media. Solalinde was not satisfied with that explanation. “How can there be a migrations operation without Migration Agents? Or do Migration agents use balaclava? And also, they threatened them with powerful weapons, they insulted them, they threatened them, they robbed them and they kidnapped the lady”, were the words of the religious man before the journalists.

Once the Linares’ experience attracted the cameras and the pens, the Chiapas authorities committed themselves to research and to respond for what had happened. The case was put in the hands of Gustavo Gutiérrez, officer in charge of migration affairs.

Movilidad Humana is the name of the NGO that documented the Linares case and caused it to reach the ears of Bustamante, the United Nations’ reporter. Solalinde works in Movilidad Humana, and it was him who, on March 18, received the news from the state authorities: Delmy was in her home. They knew it eight days after she managed to come back to her country.

Solalinde is a usual source for journalists. An article that cites his name says that he interceded to avoid the beating of 22 Central Americans one morning; another article reports that the authorities didn’t do anything to investigate the whereabouts of 12 kidnapped Guatemalan people; another note claims that 700 undocumented immigrants arrived at his house hanging off the train. All was in big numbers, with countless testimonies of human rights violations. To find, amidst that sea of tragedies, someone willing to demand justice through the institutional channel is not something that occurs everyday. That is why it was important.

Francisco not only was exhorted to dare to make a complaint before the corresponding entities. He also received offers to accompany the whole process until the end. Gustavo Gutiérrez assured Francisco, on behalf of the state of Chiapas, that he, Delmy and their three children would be helped with a home, work and studies if they returned to Mexico to live legally. If they accepted the benefits, of course, they also had to agree to go on with the process, which required a statement ratification on his part and a first statement on hers.

Francisco returned to his home in the outskirts of Santa Ana on April 20. He had spoken to Delmy the day before. It was their first conversation since the incident. They reached an agreement beforehand. He would call her as soon as he arrived at El Salvador so that she moved with their children to a place near the spot where the bus would drop him. They wanted to meet as soon as possible. But the plans were nothing but that, plans. Because Francisco ran out of money and couldn’t call his family. They met at their home.

Francisco returned to El Salvador through the legal way, not through deportation. The Salvadoran consulate in Tapachula helped him to get a temporary passport. He received the document on April 18.

El Salvador’s consul in Tapachula is Nelson Cuéllar. According to him, this office’s obligations towards Francisco were clearly delimited and they consisted in helping him with the obtaining of the documents, like the granting of the permission from the Migration office to stay in Mexico without problems, the processing of a certificate of origin and the approval of a temporary passport.

Since the incident, he spent a month and a half in Mexico. During that time, he became the main concern and the center of attention for the State of Chiapas. Gustavo Gutiérrez was the person in charge of the case from the beginning.

Francisco is a man with strong convictions. So strong that they cause him trouble. “I have always been fond of eating herbs and vegetables. That’s why we got together with some ‘brothers’ there and we cooked soups for ourselves, so that the people from the shelter didn’t have to feed us and could give the food to those who really needed it”; that is how Francisco summarizes the “issue” for which he was transferred from the shelter. It was an action in which Gustavo Gutiérrez took part.

That was because Gustavo Gutiérrez, unlike the Salvadoran consul, does not put limits on what they did for Francisco. “We took care of him”, he says; and the list of things this phrase implies is long. “We would pay attention to where he spent the night, what he ate, that he received his psychological support; we took him to his consulate, we did all we could for the consulate to help him, and then we prepared a strategy so that the consulate would work together with the Immigration Office”, the Chiapaneco officer said on the phone.

The man responsible for migration affairs in the state of Chiapas needed time. Francisco’s time. As the officer himself reckons, it isn’t hard to find stories worth reporting in Mexico. The hard part is that the interested party give up or delay his trip to the North, in order to be able to make the complaint and to confirm it later. “The Central Americans don’t stay long enough”, he says with resignation.

Mexico is a country that asks for things but doesn’t give anything in return. That is, at least, what it reads in Bustamante’s statements: “We do to the Central American immigrants worse things than they do to Mexicans in the United States”. He said that on March 12, one day before meeting Francisco for the first time.

When Gustavo Gutiérrez talks about what is left to be done, he starts by highlighting the importance of making the government institutions’ staff more sensitive before the immigrants’ complaints, and goes on by emphasizing the importance of convincing immigrants to take their complaints and put them through.

“I think they did it for convenience. They would help me out in return for me making that complaint”; such is the conclusion reached by Francisco while sitting in a chair in his home.

Francisco returned to his home on April 20, and he did it thanks to the Chiapaneco government, that gave him $95 with which to pay the cost of his family members’ documents, such as birth certificates, photos, unique identity documents, and passports. When he entered El Salvador, however, he didn’t have enough money to make a phone-call. Because, although Gustavo Gutiérrez insists that the state of Chiapas paid for his transport, Francisco assures that he had to pay for his bus ticket with those $95. “And with that money, I also paid for my food and for what they charged me for some stamps at the border”, he insists.

Since his return, Francisco has only been able to get sporadic jobs. In spite of the repeated rapes, Delmy has not seen doctors or psychologists, and she spends the time performing domestic jobs in others’ homes to raise money for the food.

Francisco’s thirst for justice has been decreasing. And Delmy, who never felt a strong desire to make a formal complaint, leaves her sorrow behind and focuses on being quiet and working. “I don’t want to accuse anyone unjustly, I didn’t see their faces”, she explains.

On May 20, the Linares couple traveled to San Salvador. She was wearing a suit and he was wearing a buttoned shirt and a belt. They got off the inter-departmental bus at the stop that is in front of the Basílica de Guadalupe, in Antiguo Cuscatlán. They were picked up by the staff of the Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Centroamericana, IDHUCA (Institute of Human Rights of the Central American University).

A whole month had passed since Francisco’s return to El Salvador, and during that time he had to deal with the same problems that had forced him to leave: paying for the house and maintenance. The Linares live in a house that was given to them by an institution that helps low-income families to get a decent home. Families, however, commit themselves to pay an installment in order to keep their adjudication-right. The Linares almost lost that right. In order to keep it, they committed to pay the delinquency fee; with that, the initial monthly payment increased from $17 to $50.

To that, they should add the amount the borrowed before the trip; the $1,100 they owe to a friend, with which the couple expected to get to the United States. But most of it was kept by the men who intercepted them.

With all those concerns, but still with the interest of justice in mind, Francisco arrived at the IDHUCA asking for advice to continue with the process of the complaint from here. But his spirit crashed down two days later. He was, as he himself puts it, frozen.

Although Gilma Pérez, coordinator of the IDHUCA’s immigration program, had said the complaint represented an “unprecedented” and “exemplary” case, Francisco had already started to give up that idea. The crimes for which he made the formal complaint in Mexico were false imprisonment, abuse of authority, forced disappearance and theft. The only non-effective charge as for today, due to Delmy’s presence, is the forced disappearance one.

According to IDHUCA’s opinion, Francisco should not return to Mexico. Pérez thinks it’s not convenient for him to be exposed to retaliation. From Mexico, Gustavo Gutiérrez not only considers it necessary for Francisco to come back, but they will also receive his whole family, willing to offer Delmy a job and to include their children in the educational system. At least that’s what they’ve offered him. And according to the Mexican officer, Francisco must only comply with the documents part, since the cost of the tickets would be at the expense of the Chiapas’ Government.

But Francisco no longer feels the same thirst for justice. The wounds have healed. Now, as if poverty had consumed his willpower, he says he regrets having accepted to make the complaint. “I should have gone (to the North)”, he says, expressing his frustration.

So, the only thing that shines today at the jeweler’s house is the memory of the daily $5.15 he used to earn by picking watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in Texas, United States. After he came back from Mexico, two months ago, Francisco didn’t take up his trade as a goldsmith. The darkened table and the pile of twisted junk with which he worked before the second burglary are still not in use. They still haven’t found the way to pay the $50 of the installment, already in default, of the house in the outskirts of Santa Ana. The deallocation orders will soon be slid again under the door. The $4 Delmy gathers with her domestic job is barely enough for the food. At 44 years of age, the United States is as necessary to Francisco as a life-jacket to a shipwrecked person. He has convinced Delmy to let him try to do it again. He will do it alone this time, and with $20 in the bag. A trip whose only advantage is that he thinks he knows the way. Working with watermelons in the North, he is certain, is more dignifying than working gold in El Salvador.

SALLY CHIWAMA, Zambia correspondent - Women News Network - WNN

A sex-safety school poster for students in Lusaka, Zambia. Image: Joshua Treviño

Lusaka, Zambia - In Feb 2006, only three months before the Zambian government ratified the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, a young girl student was calculatingly raped by her greatest authority figure, her own school teacher.

The minor and her guardian sued the teacher, along with the school and the Zambian Ministry of Education one year later, achieving a first ever court victory in Zambia on June 30, 2008.

During the case presiding Judge, Philip Musonda, made his assessment in the High Court of Lusaka. “The government is responsible for all school going children in the care of its agents — such as teachers, school authorities and any other person in it’s employment during the time the schools are in session,” he said. The case brought a K45m award (approx $13,000+ USD and $45million Zambian Kwacha) to the plaintiff, a girl who was only 13 at the time of the crime.

According to a CARI – Children at Risk in Ireland Foundation - 2006 report, Submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Child Protection, “Perpetrator psychological rehabilitation is an extremely important prevention strategy; for example, a sexual aggressor who begins abusing during adolescence and is not rehabilitated is estimated to commit an average of 380 sexual offences during his lifetime.”

13 yr old Kalenga Mutale (not her real name) was like all children and pupils who idolize their teachers. When she was about to begin work on her ninth grade final exams, she innocently asked her instructor if she could see her past test papers. “Conveniently,” Kalenga’s teacher, Edward Hakasenke, forgot the papers, even after being asked more than three times. When it suited him, he told the girl to “come and get them from his home” after class.

In innocence, Kalenga followed instructions and went to her teacher’s home. There she found him listening to music. After being asked to “take a seat,” Kalenga, was told she needed to go and get her test papers from another room. Unfortunately, she followed instructions again to gather her papers from the other room. Even though she admitted in court that she was uncomfortable and scared in her teacher’s home.

When Kalenga went to go into the other room she froze in her feet. When she opened the curtain (in place of a door) she found she was looking into a bedroom. That’s when she turned to go back but “Teacher” was standing in her way blocking her from passing as he began to tell Kalenga she was pretty and that he wanted to marry her.

The US Deptartment of Health and Human Services outlines the definition of sexual assault stating, “Sexual assault can be verbal, visual, or anything that forces a person to join in unwanted sexual contact or attention.”

Many girl-children, teens and young women do not know that sexual assault does include activity such as nonphysical verbal abuse as well.

A 2000 report on rape in neighboring South Africa by the Medical Research Council pointed to the seriousness of teacher-student rape and exploitation outlining, “Girls reported routine sexual harassment by teachers, as well as psychological coercion to engage in “dating relationships.” In some cases, girls acquiesced to sexual demands from teachers because of fears that they would be physically punished if they refused. In other cases, teachers abused their positions of authority by promising better grades or money in exchange for sex. In the worst cases, teachers operated within a climate of seeming entitlement to sexual favors from students. A medical research study found that among those South African rape victims who specified their relationship to the perpetrator, 37.7 percent said a schoolteacher or principal had raped them.”

Terrified, Kalenga asked her teacher what he was doing. Instead of an answer she was pushed on the bed. Before she knew it she went blank and tried to scream, but her assailant put his hands firmly over her mouth.

Like so many survivors of sexual assault, Kalenga was told, in the face of this crime, that she was not to tell anyone - or else. If she did she would be chased from school and her “Teacher” would lose his job.

When she went home Kalenga told no one. Not even her Auntie who is her legal guardian. Alone with no one to turn to, she soon realized she was hurting and itching and beginning to show signs of disease. Alone and silent, she decided to go to a clinic, got examined and was diagnosed and given medicine.

Once there she still remained silent and told no one, but in a bout of courage and fear she went to tell “Teacher” of her condition and health treatment.

In response, he scolded her saying, “How come I am not getting sick myself?”.

The situation on its own was not getting any better.

The silent young girl did not know what to do or where to go. Finally, in an act of desperation she decided to tell the Deputy Headmaster of her school what had happened. To her surprise the Headmaster already knew the whole story.

He knew what had been going on because he had been a roommate, sharing a house with Kalenga’s “Teacher.”

It was then it was decided. Enough was enough. There must be an end to this.

As the trauma started sinking in, Kalenga’s performance in school started dwindling. This is a common occurrence for children who have been abused by authority figures at school.

Once a very good student at school, Kalenga started getting low marks. The children at school in Kalenga’s class, who began hearing about her struggle, started talking about Kalenga behind her back. Her friends bullied her. Some would even write notes to her telling her she was a “bad” girl. Others said she was lying. Others blamed her for spreading school rumors, saying that she was falsely accusing her teacher.

“It was really traumatizing for me,” said Kalenga in a recent interview for Women News Network. “My friends were bullying me and telling me that I was just making up this whole thing. That I just wanted to put the teacher in trouble. Many days I would go home crying,” said added.

CAMFED, an international NGO which started in 1993, is dedicated to eradicating poverty in Africa through the education of girls and the empowerment of young women. Using a platform of “Education for all,” CAMFED has recently released the “Child Protection Policy” (updated April 2008) recognizing that, “girls are especially vulnerable to abuse and that they require special protection.”

All of Zambia’s children deserve safety in educational environments.
Photo image: US Embassy, Zambia / Lubuto Library Project Opening

“Empowering girls is the foundation for enabling them to be less vulnerable to abuse of any kind. A key element of our programme policy is that girls develop the confidence to reduce their exposure to abusive situations,” states CAMFED in its policy talking points.

The responsibility for education leaders in Zambia to insure the safety of its students has finally been brought to the public in Kalenga’s case. Many times girls abused by an authority figure from their school, or by school mates, stop attending school all together after they have experienced their abuse. The hardest part is that assistance for their suffering goes unattended as they often remain silent.

After facing her struggle alone, Kalenga tried to tell her Auntie what had happened but she couldn’t. It was then her headmaster put her to task and told her that if she didn’t tell immediately he would tell her aunt himself.

Scared, without knowing what would happen next, Kalenga went to a pay phone. She dialed her home number. Her aunt answered. When she tried to speak tears made Kalenga’s throat swell. The words just would not come.

On hearing this, Kalenga’s headmaster at school quickly picked up the phone and spoke to Kalenga’s “Auntie” himself urging her to listen to what her niece had to tell her as soon as she came home.

When Kalenga arrived home her “Auntie” was waiting pensively for her.

After hearing Kalenga’s story she said later, “I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t know what to do. The first thing that came to my mind was to confront the teacher at school.”

As part of a Nov 2006 YWCA Zambia campaign, “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence,” a report outlined an alarming statistic. An average of eight cases of girl-rape per week was revealed coming into the YWCA centre in Lusaka for help.

Teacher-student abuse has now been found to be a hidden and significant contributor to this statistic.

A 2002 Human Rights Watch investigation in Zambia found that Zambian teachers all too frequently have placed certain girl-students in positions resulting in exploitation. This exploitation is dependent on non-disclosure by the perpetrators as well as the survivors of abuse.

“Sexual abuse and exploitation in school environments was all too frequent. Some of the perpetrators were teachers who prey on vulnerable girls, exchanging answers to tests or higher grades for sex. Most abuses by teachers are not reported, and few teachers are penalized. A more typical outcome is that the teacher is cautioned and possibly transferred.

In some cases, parents negotiate for the teacher to marry the girl. Advocates for girls’ education have tried to get stiffer penalties against teachers who abuse students, and to ensure that those found responsible are dismissed. However, the onus is on the girl’s parents, not the school, to report the case to the police so criminal charges can be made.

School administrators sometimes interfere with the process by transferring the teachers elsewhere, which makes it extremely difficult for the case to proceed,” said Human Rights Watch in their 2002 report, “Suffering in Silence: The Links between Human Rights Abuses and HIV Transmission to Girls in Zambia.”

The next morning, Aunt and niece decided to go school to make a formal report to the Headmaster. A meeting was called. The Headmaster, another senior teacher and Kalenga’s teacher, Edward Hakasenke, were present at the meeting with Kalenga and her aunt.

The Headmaster told Kalenga’s Aunt that he could not blame the girl for anything that happened as she was a minor. He reminded Kalenga’s teacher of a previous relationship he also had with another of his students. When the Edward Hakasenke was asked if he felt Kalenga was a “girlfriend,” he answered in the affirmative. The headmaster then asked him if he knew how old the girl was when the incident allegedly occurred and if he committed the rape. The teacher admitted that he thought the girl was 14 years old, but would not answer the last question.

Verifying in court “Teacher” did testify that, yes, he knew Kalenga. He said that she was his pupil. But he denied any sexual assault.

He testified that Kalenga had started spreading rumors that she was his girlfriend. Adding that on Valentines Day, the young girl followed him with a bunch of flowers along with some chocolate and a card. But, he tried to avoid her as he realized that the whole thing would get him in trouble. He said that the young girl requested to talk to him on several occasions but he had declined.

He also said that the girl wanted to have a relationship with him but he declined. However, on cross examination in court, Kalenga’s teacher admitted that Kalenga did not proposition him. He admitted that he called the girl his “girlfriend” because he thought there was a relationship.

On June 30, 2008 the High Court of Zambia released a verdict of guilty to Kalenga’s teacher, Edward Hakasenke.

In concluding remarks Judge Philip Musonda outlined the reasons he chose “guilty” in the court decision:

“A teacher has moral superiority over his pupils. A girl saying that she loved a teacher does not mean that she consented to sex, when she is below 16 years of age. This teacher manipulated the girl by deliberately forgetting her past examination papers in order to create an opportunity to sexually abuse her at his home. There can be no consent by a child under 16 years of age.

To characterize a (child’s) valentine card as consenting, is legally, morally and psychologically flawed. Such a person (who interprets a young girl this way) undermines section 138 of the (Zambian) penal code. It is contrary to the ethics of a teacher to sleep with school girls. It is psychologically wrong. A child under 16 is not cognitively developed enough to consent to sex.

When children are left at school a teacher becomes a parent. The standard of care, managed by a headmaster of a school, is one of a careful father toward his own children.

The chances of millions of girls being infected with a (HIV/AIDS) ‘death sentence’ by unscrupulous teachers and/or headmasters cannot go unabated. Diseases (in Zambia) such as HIV/AIDS, have no cure.”

Zambia belongs to the world

As legislative solutions are coming into focus in Zambia, factors to reduce the incidence of teacher/student abuse are moving forward.

A 2000 World Health Organization – Geneva report, “World Report on Violence and Health (Chap 6 - Sexual Violence)” states, “Action in schools is vital for reducing sexual and other forms of violence. In many countries a sexual relation between a teacher and a pupil is not a serious disciplinary offence and policies on sexual harassment in schools either do not exist or are not implemented. In recent years, though, some countries have introduced laws prohibiting sexual relations between teachers and pupils. Such measures are important in helping eradicate sexual harassment in schools. At the same time, a wider range of actions is also needed, including changes to teacher training and recruitment and reforms of curricula, so as to transform gender relations in schools.”

With a verdict of guilty, the High Court of Zambia awarded Kalenga and her guardian aunt $13,000+ USD (equal to $45,000,000 in Zambia) for damages.

“I want to ensure that such a situation does not happen to any child, because the emotional scars do not heal,” said Kalenga’s “Auntie” who fought closely by Kalenga’s side in court.

Thankfully, Kalenga was also told after testing by the clinic she did not have HIV/AIDS.

“I feel like a hero for coming out in the open because most girls tend to keep quiet when such things happen to them,” said Kalenga. “I want to urge young girls not to trust any strangers and to report any cases of sexual abuse against them,” she added.

“We Zambians, especially activists, must translate this landmark judgment, with clear illustrations, cartoons and posters, into simple English and the seven official local languages (of Zambia) so that every person who can read or see learns from it,” said Zambian gender activist Sara Longwe, in a recent call to protect girls reproductive and sexual rights.

“Now I am my own ambassador,” said Kalenga, “because now I am a role model. Some girls even come to me for advice. Like the girl from school who came and told me that her uncle had defiled her and asked me what she should do. I advised her to tell a family member or see her pastor at church right away.”

“This judgment (also) protects the girl-child from the sexual abuse that customarily follows enforced child marriages,” added Ugandan attorney, Laura Nyirikindi, soon after learning the outcome of the case. “Women’s NGOs now have a precedent which they can use to lobby for legal and policy reform,” she explained. “Errant staff suspensions (inside the schools) is not enough. More in-depth measures have to be taken, especially preventative ones.”

“I also tell my friends not to trust any strangers. That they should speak out when something of that sort happens,” added Kalenga.

“We value education and as such will not take kindly to any girl being stripped of her right to education and a secured bright future,” said YWCA Director, Ktembu Kaumba. “The teaching profession is a noble one and all bad eggs must be removed from the education sector and exposed. The message we are sending is a zero tolerance one.”

“We have to fight this scourge together because a potential defiler can be anywhere, at school or at home,” added Kalenga with a big smile on her face.

A large question still remains as the Zambian public realizes what this landmark case really means. Will stronger legislation be supported throughout Zambia’s governing committees to help limit teacher-student abuse in the future? Will this case cause parents and guardians of abused children to begin to sue the Ministry of Education itself at increased levels?

The biggest question yet to be answered is: Will Zambia’s Ministry of Education pay for all upcoming defilement cases or will they put measures in place to curb this “vice” inside the education sector before it hits the courts?

Even with a landmark case like this winning in court, Zambia may have much more to go before teacher-student rape cases show a sharp decline.

By Imam Shofwan

(translated from Indonesian)

DILI and VIQUEQUE - She is said to have been breathtakingly beautiful, and even now, decades later, there are traces of what had made her so attractive to men: an oval face, cleft chin, eyes that slant upwards just so, and hair that is thick and wavy. When she was younger, her skin was also a smooth golden brown, her body slim yet full in the right places.

These days there are wrinkles around her eyes, but it is the weariness in her face and the slump in her shoulders that betray her age of 49 years – and what she has been through. Then again Lalerek Mutin, a small community east of the Timor Leste capital, isn’t known as "widow’s village" for nothing.

"My husband was kidnapped and killed by three soldiers when I was four months pregnant," she tells me. "My child died of hunger. Now I raise my two kids from two of the three soldiers who committed sexual acts on me."

I had picked her out at random from among the 8,000 witnesses who testified before the Commission of Acceptance, Truth, and Reconciliation of Timor Leste or CAVR, its acronym in Portuguese. The testimonies were given voluntarily. Later, these were compiled in a 2,500-paged book entitled "Chega!" or "Enough!" in Portuguese, where the identities of the witnesses and their alleged abusers were concealed behind code names. The woman I would meet in Lalerek Mutin went by the code name "MI" in the book, which lists crimes against humanity committed in East Timor from August 1974, more than a year before the invasion and occupation of Timor Leste by Indonesia, to 1999, when the Indonesian forces departed after the U.N.-sponsored referendum.

The witnesses came from the 13 districts across Timor Leste. They told of the human-rights violations they experienced or had seen, where and when these happened, who were involved. The atrocities enumerated in Chega! range from detention to torture, to rape and sexual slavery, to murder. In all, some 183,000 people are estimated to have died in East Timor during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation.

Most of the victims were East Timorese. Some of the alleged perpetrators, meanwhile, were from militia formed by local political parties like Frente Revolucionaria de Timor-Leste Independente (Fretilin), Uniao Democrattica Timorense (UDT), and Associacao Popular Democratica (Apodeti). But majority of those said to have committed the crimes belonged to the Indonesian Armed Forces and the militia they themselves had formed. I felt scared when I learned that most of the crimes were being blamed on members of the Indonesian military, which had also been a constant presence while I was growing up in Rembang, studying in Semarang, and later working in Jakarta.

According to Aniceto Guterres Lopes, former head of the National CAVR, the idea to create the Commission practically rose from the wreckage that was Timor Leste after the 1999 referendum. Majority of the people voted for independence, and for that buildings were razed to the ground and half of the population was forced to flee their villages. Those who did not want to leave or were suspected to be pro-independence were killed by the Indonesian military or its militia.

"That time we really needed reconciliation," says Guterres Lopes. "And this reconciliation could only be reached by revealing the truth."

"The purpose," explains Agustinho Vasconselos, former commissioner of the National CAVR and current head of the post-CAVR Technical Secretariat, "is to record the crime, so that people can learn from it and do not commit it again."

Yet not one of the recommendations put forward by the Commission had been acted upon up until the time he is saying this to me, in May 2007, or two years after CAVR had wrapped up its official activities. Indonesia itself had already refused to have its officers in Timor Leste face an international court of justice, although it promised justice for those wronged by its soldiers. There was actually a group of officers brought to court, but no one was convicted. From General Benny Moerdani and General Wiranto, who were in command of the Indonesian Armed Forces in East Timor, way down to the military rank and file -- not one took responsibility for the deaths that occurred here during the Indonesian occupation.

When I try to ask Xanana Gusmao, then the outgoing president of Timor Leste, about what had happened to CAVR’s work, he declines to comment. "I think this is not the time for the interview," he tells me. After all, I have caught up with him while he is in the thick of giving and attending farewell parties.

But I can’t help thinking that it had been under Gusmao’s leadership that CAVR was formed. He had also been active in gathering support for the Commission, including its funding. CAVR is estimated to have consumed some $25 million in total. In November 2005, it completed its work with the release of Chega! Copies of the report were distributed to members of the National Parliament and made available to the general public. Another version was sent to then President Gusmao; unlike Chega!, it contained the real names of both the victims and the alleged perpetrators.

Activists had been pleased with the CAVR report, which aside from detailing human rights-violations committed in Timor Leste from 1974 to 1999, also recounted how U.S.- and British-made planes and weapons were used to commit crimes towards civilians. The report recommended that a court of justice be formed for all crimes committed, as well as reconciliation and pardon for light crimes. Among the demands in Chega! was that some countries, including Indonesia and Australia, provide reparation for the victims.

The release of the groundbreaking report, however, was soon overshadowed by a political crisis that eventually led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. Recalls Francisco Branco of Fretilin, the biggest party in the national legislature: "At that time, Parliament had other priorities, besides examining and reading the results of CAVR’s work."

But by May 2007, this infant country’s lawmakers still had not done much regarding Chega! – even though many of them had been instrumental in crafting together the legal basis for the Commission’s work.

Some of the parliamentarians I meet say they simply have not yet received the report. "I only received the short version of the report. Not full and complete," says Vincente da Silva Guterres, a legislator from the Timorese Resistance National Council, which is more popularly known by its Portuguese acronym, CNRT. It is also Gusmao’s party.

Mario Sabino Lopes from the Democrat Party admits having a copy of Chega!, but says the "process" on what to do with the testimonies and recommendations was at a standstill in Parliament. He also points out that the legislature had been busy with campaigns – and then somehow found it necessary to note that his party was a minority in parliament "and does not wield enough votes".

All these have left activists like Edio Saldanha Borges very upset. Saldanha Borges had quit the Human Rights Association shortly after Chega!’s release and established an alliance for international justice. According to him, all members of parliament had copies of Chega! and if some claim that they haven’t, they are lying. "It is an outright lie," he says angrily, "because, according to the Constitution 162, year 2002, CAVR is responsible to the Parliament."

He also confesses to feeling bad towards Gusmao, who is a respected and much admired figure among the Timorese. But Saldanha Borges apparently cannot accept that the same man who was instrumental in starting the CAVR later created the Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF) with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Gusmao even took most of CAVR’s members to join CTF and sit in its various committees.

Saldanha Borges is scathing in his remarks about CTF and its creators: "After taking statement from the victims, they then create a friendship commission whose aim is to pardon the perpetrators. This is a betrayal of the victims."

It’s a view shared by many human-rights advocates from New York to Dili. Since CTF was formed in March 2005, it has been seen by many as a "sham". To those like Saldanha Borges, the CTF contradicts CAVR’s mission to reveal truth that will eventually lead to reconciliation; instead, they say, it hides the truth in the guise of friendship.

Human Rights Association head Jose Luis Olivera says that Gusmao’s decision to help form the CTF only showed that the ex-resistance leader was just "playing" with the victims of human-rights violations in Timor Leste. Says Olivera: "By supporting the creation of CAVR, Xanana wanted to be regarded as supporting human rights. But actually, he was not serious, as proven by his creation of (CTF)."

The creation of CAVR had posed a lot of challenges because of the wide variety of human-rights crimes to be handled and the large number of people involved, some of whom were still occupying high-ranking positions. On the East Timorese side, the more prominent personalities included Gusmao, who had been the leader of the resistance movement, and Fretilin’s Francisco Guterres Luo’lo, who wound up the president of the National Parliament. Recalls Guterres Lopes: "A lot of people were pessimistic of our mission to document all the crimes committed in the last 25 years. At that time most people were focusing on human-rights violations in 1999."  

Which were themselves horrific, thus explaining why they became the subject of several investigations, including one by the United Nations. Indeed, Geoffrey Robinson in East Timor 1999 concluded that crimes against humanity in East Timor after the UN-sponsored referendum here had been systematic and widespread. Yet even these were not enough for those like Guterres Lopes – or MI, for that matter -- to forget what had happened during the previous years.

The local organizations named in Chega! as being among the perpetrators of the atrocities -- UDT, Fretilin, and Apodeti -- all trace their beginnings in mid-1974, sometime after a government change in Lisbon, which led to Portugal suddenly pulling up its stakes in most of its colonies across the globe. In East Timor, which had been under Portuguese rule since the mid-16^th century, debates soon broke out over where the territory would go next. UDT wished for Timor Leste to remain under Portugal, while Fretilin wanted sovereignty. Apodeti, the smallest party, lobbied for integration with Indonesia next door. But all their arguments became moot with Indonesia’s invasion of Timor Leste in December 1975, with support from the United States and Australia.

It took a little longer for members of the Indonesian armed forces to reach MI’s village. She says they arrived in Lalerek Mutin in late 1983, when she was already married. MI’s young husband survived the initial Indonesian military onslaught, which seemed to have been aimed at cleansing the area of Fretilin guerrillas and sympathisers. Many men in the village were killed. By then, other communities elsewhere had already suffered a similar fate, with some enduring far worse. In Krakas village, Viqueque, the slaughter was said to have been indiscriminate, with the sick and elderly among those who were killed.

MI remembers clearly that it was a few months after the Krakas massacre that three Indonesian soldiers came and took her husband away. It was the last she would see of him.

It now takes 10 hours to get from Dili to Viqueque by public bus, at a cost of $10. Viqueque is 100 kms east of Dili, and Lalerek Mutin is approximately 15 kms from Viqueque. During the Indonesian occupation, Viqueque, Baucau, and Los Palos were known as the bases of Fretilin, the group fighting for independence. By the time I get to Lalerek Mutin, Timor Leste has had more or less seven years of being free.

I had been able to figure out who MI was and where she came from by consulting the Audience Record of the National CAVR, 28-29 April 2003. During this period, 14 women gave their testimony on the sexual violation they experienced; all of their real names and some other details were put on record. To tell which one was MI, all I had to do was find the match for her story in Chega!

But there is obviously nothing in the Audience Record or in Chega! that speaks of the beauty of much of Timor Leste’s countryside. From Dili to Manatuto and then to Bacau, the beach appears and disappears from view as the bus traverses the mountainous roads. The beach is not wide, but it is long, and its sand looks like brushed white paint separating the cool blue of the sea from the vibrant green of the hills.

Still, there is no avoiding the evidence that this country has been through a lot. For example, along the road from Dili to Motaain, bordering Indonesia, most of the buildings have either been burned down completely or left with only half their structure still standing. In late 1999, when more than 260,000 East Timorese were forced to move across the border to the western part of the island in the post-referendum chaos, the road we are on must have looked like scorched earth.

There is no public transportation to be had to Lalerek Mutin, and my bus ride stops at Viqueque. I contact Mario Pinto, a Timor Leste radio journalist, and he comes to help me out. He is friendly and smiles often. There is a motorcycle we can use, but I would have to drive it myself since Pinto doesn’t know how.

To reach Lalerek Mutin, we traverse a teak forest, the Viqueque market, a coconut plantation, the Waituku River, and a former military barracks. It is already dark when we finally arrive there, and there is no electric service. Small huts with palm leaves as roof and the earth as flooring serve as homes in Lalerek Mutin. Dogs and pigs wander around freely, as do children covered with dust and not much else.

We proceed directly to the home of Jose Gomes, the village head. Gomes was also among CAVR’s witnesses. We talk about the Krakas massacre for a bit, and I learn that most of the survivors (majority of whom were women) had moved to Lalerek Mutin in 1984. Pinto and I ask for permission to visit MI, who lives near Gomes’s house, and then we excuse ourselves.

We find MI sitting in what looks like her terrace. She is hard at work on a big pan of dough, and a makeshift oil lamp fashioned out of a soda bottle is her lone light. Besides farming, MI sells Portuguese hard bread each morning. Each piece of pao, which she makes from scratch, nets her five cents. "If I sell all, I get two U.S. dollars," MI says. The U.S. has replaced the Indonesian rupiah as the currency in Timor Leste.

"A lot of people come here to ask me about the rape that I experienced," she says, the words sounding almost like a rebuke. "Some months ago an Australian came and asked me to tell the story."

The village children now gather at her terrace, their curiosity piqued. A few bare-chested women with babies clutched to their breast follow suit, inching closer to our group. MI suddenly looks uncomfortable. "Halae, halae, halae (Disperse, disperse, disperse)!" she shouts, shooing the children away.

She later says that she did not immediately talk to people from the CAVR who had visited Lalerek Mutin a few years back. It took four tries before they were able to persuade her to give her testimony. "I trusted them," says MI, "because when the priest came, he was accompanied by CAVR staff."

If the CAVR staff proved persistent, that may be partly because of the sheer effort it had taken just to form the body. Indeed, there had been strong public pessimism regarding the initiative, but as Guterres Lopes had told me back in Dili, "the support of the international community at that time made us strong".

Since the 1990s, this kind of commission has been created in post-conflict countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America. CAVR is the 21^st such body, following a similar one set up in Sierra Leone. "I think (CAVR) is the first truth commission in Asia," Jose Estevao Soares, a former CAVR member, had also told me in Dili.

Local and international human-rights advocates, Roman Catholic Church leaders, former political detainees, pro-integration representatives, and the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) discussed the commission’s creation in a June 2000 workshop. CNRT head Gusmao received the signal to create a "truth commission", and he put the topic on the table during the popular party’s first congress. As a result, one of the recommendations of that congress was the formation of the CAVR.

And so a lead committee was put together, consisting of representatives from various political parties, as well as those from religious, military, and international groups. Its task was to consult the people on their views about the proposal. It was confirmed that the public on the whole wanted justice even as people also sought "reconciliation".  

The National Council, under Gusmao’s leadership, submitted the final blueprint for the commission to Sérgio Vieria De Mello, transitional administrator of Timor Leste. He approved the proposal on 13 July 2001.

The CAVR advisory board was made up of prominent figures in Timor Leste society: Jose Ramos-Horta, Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, Bishop Basilio do Nascimento, Madre Zulmira Osorio Soares, Pastora Maris de Fatima Gomes, and Ana Pessoa Pinto. In addition, there were four international advisers: Vieira de Mello, Ian Martin, as well as Saparinah Sadli and Munir from Jakarta.

Those who became advisers to the CAVR National Commission included Guterres Lopes, Padre Jovito do Rêgo de Araujo, Maria Olandina Isabel Caeiro Alves, Jacinto das Neves Raimundo Alves, José Estevão Soares, Rev. Agustinho de Vasconselos, and Isabel Amaral Guterres.

MI says, though, that the CAVR was not first to have sought her testimony regarding what she went through during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. "During the Indonesian era I gave information to an informal audience from the Church," she says. "I gave information again during the CAVR era."

MI, who says she has endured being called "bihu" or spy by some of her neighbours, tells me the names of the three soldiers who had taken turns in forcing her to become a "battlefield wife". The first, she says, took her even though she was still mourning the death of her 14-month-old son. She soon got pregnant again, but she miscarried and lost the child. She has not heard from the soldier since he was reassigned shortly after her miscarriage.

Then, she says without much emotion, "in 1991, M___ from Nanggala had sexual relations with me, resulting in a child who is now in the first year of junior high school. In 1993, S____ from Battalion 408 fought to get me, made me pregnant, and left the child with me."

MI says M___ finished his tour of duty and returned to his mother unit without waiting for her to give birth to his child. "I could not work after giving birth," she says. "My neighbours and relatives gave me food."

MI says that each time she is asked what she wants most, she says her answer has always been the same: a carabao. It’s a very simple wish, but she says having one would be a great help in her farm. She has said this to those who have repeatedly ask her about her experiences in the hands of Indonesian soldiers, but no carabao has been brought to her doorstep.

We talk with MI until late at night. I start panicking when I see dark clouds covering the stars in the sky.

We thank her and bid goodbye. Drops of rain begin to fall as we journey back to Viqueque, and the dirt road soon turns into slippery mud. We meet groups of people, some pushing cars, others with machetes in hand. "They just came back from the market," Pinto says reassuringly.

Our ride becomes better once we reach the Viqueque market, where the road is asphalted. But then our motorcycle’s headlight chooses that moment to die, and we spend several minutes in darkness. Fortunately, a truck comes and Pinto asks its driver to beam its light on the road to help us see our way up to a village, which is also pitch black. "Here the electricity is one day on and one day off," says Pinto.

Soon I am back in Indonesia, where I try to find M___ and S_____. I meet Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki, the head of the army’s Public Information Service in Jakarta. He asks me to submit an official request for information. I do so the very next morning; I have yet to receive a reply.

I go to Battalion 408 headquarters in Sragen, near the city of Solo, to seek S_____. Lt. Col. Ahmad Bazar, the battalion commander, meets me at the Widoro Kandang shooting range. We talk as soldiers around us go through rounds of exercise. "If it’s about the war preparation of Battalion 408, I can talk," he says. "But for human-rights issues, you have to get permission from the Regiment Command. We are just field officers." Our conversation lasts 15 minutes, maybe less.

The following day I contact the Warastama Regiment Command 074 in Solo. Lt. Col. IGK Wicitra Wisnu, the chief of staff, tells me, "This is not under my jurisdiction. We have a supervisor. Rather than give you a wrong answer, it’s better you get permission first from the Information Unit of the Regiment Command." I feel like a ping-pong ball being thwacked back and forth.

I decide to board near Dormitory 408. I even ask help from fruit and ice-cream vendors to find S_____, to no avail.

I do have an opportunity to meet the wife of someone I know was assigned with S____ to Timor Leste. But she turns angry once she learns what I am after. She screams, "If I make a report about you to the police or to the army, you will be arrested."

Livid with rage, she tells me I am lucky her husband and two sons – one "a graduate from the Military Academy in Magelang" – are not around. Otherwise, she says, I would surely end up behind bars.

I am still trying to find S_____ and M_____ to give them MI’s message that they have children in Timor Leste who are now going to school.

As for MI and other Timorese like her ever getting a taste of justice, all I keep hearing in my head are these words uttered by Timor Leste President Jose Ramos Horta in his inaugural speech: "I am satisfied with the work results of the Commission on Truth and Friendship and I will continue what had been formed by my predecessor."

MONDAY, 28 July 2008

Al Rabih Ould Edum

(Translated from Arabic) 

She is the youngest divorcee on record at human rights organizations in Mauritania…Smart, and well-spoken, she knows how to express what had happened to her…

When we arrived at her parents' humble home, she was sitting with her peers… a group of girls, not a group of women… Upon first meeting her, it was hard to believe that this is the same girl who got married in Saudi Arabia, the girl who carries in her small purse a triple divorce certificate… It was hard to understand that behind her dreamy eyes, innocent face and slender form lay the tragedy of a child that had joined the divorcee club even before she had practiced fasting in the month of Ramadan, not once, not even for a try.

We hesitated for a while at the door of the house she sat in… Um El Kheyr would not let us enter immediately… She had wanted to cover her head, since we were, after all, "foreigners", as the child described.

Her journey had been long, and her experience deep… Her story was overwhelming… In just one year, this child's innocent soul, life-embracing and curious, had lost all innocence… Her papers had been forged… She had been coerced and tortured into marriage… She had been kidnapped, snatched away from her father who had been forced by adversity to grant his daughter’s custody over to his sister…as he searched for a sustaining livelihood… The girl had been through enough alienation, oppression and violation, that she had become dreamy-eyed, as though searching for an unknown haven to rest in.

She did not cry when detailing the hurtful story… More unnerving was that the wounds inflicted had robbed her from her childhood and left no place for reserve… The child recounted the rape in minute detail in the presence of her father, who was sorrow-riddled as he stroked his dignified white beard…saying that what had happened was a heinous crime committed against his daughter…confirming that he stood by her right.

"Um El Kheyr" is ten years old… Her father, Sayed Muhammad Ould EL Tijani, 42, is a travelling salesman… He says about the experience: "Last year, the mother of my daughter passed away… It was then that I decided to take her to the eastern states, to my sister in Nouakchott, the capital, so that she would supervise her education and upbringing…

But my sister Maymuna, he adds, had a different point of view. She took the girl to Saudi Arabia without my knowing it… to where her son and daughter lived. She took the child along with her daughter whom a Saudi had married and asked for her… So, there, in Saudi Arabia, was my little child, living with my sister's son, and my sister's daughter and her husband. The man would often take his new wife to a hotel, spending there most of the time, and my little child, who was not a day older than ten, would be left alone with her 25-year-old cousin… One day, the young man found himself alone with my sleeping daughter… He raped her, and there was no one to keep him from committing this evil act…"

Um El Kheyr interjects saying: "My cousin "Abd El Lateef" raped me in Saudi Arabia when we were all alone in the house… We would never usually be in the same room, but my married cousin [his sister] was not around… Afterwards, I tried to call my father, but I couldn't."

According to her father, he had received a call in Nouakchott from the father of the young man who had raped the child, telling him that he wanted them married… Um El Kheyr's father recalls: "I wasn't aware then about the rape…and I had actually agreed to the marriage, but I didn't believe that he meant then and there, I had thought that he wanted them promised to each other… I told him that the procuration should be in the hands of an honest person. He promised to contact two of my cousins in whom I trusted, for me to vest them the authority of overseeing my daughter's marriage at the time they see that she has become eligible to do so… When he was hours late to call me back, I contacted him that very same evening… I asked him what had happened concerning our conversation, and he said that what we had talked about was done and over with, that the marriage was contracted… I yelled at him, asking him who had given him permission to marry my daughter to his son, and where were the people whom we had agreed would be granted the authority over my daughter… He hung up on me, and since then he would not take my calls, and would arrange to be in Nouakchott only when I am in the central states."

As for the child, she comments the rape and marriage that had happened successively, saying: "After my cousin raped me, he told me that he had done that because he would marry me… So, I told him, and I told everyone, that I will not get married, that I did not want to get married, that I did not want to get married to that person in particular… But my opinion did not matter at all."

According to data from the "Mauritanian Housewives' League", the groom returned to the country with his young bride, who still played with children and loved candy… and had a hard time dealing with all that had happened… Her father was not contacted to tell him the news, and she did not know that he was in the capital where she had arrived, but thought that he was roaming the central states, trading as usual… In a matter of days, he found out, and his sons-in-law visited him, accompanied by the child… This visit only lasted ten minutes, during which the father asked his daughter why she had not called to say that she was coming… She told him that she did not know that he was in the capital, and that she did not have a phone to call him… So, he gave her one that he owned, and told her to call him often… He said that he had done it because he did not want to get into a fight with a young man of twenty-five, that he blamed his brother-in-law for what had befallen his daughter… and that with him alone, would he discuss the matter.

The child's husband would not talk to us, since, according to him, he saw no need to… But the divorce certificate he sent one day after a call made by her father, reveal part of his perspective on the subject… The certificate stated: "In the name of Allah, the all Merciful the all Compassionate and His prophet, peace be upon him. This is a letter of divorce…

I, Mr. "Abd El Lateef son of…" hereby bear witness in front of Allah, His prophet, and those who believe in Him, that I have divorced Um EL Kheyr, daughter of Sayed Muhammad, a triple divorce, due to the bad company of her parents, and the hypocrisy of their treatment, as Allah is witness to my words… Signed by the husband… Date: 14 March 2008."

The girl's father told Sahara Media that the scars due to torture were evident of his daughter's back, as she was, allegedly, whipped by the husband and his brother.

"My husband tortured me with a whip, after my uncle came to advise him against mistreating me and my father, and told him that keeping me from contacting my father was unacceptable… He and his brother threatened my uncle with a knife… They tortured me and humiliated my father."

The Child Hamza: My Brother Hung me on the Ceiling…

And Branded my Body with Searing Metal…

(Translated from Arabic)

Thursday, 31 JULY 2008

Al Rabih Ould Edum - Nouakchott

He is ten years old… A child like all other children in the world… He has the right to play, to have fun, go to school, and to learn… He has the right to learn new languages and go to parks… But as fate would have it, another life awaited him… a life that was anything but what it should have been.

This child who had dropped out of school some time ago… is caught between those people living around him and those who have a negative influence on the quality of his life.

His name is "Hamza Ould Kaynu", he was born in 1998. His mother, Aysha daughter of EL Mukhtar, 35, is a travelling ice-cream saleswoman… and his father, Kaynu Ould Amaran, 60, a porter… Hamza's family lives in the capital Nouakchott.

His elderly father lives on the sidelines… He does not understand modern times at all… He does not even hold an ID… His poor mother dreams of a brilliant future for her son, but all she can offer is what little money she makes and that barely covers the daily expenses of feeding her family. Life had been harsh, and she had been compelled to sell the cold drinks "Bisam"… His older half brothers are in no way role models for him; one had died serving time in jail, and the other has just been released… His two sisters are married, toiling through life with their prince charming.

Life had not been kind to three other brothers; it had dealt them poverty, crises, sickness and inadequate living conditions… They had passed away, and death seemed more merciful than carrying on in this losing struggle for decent living.

He has had a rough life, this shy young fellow… It would stir your emotions to see him walking barefoot in the streets of the capital.

His father had two children before marrying his mother… According to the mother, he had not raised them properly… So, they had grown up on the street, and acquired a violent and delinquent way of life…

His new wife gave birth to two girls, who in turn got married and moved out from the family home… She also gave him two sons, Muhammad, 11… and Hamza, 10.

Hamza's two brothers were jailed for committing crimes… One had died serving time last year (2007)… The other survived and was released, only to be interned again after two months… promising to change his life for the better… and swearing that he repented.

After a while, "Daoud" asked his step-mother to leave the two children in his custody, so he would teach them a trade that would do them good in this life and in the hereafter… He took them with him to where he lived, and got them started in car repair… The mother did not object to her sons going into this line of business, even though she had wanted them to go to school, she was illiterate and had wanted her sons to get and education.

Hamza was opposed to working in a garage… and told his brother firmly that he will not go into this business… That earned him punishment, in the eyes of his elder brother, and this punishment almost cost him his life… His brother had tortured him until he was on the brink of death.

His mother presented the case to the Prosecutor General at the Palace of Justice in the capital Nouakchott… She filed a complaint to the police… She contacted the media to draw people's attention to her struggle.

Today, Hamza's mother is with her sister… She cannot afford the 1500 ouguiya (USD 7) needed to get her son examined, and find out if his bones are broken or fractured… She cannot even afford the taxi fare… to travel… Her last few ouguiyas were spent on medicine for the child… She is now caught in a vicious circle… But she has faith in Allah; He does not forget those who worship Him.

Her husband stood by his son, she confirms… He told her that he was her son too even if she had not given birth to him… that filing a complaint against him was unacceptable… To this she answered that evil should not be harbored against others, the truth should be declared in public, and those with just claim should defend their right… He got angry with her… They have not reconciled yet.

"A month ago, my brother "Daoud Ould Kaynu" took me away from my mother to a garage owner in "Ksar" named "Obeid" to teach me to become a mechanic, but I would often skip going to work, so he started hitting me because of that… But I told him that I did not want to become a mechanic and that I will return to the "mahzara" (Quranic School)... So, he finally accepted to do as I asked.

The very same day he took me to the "Mina" market to buy some food items and carry them to the house of his "nephew", but I did not wait for him… I went to my mother's house is "Casablanca". When he returned to his house, he took me by the hand and led me to a remote place next to pole 6 in the "Mendez" neighborhood (a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Nouakchott). He made me go inside a dark house and he closed to door. He went in after me carrying some rope. He then gagged me, took some charcoal and started a fire. He placed a nail in it and waited for it to become red hot, and started searing me, all over my body."

The child, who seemed shaken by the memories of physical and psychological torture, added:

"No one heard me screaming, because he had gagged me. As I was about to lose consciousness, he took some rope and he tied it around my hands and feet, and hung me on a beam in the ceiling of the house. He took a whip and beat me repeatedly. He left me a whole day in that place. Then in the evening, he untied me and ordered me to go to the "Souk Al Maghreb" to fix my brother's bicycle. I took the opportunity to go to my mother's house. I told her the story and showed her the scars of torture on my body… She cried and cried because of what had happened to me… Around the time of Evening Prayer, he came to my mother and told her that he was taking me away with him… She refused… He tried to snatch me away from her, but after some neighbors appeared he left our house. My mother reported the incident to the police… I am terrified; I expect to be tortured again by my brother…"

Najah Alosaimi | Arab News  

FINAL CHECK: A student applying for scholarship checks her documents. (AN photo)               

RIYADH: Manal Al-Quais, a 23-year-old Saudi, won a scholarship from the King Abdullah Scholarship Program to study nursing in Canada. There’s only one problem: She can’t find a close male relative to go with her for the entire duration of the study; they have their own families and responsibilities to attend to.

Recently, two key governmental departments have initiated a debate on how women in Manal’s situation can take advantage of Saudi Arabia’s national scholarship program.

The Higher Education Ministry will not lift the requirement that these students bring a guardian (a close male relative or husband) in order to study abroad, while the governmental Human Rights Commission (HRC) disagrees on the importance of the “mahram” accompanying the students.

“This would help hundreds of women who don’t have male guardians available or ready to go with them to pursue higher education outside,” said HRC spokesman Zuhair Al-Harithy.

In a recommendation sent to the Council of Ministers, the HRC argues that the permission of a guardian should suffice, just as it is done for allowing women to travel unaccompanied.

But for the time being, Higher Education Ministry will stick to the existing policy. Saudi women who go abroad to study at their own expense are exempt from this requirement.

“Any woman student whose guardian leaves the country where she studies will immediately lose financial support,” said Abdullah Al-Moussa, general supervisor of scholarships at the Ministry of Higher Education.

Some guardians prefer to accompany their relatives for a couple of months and return to work and family. And some Saudi women, like Maram, who in her late teens dreams of going to college abroad to study events management, simply do not have any close male relatives.

“The rule expects that every house has a man,” Maram told Arab News, adding that the rules don’t allow her mother to accompany her.

The way the government ensures that Saudi women receiving these scholarships follow the requirements is simple: They don’t give the allowance money to the woman, but rather directly to the guardian whose passport is submitted along with the prospective student during the application process.

“The complaints (on the policy of requiring “mahrams” to accompany these young women) also come from parents,” said Al-Harithy. “They object to the rules that prevent their daughters from studying abroad when they have given their full approval for them to do so.”

Contrary to a popular misconception, women in Saudi Arabia are allowed to travel abroad alone (or without their male relatives) if their guardians give permission. The permission slips are affixed to the passports to show to the authorities.

Al-Harithy pointed out that the HRC efforts in this regard are not only because of individual complaints, but also because of the impact of this rule on society and the economy.

With approximately 30 percent of these scholarships going to women, according to official figures, there are many families with college-bound daughters who can’t afford to send a male relative with them, or the male relatives have their own lives and responsibilities that prevent them from being able to take this time off.

According to media reports, the problem has even led some women to seek out marriages of convenience with men willing to become “temporary husbands” and therefore guardians of these women during their stay abroad.

Sociologist Wafa’a Taibah, a professor at King Saud University and HRC member, expressed concern about these short-term marriages. “Such marriages are based on selfish interests,” she said. “They raise the rate of divorce and adversely affect any children born out of these marriages.”

The guardians themselves are affected. Should they decide to accompany their women relatives, they can end up spending years outside the work force and return to Saudi Arabia jobless.

Abdullah, 31, who did not want to provide his family name, is an example. He works in a legal office, but will soon resign to go to Brisbane, Australia, to act as his sister’s guardian while she earns her Ph.D.

“I will have to resign from my work because the management refused to give me three years’ leave,” he said.

Furthermore, in many cases these men will not be able to legally work in the countries where they reside temporarily. Guardians abroad receive monthly allowances from the ministry for staying with their student relatives.

In some countries, such as the United States and Britain, the guardians receive monthly stipends of SR4,000.

Wajeha Al-Huwaider, a Saudi women’s rights activist, said this policy should change and that there is no legitimate religious basis for prohibiting women from living alone in general.

“If we look around us we will find a number of Saudi women living alone with their kids after divorce, or after their husbands pass away,” she said. “Tribal customs and traditions must not interfere in education because it will slow women empowerment.”