This woman.

A little past 11:30pm on 31st of December, I was still wide awake thanks to crazy family. I had a few thoughts to jot down:

This is no new year. A woman was put on trial for terrorism when her only act was to be an activist for women in her own country. She and others like her that is.

A woman was arrested on the grounds that a sacred place should not be desecrated by the recording of a rave party. That recording had been permitted and granted by the government. The same government which arrested her promptly afterwards.

A woman should not have to stand alone in front of a broken windowed house destroyed by her own government. A woman was standing with other women demanding answers for the deaths of their children, husbands, brothers, and fathers. Marching, fists in the air, demanding why innocent civic lives are taken away because of systemic violence against them.

A woman should not have to plead with the world because her husband is a human rights activist working for a human rights organization, in which everyone was arrested by their very own government.

A woman on either side of an archaic Soviet era border is alone because one government is leading a personal homophobic agenda against the other based on historical lies with the support of another neighboring government. Their loss is not the same. But at the same time, it is. Because that loss is humanity. The loss is of humanity.

So, these cases and events and women are not over, or done or gone. They are still here. So it is no new year. It is just the axis. Not our problems.

 

Note: the woman who had been arrested for the rave recording was released this past week. It does not change the fact that the arrest was made in the first place.

Also note: there are more cases, events, and women out there. All of them either destructive or injustice. Some of them have also worked towards justice with success. These all deserve applause daily.

Third note: We know what yesterday was and we know what happened. We would rather not start the next few months with yet another rant or another scream as our words are the same as here and here.

Fourth note: the photo points to sexual violence in conflict but we can also see it as gender-based violence or just systemic violence in general. Your choice. Taken in Yerevan, Armenia. November 2018. ©le_chah_errant