Transnational
Feminisms and Women's Movements Events
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November 17, 2004
Marie-Béatrice Umutesi will be discussing her book
Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan
Refugee in Zaire (2004) at the November 17 brownbag
at noon 206 Ingraham. (cosponsored by the African Studies
Program, Women and Citizenship Research Circle, and the Women's
Studies Research Center). An English version of the book was
recently published by the University of Wisconsin Press. The
book is launching a new series on Women in Africa and the
Diaspora that is co-edited by Stanlie James and Aili Tripp.
Ms. Umutesi will be in Madison from November 15-17 and will
be available to meet with students for informal discussion
from 2 - 4 pm on Monday, November 15 in 108 Ingraham (Women's
Studies Research Center). If that time does not work and you
stil want to meet with her please contact me at tripp@polisci.wisc.edu.
This is the link to the University of Wisconsin Press ad
for the book: http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/3918.htm
In this firsthand account of inexplicable brutality, day-to-day
suffering, and survival, Marie-Béatrice Umutesi sheds
light on a genocide that targeted the Hutu refugees of Rwanda
after the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994.
Umutesi's documentation of these years provides the world
a history that is still widely unknown. This poignant autobiography
is more than a testimony to the lives and humanity lost; it
is a call for those responsible for the atrocious crimes-and
the devastating silence-to be held accountable.
About 300,000 were killed in these massacres. Marie-Beatrice
Umutesi was a university-trained woman who was working with
women’s associations in Byumba, Rwanda, before she
was forced to flee to Congo in desperation along with hundreds
of thousands of other refugees. Today she works in rural
development projects in Cameroon.
In 1993 Umutesi was forced to flee from Byumba to Kigali
and then in 1994 she fled to Congo/Zaire with members of her
family and several other children. Two years later they were
forced to flee from one refugee camp to another while being
pursued by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) soldiers
that had taken over Rwanda in 1994. She and other refugees
walked, sometimes ran, 2,000 kilometers from Bukavu to Mbandaka,
through the rainforests of Zaire. They were hunted down not
only by Rwandan soldiers but also by other marauding armies.
They died by the thousands in gruesome attacks by Rwandese
forces, but also from hunger, disease, and exhaustion. They
were ignored by the international community and betrayed by
humanitarian associations, especially the United Nations High
Commission on Refugees, that hunted them down to deliver them
into the hands of their murderers as part of a repatriation
effort.
As renowned historian of Africa Jan Vansina eloquently put
it in a review of the manuscript: “She tells in unadorned,
honest, and straightforward language what happened to her
and to her companions: what they saw, what they felt, what
rumours they heard during their flights or in the camps,
their fears, their hopes, their disappointments, their illnesses,
deaths, and the horror of it all. This account testifies
above all to what humanity itself consists of in its greatness,
depravity, and resilience. There are no enemy groups in this
book; members of all of them were equally stricken. . . [
the testimony is] "so powerful and moving that it reaches
an unintended literary greatness."
October 7, 2004
The Human Face Behind the Global Economy: Bangladeshi Women
Workers' Tour
6:00 - 8:00 PM, 6210 Social Science
Come hear two teenaged Bangladeshi garment workers, two
labor organizers from Bangladesh, and an internationally
renowned anti-sweatshop activist from the National Labor
Committee, which broke the Kathy Lee Gifford worker abuse
scandal. Learn how these women garment workers from Bangladesh
work 12 to 14 hours a day sewing clothing for the largest
company in the world (Wal-Mart) and make only 17 cents an
hour.
Corporations have demanded, and won, all sorts of enforceable
laws, backed up by sanctions, to protect their trademarks
and products. The speakers ask: If the corporate label is
protected, shouldn't the rights of the 16-year-old girl who
made the product also be protected?
Speakers include two Bangladeshi Women Workers:
Sk Nasma, Director, Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity
Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director, National Labor Committee
The speakers discuss their campaign to get giant corporations
to pay 25 cents more per garment so that 1.8 million Bangladeshi
garment workers and their families could move out of misery
and at least into poverty. They talk about the implications
of this campaign for the nearly 40 million garment workers
all across the developing world.
We are not publicly mentioning the names of the women workers
since they could be fired or harassed.
This event is sponsored by the Women and Citizenship Research
Circle, the Women's Studies Research Center, the Center for
South Asia, and the Haven's Center.
For more information, contact: (608) 263-1873, or e-mail:
wsrc@uwmadmail.services.wisc.edu
Conferences
Danger in the Field: Gender, Power and Ethics
April 1-2, 2004, the Pyle Center, Room 226
http://www.womenstudies.wisc.edu/WSRC/danger.htm
Co-sponsored by the Global Studies Program, Women &
Citizenship Research Circle, Women's Studies Research Center,
and Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Organizers: Martha Huggins, Professor of Sociology, Tulane
University
Jo Ellen Fair, Director, Global Studies Program, UW-Madison
Aili Tripp, Director, Women's Studies and Research Center, UW-Madison
Colloquium
Women, Islam and Transnational Feminism
Friday, March 5, 2004, the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street
http://www.womenstudies.wisc.edu/WSRC/islam.htm
Organized by the Women's Studies Research Center and the
Women & Citizenship Research Circle; Cosponsored by the
International Institute, Center for South Asia, African Studies
Program, Middle Eastern Studies Program and the Religious
Studies Program.
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