FEED Validator

for Atom and RSS and KML

Congratulations!

This is a valid RSS feed.

Recommendations

This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

line 559, column 3: content:encoded should not contain relative URL references: #_ftn1 (27 occurrences) [help]
```
]]></content:encoded>
   ^
```
line 1137, column 0: content:encoded should not contain data-type attribute (5 occurrences) [help]
line 1137, column 0: content:encoded should not contain data-id attribute (5 occurrences) [help]

Source: https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/feed/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
>
<channel>
<title>Righting Wrongs</title>
<atom:link href="https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights</link>
<description>A Journal of Human Rights</description>
<lastBuildDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 14:55:05 +0000</lastBuildDate>
<language>en-US</language>
<sy:updatePeriod>
hourly </sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>
1 </sy:updateFrequency>
<item>
<title>COMMENT – Reevaluating Capital Punishment</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-reevaluating-capital-punishment/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-reevaluating-capital-punishment/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 14:55:03 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIV, Issue 1]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1437</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Parsva Shah, John Jay College of Criminal Justice – New York, NY COMMENT – Reevaluating Capital Punishment: An Ethical and Pragmatic Examination [Download PDF] There is a longstanding belief in U.S. society that taking another person’s life is the worst of crimes. This belief poses a great ethical dilemma: Should capital punishment be considered an […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Parsva Shah, John Jay College of Criminal Justice – New York, NY

COMMENT – Reevaluating Capital Punishment: An Ethical and Pragmatic Examination
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Shah_Reevaluating-Capital-Punishment.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
There is a longstanding belief in U.S. society that taking another person’s life is the worst of crimes. This belief poses a great ethical dilemma: Should capital punishment be considered an acceptable punishment, even for murderers? From a human rights perspective, the value of human life is incalculable and should not be disrespected. As society progresses, our beliefs about justice should change with it. Yet the United States stands as one of the only so-called “developed” countries that still incorporates the death penalty into its legal system. This essay argues that capital punishment should be abolished from the U.S. justice system not only because it is unethical and a violation of human rights, but also because it risks killing innocent people, is a waste of tax dollars, and is an ineffective deterrent of violent crime. Furthermore, this paper asserts that capital punishment disproportionately affects people of color, which further contradicts American tenets of equality and fairness.
Ethics and Human Rights
Americans must consider the ethical and human rights ramifications of allowing the government to utilize the death penalty. It is firstly a violation of fundamental human rights norms. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and binding pieces of international law such as the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognize the inherent right to life, as well as prohibit discrimination and torture and guarantee rights to fair trials and justice before the law (see United Nations, 1948 and 1966). Elsewhere in the world, the death penalty is seen as being “incompatible with human dignity”; the European Union and Council of Europe Member States have abolished its use as a condition of membership, and it is banned by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (European Union, 2020, para 1). The principle of “an eye for an eye” contrasts sharply with society’s imperative to protect inalienable human rights, which exist regardless of an individual’s behavior. The existence of the death penalty in the U.S. criminal justice system serves as a contradiction to American values, which are centered on rights protection. The death penalty intentionally annihilates life and contradicts the fundamental “right to life.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (2007) argues:
When the government metes out vengeance disguised as justice, it becomes complicit with killers in devaluing human life and human dignity. In civilized society, we reject the principle of literally doing to criminals what they do to their victims: The penalty for rape cannot be rape, or for arson, the burning down of the arsonist’s house. We should not, therefore, punish the murderer with death (para 10).
The moral abhorrence of the death penalty is demonstrated by its inability to reflect society’s changing norms of decency. The punishments we consider reasonable and humane should evolve in conjunction with the advancement of our societal moral conscience. The death sentence, a remnant of a bygone past, no longer corresponds with modern ideals and justice demands (Goldberg & Dershowitz, 1970). Our ideals of justice have changed considerably given how we now recognize the value of every human through such practices as rehabilitation, forgiveness, and redemption. With its permanent and irreversible nature, the death penalty opposes these progressive standards. Those sentenced to the death penalty are neither given the opportunity for rehabilitation nor allowed to repent for their crimes.
The death penalty sends a troubling message to society that sparks opposition to its use, and resistance to capital punishment has deep historical roots in the United States. Although administered in the name of “justice,” the death penalty abandons ideals such as compassion and mercy. Capital punishment instead promotes negative values in society such as revenge and retaliation. By taking the life of a murderer, the death penalty blurs the lines between the actions of the murderer and those of the state. Opposition to capital punishment is nothing new in the U.S. The death sentence has always appeared to be inhumane and violent, regardless of whether it was carried out by an axe or injection. As early as 1773, a Harvard University legal review of the death penalty explained in a section titled “The Evolving Standards of Decency”that as our society evolves, we should change what we consider to be a decent punishment and reevaluate our actions (quoted in Goldberg & Dershowitz, 1970).
Many proponents of the death penalty argue that the modern death penalty is humane and therefore morally valid. However, this is far from the case, especially when one considers the gruesome details of botched executions, a harsh reality of the U.S. justice system. Researchers estimate that approximately three percent of capital punishments have gone wrong in the U.S., with the highest percentage of error being through the commonly used method of lethal injection (Sarat, 2014). The death penalty cannot be considered humane when it can take two hours of pain for someone to be rendered unconscious due to someone administering the wrong dosage of a toxin. Horrifying reports of these botched executions, such as the 2006 suffering of Angel Diaz, reveal ghastly details that lead one to question the moral validity of such a practice. Diaz experienced severe pain and suffering for 34 minutes before he was finally declared dead after two injections due to the deadly chemicals being injected into his soft tissue rather than a vein (Radalet, 2022). These cruel deaths at the hand of the state require condemnation and reform. The practice is inhumane and a violation of human rights norms, including prohibitions on torture, and should be abolished.
Furthermore, racial disparities in the use of capital punishment violates the right to freedom from discrimination. It is inaccurate to call capital punishment a method of justice when it is disproportionately sentenced to members of certain marginalized groups and/or when murder victims are members of the (white) majority. In the United States, decades of research show how the death penalty is disproportionally used against people of color and allocated in cases where the murder victim is white. Since 1976, people of color have made up a disproportionate 43 percent of all executions, and they make up 55 percent of those currently on death row (American Civil Liberties Union, 2003). Moreover, 80 percent of capital trials feature white victims when around half of all murder victims are white (American Civil Liberties Union, 2003). This selective allotment of capital punishment shows how capital punishment operates inside a racialized framework that is biased against Black defendants and victims while privileging white ones.
Other Considerations
The Risk of Executing Innocent Individuals – In addition to the ethical and human rights concerns inherent to the death penalty, its use is also ineffective and logistically problematic. For instance, the death penalty comes with the horrifying possibility of killing innocent people – a mistake that is irreversible. DNA testing and other technologies have led to at least 159 people being freed from Death Row since 1973, highlighting how the justice system indeed makes serious mistakes. If timing and circumstances had been different, those exonerated prisoners would have instead died for crimes they did not commit (Innocence Project, n.d.). Eyewitness identification errors, pressured confessions, insufficient legal representation, and forensic errors are just a few ways that unjust convictions occur. Those weaknesses are exacerbated when one accounts for racial biases within U.S. society and the criminal justice system. As reported by the Innocence Project (n.d.), official misconduct has been documented in three-fourths of the cases of Black exonerees and two-thirds of the cases of Latinx exonerees. Meanwhile, official misconduct is present in less than 60 percent of the cases of white exonerees. The irreversibility of the death sentence means that once a life is taken, there is no way to right the wrong.
The Financial Burden of Capital Punishment – The death penalty should also not be part of the U.S. justice system because it constitutes an extraordinary and inefficient burden on taxpayers. An abundance of evidence shows that the costs of death penalty proceedings and administration considerably outpaces alternative sentencing. For instance, a 2008 study by the Commission of the Fair Administration of Justice found the annual cost of the death penalty in California was a stunning $237 million, compared to the $11.5 million cost of a life sentence – a twenty-fold disparity (Gale, 2021). Media reports from the early 1990s echoed similar findings, such as how the cost of the death penalty in Texas was three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a high-security, single cell prison for 40 years (Hoppe, 1992). The death penalty is necessarily costly because of the gravity of the situation; it requires specialized jury selection, specialist legal counsel, and additional court procedures, among other costs (Death Penalty Information Center, 2012). Subsequent government expenses including food, housing, and funerals, on top of the cost of extra attorneys and officials, accumulate to further widen the gap between death sentencing and life-without-parole sentencing (Stephens, 2021). These “budgetary repercussions” of capital punishment (Baiker, 2001) are clearly unsustainable, especially compared to the less expensive alternative of life imprisonment.
Ineffectiveness as a Deterrent – Data suggests that capital punishment doesn’t serve as an effective deterrent to violent crime. In fact, most of the states that allow the death penalty also have much higher homicide rates than states that do not allow the death penalty (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.). The ACLU (n.d.) explains that murders do not usually happen with an eye towards the future: “People commit murders largely in the heat of passion, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or because they are mentally ill, giving little or no thought to the possible consequences of their acts. The few murderers who plan their crimes beforehand – for example, professional executioners – intend and expect to avoid punishment altogether by not getting caught.” In other words, most homicides are committed under circumstances where the perpetrators are not evaluating the consequences of their actions. As such, it is incredibly unlikely that capital punishment will play a role in deterring violent criminal actions. Statistics support this assumption; the use of capital punishment does not deter violent crime.
Conclusion
The use of capital punishment in the United States is unethical and violates fundamental human rights – including rights to life and equality before the law as well as freedom from discrimination and torture. It also brings with it a variety of harmful and/or ineffective complexities; it risks executing innocent people, it is expensive with a higher cost than life imprisonment, and it is ineffective in deterring violent crime. This combination of normative and practical concerns makes it clear that the United States should abolish capital punishment, much like its counterparts in Europe. Doing so would be a critical step toward creating a more just, humane, and ethically grounded criminal justice system.
References
American Civil Liberties Union. (2003, February 26). Race and the Death Penalty. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/documents/race-and-death-penalty.
American Civil Liberties Union. (2007, April 9). The Death Penalty: Questions and Answers. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/documents/death-penalty-questions-and-answers#%3A~%3Atext%3DQ%3A%20Doe.
Baiker, K. (2001). The Budgetary Repercussions of Capital Convictions. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, No. 8382. Retrieved from https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8382/w8382.pdf.
Death Penalty Information Center. (2012, August 10). COSTS: Why the Death Penalty Costs So Much. Retrieved from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/costs-why-the-death-penalty-costs-so-much.
European Union. (2020). “EU statement on the death penalty.” Retrieved from https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/eu-statement-death-penalty_en.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). “Expanded Homicide Data.” Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expandhomicidemain.
Gale. (2021). Capital Punishment. Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Retrieved from https://www.gale.com/open-access/death-penalty.
Goldberg, A. J., & Dershowitz, A. M. (1970). Declaring the Death Penalty Unconstitutional. Harvard Law Review, 83(8): 1773-1819.
Hoppe, C. (1992, March 8). Executions cost Texas millions: Study finds it’s cheaper to jail killers for life. The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved from https://standdown.typepad.com/DallasMorningNews-%20ExecutionsCostTexasMillions-1992-0308-Hoppe.pdf.
Innocence Project. (n.d.). Innocence and the Death Penalty. Retrieved from https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-and-the-death-penalty/.
Radalet, M. L. (2022, December 6). Examples of Post-Furman Botched Executions. Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions.
Sarat, A. (2014). Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sethuraju, R., Sole, J., & Oliver, B. E. (2016). Understanding Death Penalty Support and Opposition Among Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Students. Sage Open, 6(1).
Soken-Huberty, E. (n.d.). 10 Reasons Why the Death Penalty is Wrong. Human Rights Careers. Retrieved from https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/why-death-penalty-is-wrong/.
Stephens, R. K. (2021, February 11). The Cost of Federal Executions in Trump’s Last Year a Lingering Burden. Interrogating Justice. Retrieved from https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of-federal-executions-trump/#:~:t.
United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
United Nations. (1966). Internation Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights.
© Copyright 2024 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-reevaluating-capital-punishment/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Veiled Threats: Human Rights and the Russian Criminalization of Muslim Dagestani Women</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/veiled-threats-human-rights-and-the-russian-criminalization-of-muslim-dagestani-women/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/veiled-threats-human-rights-and-the-russian-criminalization-of-muslim-dagestani-women/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 14:52:05 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIV, Issue 1]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1436</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Jessica Price, California State University of Bakersfield Veiled Threats: Human Rights and the Russian Criminalization of Muslim Dagestani Women [Download PDF] Amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, a disturbing trend has emerged: The heightened criminalization of Muslim Dagestani women. This paper explores how these women employ religion as a means of resistance to Russia’s shifting policies […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Jessica Price, California State University of Bakersfield

Veiled Threats: Human Rights and the Russian Criminalization of Muslim Dagestani Women
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Price_Veiled-Threats.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
Amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, a disturbing trend has emerged: The heightened criminalization of Muslim Dagestani women. This paper explores how these women employ religion as a means of resistance to Russia’s shifting policies only to be labeled and treated as extremists. It highlights the complex interplay of political oppression, gendered rhetoric, and religious discrimination and argues that Russia’s actions constitute a significant breach of established human rights norms.
I was browsing international arrests warrants, or Red Notices, on the International Criminal Police Organization’s (INTERPOL) website when I discovered a recurring trend: Hundreds of women were accused by Russia of various charges related to “extremism.” I noticed that most of those women wore the hijab in their identification photographs – a detail which I believe contributes to a narrative that associates Islamic women with female subservience and religious fanaticism (see Kumar, 2010) – which in turn fuels Islamophobic bias and justifies discriminatory action. Importantly at the time of my search, Russia’s war in Ukraine had just reached the one-year mark, and the country’s forced conscription of men from Dagestan, an ethnically non-Russian republic in Central Asia, had led to a disproportionately high rate of Dagestani casualties (Abkhaz World, 2023). This chance observation led to my current research topic, which centers on human rights abuses and criminalization targeting Muslim Dagestani women.
Dagestani women have been participating in various forms of protest against Russian state actions and are increasingly criminalized as terror threats by the Russian government. Some women channel their political discontent into active participation in domestic and foreign jihadist movements, while many others are arrested merely for social media posts or attending peaceful protests. (Exact figures of such protect activities are unknown due largely to the opacity of Russian records, but regional online news sites have not reported on new terror attacks. They have, however, reported on several instances of arrests associated with picketing, protesting the military draft, association with extremist organizations, possession of an Islamic State flag, public calls for extremism, and financing extremism<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1">[1]</a>) In response, Russia is targeting Dagestani women for their participation in “crimes against public security” in record numbers. The charge is vaguely defined by Russian Criminal Code Article 282 as the “instigation of hate and enmity even when no violence is involved” (quoted in Roudik & Law Library of Congress, 2016).<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2">[2]</a> Recently reported protests and arrests indicate that Russian political-military actions, including the forced conscription of Dagestani men, are a driving force behind the heightened engagement of Dagestani women and thus contribute to the perception of their religious-based extremism.
Therefore, this article investigates Dagestani women’s increasing public engagement through protests and growing religious militancy, including alleged acts of terrorism, in response to discrimination by the Russian state. Evidence suggests that the criminalization of Muslim Dagestani women constitutes violations of internationally recognized human rights standards (United Nations, 2023). This research is based on a comprehensive analysis of INTERPOL’s Red Notices, which serves as a critical database that outlines the profiles of and charges against Dagestani women implicated in alleged acts of terrorism and extremism. It also draws from a diverse array of digital sources, including governmental reports, media outlets, and Russian state news publications. Digital archives at the U.S. State Department and the Library of Congress provided further documentation to analyze Russia’s systemic targeting and persecution of Muslim Dagestani women. With its focus on Dagestani women responding to state discrimination and persecution with various forms of dissent, this paper builds upon existing scholarly literature on gender discourse and religious discrimination in the Russian Federation.
I argue that Russia’s heightened criminalization of Muslim Dagestani women is rooted in several intersecting factors, including their ethnic background, status as a religious minority, and gender. Xenophobic attitudes in Russia stem from a complex legacy of stereotyped cultural diversities and religious practices of ethnically non-Russian Muslims. Historically, tensions have arisen from geopolitical conflicts in the North Caucasus region, which exacerbate existing prejudices through biased media portrayals and institutionalized discrimination – namely, that Muslims are a security threat (Aziz & Calderone, 2024). The historical legacies and evolving patterns of ostracism in the current climate of the Russia-Ukraine war ultimately make it clear that Russia’s actions do indeed constitute a significant breach of human rights. <a></a>
Historical and Geopolitical Context
Dagestan, a mountainous republic in Central Asia situated in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation, borders Georgia, Chechnya, and the Caspian Sea. The population is just over three million people who are largely isolated and living in remote ethnic groups with few urbanized centers. And while there is a vast array of languages and ethnicities in Dagestan, most inhabitants are of the Sunni Islamic faith – an enduring imprint of historical Persian influence (Kelly, 2023). Dagestan’s cultural fusion, coupled with the region’s geographic location as a junction between Europe and Asia, laid a foundation for Dagestan’s unique blend of Islamic traditions and indigenous customs.
Since the eighteenth century, Russia has maintained a presence in the Caucasus. The country’s involvement has long been a point of contention for Dagestan and other area republics seeking political autonomy. Russia’s first foray into Dagestan was under Peter the Great in 1722, and by 1824 nearly all Dagestani territory was under Russian control. There have been several points of rebellion since that time, reflecting a legacy of Dagestani bitterness toward Russia that endures to this day (Khalid, 2014). Religious leaders consistently attempted to use faith as a rallying force for resistance against Russia’s governance. In the late 1820’s two imams, Ghazi Muhammad and Shamil, promoted combining military efforts with religion, resulting in guerilla warfare that battled Russian occupying forces for almost 30 years (Ware & Kisriev, 2009). There were similar uprisings led by imams in 1861, 1862, 1871, and 1877-78, when Dagestan attempted to distance themselves from Russian rule to no avail. Russia met each rebellion with increasing brutality by burning villages and staging public executions until the republic finally incorporated Dagestan after the 1917 Revolution (Gammer, 2013).
The Soviet era marked a period of profound socio-political transformation, leading to the widespread suppression of religious practices and the imposition of atheism as the state ideology. This significantly altered the cultural and religious dynamics of the Caucasus region, where Muslim identity was so intertwined with the Dagestani historical heritage (Khalid, 2014). These changes generated a decades-long ripple effect on the lives of Dagestani people that included stringent policies and laws enforced by Russian authorities that have created a climate of marginalization and prejudice. Even today, dissidents to the Russian State who are overt in their religious practices have been singled out by state security and are subject to exclusionary laws (Aziz & Calderone, 2024). Russia’s constitution details the right to religious freedom, but the government has branded many religious groups – including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Falun Gong, the Church of Scientology, and multiple evangelical Protestant groups – as extremist. Government authorities routinely jail followers of these traditions for organizing religious activities (United States Department of State, 2022a). Despite Russia’s coercive efforts to quell religious expression, the deep-rooted traditions of Dagestan endured in various forms of clandestine religious observation and cultural preservation. The lasting repercussion of subjugation, paired with the political climate of the post-Soviet era, compelled some Dagestani Muslims to seek alternative methods of religious practice in the face of the state’s oppression (Khalid, 2014).
The adoption of Salafi Islam was one such alternative. Salafism is an ultra-conservative Islamic movement that seeks to emulate the practices and beliefs of the early Islamic community, including the Prophet Muhammad. Salafi Muslims emphasize the importance of commanding right and forbidding wrong, believing it is their religious duty to perform virtuous deeds and discourage immoral behavior in their communities as a form of moral and social justice (al-Azami, 2021). It offers a distinct focus on religious authority, serving as a form of rebellion against an unfair government through faith and providing an avenue for dissent through one’s religious identity (Sokolov, 2016).
After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s, Chechnya drew Dagestan into its fight for independence from Russia. This development introduced complex societal shifts for Dagestani women due to the high number of casualties of Dagestani men (Ware & Kisriev, 2009). The consequences of the demographic shift transformed Dagestan’s collective landscape, influencing the individual agency and religious dynamics for Dagestani women. The women encountered a high emotional toll from the loss of family members and an upheaval in familial dynamics and limited support. These hardships caused many Muslim Dagestani women to turn to their faith for solace and guidance, finding in Islam a source of strength that could also be a catalyst for change (WPS Prague, 2019).
The transformations that occurred during the Chechen Wars are now being echoed in the contemporary situation for the women losing loved ones in Russia’s war on Ukraine (Sokolov, 2020). As a response to the political unrest of the Chechen Wars, a growing number of young, unemployed, and disillusioned Dagestanis turned to Salafi Islam. Salafism condemns, among other things, corrupt political systems, and moral degradation (Williams & Lokshina, 2015). Women’s roles in Salafism are significant in fostering and perpetuating the movement’s ideologies and propagating conservative values (Nurani, 2019). Dagestan’s Salafi community is often correlated with extremism and religious militancy due to its calls for resistance against Russian State control. Salafism is also frequently used interchangeably with Wahhabism, although there are nuanced differences.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3">[3]</a> Wahhabism is also a strictly conservative movement, founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Both sects have historical associations with the terrorist groups ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They are similarly associated with radical ideologies because of their rigid interpretations of Islamic doctrines (Ťupek & Beránek, 2018). This parallel underscores the impact conflict has had on the Dagestani community under Russian oppression and offers insight into the patterns of the women’s roles across different points of their shared history.
Russia’s invasion into Ukraine in February 2022 was the continuation of a historical legacy of state oppression as it opened another chapter of violent conflict for the people of Dagestan. The assault revealed a geopolitical landscape long marred by heightened tensions and regional instability. Ethnically non-Russian men in Dagestan are being drafted into the war at far higher rates than the rest of the Russian male population, which has led to devastating casualties (Abkhaz World, 2023). The rate of casualties among ethnic minorities highlights a disturbing trend, with Dagestani men suffering a disproportionate rate of deaths. Although Dagestan makes up approximately 2.2 percent of the population in the Russian Federation, they comprise close to 15 percent of reported casualties (Molfar, 2023). It has been suggested that the number is likely higher because Russian officials are significantly under-reporting their losses (Cole, 2024). This hints at a broader state agenda of targeting ethnically non-Russian populations, like Dagestan, for mandatory drafts – possibly as a form of ethnic cleansing.<a id="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> Evidence also suggests that Russian conscriptions have depopulated non-Slavic areas by as much as 20 percent, even though they are significantly less populated regions (Van Son, 2022). The historical and geopolitical context serves as a foundation to better understand the complex interplay of the lives of Dagestani women and the layers of their identities.
Lived Experiences: Ethnicity, Religion, Gender<a></a>
The experience of Dagestani women emerges from the convergence of their cultural heritage, religious convictions, and history with conflict and war. In Dagestan, women play a pivotal role within domestic and communal structures. There is a multifaceted nature to their responsibilities; Dagestani women are integral to upholding their family’s honor, preserving traditions, and fostering community solidarity amidst the atmosphere of political turmoil and regional instability (WPS Prague, 2019). Meanwhile Islam occupies a primary role in Dagestani society, serving as a cornerstone of identity and a source of spiritual solace. Islamic faith calls for haqq alnas, or duties to the community, and the role of sustaining Islamic culture is ascribed to women (Haddad, 2011).In the face of limited options, there is often a complex trajectory for Dagestani Muslim women’s lives. One option is the traditional, rural experience possibly including arranged marriage (WPS Prague, 2019). Alternately, some women are exploring opportunities outside of their villages and discovering the urban cities of Dagestan or other regions in the North Caucasus. In this pursuit, they are brushing up against conflict-ridden areas like Syria and Turkey and a more conservative sect of Islam, Salafism. This is causing transformative impacts on their identities as Muslim women and their supposed affiliations with male counterparts in extremist groups (Williams & Lokshina, 2015).
Dagestani women’s perceptions of their Islamic faith are intricately woven into their daily lives and shaped by cultural, historical, and political factors. For these women, Islam is not merely a set of doctrines, but a way of life that provides meaning, community, and ethical guidance (Mahmood, 2006). Their interpretations of Islamic teachings are deeply rooted in local traditions, family values, and distinct historical experiences in the North Caucasus. The aftermath of the Chechen conflict led to significant changes in the religious and social identities of Muslim Dagestani women. In the North Caucasus region, Sunni Muslims represent most of the population. Salafism, a “purer” Islamic practice, surged in appeal during and after the Chechen conflicts because it is considered a pathway of resistance against the unpopular Russian state and law enforcement (Sokolov, 2020). Many younger generations of Dagestani women have embraced the more fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in response to the fluctuating political landscape. It is not surprising then, that officials are branding Salafism as radical (Lokshina, 2010).
Muslim Dagestani women’s lived experiences and interpretations of Islam transcend the simplistic narratives often portrayed in Western and Russian media, which often diminish these nuanced expressions of faith to a singular/monolithic/exotic description that neglects their diversity (Kumar, 2010). This reductionist perspective contributes to the stigmatization of Muslim Dagestani women, fostering a climate where their religious identity becomes a target for discrimination. The frequent discourse narrative of the “Black Widow” or “jihadi bride,” where Muslim women in hijab seek martyrdom through their radical faith, is one such example (Krulišová, 2016). The disconnect between internalized religious practices and biased external perceptions intensifies the challenges the women face, particularly when viewed through the lens of Western secularism that often associates Islam with violence and veiled women as “clashing” with Western ideology (Kumar, 2010).
The media typecasts that contribute to the stigmatization of Muslim Dagestani women also lays the groundwork for the surge in their criminalization. For instance, Russian state media publishes a list of individuals who are allegedly involved in extremism (see Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 2015), which underscores a pattern of stereotyping women as terrorists. The portrayal of Muslim Dagestani women as threats to national security, perpetuated by both media narratives and government discourses, further exacerbates their vulnerability and subjects them to unwarranted scrutiny. The characterization of the veiled, radicalized woman offers critical insight into the gendered typecast and prejudices that shape outsiders’ perspectives of Muslim Dagestani women. They are framed as agents of irrationality and vindictiveness, which perpetuates a cycle of social exclusion and discrimination (Krulišová, 2016).
Additionally, cycles of violence and the loss of male family members reverberates within familial narratives and compels Dagestani women to navigate the complicated terrain of grief, resilience, and resistance. It has also provoked a reevaluation of religious identity and expression for some women, motivating them to question their faith or seek alternative paths (Sokolov, 2016). The disproportionate conscription of Dagestani men into the Russia-Ukraine war serves as one such catalyst, propelling women into the forefront of sociopolitical activism and possible religious militancy. The reality of losing their loved ones to a violent conflict inspires a sense of disillusionment and resentment toward the Russian government’s coercive measures, further sparking a collective fervor among Muslim Dagestani women to challenge the injustices and assert their agency in challenging the narrative of their community’s plight.
Research by anthropologist Denis Sokolov (2020), whose work focuses on Russia and the North Caucasus and explores the proliferation of Salafi Islam in rural communities, highlights how Muslim Dagestani women are impacted by ongoing armed conflicts. In one field interview at a detention camp, Sokolov (2020) detailed how a Dagestani woman named Zarema found her way to rebellion through Salafi Islam. She and her husband had grown up in secular families and later became part of the “Islamic renaissance” in the North Caucasus, adopting Islam as a source of morality in their everyday lives and choosing Sharia courts over the corrupt post-Soviet system. When Zarema’s father-in-law passed away, neighbors reported her family to authorities for holding a “Wahhabi” funeral service. As a result, law enforcement raided her family home. Zarema soon fled the country with her children, ultimately arriving in Syria. There, officials took her phone and passport, and she was subject to registry in an immigration detention center. She has remained in a Kurdish detention camp, unable to return to the Russian Republic due to the threat of criminal prosecution and imprisonment. According to Sokolov (2020), this is just one example of a deepening trend.
In their resistance against their criminalization and persecution in Russia, Muslim Dagestani women often navigate a precarious landscape of religious militancy. The narratives woven around their alleged affiliations with extremist organizations and their depiction as “jihadi brides” in the Russian media reflect a broader sociopolitical context of sweeping Islamophobia and gendered Islamophobic discourse that further supports their criminalization (Martini, 2018). After a 2010 Moscow metro suicide bombing was reportedly carried out by two Muslim women from Dagestan, Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravada published the names, home addresses, and photographs of 22 Muslim Dagestani women who had no relation to the Moscow incident. The headline read “Forewarned” and listed the women as “potential” future suicide bombers. It is believed that the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s federal security agency, released the names to the press agency. None of the women had been suspected of, or charged with, any crimes. However, they were targeted because they were practicing Salafis or had husbands or other male relatives who were considered religious extremists (Lokshina, 2010).
The overlay of their gender and religious identities, paired with the looming threat of domestic terrorism, reinforces the stereotype of Muslim Dagestani women as dangerous outsiders. This continual fear and suspicion permeate their everyday lives, restricting their ability to openly protest unjust power structures, like the Russian government, that seek to silence their voices. In another field interview, Sokolov (2020) describes the experience of Aysha, a woman from the North Caucasus who traveled abroad to marry. Her family reported her to the government for suspected Wahhabi affiliation. When she attempted to return to her home country, she was beaten and sent to Moscow. In Moscow, FSB officers were waiting for her; they took her personal belongings, including her passport and her phone, and she was detained. Aysha remains in a detention camp. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB frequently summon her mother for questioning because of her daughter’s religious practices, travel, and personal affiliations (Sokolov, 2020).
The intersection of religious identity, gender roles, and sociopolitical activism interlock within the lived experiences of Muslim Dagestani women. Their contemporary narratives serve as a testament to the historical practice of utilizing religion as resistance in the North Caucasus and highlight their resilience, defiance, and communal solidarity. These examples amplify the urgency for action, including measures to safeguard the rights of Muslim Dagestani women who face discrimination and criminalization by Russian authorities.
Criminalization of Dagestani Women
Russia employs multifaceted mechanisms to designate Muslim Dagestani women as criminals, with the ultimate goals of discouraging dissent and exerting control. Thus, women find themselves navigating an existence where outspoken voices or perceived affiliations can swiftly lead to their inclusion in international criminal databases. Russia updated its terrorism and extremism laws in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine, and the revised laws categorize a myriad of resistance actions as felony crimes, including the prohibition of anti-war speech and protest (United States Department of State, 2022b). These activities range anywhere from acts of violence to sharing a post on social media.<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5">[5]</a> Along with the previously mentioned Russian Criminal Code Article 282, which prohibits the inciting of hate and enmity (including the use of media or the internet even when no violence is involved), there are other vague laws used to police a wide range of citizens’ activities. Article 205, for example, prohibits involvement in the commission of (or assistance with) crimes of a terrorist nature. These crimes include the public justification of “terrorism” on social media or in the mass media (Roudik & Law Library of Congress, 2016). These vague policies blur the lines in defining criminality and serve to restrict citizens’ activity using third parties such as INTERPOL or the media. Intentionally broad or inconsistently applied measures – such as those used by the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the U.S. Patriot Act allowed for administrative detention without criminal charges – open the door for human rights violations under the pretense of protecting the public from terrorism (Fitzpatrick, 2003).
While Russia utilizes domestic laws to suppress perceived extremism, it also extends its reach by engaging with international entities. INTERPOL is an inter-governmental organization the provides a central database for law enforcement agencies from 195 participating countries to share information about crimes, missing persons, global security, or persons wanted for serious crimes in their respective countries (INTERPOL, n.d.b). It issues Red Notices after receiving submissions by agencies in member countries for individuals wanted in their jurisdictions. The notices on INTERPOL’s website share names, photographs, personal descriptors, and alleged crimes of the suspected criminals. In August 2023, there were a total of 6,943 Red Notices in the database from all contributing countries, and 960 of those total notices were issued for women. Russia issued 710 (73.9 percent) of the Red Notices for those women. Of the 710 women, 539 (76 percent) were wearing hijab in their photographs, and 407 (57 percent) were from Dagestan. Almost all (678, or 95 percent) of the women were wanted for charges related to terrorism or extremism (see INTERPOL, n.d.a). As a comparison, the United States had a total of 12 Red Notices issued for women; only one of those was a terrorism-related charge (see INTERPOL, n.d.a).
The Russian government strategically uses the issuance of INTERPOL Red Notices, in conjunction with state-sponsored media, to label and publish lists of individuals as extremists. This practice impacts the daily lives of Muslim Dagestani women. For instance, one of the women who was identified as a “potential” suicide bomber in Komsomolskaya Pravada because she was a practicing Salafi Muslim consequently lost her job and was continually harassed by neighbors in the street (Lokshina, 2010). These lists, which are often disseminated through official channels, subject Muslim Dagestani women to intensified public scrutiny and alienation, which stigmatizes them within their communities. One Dagestani woman who moved to Moscow was discouraged by her family from wearing the hijab, reading the Qur’an, or studying Arabic and was routinely harassed by Russians in the metro (Sokolov, 2020). Public blacklisting therefore leads to discrimination and exclusion.
Muslim women who are perceived to be affiliated with religious extremism – as sometimes indicated by conspicuous Islamic attire like the hijab or by openly practicing religious ceremonies – can also be reported to authorities as “Wahhabis,” which is used as a pejorative term. This can subsequently lead to excessive questioning, fingerprinting, collection of DNA, searches, and confiscation of personal electronic devices without being suspected of a crime (Sokolov, 2020). Russian authorities further use preventive registers, which are government-created and monitored informational databases, to target women deemed to be religious extremists (United States Department of State, 2022a). For Muslim Dagestani women, this is a violation of their privacy, and it acts as a mechanism for state-sanctioned discrimination. The use of preventive registers worsens the atmosphere of fear and intimidation, as the women become subject to unwarranted surveillance simply based on their religious practices (Belova-Dalton, 2022). This practice not only undermines the principles of due process, but also contributes to the pervasive climate of suspicion.
Human Rights Violations
The Russian government’s systemic targeting of Muslim Dagestani women stands in direct contradiction to the principles outlined in both the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and also binding international law such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These frameworks articulate universal and inalienable rights that should be afforded to all people. Russian state discrimination against Muslim Dagestani women violates their rights to expression and political participation while simultaneously creating a hostile environment of state-sponsored violence, coercion, and intimidation. The use of preventive registers and government watch lists to surveil individuals who have not committed a crime, for instance, violates their rights to equality before the law – including their right to due process (see United Nations, 1948, Articles 10-11; United Nations, 1966, Article 14). Muslim Dagestani women face discrimination based on the intersection of their religion and gender, which further violates human rights norms related to freedom of discrimination (see United Nations, 1948, Article 2; United Nations, 1966, Article 26) and generates a profound sense of alienation and exclusion among the historically marginalized communities of Dagestan. Furthermore, Russia’s restrictions on the civil and religious liberties of Muslim Dagestani women creates a level of intimidation that resonates throughout Dagestan and the North Caucasus region. In pursuit of a “United Russia,” the state prohibits what they determine to be explicit religious, ethnic, and political parties, including many human rights groups which Russia deems unpatriotic and a threat to national security (Balzer, 2011).
The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6">[6]</a> offers a human rights lens to view this issue from a Muslim standpoint (see Organization of Islamic Cooperation, 1981). In Islam, the concept of social justice is deeply rooted in the Qur’anic teachings and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad. There are individual responsibilities incumbent on Muslims to prioritize the principle of justice in all aspects of their lives, with daily prayers including asking God to help them practice justice. In this context, the Prophet Muhammad tells Muslims that they should not settle for unjust leaders and that Muslim societies are responsible for standing up for piety and righteousness (Akhlaq, 2018). This insight highlights how the criminalization of Salafi women in Dagestan is not only an affront to their personal freedoms but is also a departure from Islamic principles that call for a social responsibility.<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7">[7]</a> Muslims, as stewards of justice in their communities, are encouraged to resist oppressive measures to align their actions with the Qur’anic vision of justice (Akhlaq, 2018). According to the Islamic Declaration, Dagestani women’s rights are additionally violated when Russia restricts their ability to protest oppression and to openly participate in their religious communities, where they should be able to promote what is right (ma’root) and wrong (munkar) (Organization of Islamic Cooperation, 1981, Articles 12 & 14).
Conclusion
The pointed criminalization of Muslim Dagestani women by the Russian government presents a disturbing breach of human rights, revealing the intersectionality of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, and religious identity. The historical context of Dagestan’s role in the Russian Federation is fraught with oppression, setting the stage for today’s struggles. Russia’s current targeting of Muslim Dagestani women corresponds with the war in Ukraine, where Dagestani men face disproportionately high draft rates and casualties. The cycle of grief and resentment among Muslim Dagestani women echoes the impact of the Chechen Wars and reinforces the presence of conflict and resistance in their culture.
Religious identity plays a central role in the lives of Muslim Dagestani women, but their practice of Islam clashes with the Russian state’s secularism and leads to their marginalization and stigmatization. The portrayal of these women as potential threats to national security perpetuates harmful stereotypes and harms their daily lived experiences. Criminalization mechanisms – including INTERPOL Red Notices, preventive registers, travel restrictions, and media lists – demonstrate Russia’s efforts to suppress dissent and control Dagestani women. These actions violate numerous human rights principles as outlined by international normative frameworks and binding international law. The multifaceted nature of the problem requires a comprehensive approach that acknowledges the historical legacies, geopolitical complexities, and systemic discrimination shaping the experiences of Muslim Dagestani women. As the international community grapples with these challenges, Dagestani women urgently need safeguards to protect their dignity, agency, and autonomy.
References
Abkhaz World. (2023, March 1). The number of deaths among natives of Southern Russia in Ukraine has reached 1500. Retrieved from https://abkhazworld.com/aw/caucasus/2194-number-of-deaths-natives-of-southern-russia-in-ukraine-reached-1500.
Akhlaq, S. H. H. (2018). The Conjunction between Quranic Justice and Islamic Civilization. In Justice and Responsibility: Cultural and Philosophical Foundations, edited by J. J. Vila-Chã & J. P. Hogan, pp. 435-460. Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.
Al-Azami, U. (2021). Legitimizing Political Dissent: Islamist Salafi Discourses on Obedience and Rebellion after the Arab Revolutions. Salafi Social and Political Movements: National and Transnational Contexts, edited by M. Bano,pp. 61-86. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Aziz, S. F., & Calderone, S. (2024). Islamophobia in Russia: Ethnicity, Migration, and National Security. Global Islamophobia in an Era of Populism, edited by S. F. Aziz & J. L. Esposito. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Advanced copy retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4421692.
Balzer, M. M. (2011). Religious Communities and Rights in the Russian Federation. Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights, edited by T. Banchoff, & R. Wuthnow, pp. 247-285. Oxford: Oxford Academic.
Belova-Dalton, O. (2022). Foreign (terrorist) fighters and their families in Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, (northwestern) Russia and their impact on Estonia. Tallinn, Estonia: Sisekaitseakadeemia.
Caucasian Knot. (2020, March 5). Dagestani native sentenced for terrorism claims torture. Retrieved from https://eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/50205.
Cole, B. (2024, January 1). Russia’s staggering losses in a year. Newsweek. Retrieved from https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-losses-staggering-year-1856852.
Fitzpatrick, J. (2003). Speaking Law to Power: The War Against Terrorism and Human Rights. European Journal of International Law, 14(2), 241-264.
Gammer, M. (2013). Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. New York: Routledge.
Haddad, Y. Y. (2011). Muslims, Human Rights, and Women’s Rights. Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights, edited by T. Banchoff, & R. Wuthnow, pp. 71-100. Oxford: Oxford Academic.
Human Rights Watch. (2023). Russian Federation: Events of 2022. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/russian-federation.
International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL). (n.d.a). View Red Notices. Retrieved from https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Notices/Red-Notices/View-Red-Notices.
International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL). (n.d.b). What is INTERPOL? Retrieved from https://www.interpol.int/en/Who-we-are/What-is-INTERPOL.
Kelly, L. (2023, October 29). Facts about Russia’s Republic of Dagestan. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/facts-about-russias-republic-dagestan-2023-10-30/.
Khalid, A. (2014). Islam After Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Krulišová, K. (2016). The “Black Widow” Media Discourse: “Desperation, Irrationality and Vendetta” in Dagestan. Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, 10(1), 30-60.
Kumar, D. (2010). Framing Islam: The Resurgence of Orientalism During the Bush II Era. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34(3), 254-277.
Lokshina, T. (2010). The Black Widows of Dagestan: Media Hype and Genuine Harm. Open Democracy. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/black-widows-of-dagestan-media-hype-and-genuine-harm/.
Mahmood, S. (2006). Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation. Public Culture, 18(2), 323-347.
Martini, A. (2018). Making women terrorists into “Jihadi brides”: An analysis of media narratives on women joining ISIS. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 11(3), 458-477.
Molfar. (2023) Which “national minorities of Russia” are dying in the Ukrainian fields?Retrieved from https://molfar.com/en/blog/national-minorities-of-russia.
Nurani, S. (2019). SALAFÎ WOMEN AND ISLAMIC MethOVEMENTS: The Case of Salafism in Jama‘ah al-
Khidhir. Ulul Albab, 20(2), 233–254.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation. (1981). Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=121&refID=38&chapID=1.
Roudik, P. & Law Library of Congress. (2001) Russia: The New Code of Criminal Procedure. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/2021700300/.
Roudik, P. & Law Library of Congress. (2016). Russia: Strengthening of Punishment for Extremism. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2016-07-18/russia-strengthening-of-punishment-for-extremism/.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta. (2017, November 7). Federal list of extremist materials. Retrieved from https://rg.ru/documents/2017/11/07/spisok-dok.html.
Sokolov, D. (2016). Kennan Cable No. 17: Russia’s Other Pipeline: Migration and Radicalization in the North Caucasus. Wilson Center. Retrieved from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/kennan-cable-no17-russias-other-pipeline-migration-and-radicalization-the-north-caucasus.
Sokolov, D. (2020). Love and Jihad. Female Trajectories from North Caucasus to the Islamic State. Central Asian Affairs, 7(2), 123-151.
Ťupek, P., & Beránek, O. (2018). Early Wahhabism and the Beginnings of Modern Salafism. In The Temptation of Graves in Salafi Islam, edited by O. Beránek & P. Ťupek, pp. 70-125. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
United Nations. (n.d.). Ethnic Cleansing. Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/ethnic-cleansing.shtml.
United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.
United Nations. (1966). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights.
United Nations. (2023, October 25). Spotlighting human rights violations in six countries, including Ethiopia, Ukraine, third committee denounces war crimes, sexual violence, shrinking civic space. Retrieved from https://press.un.org/en/2023/gashc4391.doc.htm.
United States Department of State. (2022a).2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Russia.Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/russia/.
United States Department of State. (2022b).Country Reports on Terrorism 2022: Russia. Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2022/russia/.
Van Son, C. (2022, June 12). Putin’s Discriminatory Draft. Inkstick. Retrieved from https://inkstickmedia.com/putins-discriminatory-draft/.
Ware, R., & Kisriev, E. (2009). Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the North Caucasus. New York: Routledge.
Williams, D., & Lokshina, T. (2015). Invisible War: Russia’s Abusive Response to the Dagestan Insurgency. Human Rights Watch Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/06/18/invisible-war/russias-abusive-response-dagestan-insurgency.
WPS Prague. (2019). Report Summary: Life and the Status of Women in the North Caucasus.WPS Prague.Retrieved from http://www.wpsprague.com/research-1/2019/2/10/reportsummary-life-and-the-status-of-women-in-the-north-caucasus-irina-kosterina.
© Copyright 2024 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
<a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1">[1]</a> Online media sources included The Caucasian Knot, an English and Russian language site that focuses on human rights issues in the Caucasus region. One report, for instance, detailed the arrest of a man in November of 2019 who was accused of “preparing a terror attack.” However, the suspect claimed he confessed under coercion and torture (Caucasian Knot, 2020). Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a state-sponsored publication in the region, did not report any terror attacks involving women from the region as far back as 2012. It simply listed organizations, individuals, and materials associated with and deemed to be extremist (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 2017).
<a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2">[2]</a> Russia updated its terrorism and extremism laws in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine. The revised laws categorize a myriad of resistance actions as felony crimes, including the prohibiting of anti-war speech and protest (United States Department of State, 2022b). These activities range anywhere from acts of violence to sharing a post on social media. The Meta corporation and its subsidiaries were added to Russia’s extremist and terrorist groups in 2022 for allegedly tolerating “Russophobia” on their platforms (Human Rights Watch, 2023).
<a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3">[3]</a> Wahhabi Islam and Salafi Islam are considered similar in my aspects, but have different historical origins, a difference in emphasis, and differing political influences (Ťupek & Beránek, 2018).
<a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4">[4]</a> The United Nations (n.d.) defines ethnic cleansing as “rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups of given groups from the area.”
<a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5">[5]</a> The Meta corporation and its subsidiaries were added to Russia’s extremist and terrorist groups in 2022 for allegedly tolerating “Russophobia” on their platforms (Human Rights Watch, 2023).
<a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6">[6]</a> The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the Islamic Council of Europe in September of 1981 and the rights outlined in its text are supported from chapters and verses in the Qur’an.
<a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7">[7]</a> Russia attempts to justify rights violations by portraying customary Qur’anic laws as a threat to state authority and stability. This rationalization, however, overlooks the genuine concerns of the women who seek to uphold their religious practices as well as their personal freedoms (Balzer, 2011).
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/veiled-threats-human-rights-and-the-russian-criminalization-of-muslim-dagestani-women/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>COMMENT – Language and Reporting Styles for Discussing Violence Against Women</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-language-and-reporting-styles-for-discussing-violence-against-women/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-language-and-reporting-styles-for-discussing-violence-against-women/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 14:49:08 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIV, Issue 1]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1435</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Aissata Kamara, Webster University – Saint Louis COMMENT – Language and Reporting Styles for Discussing Violence Against Women [Download PDF] Violence against women encompasses various forms of abuse, including physical and sexual violence from intimate partners, non-partner sexual assault, rape, and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated by individuals outside of romantic relationships. Despite increasing […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Aissata Kamara, Webster University – Saint Louis 

COMMENT – Language and Reporting Styles for Discussing Violence Against Women
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Kamara_Language-and-Reporting-Styles.pdf">Download PDF</a>] 
Violence against women encompasses various forms of abuse, including physical and sexual violence from intimate partners, non-partner sexual assault, rape, and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated by individuals outside of romantic relationships. Despite increasing awareness of this issue, the portrayal of this violence in the U.S. mainstream media remains problematic. The media’s use of biased language, victim-blaming, and isolation reinforce myths regarding sexual assault, contributing to this concern. Concepts such as hegemonic masculinity and “doing gender” help uncover the social shortcomings that allow this problem to persist. Fortunately, strategies exist for improving how the media reports on violence against women, especially by sharing resources and training stakeholders.
Language is powerful. How people choose their words can impact others tremendously, so paying attention to what you say – and how you say it – is important. With this in mind, I examined recent media publications to see how violence against women is reported. According to World Health Organization (2013), the term “violence against women” refers to a wide range of violent acts, including intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, rape, sexual assault, and other types of sexual assault committed by individuals other than romantic partners. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that 43.6 percent of women (almost 52.2 million individuals) in the United States have at some point been victims of sexual violence (Smith et al., 2018). Also, research links intimate relationship violence and depressive symptoms in women (Devries et al., 2013). Anxiety, fear, depression, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, and posttraumatic stress disorder are among the most prevalent psychiatric aftereffects of sexual assault (Goodman et al., 1993). Researchers have also found that experiences of rape and physical abuse lead to serious medical issues and are linked to lower self-perception (Goodman et al., 1993).
Violence against women is a pervasive issue that goes beyond just physical attacks; it also includes the use of hurtful words and demeaning language. With this knowledge, we must acknowledge that violence against women is a pervasive societal issue – and the language we use to talk about it should be used to uplift, rather than degrade, survivors. It is important to recognize how the media weaponizes language through reporting styles and uses it to control the narratives and portrayals of victims. Survivors are frequently held responsible, scrutinized, and interrogated while their offenders are shielded and protected. Moreover, media coverage can make it difficult for victims to report assault or seek the help they need.
This essay analyzes the reporting of violence against women in the mainstream U.S. media to consider how journalists frame cases of violence against women and how those reporting styles can be improved. For instance, the media’s use of biased language, victim-blaming, and isolation reinforce myths about sexual assault and contribute to problematic reporting. Concepts such as hegemonic masculinity and “doing gender” help uncover the social shortcomings that allow this problem to persist. Fortunately, strategies exist for improving how the media reports on violence against women, such as sharing resources and training stakeholders.
Portraying Violence Against Women
The media has the potential to sway public opinion through its word choices (Boegli, 2020). By framing, which is the process of selecting and emphasizing specific aspects of perceived reality, media can persuade audiences to view certain issues, behaviors, and events in a certain manner while ignoring others (Easteal et al., 2015). There are three major frames when reporting violence against women: (1) The use of detachment and indifference, such as framing domestic violence as instances of simple disputes or as one-off incidents that can easily be fixed (rather than an ongoing societal problem that has led to many deaths). (2) Victim-blaming and isolation, which involve holding women accountable for the violence they experience, making light of it, or implying that the issue is being overblown. (3) Reinforcement of myths regarding rape and sexual assault, which involves focusing heavily on the victim’s actions as an explanation for the assault (Easteal et al., 2015).
Among the issues associated with the media’s portrayal of violence against women is the debate about what constitutes a “real” victim, particularly in relation to sexual assault and rape. Misconceptions perpetuate the damaging belief that to be taken seriously, one must fit into the narrow mold of a “perfect victim” or experience what is deemed as “real rape.” This flawed thinking often leads to victims being labeled as “whores” or “attention-seeking” (Easteal et al., 2015). In addition, the use of the word “alleged” in cases of violence against women can indicate how society questions the credibility of victims who do not conform to traditional gender roles or norms. In these cases, the validity of survivors’ experiences is often called into question, further perpetuating harmful stereotypes and societal expectations (Boegli, 2020). One of the factors that contributes to this harmful mindset is the acceptance of nonconsensual and sexually aggressive behavior in certain environments, such as bars. Researchers found that victims who do not resist, who dress provocatively, or who consume alcohol are often blamed for their own assault as if they “wanted it” (Easteal et al., 2015). These disturbing findings are further supported by a study of college students who had experienced gender-based violence. Researchers discovered that despite experiencing sexual aggression, many college-aged survivors did not consider it as such (Tinkler et al., 2018). This is particularly prevalent in drinking environments, where sexual harassment between young men and women is commonly overlooked. This raises the important question of how different settings can greatly impact the way sexual violence and other forms of violence against women are perceived and treated.
Paying attention to language used by the media helps us understand how violence against women is viewed by the U.S. public. For instance, researchers have studied how often attribution was assigned to or minimized in news stories about sexual assault and found that the way a news article is phrased has a significant impact on how readers perceive the people involved, possibly taking responsibility away from the person who committed the abuse (Siefkes-Andrew & Alexopoulos, 2018). Although most reports analyzed in that study used language supporting victims, about 40 percent used words that cast doubt on them (Siefkes-Andrew & Alexopoulos, 2018). In another analysis of how sexual harassment is portrayed in the media, 57 percent of the articles surveyed highlighted the perpetrator’s account of events (Easteal et al., 2015). Conversely, the lives and achievements of men are seen as something to protect; journalists tend to highlight the perpetrator’s accomplishments and athletic success. Journalists may even give the offender a “relatable breadth of character” that readers can empathize with (Siefkes-Andrew & Alexopoulos, 2018, p. 8). By presenting the perpetrator in a favorable light, journalists ignore how their actions could potentially affect victims. This phenomenon is connected to “himpathy,” a term recently coined but backed by extensive research in psychology and sociology that highlights the disproportionate amount of sympathy given to privileged men accused of sexual assault or harassment (Rogalin & Addison, 2023). Himpathy demonstrates the societal tendency to excuse male perpetrators and shift blame onto the victims, taking sympathy away from survivors and putting it toward their male victimizers (Rogalin & Addison, 2023).
Research also reveals the damaging effects of masculine language styles in legal settings. This “reality” has allowed victim blaming to turn the stories of victims against them (Easteal et al., 2012). In the courtroom, the use of language can play a crucial role in the outcome of sexual assault cases. Unfortunately, the manipulation of language often shifts the focus onto the victim’s actions rather than holding the perpetrator accountable for their crimes. This perpetuates a harmful narrative that places blame and responsibility on the victim, making it easier for the courts to dismiss their cases or hand out lighter sentences. The implicit biases embedded within language can also sway the perceptions of those involved, leading to a lack of justice for survivors of sexual assault (Boegli, 2020). According to Patricia Easteal, Lorana Bartels, and Sally Bradford (2012), “men have created the legal world in their own image, confusing it with the absolute truth” (p. 325). Despite strides towards gender equality, the fact that the judicial system was once a male-dominated institution remains a hindrance. Since the “voice” of the law is male, there is the possibility that how victims experience and interpret violence does not match social and legal definitions (Easteal et al., 2012).
Two sociological concepts provide insight into why violence against women is depicted the way it is: Hegemonic masculinity and “doing gender”. Hegemonic masculinity theory relates to the ideal version of masculinity, which upholds masculine superiority and contributes to the dominance of men and the subordination of women. This may explain why issues impacting women are not seen as important in our society and are often tossed aside. According to researchers, masculinity requires “doing gender,” which means continuously proving and seeking validation of one’s manhood (Scaptura & Boyle, 2019). When men’s masculinity is questioned, they may engage in aggressive behavior, alcohol abuse, objectification of women, and sexual pursuits to look more manly (Scaptura & Boyle, 2019). Due to the prevalence of hegemonic masculinity and “doing gender,” men are often excused on the grounds that they are men and cannot control themselves.
Improving Media Coverage
Despite these challenges, some journalists and media organizations are adopting strategies to improve how violence against women is reported. Providing resources to journalists that promote fair representation of survivors, for instance, is a tactic being used in Australia. The Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (now known as the Australian Institute of Family Studies) developed a website that includes examples of media reports that perpetuate misconceptions and provides information about support services and additional online resources (see Australian Government, n.d.). The Centre provides journalists with access to statistics, information about the impact of sexual assault, and guidance on language use. By equipping journalists with accurate information that challenges harmful stereotypes, this tactic may begin to shift the narrative surrounding violence against women.
Another approach is the creation of specific guidelines for reporting on violence against women that encourage objective reporting. The International Federation of Journalists – the largest organization of journalists globally, with a representation of 600,000 media professionals from 187 trade unions and associations in over 140 countries – recognizes the importance of this. In line with their objective to promote gender equality in all aspects, the organization developed 10 Guidelines for Reporting on Violence Against Women. The guidelines include accurately identifying violence against women using the internationally accepted definition in the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. These guidelines also emphasize the importance of using non-judgmental language and sensitive reporting, ensuring that media interviews are conducted with the needs of the survivor in mind, treating survivors with respect, telling the entire story, and providing statistical and social background information (International Federation of Journalists, 2014). By adhering to these guidelines, journalists can play a crucial role in raising awareness and advocating for the rights of women who have been victims of violence.
Lastly, training for members of the media and law enforcement – including teaching them how to talk about sexual violence – can foster more accurate media reporting. End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI) is an organization that implements this strategy. This program was created in 2003 after Sergeant Joanne Archambault of the San Diego Police Department in California noticed professionals lacked the resources and training necessary to investigate sexual assault and domestic violence (End Violence Against Women International, n.d.). Indeed, research demonstrates that law enforcement officials (and specifically police officers) think false accusation rates are higher than they actually are (McMillan, 2016). Based on these findings, there seems to be a systemic problem surrounding police organizational culture; officers’ attitudes about victims reflect broader negative social views (McMillan, 2016). Thus, it is necessary to have organizations like EVAWI to provide a setting where state officials and advocates can collaborate to effectively assist victims. “We specialize in trauma-informed law enforcement responses – from the first interaction with a victim through the investigation and potential prosecution,” notes EVAWI (End Violence Against Women International, n.d.). “Positive outcomes for survivors require everyone working together, so we also champion collaborative practices, with multidisciplinary training for health care providers, prosecutors, advocates, and others who respond to survivors.”
Conclusion  
Despite the increasing awareness of violence against women, there is not enough attention to the role of language in stigmatizing survivors and impeding justice. It is only recently that researchers have begun to investigate the specific language used when discussing violence against women, and their findings point out shortcomings with existing media strategies. The development of informational resources and training programs are an important first step in educating the media and law enforcement on the realities of violence against women, including how to accurately talk about it. I’d like to see this go farther, such as having credentials that journalists can earn (or lose) for reporting instances of violence against women. More awareness of hegemonic masculinity and “doing gender” needs to also happen – not only in newsrooms and police stations, but in public schools and other social spaces. Organizations that facilitate collaboration between survivors of violence and journalists might also help ensure that victims’ stories are accurately and ethically portrayed.
It is important for the media to take responsibility for the power they hold and use it to accurately report on violence against women without perpetuating harmful narratives and stereotypes. Mainstream media outlets are the primary source of information about sexual assault in one’s community, granting journalists a significant amount of power in shaping our understanding and perception of these sensitive issues (Boegli, 2020). The media can therefore play a crucial role in raising awareness, promoting understanding and empathy, and ultimately creating a safer and more inclusive society. The way that victims of violence are portrayed in the media needs to change.
References
Australian Government. (n.d.). Sexual violence. Australian Institute of Family Studies. Retrieved from https://aifs.gov.au/research/sexual-violence.
Boegli, M. (2020). The Linguistics of Sexual Assault: How the Dissonance of Individuals’ Perpetrator Expectations and the Ordering of Information Effects Perceptions of Sexual Assault. Dissertation. Western Oregon University.
Devries, K. M., Mak, J. Y., Bacchus, L. J., Child, J. C., Falder, G., Petzold, M., Astbury, J., & Watts, C. H. (2013). Intimate Partner Violence and Incident Depressive Symptoms and Suicide Attempts: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies. PLoS Medicine, 10(5). Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001439.
Easteal, P., Bartels, L., & Bradford, S. (2012). Language, gender and ‘reality’: Violence against women. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 40(4): 324–337.
Easteal, P., Holland, K., & Judd, K. (2015). Enduring themes and silences in media portrayals of violence against women. Women’s Studies International Forum, 48: 103–113.
End Violence Against Women International. (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved from https://evawintl.org/about/.
Goodman, L. A., Koss, M. P., & Felipe Russo, N. (1993). Violence against women: Physical and mental health effects. Part I: Research findings. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 2(2): 79–89.
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). (2014). IFJ Guidelines for Reporting on Violence Against Women. Retrieved from https://www.ifj.org/fileadmin/user_upload/IFJ_Guidelines_for_Reporting_on_Violence_Against_Women_EN.pdf.
McMillan, L. (2016). Police officers’ perceptions of false allegations of rape. Journal of Gender Studies, 27(1): 9–21.
Rogalin, C. L., & Addison, S. M. (2023). “He is Not a Monster”: Himpathy and Sexual Assault. Midwest Social Sciences Journal, 26(1): Article 7.
Scaptura, M. N., & Boyle, K. M. (2019). Masculinity Threat, “Incel” Traits, and Violent Fantasies Among Heterosexual Men in the United States. Feminist Criminology, 15(3): 278–298.
Siefkes-Andrew, A. J., & Alexopoulos, C. (2018). Framing Blame in Sexual Assault: An Analysis of Attribution in News Stories about Sexual Assault on College Campuses. Violence Against Women, 25(6): 743–762.
Smith, S. G., Zhang, X., Basile, K. C., Merrick, M. T., Wang, J., Kresnow, M., & Chen, J. (2018). National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2015 Data Brief – Updated Release. Atlanta: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/2015data-brief508.pdf.
Tinkler, J. E., Becker, S., & Clayton, K. A. (2018). “Kind of Natural, Kind of Wrong”: Young People’s Beliefs about the Morality, Legality, and Normalcy of Sexual Aggression in Public Drinking Settings. Law & Social Inquiry, 43(1): 28–57.
World Health Organization. (2013). Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf.
© Copyright 2024 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-language-and-reporting-styles-for-discussing-violence-against-women/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>COMMENT – Life Imprisonment Without Parole</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-life-imprisonment-without-parole/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-life-imprisonment-without-parole/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 14:43:29 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIV, Issue 1]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1433</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Bernice Chen, University of Toronto COMMENT – Life Imprisonment Without Parole: A Sentence Comparable to Death [Download PDF] Canada’s 2022 Supreme Court decision to eliminate life imprisonment without parole has prompted a significant shift in the Canadian criminal justice system and Canadian society. This ruling aligns with the fundamental focus on rehabilitation within the context […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Bernice Chen, University of Toronto

COMMENT – Life Imprisonment Without Parole: A Sentence Comparable to Death
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Chen_Life-Imprisonment-Without-Parole.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
Canada’s 2022 Supreme Court decision to eliminate life imprisonment without parole has prompted a significant shift in the Canadian criminal justice system and Canadian society. This ruling aligns with the fundamental focus on rehabilitation within the context of Canadian law. This essay examines the shifts in Canadian life sentence legislation and the intricacies surrounding the Supreme Court decision. It explores the implications of the decision on offenders and broader society, shedding light on the significance of providing opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation.
The Canadian criminal justice system’s commitment to rehabilitation is deeply rooted in domestic and international legal principles that reflect a broad commitment to upholding human dignity, including the ethical treatment of incarcerated individuals. This commitment is anchored in domestic legislation, notably the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which safeguards civil liberties and rights for Canadians. It is also bolstered by international human rights standards as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). These international documents underscore the importance of respecting all individuals’ inherent dignity, including those incarcerated, by underlining the potential for their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
In the context of Canadian criminal law, the principle of rehabilitation holds a central position, as highlighted by landmark judicial decisions such as R. v. Bissonnette (Supreme Court of Canada, 2022) and R. v. Lacasse (Supreme Court of Canada, 2015). This principle not only reflects a core moral value of Canadian society but also plays a crucial role in shaping judicial sentencing decisions to ensure they are just and appropriate (Supreme Court of Canada, 2015). The Supreme Court of Canada’s unanimous 2022 decision to abolish life imprisonment without the possibility of parole underscores the significance of rehabilitation within the criminal justice system. Despite facing criticisms for perceived leniency and a lack of consideration for victims and their families, this decision prioritizes the collective well-being of Canadian society and adheres to international human rights standards.
This essay first explores the evolution of Canadian life sentence legislation, tracing its historical transformations over time. Subsequently, it delves into the rationale underpinning the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to abolish life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The analysis extends to critique Canada’s criminal justice system and examines the 2022 legislative adjustments to life imprisonment and parole eligibility. Lastly, it analyzes the implications of current legislation pertaining to life sentences and parole for both Canadian offenders and the public, concurrently highlighting the advantages of the present system, as compared to their precursors.
By arguing in favor of the 2022 Supreme Court decision from a human rights perspective, this essay not only endorses the transition toward rehabilitative justice but also calls for further enhancements to the Canadian criminal justice system. While acknowledging the Supreme Court decision as a significant step forward, it suggests there is room for improvement – including in other countries – where governments can look toward Canada as a model. Ultimately, this essay asserts that adopting rehabilitative justice practices benefits not only offenders but also society at large, presenting a compelling case for global legislative and reform adoption in line with Canada’s approach.
Canadian Life Sentence Legislation
Canada’s legislation concerning life sentences has undergone a series of notable adjustments. Prior to 2011, sentences for multiple murders were to be served concurrently, meaning that they would run simultaneously, with the longest term becoming the ultimate duration an offender would be incarcerated for – typically 25 years without the possibility of parole. However, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the government introduced a legislative change in 2011 known as the “Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act.” This legislation introduced a new provision, section 745.51(1), into the Criminal Code, empowering courts to hand down consecutive life sentences based on considerations such as “the character of the offender, the nature of the offense, and the circumstances surrounding its commission” (Minister of Justice, 1985, s 745.51[1]). This alteration granted the courts the authority to impose lifelong sentences, thereby pushing an offender’s earliest chance for parole far beyond their expected remaining lifespan (Spencer, 2019).
The implementation of this legislation faced opposition and was challenged on grounds relating to the Charter’s rights of offenders. Specifically, concerns were raised about potential violations of section 12 – which protects individuals against cruel and unusual punishment – and section 7 – which protects the right to life, liberty, and security of the person. As a result, there was a notable backlash and the Harper legislation was ultimately deemed unconstitutional (Spencer, 2019).
Consequently in 2022, the Canadian Supreme Court made a unanimous decision that limited the maximum incarceration period without the chance for parole. The Court ruled that even for the most gruesome and heinous criminals, the most severe punishment that Canadian courts could impose is life imprisonment with eligibility for parole and supervised reintegration into society following a 25-year incarceration period (Supreme Court of Canada, 2022). Additionally, those who had already received sentences under this section were to have their sentences appropriately reduced (Supreme Court of Canada, 2022).
Life Imprisonment and Parole Eligibility
The 2022 decision by the Canadian Supreme Court regarding parole eligibility after 25 years reflects a fundamental principle of Canadian criminal law – the right of rehabilitated offenders to seek parole.The Court emphasized that even the most serious crimes do not negate the core belief that all individuals possess the capacity for rehabilitation (Supreme Court of Canada, 2022). This stands in stark contrast to the ethos behind the 2011 legislation, which prioritized punitive measures over rehabilitation, targeting offenders whom the criminal justice system deemed unable to be rehabilitated.
This ruling is not solely rooted in valuing the lives of offenders; it also speaks to the need for limitations on the government’s authority to punish criminals. Essentially, the 2022 legislative decision seeks to punish offenders in a manner consistent with the rights provisions of the Constitution and Charter (Supreme Court of Canada, 2022). Moreover, the Court highlighted how depriving someone of the chance of parole not only extinguishes the incentive to reform, but also any prospect of freedom. This approach, embodied in Section 745.51, inflicts the most profound punishment, ingraining in offenders’ minds that irrespective of their progress or efforts at rehabilitation, their sentence only ends with their death (Spencer, 2019). In essence, the psychological toll of life imprisonment parallels that experienced by individuals on death row, for only death brings an end to their incarceration (Supreme Court of Canada, 2022).
In the wake of the 2022 decision, numerous critics emerged to voice their reservations and critiques about the criminal justice system. Detractors argued that parole eligibility offsets the severity of life imprisonment, negating the concept of “life in prison” (Fine, 2022; Moye, 2023). Prior to the 2011 legislation, there was a prevailing sentiment that those convicted of multiple murders received undue leniency on sentencing for every additional murder and, instead, should be locked up and have the key thrown away (Ruddell et al., 2010). During this era, the primary aim of the criminal justice system was not rehabilitation, but the containment of individuals deemed threats to society.Following the 2022 Supreme Court decision, critics contended that granting parole opportunities undermines the punitive aspect, affording criminals an easier way out of their punishment (Fine, 2022; Leamon, 2022; Moye, 2023). Yet, an examination of the nuances surrounding parole eligibility reveals that this assertion is unfounded.
While parole has now been integrated into the sentences that offenders receive, it is important to note that not all individuals serving life imprisonment will receive parole (Government of Canada, 2023). During the parole application process, the Parole Board of Canada holds the authority to deny parole to those it perceives as an ongoing threat to public safety (Ruddell et al., 2010). Several factors are assessed when making parole decisions, including the offender’s level of remorse, their criminal history, and their behavior while incarcerated (Government of Canada, 2023). Hence, while a parole eligibility threshold of 25 years exists, it does not guarantee an automatic reintegration into society or immediate release. By considering this, it is reasonable to assert that although the current approach demonstrates more flexibility compared to its 2011 counterpart, it still incorporates limitations that prevent potential risks to public safety and ensures that offenders remain accountable for their crimes.
Overall, the 2022 decision marks a significant juncture whereby the criminal justice system finds a balance between rehabilitation and punishment, steering away from strict containment policies and embracing the belief in the potential for rehabilitation. This crucial ruling underscores the necessity for progressive development of the criminal justice system, emphasizing the significance of striking a balance between safeguarding the public while also respecting the inherent human rights of offenders. By recognizing the need for rehabilitation alongside punishment, the principles of justice are upheld while simultaneously pursuing the betterment of society at large.
Parole Eligibility and Rehabilitation
Life sentences, designed to penalize serious offenders for their crimes, often fall short in effectively promoting rehabilitation or enhancing societal well-being. Instead of fostering the reformation of these individuals into responsible citizens and facilitating their reintegration into society, life sentences tend to extinguish prospects for redemption, hope, and rehabilitation.The absence of parole eligibility or redemption in such sentences creates an environment devoid of optimism which may result in various negative repercussions.
Individuals subject to life imprisonment face heightened risks of both homicide and suicide while incarcerated, jeopardizing not only their own safety but also the well-being of others within the prison system (Ruddell et al., 2010). In essence, the practice of imprisoning someone for an entire lifetime without the possibility of parole results in unduly severe sentences that increase mental turmoil and strip prisoners of any hope for eventual release. This approach can be viewed as a form of inhumane punishment that elevates the risk of harm to others.
Conversely, the current approach offers a potential avenue for offenders to secure parole and reintegrate into society, although this avenue remains exceedingly slim for those convicted of serious offenses (Government of Canada, 2023). The recent shift towards allowing the opportunity for parole reflects an acknowledgment of offenders’ capacity for rehabilitation. It communicates to them that reform and reintegration are possible, demonstrating that the government and its agencies maintain hope for their change. In response, incarcerated offenders may find motivation to conscientiously consider their actions and conduct, aiming to enhance their prospects for parole and overall rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation stands as a central moral principle embraced by Canadian courts and the criminal justice system. By granting offenders the possibility of parole, the system instills within them an incentive to actively pursue rehabilitation, personal transformation, and overall self-improvement (Augliere, 2015). In other words, the ability for rehabilitation offers prisoners a glimmer of hope, which is more advantageous than resigning them to hopelessness. Even in cases where parole is denied, the existence of a parole possibility carries more humane undertones than outrightly conveying that these individuals are destined for perpetual confinement. This opportunity aligns with both the Canadian Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasizing the importance of equal treatment for all individuals while safeguarding prisoners against cruel and unusual punishment and upholding their right to life, liberty, and security of the person. Moreover, the commitment to rehabilitation can provide offenders with a sense of support and counteract the feelings of isolation that often accompany incarceration. This commitment reinforces the notion that they are not alone, even amidst the physical seclusion of imprisonment.
Conclusion
The unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2022 to abolish life imprisonment without the possibility of parole marks a significant advancement for the Canadian criminal justice system, signifying its dedication to rehabilitation and signaling a progressive move towards a more compassionate form of criminal justice. This ruling, deeply aligned with domestic and international human rights frameworks, highlights the belief in the rehabilitative potential of even the most serious offenders. By fostering a rehabilitative rather than a purely punitive approach, Canada exemplifies a humane path for global criminal justice systems. This stance underscores a sharp contrast with certain states in the United States and globally, where the death penalty still exists. This essay highlights the evolution of Canadian life sentence legislation, critically examines the 2022 Supreme Court decision, and explores the implications of parole eligibility to reveal the advantages of a rehabilitative approach for both offenders and society at large. It calls for continued improvements to the criminal justice system, stressing the importance of balancing public safety with the fundamental human rights of offenders. By adopting rehabilitative justice principles, Canada reaffirms its commitment to human dignity and the potential for change, offering valuable insights into the constructive impact the criminal justice system can have in fostering a more equitable and compassionate society.Top of Form
References
Augliere, B. (2015, October 6). Rewarding good behavior of prisoners is a benefit to society, Stanford expert says. Stanford News. Stanford University. Retrieved from https://news.stanford.edu/2015/10/06/prisoners-early-release-101615/.
Fine, S. (2022, May 25). Supreme Court to rule on constitutionality of life without parole in case of Quebec City mosque shooter. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-supreme-court-quebec-city-mosque-shooter/.
Government of Canada. (2023, July 31). Parole Decision-Making: Myths and Realities. Parole Board of Canada. Retrieved from https://www.canada.ca/en/parole-board/corporate/publications-and-forms/parole-decision-making-myths-and-realities.html.
Leamon, S. (2022, June 23). Bissonnette ruling commands attention, but the rubber hits the road with the Parole Board of Canada. The Georgia Straight. Retrieved from https://www.straight.com/news/sarah-leamon-bissonnette-ruling-commands-attention-but-rubber-hits-road-with-parole-board-of.
Minister of Justice. (1985). Criminal Code, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46. Retrieved from https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C-46.pdf.
Moye, M. J. (2023, May 15). Life Sentences and Imprisonment in Canada. Mass Tsang LLP. Retrieved from https://www.masstsang.com/blog/post/life-sentences-and-imprisonment-canada/#:~:text=In%202011%2C%20Canada%20enacted%20a,those%20convicted%20of%20multiple%20murders.
Ruddell, R., Broom, I., & Young, M. (2010). Creating Hope for Life-Sentenced Offenders. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 49(5): 324–341.
Spencer, D. (2019). Does the Royal Prerogative of Mercy Offer Hope for Murderers? Further International Guidance for Interpreting the Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act. Canadian Criminal Law Review, 24(3): 313–338.
Supreme Court of Canada. (2015). R. v. Lacasse, 2015 SCC 64. Retrieved from https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/15680/index.do.
Supreme Court of Canada. (2022). Case in Brief: R. v. Bissonnette, 2022 SCC 23. Retrieved from https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/cb/2022/39544-eng.pdf.
© Copyright 2024 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/comment-life-imprisonment-without-parole/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Punish China for the Genocide of the Uyghur People</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/punish-china-for-the-genocide-of-the-uyghur-people/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/punish-china-for-the-genocide-of-the-uyghur-people/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 14:36:24 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIV, Issue 1]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1431</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Jared Blackwell, University of California – San Diego Punish China for the Genocide of the Uyghur People [Download PDF] There is perhaps no better case study to illustrate China’s pervasive lack of human rights protection than the atrocities being committed in its most northwestern province of Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. This mostly Muslim, Turkic ethnic […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Jared Blackwell, University of California – San Diego

Punish China for the Genocide of the Uyghur People
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Blackwell_Punish-China.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
There is perhaps no better case study to illustrate China’s pervasive lack of human rights protection than the atrocities being committed in its most northwestern province of Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. This mostly Muslim, Turkic ethnic minority group has faced persecution that some experts believe now constitutes genocide. This paper explores the history of this human rights situation, including how Islamophobic discrimination and counterterrorism measures led to the surveillance and control of Uyghurs in China. The current situation includes mass detention and relocation, including the widespread use of “re-education” concentration camps and abuse that likely constitute a mass atrocity. Existing policy proposals center on individual sanctions, technology sanctions, and stopping China’s access to resources in Africa. These approaches ultimately suffer from core weaknesses, however, and it is ultimately up to the international community to hold China accountable. While action through the United Nations is limited by China’s permanent membership to the UN Security Council, the UN nevertheless offers an opportunity for the world to take a stand against genocide in Xinjiang.
Despite being a major economic superpower that contains more than 18 percent of the entire world population (Whelan, 2020), China frequently does not live up to its human rights obligations. According to the Human Freedom Index, a comprehensive measure of both personal and economic freedom, China ranks as the sixteenth worst nation in the world with a Human Freedom Score of 5.57 – a tie with the African nation of Chad (World Population Review, 2023). There is perhaps no better case study to illustrate this pervasive lack of human rights protection in China than the atrocities being committed in its most northwestern province of Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. This mostly Muslim, Turkic ethnic minority group has faced persecution including arbitrary detention, forced relocation, and other discriminatory policies.
This human rights situation is of the utmost urgency because violations are increasing to the point where many argue China is committing mass atrocity crimes, including genocide (Baillie & Parkes, 2023). The United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the UN Genocide Convention) defines genocide as killing, harm, or other physical destruction done with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” (United Nations 1948, Article II). Furthermore, according to the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, everyone has the right to liberty and security of person – including protection against arbitrary arrest or detention (United Nations 1966, Article 9.1). However, this basic freedom has routinely been violated due to the incarceration of minority groups such as the Uyghurs, which includes the use of extrajudicial concentration camps and prison systems. Criminal arrests in Xinjiang accounted for 21 percent of all arrests in China, even though the region holds only 1.5 percent of the country’s total population (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021, p. 961). Many Uyghur prisoners are sent to massive reeducation camps for unknown periods of time and are often funneled into the prison system, forced labor camps, or put under house arrest (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021, p. 962). <a></a>
I argue that China must be held accountable for human rights violations committed against the Uyghur people and that the international community must act to stop genocide. This paper explores the history of this human rights situation, including how Islamophobic discrimination and counterterrorism measures led to the surveillance and control of Uyghurs in China. The current situation includes mass detention and relocation, including the widespread use of “re-education” concentration camps and abuse that likely constitute a mass atrocity. Existing policy proposals center on individual sanctions, technology sanctions, and stopping China’s access to resources in Africa. These approaches ultimately suffer from core weaknesses, however, and it is ultimately up to the international community to hold China accountable. While action through the United Nations is limited by China’s permanent membership to the UN Security Council, the UN nevertheless offers an opportunity for the world to take a stand against genocide in Xinjiang.
History of Rights Abuses Against the Uyghurs
History reveals that the Uyghurs have been oppressed by the Chinese government for decades. Various policies between 1950 and 1976 aimed to consolidate power for the Chinese Community Party and repress certain groups; these included the Land Reform Campaign, the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Millions of people from various ethnic minority groups were sent to forced labor camps, subjected to hate campaigns, forcibly relocated, imprisoned, tortured, starved, and/or killed (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021, p. 955). These policies in the twentieth century set a precedent of arbitrary arrest and detention, which led to today’s so-called “re-education camps” that the Chinese government uses to control minorities. Additionally, long before the most recent iterations of imprisonment were imposed upon the Muslim minority group, Uyghurs were often treated as “second-class citizens who needed to be civilized or persecuted to eliminate any separatist ideas” (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021, p. 955-956; see also BBC, 2022). Indeed, since 1949 China has used discrimination against the Uyghurs in the context of so-called “national security” (Uluyol, 2021).
There have been periods of hope for the Uyghurs, but they have been short-lived. There was a Uyghur period of religious and cultural revival in the 1980s after Communist dictator Mao Zedong died, but by the 1990s differences between ethnic groups intensified. In Xinjiang, these tensions were primarily between the Uyghurs and Han settlers who were incentivized by the Chinese government to move to border regions like Xinjiang to crowd out Uyghurs and erase Muslim culture through assimilation (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021). The Chinese government ultimately ordered severe crackdowns in the region, which led to the imprisonment and death of thousands of Uyghurs accused of being separatists and/or jihadists. Indeed, “the seed of Islamophobia has been embedded in the Chinese Communist Party for decades before this modern-day human rights issue came to the forefront of conversation” (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021, p. 956).
Tensions between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government worsened after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States and the subsequent rise in Islamophobia worldwide. Even though Islam is not new to China – of China’s 56 ethnicities, ten are considered adherents of Islam – the Uyghur ethnic minority has “borne the brunt of China’s counterterrorism policies, which overwhelmingly linked the entire Uyghur population with terrorism” (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021, p. 957). The Global War on Terror has been used to justify violent crackdowns against the entire Uyghur population. In response to 9/11, China expanded its counterterrorism laws that raised serious concerns about human rights implications for this minority group (Uluyol, 2021). (It should be noted that this approach was like how the United States used national security to target and destabilize Middle Eastern countries after the 9/11 attacks; Uluyol, 2021.) Experts argued that anti-terror provisions might be expanded to criminalize a wide range of activities, including peaceful protest, and to justify extreme punishments such as the death penalty (Clark, 2010, p. 18). Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party does not approve of Uyghur culture because the Uyghurs have not assimilated into the mainstream Han culture like other groups have. The Uyghur people are singled out and scapegoated as Muslim terrorists while other, more assimilated Muslim minorities enjoy greater human rights freedoms (Abdulla & Shamseden, 2021).
Human Rights in Xinjiang Today
The human rights situation confronting Uyghurs in Xinjiang today is the direct result of this history. Intensifying state-sponsored Islamophobia has facilitated the “comprehensive will to control religious observance in Xinjiang” and to curtail various freedoms, including freedom of religious expression (Clarke, 2010, p. 22). Basic civil and political rights have been stripped, due in part to the ambiguous and broad language of counterterrorism laws. For example, Chinese law states that “inciting the masses to illegally rally and demonstrate” is punishable, but researchers point out that this language “is arguably aimed at controlling the freedom of assembly” (Clarke, 2010, p. 22). Additionally, laws declare that “using religion to meddle in administration, justice and education, weddings, family planning or cultural activities” as well as “going abroad to study religion” are punishable, which violates freedoms of expression and movement (Clarke, 2010, p. 22). On the ground, the consequences of this legislation include the mass arrests of suspected terrorists and their sympathizers, with regular sweeps of homes in pursuit of suspected militants (Clarke, 2015). Thousands of government agents are sent to the countryside to “educate” people about the threats of Islam, which includes enforcing policies that restrict religious observance (Clarke 2015, p. 141; see also United States Holocaust Memorial Museum n.d.). In short, the broadening of what China considers to be terrorism has resulted in the “erosion of individual human rights of the [Xinjiang] ethnic minorities but particularly the Uyghur[s]” (Clarke 2010, p. 27).
While much attention centers on the situation’s two clear stakeholders – the Chinese Communist Party and the Uyghur people – it is notable that regional and global actors also play a role and might, therefore, be involved in solution-seeking. The Chinese government’s interest for the region of Xinjiang has been to open Xinjiang to Central Asia to achieve economic growth and to stabilize its Central Asian frontier (Clarke, 2015). Through the opening of Xinjiang, Central Asian nations can re-establish links with the Uyghurs. Uyghur organizations in countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, for instance, now work to establish “widespread advocacy of greater autonomy for the Uyghurs of Xinjiang” (Clarke, 2015, p. 136). While the Chinese Communist Party wants the Uyghur minority to assimilate and quell threats of separatism, many Uyghurs seek to preserve their cultural autonomy. Mass incarceration and forced resettlement have become common occurrences in the name of deterring further terrorism, but such violence has led to growing resentment against the Chinese government. So, the Chinese government’s methods of supposedly preventing terrorism in the Xinjiang region will ultimately cause more resentment towards the government and cause more potential for actual terrorism as the Uyghur people grow angrier with their human rights being violated (Clarke, 2015).
Other state and intergovernmental actors could act to prevent further human rights violations in Xinjiang – but their options are limited, especially since many countries are economically interdependent with China. The Chinese government uses its economic power to heavily invest in other countries’ infrastructure and development. For example, China’s overseas investments have increased remarkably in recent years, providing much needed resources for developing regions of the world, including Africa and Latin America (Zhou & Leung, 2015). As a result, China is playing an ever more important role in international relations. With China’s financial power, Beijing can leverage influence over the countries it invests in. If countries receiving development aid from China protested Beijing’s mistreatment of the Uyghur people, for instance, it is very likely that their aid would drastically decrease or stop all together. The Chinese government knows this likelihood, which is why Beijing “politicizes its foreign investments” to coerce its economic partners into being complacent towards the genocide of the Uyghur people (Uluyol, 2021). This is also true for some Muslim countries and even the United States; China has essentially “bought the silence” of many countries because it puts its economic interests above human rights (Uluyol, 2021). Notably, China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council; it can veto any UN intervention to prevent or stop mass atrocities.
Options for Protecting Human Rights in Xinjiang
Even though options are limited when it comes to keeping China accountable, there are numerous human rights organizations and activists that are advocating for solutions to this genocide. The following policy options presented are ideally to be implemented in combination, since the current course of action by the international community has been inadequate. Matt Wicks, Samantha Hitchcock, and Josè Flores (2021) write that there have been several multi-pronged plans seeking to pressure China to relent on its mistreatment of the Uyghurs. One policy proposal was to expand the use of the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which imposes bank and asset freezes on sanctioned individuals and bars U.S. businesses from interacting with them – thereby drying up economic opportunities for human rights violators (Wicks et al., 2021). There has been international support for the idea of imposing sanctions on individual people deemed responsible for the human rights violations against the Uyghurs; in March 2021, the European Union announced sanctions on perpetrators of gross human rights violations. These sanctions included visa bans and financial asset freezes on four Chinese officials and members of the Xinjiang police department (Uyghur Human Rights Project, 2023). The sanctions target heads of Chinese Communist Party agencies who are responsible for Beijing’s government-sponsored surveillance on the Uyghurs through technology such as facial recognition software (Wicks et al., 2021). Sanctions targeted at specific individuals are a great strategy to blacklist perpetrators and prevent them from making international business deals, as well as to galvanize international support against these violators. But the caveat to individual sanctions is that these sanctions become very limited if these officials are simply replaced. This sanction strategy would have to be repeated to keep up with new hiring and would ultimately dilute the power of the sanction strategy, since there will always be someone else to assume command and continue human rights violations unhindered.
Another policy option proposed to address the genocide of the Uyghurs is implementation of “technology-centered sanctions,” which would replace out-of-date sanctions to include modern technologies such as the facial recognition (Wicks et al., 2021). The idea is that the United States and the European Union could collaboratively cut off China’s access to new technologies, which are used to surveil the Uyghurs, and “slow the rate of human injustice” (Wicks et al., 2021, p. 625). However, this policy option would not change the fundamental relationship between the Chinese government and the Uyghur people. Sanctions that specifically target China’s surveillance technology could indeed serve as a setback to China’s ability to persecute the Uyghurs, but it would not stop completely. Ultimately, China does not need high-tech surveillance to commit human rights atrocities – and technology comes from outside the U.S. and Europe, as well.
Lastly, another proposal is to undermine China’s efforts to partner with various African states to obtain mineral resources in exchange for infrastructure development (Wicks et al., 2021). China is making these deals with African countries such as Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, and Kenya because of China’s huge energy needs; its energy efficiency is four times less than Europe, and its coal reserves may be exhausted in only a few decades. China is therefore looking towards other countries for their “expanding industrial needs” (Wicks et al., 2021, p. 626). This situation offers leverage to combat human rights abuse against the Uyghurs, if cooperation between the E.U. and the U.S. could fund infrastructure development loans in Africa at lower interest rates than those offered by China. This would mean withholding minerals that China desperately wants until verifiable improvements are made in Xinjiang (Wicks et al., 2021). The problem with this policy option is that it will not starve China of its resources within a reasonable enough timeframe to save the Uyghur people currently imprisoned and detained in re-education camps. There are other policy options that can be implemented that will immediately start negatively affecting China’s reputation and power, so that they are politically forced to improve human rights for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Policy Recommendations
There are two recommendations that will decrease the effectiveness of China’s exploitation of the Uyghurs and will force more nations to pick a side in this international debate. The first recommendation is to pass a UN resolution echoing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which is a U.S. law that “prohibit[s] the import of all goods, wares, articles, or merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part, by forced labor…and particularly any such goods, wares, articles, or merchandise produced in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China” (United States Congress, 2022). The second recommendation is to expand the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which imposes individual sanctions on human rights violators, into another UN resolution that specifically targets Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Both recommendations aim to make the human rights violations occurring in Xinjiang into an international debate, since they would press the issue to the forefront of global conversation. Currently, many countries have stayed silent on this issue; only 39 states signed a letter expressing concern over “gross human rights violations” and calling for “immediate access” for independent observers to Xinjiang, while 65 countries have not come out against Chinese abuses (Zarpli & Zengin, 2022, p. 2). In their research, Omer Zarpli and Huseyin Zengin (2022) found that “countries that have closer political and economic relations with the norm-violating states are less likely to name and shame human rights abuses” (p. 3). It is therefore important that the political reputation and economic strength of China be targeted by these policy recommendations. The first recommendation of proposing an international ban of all products created by forced Uyghur labor will limit the amount of products China can sell to other countries, overall weakening China’s economic strength and leverage on the international market. The second recommendation of imposing international sanctions on China’s sole leader, Xi Jinping, will weaken his political power and will bring China’s respectability into question. There should not be debate over whether Xi Jinping is involved in these human rights violations against the Uyghur people either, as his call for a “people’s war” to make terrorists “like rats scurrying across the street” has resulted in an increased security presence in Xinjiang (Clarke, 2015, p. 141). Notably, previous actions by the U.S. and E.U. have set a precedent for international cooperation when it comes to sanctions (see Gaouette & Frater, 2021).
There is a potential obstacle to making these resolutions a reality, however: the UN Security Council. For resolutions to pass in the UN Security Council, which have more legal and political power than those passed in the UN General Assembly, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council must agree with it – or at least, not veto it. Since China is one of those permanent members and would certainly veto the resolution, it is unrealistic to think that the Security Council could adopt a resolution punishing China for human rights abuses of the Uyghurs. Still, there is plenty of opportunity for a resolution to pass in the UN General Assembly. Most of Europe and North America, as well as parts of South America and Asia, have publicly denounced China for their rights abuses. Proposing a UN resolution would force the silent nations of the world to vote on this human rights issue. There is a chance they would abstain from the vote, but that response would make their avoidance very apparent – and perhaps make their citizens aware of this often-ignored situation.
Admittedly, there is no way to force the Chinese government to change its discriminatory views of the Uyghurs. What these recommendations do is push these realities – this pervasive Islamophobia and these human rights atrocities – to the forefront of global conversations. Even if these UN resolutions were to fail, the negative attention the proposed sanctions would create would succeed in bringing more awareness to this issue and hopefully exert pressure on other state governments to take meaningful action.
Conclusion
There has already been work done to address Chinese human rights violations against the Uyghurs in the form of sanctions against high-ranking individuals and bans on the imports of forced labor businesses using forced Uyghur labor. That work has only been done on a national scale in places like the United States and the European Union, but those policies can inspire international cooperation in the future. Recommendations to pass UN resolutions to sanction China’s president and ban products of forced Uyghur labor can bring this issue to the international stage and hopefully garner global support for human rights protections in Xinjiang. More awareness is necessary to solve the crisis facing China’s Uyghur minority, and these recommendations can help bring this issue to the forefront of global debate.
References
Abdulla, M., & Shamseden, Z. (2021). “The Rise of Xenophobia and the Uyghur-China Situation.” Social Research, 88(4): 949-972.
Baillie, L., & Parkes, M. (2023, April 6). “Don’t Look Away from China’s Atrocities Against the Uyghurs.” United States Institute of Peace. Retrieved from https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/04/dont-look-away-chinas-atrocities-against-uyghurs.
BBC. (2022, May 24). “Who are the Uyghurs and why is China being accused of genocide?” Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037.
Clarke, M. (2010). “Widening the net: China’s anti-terror laws and human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” The International Journal of Human Rights, 14(4): 542-558.
Clarke, M. (2015). “China and the Uyghurs: The ‘Palestinization’ of Xinjiang?” Middle East Policy, 22(3): 127-146.
Gaouette, N., & Frater, J. (2021). “US and allies announce sanctions against Chinese officials for ‘serious human rights abuses’ against Uyghurs.” CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/22/politics/us-eu-china-uyghur-sanctions/index.html.
United Nations. (1948). The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf.
United Nations. (1966). Internation Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights.
United States Congress. (2022, December 22). H.R.1155 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1155/text.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Chinese Persecution of the Uyghurs. Retrieved from https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/chinese-persecution-of-the-uyghurs.
Uyghur Human Rights Project. (2023). “International Responses to the Uyghur Crisis.” Retrieved from https://uhrp.org/responses/.
Uluyol, B. (2021, February 22). “China has a long history of discrimination against the Uyghurs, but the world has a role to play.” Middle East Monitor. Retrieved from https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210222-china-has-a-long-history-of-discrimination-against-the-uyghurs-but-the-world-has-a-role-to-play/.
Whelan, N. (2020). “Countries By Percentage of World Population.” World Atlas. Retrieved from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-percentage-of-world-population.html.
Wicks, M., Hitchcock, S., & Flores, J. (2021). “The transatlantic partnership: Holding China accountable for the Uyghur genocide.” Orbis, 65(4): 618-629.
World Population Review. (2023). “Freedom Index by Country 2023.” Retrieved from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country.
Zarpli, O., & Zengin, H. (2022). “Shame, endorse, or remain silent? State response to human rights violations in other countries.” Research & Politics, 9(1).
Zhou, L., & Leung, D. (2015, January 28). “China’s Overseas Investments, Explained in 10 Graphics.” World Resources Institute. Retrieved from https://www.wri.org/insights/chinas-overseas-investments-explained-10-graphics.
© Copyright 2024 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2024/05/04/punish-china-for-the-genocide-of-the-uyghur-people/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Mobilizing (and Weaponizing) Visible Identities</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/mobilizing-and-weaponizing-visible-identities-unveiling-the-french-discourse/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/mobilizing-and-weaponizing-visible-identities-unveiling-the-french-discourse/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Dec 2023 22:05:48 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIII, Issue 2]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1413</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Anastasis Mauriac, University of Birmingham – United Kingdom Mobilizing (and Weaponizing) Visible Identities: Unveiling the French Discourse [Download PDF] This essay contends that the French government weaponizes the “visible identities” of veiled Muslim women through colonial feminist discourse to uphold secular values and reinforce traditional conceptions of French identity. It provides a brief overview of […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Anastasis Mauriac, University of Birmingham – United Kingdom

Mobilizing (and Weaponizing) Visible Identities: Unveiling the French Discourse
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Mauriac_Visible-Identities.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Mauriac_Visible-Identities.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
This essay contends that the French government weaponizes the “visible identities” of veiled Muslim women through colonial feminist discourse to uphold secular values and reinforce traditional conceptions of French identity. It provides a brief overview of how France became a secular state and explain why secularism is at the heart of French identity. This helps uncover the roots of why headscarf debates are so controversial in France. Drawing on on existing scholarship to examine how the French state uses various feminist rhetorics to uphold secular values, the author argues that the feminist discourse that centers on “saving women” legitimizes headscarf bans based on gender equality. Lastly, this piece considers how the French state is excluding Muslim women from public debates to uphold secular values using concepts such as epistemic justice, hermeneutic marginalization, and the argument of false consciousness.
In France, the figure of the veiled woman has recently become a controversial symbol of religious fundamentalism and a threat to Western modernity. A French ban on the hijab in 2004 and then on the niqab in 2010 were directly influenced by anti-terrorism security measures following the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Terrorist attacks in French territory has amplified the weaponization of Muslim women. It is widely believed that the 2016 local bans on burkinis, for instance, are a reaction to public fear of Islamic terrorism after a terrorist attack in the city of Nice (Dearden, 2016).<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1">[1]</a> Similarly, a 2021 ban on the hijab duringschool trips has been attributed to fear following the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty. Paty was killed after showing his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free speech in 2020 (Al Jazeera, 2021).
I argue that the French government weaponizes the “visible identities” of veiled Muslim women through what Leila Ahmed (1992) calls “colonial feminist” discourse to uphold secular values and reinforce the so-called “French identity.” Weaponization is a process of attacking a person or group using a specific characteristic, such as symbols or identities. Although Linda Martín Alcoff (2006) conceptualizes “visible identities” based on race and gender, I contend that religious belonging can be considered a visible identity. The veil is an outward symbol of religious identity, which makes Muslim women an easy target for Islamophobic abuse. The Muslim community is a visible minority that is a victim of heavy discrimination in France (Le Monde, 2019), and French bans highlight how religious identities can be targeted in everyday ways.
First, I provide a brief overview of how France became a secular state and explain why secularism is at the heart of French identity. This helps uncover the roots of why headscarf debates are so controversial in France. Second, I will draw on existing scholarship to examine how the French state uses colonial, Orientalist, and Western feminist rhetoric to uphold secular values through the weaponization of veiled women. I argue that feminist discourse that centers on “saving women” legitimizes headscarf bans based on gender equality. Third, I consider how the French state is excluding Muslim women from public debates to uphold secular values using concepts such as epistemic justice, hermeneutic marginalization, and the argument of false consciousness.
Historical context
The contestation of the headscarf within French society derives from France’s development into a secular state devoted to laïcité. Laïcité is not the same as freedom of religion. Rather, it means keeping public spaces neutral in terms of religion. France’s contested history with the Catholic Church, as well as various wars over religion, help explain why secularism is at the heart of the French identity, including within its educational system. For instance, the Catholic Church had a strong grip on French schools before a 1905 law prohibited the state from officially recognizing or endorsing religious groups. Public anxiety over overt religious symbolism within the public sphere can be explained by previous conflicts centered on religion (Platt, 2014). More broadly, the protection of public order has always been a priority for French institutions. Secularism is understood as what keeps society intact (Bowen, 2006), and that influences how the state governs public spaces such as public schools and government buildings – two spaces where the headscarf is banned. Central to these bans is the perceived protection of French identity and values (Bowen, 2006). Proponents of laïcité believe it can be used as a tool to prevent religious groups that appear to support illiberal practices, such as forced marriage, from gaining political power. Opponents of laïcité argue that it further discriminates against religious groups because it excludes them from the public sphere (Yardim & Hüseyinoglu, 2021).
It is noteworthy that these debates often utilize the discourse of “saving women” – that is, they believe that “Third World women” need saving because they come from “uncivilized” and oppressive cultures. This rhetoric stems from colonial feminism, a branch of Western feminism that uses an Orientalist framework to assert that they know what is best for Muslim women (Crosby, 2014). Ahmed (1992) describes colonial feminism as “feminism used as a tool against other cultures to benefit the colonisers” (p. 152). (Orientalism is a constructed lens through which the West consistently produces an image of the East as uncivilized and barbaric to dominate it. The West justified its imperial conquest through this constructed representation; see Platt, 2014). The discourse of “saving women” has also been weaponized to justify military interventions, such as the United States’ intervention in Afghanistan (Abu-Lughod, 2002). Secularism, colonialism, and Orientalism are similar in that they contain a hierarchy of values and cultures that is imposed on other groups.
Upholding secular values using colonial feminist rhetoric
Debates about the veil are numerous and heated among feminist scholars and advocates, and I believe these debates directly relate to the discourses used by the French government. Some critics argue that laïcité is used by some feminists to achieve a form of gender equality that is framed as universal. However, it is actually Western-centric (Patel, 2013; Fernando, 2009) and is typically viewed as part of colonial feminism. Others claim that the emergence of Westernized, secular Muslim women who encourage unveiling is also problematic since it requires women to abandon cultural traditions to conform to the French version of citizenship (Kemp, 2010). The French government uses feminist colonial discourse to encourage the Muslim community to adjust to French customs by stressing the role of secularism in achieving gender equality.
Notably, many analyses of this issue perpetuate a monolithic, reductive representation of Muslim women (Yardim & Hüseyinoglu, 2021) due to their focus on how Muslim women can change their behavior to avoid discrimination. There is little consideration of how the French state uses these assumptions and perspectives to its advantage and weaponizes identity for political ends. The veil is reduced to a symbol of gender oppression, and colonial feminists see unveiling as a tool of emancipation. A good example of this is Laurence Rossignol’s 2016 comment when she was France’s Women’s Rights Minister; she compared veiled Muslim women to Black slaves “who accepted slavery” (quoted in BBC News, 2016). Rossignol’s comparison shows she believed that Muslim women who chose to wear the veil were submitting to oppression, a viewpoint which encourages the monolithic representation of Muslim women as needing to unveil to free themselves to achieve equality. By using the discourse of “saving women,” the government also embodies the figure of a savior, which is useful for upholding the state’s political agenda because it hides assimilationist policies under a moral argument that is publicly accepted.
This reductive representation is problematic for several reasons. It erases Muslim women’s agency and essentializes the narrative that they are forced to veil, which is not the case for many (Wing & Smith, 2006). Furthermore, the essentialization of their experiences erases the possibility of different realities (Spelman, 1988). When the French state argues that all veiled women are oppressed, it ignores the reality that many women have decided to wear the veil for reasons such as faith, protection from the gaze of men, and compliance with family values (Ahmed, 2011). Failing to take different experiences seriously can lead to the violation of women’s rights to freedom and expression of religion. Denying their right to choose how to dress does not automatically improve the lives of those who are forced to veil. The “saving women” discourse also implies a lack of agency in Muslim women’s lives, which contradicts feminism’s core principle: elevating women’s agency.
Such reductivism also hides an assimilationist agenda in the name of protecting French identity. This point can be illustrated by comparing the feminist discourse used in the colony of Algeria and in the context of France’s current ban on the veil. During France’s 132-year occupation of Algeria, colonizers launched propagandistic efforts to “emancipate” Muslim women from “patriarchal oppression” in unveiling campaigns (MacMaster, 2009). These campaigns were a strategy to assimilate Muslim women into France’s secularism. Despite using the discourse of feminist liberation, French colonists did not have Algerian women’s interests at heart. Neil MacMaster (2009) considers how the word “emancipation” was used by the French government; it referred to reforms that ensured equality of rights between French metropolitan women and Algerian Muslim women. However, an assimilationist agenda hid behind this term because it sought to transform Algerian women into bourgeois French women. Moreover, the emphasis on girls’ education was an effort to impose Republican values on brothers, fathers, and husbands (Wing & Smith, 2006). This strongly resembles the current situation in France. Under the banner of “emancipation,” the ban has been implemented in schools and forced Muslim girls and women to unveil and conform to secularism. This assimilationist policy reflects France’s anxiety around the public display of religious symbols and the nation’s fear of losing its “French identity.” In this way, veiled women are weaponized through the French government’s use of colonial feminist discourse to reinforce secularism and corresponding French identity.
Excluding Muslim women from public debate
The French state excludes Muslim women from public debate by restricting their spatial mobility, ignoring their experiences, and delegitimizing their voices to uphold secular values. In debates around the veil, Muslim women in France are “silent symbols” (Wing & Smith, 2006, p. 747), though they have hyper-visible identities (Yardim & Hüseyinoglu, 2021). According to the government’s own figures, 60% of Muslim women who wear the veil have experienced discrimination due to their religion, compared to 42% of Muslims overall (Le Monde, 2019). Indeed, Muslim women are easy targets for Islamophobia because they wear the veil, an outward symbol of Islamic affiliation, and are therefore frequently excluded from public spaces. Because of their hyper-visible identities, they are targeted by the French government as symbols of Islamic terrorism. After the 9/11 attacks and the emergence of Islamic terrorism in public debates, veiled women became the prime targets of public anxiety over terrorism. The “Western obsession” (Abu-Lughod, 2002, p. 786) with the veil comes from its association with terrorism and is perceived as dangerous for Western democratic values.
In the context of Islamic terrorism, there is widespread fear of France’s disunity. The communitarian dimension of French Republicanism aims at defending French identity against a “perceived growing cultural affirmation” by Muslim citizens (Heine, 2009, p. 177), and French President Emmanuel Macron warned in 2021 that Islamism was undermining the unity of the Republic (Reuters, 2021). The reinforcement of French Republican values in the face of Islamic extremism requires the exclusion of Muslim women (Heine, 2009) because it instrumentalizes them, using colonial feminist discourse in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism, as amplified by restrictions on religious freedom for Muslim women following terrorist attacks. Yet, the bans punish and target Muslim women for Islamic terrorism and essentialize the Muslim community’s beliefs rather than thwarting future attacks. I believe those bans are sexist and Islamophobic, hidden beneath the discourse of secularism and Republican values.
Another way the French government weaponizes Muslim women to uphold secular values is by ignoring their experiences and delegitimizing their voices, as highlighted by three key concepts: epistemic injustice, hermeneutic marginalisation, and the argument of false consciousness. Epistemic injustice relates to the credibility of some people being doubted or ridiculed based on prejudices (Code, 2014). A good example to illustrate epistemic injustice is the way veiled women were framed by the French media in debates about the head scarf. In one illustrative interview, for instance, three veiled women were perceived as insolent and contemptuous rather than as powerful figures reclaiming the rights of women (Adizzoni, 2004). Their credibility was doubted and ridiculed when they were asked about their experiences wearing the veil, thereby discrediting their opinions about the bans and the state’s attempts to regulate their personal expression. Such an approach is infantilizing, enabling society to ignore Muslim women’s complaints because insolence is usually assigned to someone who is in a position of inferiority and defying authority. It should further be noted that prominent voices highlighted by the French media were almost exclusively men; male politicians, journalists, and religious leaders. The women at the center of the issue were thus denied a voice in the public conversation, and their choice was instead defended or opposed by patriarchs (Adizzoni, 2004).
Hermeneutic injustice occurs when “someone has an area of their social experience obscured from understanding owing to prejudicial flaws (Fricker, 2007, p. 153). This concept stems from a broader framework called “critical race feminism,” which highlights how essentialist images of Muslim women portrayed in the media fail to incorporate women’s voices. This framework is helpful for analyzing how Muslim women have been silenced by media debates that privilege men and for offering possibilities for “demarginalizing” the opinions of women (Wing & Smith, 2006; Brems, 2014). Critical race feminism scholars argue that an “outsider” perspective is often used to depict veiled Muslim women and that legislators do not show an interest in learning about their “lived experiences” (Brems, 2014). Muslim women struggle to share their experiences (and be listened to) as a marginalized identity group, and it is notable that powerful actors, such as French legislators, have an interest in obscuring these experiences so they can better assimilate Muslim women into the secular French identity (Heine, 2009).
False consciousness is another symptom of epistemic injustice that has been brought to life in the wake of France’s veil controversy. False consciousness means that someone has an “unconscious, conditioned reflection of their oppression” and are therefore “complicitous in it” (MacKinnon, 1983, p. 637). In other words, it is a way of thinking that keeps a person from perceiving the true nature of their situation. Veiled women are viewed as having internalized their oppression and inferiority, which is used to de-legitimize their experiences and opinions; they are perceived as brainwashed. This discourse legitimizes Western women speaking for women of other cultures and races and weaponizes Muslim women by silencing their opinions and having their experiences re-framed by others (Wing & Smith, 2006; Crosby, 2014). By invoking imperial feminist rhetoric, Western women end up oppressing Muslim women more than liberating them; they assist the French state in imposing laws that police women’s bodies and limit their spatial mobility – all justified as a way to help them and increase their agency. This is part of colonial and oriental discourses that prominent feminist scholars such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1988) denounce. Mohanty (1988) argues that there is a form of “ethnocentric universalism” in Western feminist discourse that posits women from the Global South as oppressed and Western women as emancipated (p. 64). Therefore, women’s experiences must be historically situated and not essentialized (Mohanty, 1988; Abu-Lughod, 2002). I believe that there is work to be done to deconstruct France’s “reductive interpretation of veiling as the quintessential sign of women’s unfreedom” (Abu-Lughod, 2002, p. 786).
Conclusion
I argue that the ban on the veil is a sexist and Islamophobic policy, hidden behind the discourse of gender equality and Republican values. Viewed through a colonial feminist discourse, Muslim women are weaponized to reinforce French identity and its value of secularism. Bans on the veil have Orientalist and colonial roots, using the ideal of “saving women” to encourage veiled women to conform to French secular values. Muslim women are also excluded from public debates, and their voices are frequently ridiculed or ignored. In this sense, their lived experiences of wearing the veil are stolen from them.
The French government’s adoption of a Republican definition of laïcité privileges colonial feminism rather than a more equitable and inclusive post-colonial stance. This version of laïcité views secularism as a way of protecting the public space by restricting religious affiliations to the private sphere (Maclure & Taylor, 2010, p. 20). Although the state insists on the principle of neutrality, it is hostile towards religious belief and adopts discriminatory policies, such as the ban on wearing the veil. Perhaps it is time to implement a form of secularism which welcomes all religions and requires only institutions to be neutral, not individuals. Liberal and pluralist laïcité claim that religious beliefs are individual rights and cannot be penalised, for instance (Maclure & Taylor, 2010). Since the Muslim community represents France’s largest minority (Le Monde, 2019), it is time to adapt policies to include this community – which is also part of the French identity. France’s values are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. As Adrien Katherine Wing and Monica Nigh Smith (2006) write: “Let’s make sure that also includes sisterhood” (p. 785).
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (2002). Do Muslim women really need saving? Anthropological reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others. American Anthropologist, 104(3), 783-790.
Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Alcoff, L. (2006). Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Al Jazeera. (2021, April 9). “Law against Islam”: French vote in favour of hijab ban condemned.
Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/9/a-law-against-islam.
Adizzoni, M. (2004). Unveiling the Veil: Gendered Discourses and the (In)Visibility of the Female Body in France. Women’s Studies, 33, 629-649.
BBC News. (2016, March 30). French minister compares veil wearers to “negroes who accepted slavery”.
Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35927665.
Bowen, J. R. (2007). Why the French Don’t like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brems, E. (2014). The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Crosby, E. (2014). Faux Feminism: France’s Veil Ban as Orientalism. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 15(2), 46-60. Retrieved from https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol15/iss2/4.
Code, L. (2014). Ignorance, Injustice and the Politics of Knowledge: Feminist Epistemology Now. Australian Feminist Studies, 29(80), 148-160.  
Dearden, L. (2016, August 24). Burkini ban: Why is France arresting Muslim women for wearing full-body swimwear and why are people so angry?
The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/burkini-ban-why-is-france-arresting-muslim-women-for-wearing-fullbody-swimwear-and-why-are-people-so-angry-a7207971.html.
Fernando, M. (2009). Exceptional citizens: Secular Muslim women and the politics of difference in France. Social Anthropology, 17(4), 379-392.
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heine, S. (2009). The Hijab controversy and French republicanism: Critical analysis and normative propositions. French Politics, 7(2), 167-193. Retrieved from http://ucparis.fr/files/1113/6550/6662/Heine_Hijab_controversy.pdf.
Kemp, A. (2010). Voices and Veils: Feminism and Islam in French Women’s Writing and Activism. London: Routledge.
Le Monde. (2019, November 6). Selon un sondage, 42 % des musulmans de France disent avoir été discriminés à cause de leur religion. Retrieved from https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2019/11/06/selon-un-sondage-40-des-musulmans-de-france-ont-fait-l-objet-de-racisme_6018225_3224.html.
MacKinnon, C. A. (1983). Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence. The University of Chicago Press Journal, 8(4), 635-658.
Maclure, J. and Taylor, C. (2011). Secularism and Freedom of Conscience Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
MacMaster, N. (2009). Burning the veil: The Algerian war and the ‘emancipation’ of Muslim women, 1954–62. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Mohanty, C. (1988). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review, 30(1), 61-88.
Patel, P. (2013). Multi-Faithism and the Gender Question: Implications of Government Policy on the Struggle for Equality and Rights for Minority women in the UK. In L. Kelly, Y. Rehman, & H. Siddiqui, H. (Eds.), Moving in the Shadows: Violence in the Lives of Minority Women and Children (pp. 41-58). London: Routledge.
Platt, K. (2014). Women and the Islamic Veil: Deconstructing implications of orientalism, state, and feminism through an understanding of performativity, cultivation of 
piety and identity, and fashion. Hofstra University, student thesis. Retrieved from https://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/academics/colleges/hclas/rel/rel_thesis_platt.pdf.
Reuters. (2021, May 4). Hands off my hijab! Young Muslim women protest proposed French ban.
Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hands-off-my-hijab-young-muslim-women-protest-proposed-french-ban-2021-05-04/.
Spelman, E. (1988). Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston:Beacon Press.
Yardim, M., & Hüseyinoglu, A. (2021). Veil and Burqa in the French Public Sphere: A Feminist Analysis. Insight, 23(2), 191-212.
 Wing, A. K., & Smith, M. N. (2006). Critical Race Feminism Lifts the Veil: Muslim Women, France, and the Headscarf Ban. U.C. Davis Law Review, 39(3), 743-784.
© Copyright 2023 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
<a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1">[1]</a> The hijab is a head covering/scarf that is worn by some Muslim women to cover their hair and neck. The niqab is a long, black garment that covers a women’s body and face. A “burkini” is a swimsuit that covers a woman’s entire body except the face, hands, and feet. In this article, the terms “headscarf” and “veil” are frequently used as stand-ins for the hijab.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/mobilizing-and-weaponizing-visible-identities-unveiling-the-french-discourse/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Confronting Transgender Intimate Partner Violence (T-IPV)</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/confronting-transgender-intimate-partner-violence-t-ipv/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/confronting-transgender-intimate-partner-violence-t-ipv/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Dec 2023 22:02:08 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIII, Issue 2]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1412</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Alexander Goode, Webster University – Saint Louis Confronting Transgender Intimate Partner Violence (T-IPV) [Download PDF] Transgender intimate partner violence (T-IPV) is an under-researched social problem. Due to a distrust of the police, transgender people are reluctant to seek law enforcement help when dealing with T-IPV and lack formal support for leaving abusive relationships. This paper […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Alexander Goode, Webster University – Saint Louis

Confronting Transgender Intimate Partner Violence (T-IPV)
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Goode_T-IPV.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Goode_T-IPV.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
Transgender intimate partner violence (T-IPV) is an under-researched social problem. Due to a distrust of the police, transgender people are reluctant to seek law enforcement help when dealing with T-IPV and lack formal support for leaving abusive relationships. This paper defines T-IPV, outlines the unique form of IPV that transgender people face, considers the current policies that inadequately address T-IPV, and proposes a violence intervention program that does not immediately rely on police.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious problem in the United States. IPV includes sexual violence, stalking, physical violence, and psychological aggression. It also includes forms of verbal abuse and financial abuse. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) describes an intimate partner as “spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, people with whom they dated, were seeing or ‘hooked up’” (Smith et al., 2018, p. 7). The NISVS found that in the United States, one in three women experience intimate partner violence of some form in their lifetime. For men in the United States, the number was also roughly one in three (Smith, 2018). Notably missing from this study, however, are the experiences of transgender and nonbinary people.
Transgender individuals have been ignored or intentionally discriminated against in the existing scholarship and policy related to IPV. This lack of research harms the transgender community because it prevents important information from being disseminated to social service agencies and legal systems. Limited research on transgender intimate partner violence (T-IPV) has found that in the United States, 54% of transgender people have experienced IPV in some form, and 24% have experienced “severe physical violence” at the hands of an intimate partner (James et al., 2016). Tamar Goldenberg et al. (2018) found that nonbinary individuals were more likely to experience intimate partner violence than transgender men and women. Additionally, when an individual is undocumented, has a disability, been incarcerated, was or is involved in sex work, or is HIV-positive and transgender, they are at even higher risk of experiencing IPV (Turell, 2000). Adam M. Messinger (2020) theorizes this is because an individual belonging to multiple at-risk identities may be “more likely to fear the consequences of seeking help for victimization…to perceive sources of help to be less readily accessible…and to view leaving abusers as an untenable loss of emotional and financial support” (p. 115). To change this and make it easier for T-IPV survivors to leave an abusive relationship, new policies must be implemented to address the specific needs of the transgender community.
While transgender intimate partner violence (T-IPV) is an under-researched social problem, we know that transgender people are reluctant to seek law enforcement help when dealing with T-IPV and lack formal support systems for leaving abusive relationships. Because of this reality, a better understanding of T-IPV and how it uniquely affects trans individuals is necessary for the establishment of better support systems. In this paper, I first explain T-IPV by discussing the issue of identity abuse – a unique form of IPV that transgender people face. Second, I consider several theories that help explain the persistence of T-IPV, including honor-based violence theory, disempowerment theory, and minority stress theory.  Third, I outline challenges within the current U.S. legal system for survivors of T-IPV. These include issues related to mandatory arrest policies, no-drop prosecution, and a distrust of the legal system by members of the trans community. Finally, since current policies inadequately address T-IPV, I propose a violence intervention program that does not immediately rely on police involvement.
Identity Abuse
Transgender people experience IPV victimization in many of the same ways that cisgender people do. However, one unique form of abuse that transgender people may face is identity abuse. Identity abuse is a form of abuse that leverages heterosexism and cissexism to harm survivors (Woulfe & Goodman, 2018). Within identity abuse, perpetrators may use retroverting and maneuverting. Retroverting entails the abuser repeatedly referencing back toward a victim’s previous identity or forcing survivors to be like their previous self (pre-transition or coming out), while maneuverting entails abusers framing the desired gender identity as unobtainable (Koontz, 2020). In both situations, abusers may take steps to make victims’ physical transition or expression of gender identity nearly impossible. They may ridicule or belittle transgender identities, dictate how gender is expressed, deny access to gender-affirming care, and threaten to “out” someone (Leslie et al., 2022). Victims may also be told that they are not a “real” woman or man by an abusive partner (James et al., 2016) or held to standards of masculinity and femininity that are impossible to achieve (Koontz, 2020). Abusers may also destroy “props”’ associated with gender transition. These props could be a chest binder, gender-affirming clothing, makeup, or prosthetics. Amanda Koontz (2020) writes that abusers control these props (both providing them and taking them away) to maintain power in the relationship, to keep victims reliant on the abuser, and to maintain control over how others view the victim (in terms of gender recognition). Abusers may also threaten to “out” victims to friends, family, and employers (Guadalupe-Diaz & Jasinski, 2017). The threatening of one’s identity is a unique form of abuse that transgender victims may deal with – and which social service agencies and current legal systems do not know how to handle.
Theories of T-IPV
One theory that may explain the issue of T-IPV is the honor-based violence theory. This theory argues that cisgender people who are transphobic or accept transphobic beliefs and stereotypes may be more likely to perpetuate IPV towards a transgender partner to “disassociate” themselves from the stigma surrounding being transgender (Messinger, 2021). This works to protect the abuser’s societal privilege as a cisgender person. Some qualitative research indicates that cisgender abusers may express transphobic statements toward their transgender partners (Cook-Daniels, 2015). Analyzing a variety of sources, Messinger (2021) found that 30% of transgender people reported a cisgender partner stopping them from disclosing their status as transgender, 30% reported a cisgender partner preventing them from expressing their gender through physical appearance, and 7% had a cisgender partner prevent them from receiving gender-affirming healthcare. Additionally, in a study comprised of 97 transgender individuals assigned male at birth, 10.3% experienced IPV due to their status as a transgender person (Shipherd et al., 2011). Further research is needed to better develop this theory and provide more evidence as to how exactly transphobia plays a role in T-IPV in cisgender and transgender partnerships since it does not adequately explain intimate partner violence perpetrated by other transgender individuals.
To explain transgender individuals as abusers, Messinger (2020) points to disempowerment theory and minority stress theory. Disempowerment theory states that because some people feel disempowered by societal discrimination, those individuals perpetrate IPV to regain a sense of power and control in their lives. Minority stress theory states that those who feel extreme stress due to societal discrimination abuse others to relieve this aggression (Messinger, 2020). Disempowerment theory and minority stress theory are very similar but differ in the reason why an individual may be abusive; it is the difference between gaining a sense of power and control and expressing stress and frustration. These theories are supported by limited research, such as Nicola Brown’s (2007) study, which found some transgender abusers cited the stress of transphobia and transitioning as a reason why they abused their partners. Yet Messinger (2020) points out that abusers may be exaggerating their stress to rationalize their behavior.
Challenges Within the U.S. Legal System
In the U.S. legal system, transgender people face concerns about whether local police will believe them if they seek help from law enforcement. This is due, in part, to their distance from what society tends to think the “perfect” victim of IPV looks or acts like. Transgender people may also be concerned about making the queer and transgender communities look bad by reporting IPV (Leslie et al., 2022), and they might not see themselves as victims of IPV in the first place (Guadalupe-Diaz & Jasinski, 2017). These various factors prevent transgender people from seeking help from law enforcement, and currently available legal options, such as mandatory arrests and no-drop prosecution policies, are often inadequate for serving transgender people.
Mandatory Arrests
The legal case of Thurman v. City of Torrington<a id="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> pushed many states to pass mandatory arrest laws in the case of intimate partner violence. Mandatory arrest laws state that when a police officer is summoned to a scene for a case of domestic violence, an arrest must be made.<a id="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> Mandatory arrest policies attempt to immediately remove an abuser and provide respite to the victim(s). It is expected that this will allow for a “cool off period” between the couple. These laws also force police officers to take IPV seriously rather than treating it as a private matter. However, research has found that arrest does not significantly reduce intimate partner violence (Garcia & McManimon, 2011; Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2022). Instead, it often leads to more social inequality and injustice. For instance, arrest rates for women have gone up in intimate partner violence calls. Venessa Garcia and Patrick McManimon (2011) found that women are more likely to be arrested when the women violate norms and stereotypes or act outside of gender roles. Perceived hostility toward police also increases the risk of arrest, and racial minorities in the United States are frequently concerned that the police will respond in a racist way and will not take their victimization seriously (Garcia & McManimon, 2011). Additionally, victims might not want the perpetrator to be arrested and simply want the violence to stop at that moment. An arrest may also cause the abuser to abuse their victim more severely in the future, and the victim may be reluctant to contact the police again because they do not want to suffer another bout of abuse. Transgender people also report concerns that the police will not take their victimization seriously (Guadalupe-Diaz & Jasinski, 2017). This results in a general distrust of the U.S. legal system among the transgender community.
Distrust of the Legal System
Due to distrust in the police, transgender individuals are less likely to reach out for help through formal legal processes. The 2015 United States Transgender Survey Report found that in Missouri, 61% of respondents who interacted with police (when the police knew the individual was transgender or suspected such) experienced some form of mistreatment. This included, but was not limited to, verbal harassment, misgendering, and physical and sexual assault. As a result of such discrimination, transgender people are very hesitant to contact them, with 56% saying they would be uncomfortable seeking help from the police (National Center for Transgender Equality, 2017).
Society also tends to assign greater value to circumstances that depict IPV survivors as “real” or “perfect” victims of violence. Garcia and McManimon (2011) characterize the “perfect” victim who is deserving of justice and support as a passive woman who still manages to resist her abuser. She stands by her boyfriend or husband but also must attempt to escape the violence. They conclude by suggesting that when individuals “behave outside of these social constructs, they are not recognized as innocent victims” (Garcia and McManimon, 2011, p. 16). As transgender people defy social conventions of what a man or woman is supposed to be, transgender people find it even more difficult than their cisgender counterparts for their concerns about IPV to be taken seriously. This becomes even more difficult when the victim is a person of color. Sharon Angella Allard (1991) writes that theories of battered women’s syndrome use a definition of women that is “based upon limited societal constructs of appropriate behavior for white women” (p. 194). Because women of color are not afforded the same opportunities as white women in how they are treated in cases of IPV, we can conclude that transgender women are likely to not be awarded the same opportunities as cisgender women since transgender women also do not align with what society judges a “perfect victim” to look like.
No-Drop Prosecution
No-drop prosecution laws were established in response to domestic violence victims’ reluctance to cooperate with prosecutors due to fears of retaliatory violence. These policies prevent victims from dropping charges and require prosecutors to use evidence-based prosecution. Garcia and McManimon (2011) favor no-drop prosecution because it shows offenders that intimidation tactics will not work to dissuade victims from pressing charges. No-drop prosecution can be helpful for cisgender survivors, but transgender survivors are more likely to be revictimized and retraumatized through the legal process. Forms of IPV specific to the transgender community, such as identity abuse, are not illegal and do not offer legal recourse for victims. This means that protective orders do not take identity abuse into consideration, making them an inaccessible means for transgender survivors to seek legal protection. Furthermore, if the survivor finds recourse in the legal system, they may face transphobic remarks from members of the court and be misgendered, and the court staff may be uncomfortable when the gender presentation of an individual does not match what is listed on identifying documents (Goodmark, 2020). Litigants are also referred to by their legal name, which can cause those who have not legally changed their name to become extremely uncomfortable. Transphobic strategies have also been used in litigation, such as suggesting that an individual is deceitful due to their transgender status and is thus lying about the abuse (Goodmark, 2020). Due to the unique challenges transgender people face in the legal system, no-drop prosecution, and the system as a whole, are inadequate at addressing the concerns of transgender victims of T-IPV.
Policy Recommendations and Conclusions
Solutions that focus on formal legal systems are often not accessible to transgender people facing intimate partner violence due to distrust of law enforcement by the transgender community. Mandatory arrest policies and no-drop prosecution are well-intended responses that have had some positive impacts. However, for transgender individuals, mandatory arrest policies involve frustrating encounters with police officers, who may or may not take their victimization and concerns seriously. No-drop prosecution also may entrench transgender individuals in legal situations wherein their preferred name and pronouns are disregarded or their identity as a transgender person is weaponized against them. New policies need to be implemented to better serve the transgender community, and alternatives must be put in place to support transgender victims of abuse and prevent and interrupt violence.
A violence intervention program, for instance, would be a useful alternative to calling the police. Such a program would employ credible messengers to respond to domestic violence calls<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3">[3]</a>. In the instance that there is an episode of domestic violence, a phone call could be placed to a violence interruption center, which would then send an individual (credible messenger) to the residence to mediate the dispute, support the victim, and develop next steps. Transgender individuals would positively benefit from an IPV interruption program as it would have a trusted community member arriving first to the scene instead of a member of law enforcement, which decreases the concern of police violence or police not taking the victim seriously. This is not to say that there would not be situations in which additional levels of care would be necessary – situations would still arise in which calling for police or EMTs to address physical harm would be a more appropriate option than a violence intervention program. However, this program would first allow a credible messenger to visit the residence and address the situation before deciding if it needs to be escalated to law enforcement and/or EMTs involvement. This approach might work better than previous policies because it gives victims more agency over what they want the next steps to be and allows someone with similar life experience (also a member of the transgender community) to help resolve the dispute. This recommendation comes from a radical reform framework, which calls for the shrinking of the system doing harm (in this case, the police) as well as building and shifting power into the hands of those who are directly impacted (Stahly-Butts & Akbar, 2022).
The implementation of a violence intervention program for T-IPV would allow transgender victims to disrupt the abuse they are facing without having to involve the legal and carceral systems. Additional research is needed on the successes of violence intervention programs and how they could be best adapted to address domestic violence. Additional training and funding aimed at interrupting cycles of abuse and cultivating safer options for transgender community members would then be needed for violence intervention programs to make this transition. Trans people cannot wait for the policing and legal systems to be transformed; safety is an immediate need. Violence prevention programming allows for immediate action that can prevent future abuse and mitigate current harm.
References
Allard, S. A. (1991). Rethinking Battered Woman Syndrome: A Black Feminist Perspective. UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 1, 191-207.
Brown, N. (2007). Stories from outside the frame: Intimate partner abuse in sexual-minority women’s relationships with transsexual men. Feminism and Psychology, 17(3), 373-393.
City of Saint Louis. (n.d.). Community Violence Intervention Strategy. Retrieved from https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/public-safety/violence-prevention/cure-violence/index.cfm.
Garcia, V. & McManimon, P. (2011). Gendered Justice: Intimate Partner Violence and the Criminal Justice System. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Goldenberg, T., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., & Harper, G. W. (2018). Intimate Partner Violence Among Transgender Youth: Associations with Intrapersonal and Structural Factors. Violence and Gender 5(1), 19-25.
Goodmark, L. (2020). Legal System Reform. In A. E. Messinger and X. L. Guadalupe-Diaz (Eds.), Transgender Intimate Partner Violence: A Comprehensive Introduction (pp. 258-277). New York: New York University Press.
Guadalupe-Diaz, X. L. & Jasinski, J. (2017). “I Wasn’t a Priority, I Wasn’t a Victim”: Challenges in Help Seeking for Transgender Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. Violence Against Women, 23(6), 772-792.
Koontz, A. (2020). Undermining Transgender Survivors. In A. E. Messinger and X. L. Guadalupe-Diaz (Eds.), Transgender Intimate Partner Violence: A Comprehensive Introduction (pp. 62-87). New York: New York University Press.
Leslie, A., Rea, M., Belawski, S. E., & Sojka, C. J, (2022). Intimate Relationships. In L. Erickson-Schroth (Ed.), Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource By and For Transgender Communities, 2nd edition (pp. 413-437). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Messinger, A. M. (2020). Theorizing on the Roots of T-IPV. In A. E. Messinger and X. L. Guadalupe-Diaz (Eds.), Transgender Intimate Partner Violence: A Comprehensive Introduction (pp. 110-132). New York: New York University Press.
National Center for Transgender Equality. (2017). 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey: Missouri State Report. (2017). Retrieved from https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTSMOStateReport(1017).pdf.
Shipherd, J. C., Maguen, S. Skidmore, W. C., & Abramovitz, S. M. (2011). Potentially traumatic events in a transgender sample: frequency and associated symptoms. Traumatology 17(2), 56-67.
Smith, S. G., Zhang, X., Merrick, M. T., Wang, J., Kresnow, M., & Chen, J. (2018). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2015 Data Brief–Updated Release. Atlanta: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Stahly-Butts, M. & Akbar, A. A. (2022). Reform for Radicals? An Abolitionist Framework. UCLA Law Review, 68, 1546-1583.
Turell, S. C. (2000). A descriptive analysis of same-sex relationship violence for a diverse sample. Journal of Family Violence, 15(3), 281-293.
Washington State Institute for Public Policy. (2022). Mandatory Arrest for Domestic Violence: A Systematic Review. Retrieved from https://www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/1747/Wsipp_Mandatory-Arrest-for-Domestic-Violence-A-Systematic-Review_Report.pdf.
Woulfe, J. M. & Goodman, L. A. (2018). Identity Abuse as a Tactic of Violence in LGBTQ Communities: Initial Validation of the Identity Abuse Measure. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(5-6), 2656-2676.
© Copyright 2023 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
<a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1">[1]</a> Tracey Thurman was attacked multiple times over the course of eight months by her husband, Charles, but her reports to the police were consistently ignored. Charles approached Tracey’s house on June 10, 1983, and she called the police. Charles then stabbed Tracey repeatedly. When the police arrived, Charles kicked Tracey in the head, threatened her, and dropped her son on her. Only after Tracey was loaded onto a stretcher was Charles arrested. Tracey sued the City of Torrington and the Torrington police department for violation of civil rights by “not performing and poorly performing their duty” (Garcia & McManimon, 2011, p. 89). The courts found that the city of Torrington had a policy of “noninterference” in domestic violence situations, which was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
<a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2">[2]</a> However, some U.S. states do not currently have a mandatory arrest policy. When the police are called for a domestic dispute in Missouri, for example, they do not have to make an arrest. If a police officer chooses to not make an arrest, they must make a detailed report explaining why no arrest was made. If an officer responds to the residence for a second time in a twelve-hour period, the primary aggressor must be identified, and an arrest must be made.
<a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3">[3]</a> Although a program such as this has not been tested regarding intimate partner violence, there have been similar successful programs that address gun violence in U.S. communities. Saint Louis, Missouri, has utilized a Cure Violence program in the neighborhoods of Wells Goodfellow, Hamilton Heights, Dutchtown, and Walnut Park. In March 2023, 25 conflicts (involving 163 individuals in total) were mediated, resulting in 44% being resolved, 44% being conditionally resolved, and 12% remaining unresolved (City of Saint Louis, n.d.).
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/confronting-transgender-intimate-partner-violence-t-ipv/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Recidivism Among Drug Offenders: The Impacts of Drug Courts and Prop 36</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/recidivism-among-drug-offenders-the-impacts-of-drug-courts-and-prop-36/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/recidivism-among-drug-offenders-the-impacts-of-drug-courts-and-prop-36/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Dec 2023 21:59:21 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIII, Issue 2]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1411</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Alex DeBourge, Webster University – Saint Louis Recidivism Among Drug Offenders: The Impacts of Drug Courts and Prop 36 [Download PDF] The United States’ criminal justice system is marked by a damaging cycle of drug offender recidivism where people are reconvicted but not treated for their addiction and substance use disorders. The effects of approaches […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Alex DeBourge, Webster University – Saint Louis

Recidivism Among Drug Offenders: The Impacts of Drug Courts and Prop 36
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/DeBourge_Recidivism-Among-Drug-Offenders.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/DeBourge_Recidivism-Among-Drug-Offenders.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
The United States’ criminal justice system is marked by a damaging cycle of drug offender recidivism where people are reconvicted but not treated for their addiction and substance use disorders. The effects of approaches such as the U.S. “War on Drugs” are still experienced today as drug offenders have limited opportunities to receive treatment and experience racial disparities and negative environments that promote their drug use. Labeling theory and social control theory assist in explaining the existence and persistence of drug offender recidivism and guide policy demands that attempt to resolve it. Drug courts and policy modifications like Proposition 36 to the Three Strikes Law are policy implications that make a difference for drug offenders, but they still present certain challenges.
The problem of drug abuse in the United States has been addressed by the U.S. government in various ways over the last several decades, yet the issue remains a prevalent concern for many people. The opioid epidemic alone has caused around 50,000 deaths and led to millions of citizens having opioid use disorders (Zhang et al., 2022). There is also controversy over how people who use drugs are treated in the U.S. criminal justice system. Drug users have been found to come into greater contact with the system than most groups (Jamin et al., 2021). When they leave the system, usually after finishing a period of incarceration,<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1">[1]</a> they have not been rehabilitated for their drug use and have not received help from the medical system. As a result, drug offenders’ mortality rates from overdoses and other drug-related deaths are high (Jamin et al., 2021). Drug offenders in prison may become more addicted; research shows that drugs frequently move in and out of prisons, exposing inmates to limited options of hard drugs (Watson, 2016). Sharing needles becomes a common activity with such limited access, while increased securitized search procedures often lead to a decline in visitors and negative consequences for prisoners’ social well-being. Imprisonment can also lead to repeat offenses and incarceration for drug offenders (Mitchell et al., 2017).
Increases in the U.S. prison population are partly caused by the influx of drug offenders entering the criminal justice system, with Black men being the most disproportionately targeted (Rowell, 2012). A catalyst of this problem has been the “War on Drugs,” which put Black people in prison at higher rates than white people despite similar rates of drug use (Nicosia et al., 2017). Under this initiative, drug penalties included harsh and often mandatory sentences. Numerous factors contribute to racial disparities related to drug prosecution, including one’s criminal history, increased policing, and lower access to wealth, employment, housing, and education – which all leads to reduced life chances and access to quality legal representation (Nicosia et al., 2017). There are many factors that explain why racial disparities exist in drug offending, but a lack of resources for addressing drug use is partly what causes recidivism to be experienced across racial and ethnic demographics.
This paper focuses on the issue of drug offender recidivism – the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend. The U.S. criminal justice system perpetuates a damaging cycle of drug offender recidivism that is marked by racial inequities and centers on punishment rather than treating people for addiction and health disorders. The effects of initiatives such as the “War on Drugs” continue to be felt by drug offenders who face limited opportunities to access treatment, experience racial disparities, and are challenged to survive in negative environments that promote their continued drug use. Theories such as “labeling theory” and “social control theory” help explain the existence and persistence of drug offender recidivism, while initiatives such as the use of drug courts and California’s Proposition 36 offer lessons for enacting change.
Race and Drug Offender Recidivism in the United States
Research highlights racial disparities related to U.S. drug offenses. For instance, researchers collected quantitative data on Black and white males’ criminal records from 1995 to 2005 from California’s Automated Criminal History System – that is, right before harsher penalties were imposed as part of California’s controversial “Three Strikes Law” (Nicosia et al., 2017). They investigated the drug offenders’ outcome (prison, drug treatment, etc.), case characteristics, criminal history, demographics, and time and location. They found that while both Black and white men had declined rates of prison sentences, Black men were 17% more likely to be sentenced to prison compared to similarly situated white men. It is important to note that the reduced racial disparities between Black and white men from 2010 to 2013 may be due to the nationwide effort to reduce prison overcrowding (Nicosia et al., 2017). Black men were also 43% less likely to be sentenced to drug treatment, despite new state laws improving overall access to it (Nicosia et al., 2017). The severity of the crime and the criminal record had an influence on the length of prison sentence, but research shows that there are other variables that create the sentencing differences between Black and white people (Nicosia et al., 2017).
Another study surveyed and interviewed 134 Black males from a maximum-security correctional facility about their socio-demographics, probation and parole status, drug history, and drug use in prison (Rowell et al., 2012). Researchers found drug use still occurs in prison (25% of participants claimed to use drugs during incarceration). If they had a history of extensive drug use before entering prison, or if their prison sentence was lengthy, the more likely it became that they used drugs in prison (Rowell et al., 2012). If the participant was actively on parole or probation at the time of the arrest, they were less likely to use drugs while in prison (Rowell et al., 2012). Based on prior evidence, drug treatment programs within prisons would have the positive effects of reducing drug use, offender misconduct, and involvement in illegal activities upon release (Rowell et al., 2012).
Theoretical Approaches
Labeling theory and social control theory help explain the existence and persistence of drug offender recidivism.“Labeling theory” predicts that once a person is labelled for their deviant behaviors, they embody the label because that is how society views them. Drug users, for example, may cycle through criminal activity because that is what is expected of them. Drugs are highly stigmatized from U.S. initiatives like the War on Drugs – an ongoing government initiative that began in the 1970s and aims to stop illegal drug use and distribution by dramatically increasing prison sentences for both drug dealers and users (History, 2019) – creating moral panic for citizens (Nicosia et al., 2017). Labeling theory notes that inequality in society takes small deviances and amplifies them into criminal attributes. It acknowledges the historical context of drug use and considers how policies and institutions are built around the labels that permeate U.S. society. Once these labels are institutionalized, they are difficult to reverse; for instance, prisons and courts deal with drug users as criminals rather than people facing addiction and illness. These people do not receive the treatment they need to get better because their futures are intertwined with stereotypes about drug users and “criminals” in general.
According to labeling theory, racial disparities persist when moral entrepreneurs create a perceived threat of race-based crime and direct social control toward specific racial communities. An example of this is imposing severe criminal penalties for crack use and sale compared to cocaine; cocaine has been traditionally used more by white Americans and crack by Black Americans, but they are essentially the same drug (Mitchell, 2009). By placing heavier penalties on crack, the U.S. criminal justice system labeled crack (and Black users) as more destructive and threatening than cocaine (and white users). Labeling theory is also apparent in the evolving criminalization of marijuana being used to control minority groups and disrupt their communities, which has perpetuated stigmas for decades (TruTV, 2016). The labeling of racial groups as threatening enables law enforcement to go after low level drug offenders by focusing on racial differences and stereotypes related to drug usage (Mitchell, 2009).
Another relevant theory is “social control theory,” which predicts that frustration towards one’s own social injustices motivates delinquency and diminishes social bonds, thus further motivating someone to violate group norms (Unlu et al., 2021). Social bonds that can be destroyed are attachment to people, commitment to obligations and goals, involvement in social activities, and common beliefs shared in the community. The abandonment of one’s bonds stems from perceived social injustice that prevents someone from achieving positively valued goals. Policies that disproportionately effect a racial group, like the War on Drugs, limit a person’s ability to thrive in the same way as others (Nicosia et al., 2017). From the social control perspective, convicted drug offenders are taken away from positively valued goals (such as supporting their family through work) and are worse-off in society after they are released from prison. This all may lead to greater frustration and drug dependency in response to such social strains, especially if they react negatively to pressures to correct their lifestyles and align with group values.
Responding to Recidivism
Two existing responses to recidivism offer possibilities for future progress and policy change: Drug courts and California’s Proposition 36. First, Drug courts have been used to combat drug offender recidivism since 1989. Originating in Miami, Florida, they have spread throughout the country and now number a few thousand across the United States (Gallagher et al., 2020). This bipartisan approach is unique because it satisfies the needs of offenders, the courts, and the community. They are frequently viewed as a cost-efficient way to engage community leaders, rehabilitate drug offenders, and avoid future overdoses and incarceration. Looking at drug courts from the perspective of labeling theory, the goal is to change the self- and social labels of participants. Second, The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000, more commonly referred to as California Proposition 36 (or Prop 36), was passed by California voters in 2000. It mandates drug treatment sentences rather than jail time for certain qualifying offenses and defendants (Eisner Gorin LLP, n.d.). Research suggests that Prop 36 reduces drug offenses and recidivism while saving the state money. As other U.S. states implement or consider similar programs, this policy is worth exploring with an eye toward national implementation.
Drug Courts
Drug courts focus on people charged with drug offenses who have substance use disorders or are determined by the justice system to have a higher likelihood of reoffending and aim to keep offenders clean from drug use once they are released. Drug courts have short, medium, and long-term goals centered on keeping offenders invested in the treatment process. These courts strive to give people a more positive experience of the criminal justice system by connecting them to supportive outside organizations, utilizing frequent drug testing, providing incentives, and increasing communication between participants and judges (Gallagher et al., 2020). Judges and attorneys play central roles in creating drug court opportunities, and drug court teams (which consist of community organization leaders such as medical and mental health professionals) report progress directly to the judge (Gallagher et al., 2020). Police officers routinely check up on participants at their homes, while employers and/or educators help ensure participation (Gallagher et al., 2020).
Drug courts are made available to qualifying participants after they have made a plea agreement and been sentenced, offering an alternative to their original prison sentence. If the participant agrees to the comprehensive and tough program, they will receive a lower or more lenient sentence upon completion. If they refuse or fail to complete the program, they are given their original sentence (Rivier, 2021). Initially, participants sign the drug court contract and then share stories with the judge about their addiction identities (Rivier et al., 2021). The program consists of required phases that include stabilization, intensive treatment, and transition. Participants meet regularly with the judge to share their progress in the program through essay writing, treatment evaluation, community service, self-help groups, celebrating accomplishments in employment and education, and other milestones (Rivier et al., 2021). Noncompliance leads to penalties that require extra commitment to the program, with excessive negative behavior leading to expulsion. Drug court programs take around one to two years to complete (Rivier et al., 2021).
Individuals who pass the program have been shown to reoffend at a lower rate than individuals who underwent probation or failed drug court. Factors that increase success include educational and occupation opportunities, medical care, and mental health treatment (Gallagher et al., 2020). Although many potential participants do not complete the drug court program, those who are enrolled for at least 15 months are 63% more likely to complete the program and five times more likely to be reunited with their children in family drug courts (Logsdon et al., 2021). While the cost of the program is approximately $187,000, it saves at least $168,000 overall for the state (Logsdon et al., 2021). Notably, however, data shows that juvenile drug courts do not have similar impacts on lowering recidivism (Sullivan et al., 2016). Other demographic variables change the program’s effectiveness, too; lower recidivism was more prominent among women, older individuals, minorities, and those with serious criminal records (Brown, 2011).
Research from across the United States illustrates the potential positive impacts of drug courts. Participants of a drug court in Dane County, Wisconsin, were less likely to commit a new crime than those who did not go through the program (Brown, 2011). Even those in the program who did repeat an offense (on average of 614 days after end of program) experienced a lower sentence than the other group (on average of 463 days after end of sentence). A qualitative study from a drug court in central Florida found that one-fifth of participants stopped using drugs and a majority decreased their substance use (Francis & Abel, 2014). Additional evidence reveals that these participants received other benefits, like learning about their addictions and becoming motivated to continue school or get a job. Notably, one big issue for non-completers was the financial cost of drug treatment, such as having to come in multiple times a week to get a drug test (Francis & Abel, 2014).
However, drug courts come with limitations involving racial disparity and inattention to mental health challenges. Research highlights that white offenders are more likely to receive drug treatment, for instance. Drug courts are more effective for individuals with criminal histories and higher risks of reoffending, yet white offenders with no criminal history are accepted into court programs at much higher rates than nonwhites (Gallagher et al., 2020). (Researchers attribute this to the fact that criminal histories that include a prior felony conviction might disqualify participants from drug court. This is problematic because those with a high risk of re-offending would likely benefit more from program participation; Gallagher et al., 2020.) Another limitation includes the accuracy with which the program treats individuals for their needs. Some participants noted that their mental illness was not appropriately treated, which led to their failure in the program (Gallagher et al., 2018).
California’s Proposition 36
Another approach to resolving the issue of drug offender recidivism is modifying mandatory sentencing laws to incorporate possibilities for drug treatment and rehabilitation. This policy was implemented in 2001 in California with the goal of diminishing racial disparities in drug offender sentencing. It focused on nonviolent drug offenders, thereby leveraging incarceration against violent offenders, reducing drug-related crimes to keep the public safe, and improving public health (Nicosia et al., 2017). Since then, some states have adopted similarly intentioned policies. Under California’s Proposition 36, any adult on their first- or second-time drug offense receives drug treatment along with probation instead of incarceration or probation alone. This intervention can reduce the recidivism rate because it tackles the root causes of criminality and prevents further offenses. Instead of the severe punishments that the mandatory sentencing embodies, this approach aims to rehabilitate offenders. Drug treatment emphasizes the power of labels and works with patients to articulate new labels for themselves. It also leads to positive social and behavioral changes that are deemed acceptable in the community and diminishes the odds of reoffending, whereas incarceration would reinforce negative labels once outside of prison.
Research shows that this policy has been effective in increasing the use of drug treatment for those involved in the criminal justice system. Proposition 36 created a 19% increase in odds for diversion for Black people compared to white people, but Black offenders still had a lower chance of receiving drug treatment or completing drug treatment programs overall. Therefore, racial disparity still exists despite positive policy changes (Nicosia et al., 2017). Still, Proposition 36 significantly decreased the likelihood of prison and jail sentences for all drug offenders (Nicosia et al., 2017). Of 50,000 Prop 36 participants in California drug treatment programs, 32-41% completed drug treatment with a lowered rate of re-arrest within a one-year span upon completion (Urada et al., 2011). Notably, this policy is also financially beneficial because although it costs $120 million annually, it saves $2.50 for every dollar spent on the program and saves $4 for every dollar spent on those who complete the program (Nicosia et al., 2017; Urada et al., 2011). This is intended to save taxpayers $1.5 billion over a five-year span (Auerhahn, 2004).
Despite these positive points, Proposition 36’s success has been limited in a few ways. As noted, there is still a racial disparity for drug offenders that needs to be addressed, and it only somewhat limits the growth of the drug offender population (Auerhahn, 2004). It is also worth noting that that drug courts were previously implemented in California and led to a decline of drug offenders in prison, so it is difficult to measure what impacts stem from Prop 36 and which can be attributed to the courts (Gallagher et al., 2020).
Conclusions
Approaches such as drug courts and California’s Proposition 36 move the criminal justice system in the right direction toward reducing drug offender recidivism. Both options offer an alternative to incarceration, and they have produced positive results for lowered recidivism rates among drug offenders. Indeed, we know that drug offenders in prison are likely to be reconvicted unless drug treatment accompanies their sentence (Mitchell et al., 2017). Based on my research, I favor drug courts because they help limit the prison population growth by placing people into treatment programs rather than prison cells and promote collective efficacy by incorporating community institutions to assist the criminal justice system. They also place drug offenders in an environment where they are surrounded by opportunity rather than being in prison, where they are separated from their family and communities and are at higher risk for drug use and overdose (Mitchell et al., 2017). Yet both approaches are valuable because they utilize drug treatment and address root causes of crime and incarceration.
While drug courts and Prop 36 are useful, there is room for improvement. Stakeholders should consistently reevaluate these policies to ensure that everyone has access to the help they need, and these actions must be collaborative and transparent. Current problems, such as racial disparities that persist in accessing treatment, must be addressed. These approaches should also be combined with other practices, such as addressing security gaps in prisons that allow drugs and needles to be smuggled in. Since many people overdose after being released from prison, it is also important that support systems are in place for the first few months after re-entering society; there should not be a gap in access to resources and social connections after incarceration ends.
The problem of drug offender recidivism needs our utmost attention because it is damaging our communities in significant and complex ways. It is not an easy fix and will take time and a collective effort to resolve this issue. The movement to rehabilitate drug offenders goes beyond the criminal justice system and it represents a shifting belief in society where we address the root causes of our social problems.
References
Auerhahn, K. (2004). California’s Incarcerated Drug Offender Population, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Evaluating the War on Drugs and Proposition 36. Journal of Drug Issues, 34(1), 95-120.                                                                                                                                       <a href="https://doi-org.library3.webster.edu/10.1177/002204260403400105"></a>
Brown, R. (2011). Drug Court Effectiveness: A Matched Cohort Study in the Dane County Drug Treatment Court. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 50(4), 191-201.
Eisner Gorin LLP. (n.d.). California Proposition 36 – Drug Treatment Program Rather Than Jail Time. Retrieved from https://www.egattorneys.com/drug-crimes/proposition-36.
Francis, T. R., & Abel, E. M. (2014). Redefining Success: A Qualitative Investigation of Therapeutic Outcomes for Noncompleting Drug Court Clients. Journal of Social Service Research, 40(3), 325–338.
Gallagher, J. R., Nordberg, A., & Gallagher, J. M. (2018). Participants’ views on the strengths and limitations of drug court: Recommendations to enhance assessment and treatment of mental illnesses. Social Work in Mental Health, 16(4), 436-450.
Gallagher, J. R., Wahler, E. A., & Lefebvre, E. (2020). Further Evidence of Racial Disparities in Drug Court Outcomes: Enhancing Service-Delivery to Reduce Criminal Recidivism Rates for Non-White Participants. Journal of Social Service Research, 46(3), 406-415.
History. (2019, December 17). The War on Drugs. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/crime/the-war-on-drugs.
Jamin, D., Vanderplasschen, W., Sys, O., Jauffret-Roustide, M., Michel, L., Trouiller, P., Neisa, A., Homen, M., Mendes, V., & Stöver, H. (2021). “My first 48 hours out”: Drug users’ perspectives on challenges and strategies upon release from prison. Harm Reduction Journal, 18. <a href="https://doi-org.library3.webster.edu/10.1186/s12954-021-00480-w"></a>
Logsdon, A. R., Antle, B. F., & Kamer, C. (2021). Family Treatment Drug Court Cost Analysis: An In-depth Look at the Cost and Savings of a Southeastern Family Treatment Drug Court. Child Welfare, 99(5), 51-74.
Mitchell, O. (2009). Is the War on Drugs Racially Biased? Journal of Crime & Justice, 32(2), 49-75. <a href="https://doi-org.library3.webster.edu/10.1080/0735648X.2009.9721270"></a>
Mitchell, O., Cochran, J., Mears, D., & Bales, W. (2017). The effectiveness of prison for reducing drug offender recidivism: a regression discontinuity analysis. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 13(1), 1-27.
Nicosia, N., MacDonald, J., & Pacula, R. (2017). Does Mandatory Diversion to Drug Treatment Eliminate Racial Disparities in the Incarceration of Drug Offenders? An Examination of California’s Proposition 36. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 33(1), 179-205.
Revier, K. (2021). “Without Drug Court, You’ll End Up in Prison or Dead”: Therapeutic Surveillance and Addiction Narratives in Treatment Court. Critical Criminology, 29(4), 915-930. <a href="https://doi-org.library3.webster.edu/10.1007/s10612-021-09592-y"></a>
Rowell, T. L., Wu, E., Hart, C. L., Haile, R., & El-Bassel, N. (2012). Predictors of Drug Use in Prison among Incarcerated Black Men. American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 38(6), 593-597.
Sullivan, C. J., Blair, L., Latessa, E., & Sullivan, C. C. (2016). “Juvenile Drug Courts and Recidivism: Results from a Multisite Outcome Study.” JQ: Justice Quarterly, 33(2), 291-318. <a href="https://doi-org.library3.webster.edu/10.1080/07418825.2014.908937"></a>
TruTV. (2016). Adam Ruins Everything – The Sinister Reason Weed is Illegal. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPOw2unxy0.
Unlu, A., Ekici, N., Taskgin, S., & Entzminger, P. (2021). An empirical test of age-graded informal social control theory: New correlates of youth deviance. Crime & Delinquency, 67(2), 179-211.
Urada, D., Gardener, C., & Anglin, M. D. (2011). Stakeholder Consensus and Circumvention in Drug Diversion Programs: Findings from California’s Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (Proposition 36). Journal of Drug Issues, 41(1), 45-67.
Watson, T. M. (2016). The Elusive Goal of Drug-Free Prisons. Substance Use & Misuse, 51(1), 91-103. <a href="https://doi-org.library3.webster.edu/10.3109/10826084.2015.1089907"></a>
Zhang, A., Balles, J. A., Nyland, J. E., Nguyen, T. H., White, V. M., & Zgierska, A. E. (2022). The relationship between police contacts for drug use-related crime and future arrests, incarceration, and overdoses: a retrospective observational study highlighting the need to break the vicious cycle. Harm Reduction Journal, 19(1), 1-10.
© Copyright 2023 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
<a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1">[1]</a> Incarceration, also termed incapacitation, is the imprisonment of criminals to prevent them from committing more crimes and harming the community. This form of punishment is the main outcome for U.S. drug offenders through the government’s “tough on crime” perspective. The focus on incarceration often means that drug users are abandoned by the system and institutions, their addictions are left untreated, and they are unprepared to re-enter society.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/recidivism-among-drug-offenders-the-impacts-of-drug-courts-and-prop-36/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Healthcare Liberation for Fat, Black, Disabled Women</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/healthcare-liberation-for-fat-black-disabled-women-white-supremacy-in-the-american-medical-system/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/healthcare-liberation-for-fat-black-disabled-women-white-supremacy-in-the-american-medical-system/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Dec 2023 21:56:02 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIII, Issue 2]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1409</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Megan E. Fritz, Keene State College Healthcare Liberation for Fat, Black, Disabled Women: White Supremacy in the American Medical System [Download PDF] Systemic racism, sexism, disability discrimination, and weight bias impact Black women’s health. Living under structures of white supremacy is directly correlated with long-term health disparities. Layers of stress associated with living in an […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Megan E. Fritz, Keene State College

Healthcare Liberation for Fat, Black, Disabled Women: White Supremacy in the American Medical System
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Fritz_Healthcare-Liberation.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Fritz_Healthcare-Liberation.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
Systemic racism, sexism, disability discrimination, and weight bias impact Black women’s health. Living under structures of white supremacy is directly correlated with long-term health disparities. Layers of stress associated with living in an ableist and fatphobic society increase negative health outcomes. This article shows how the intersection of race, gender, disability, and body weight deserves further interdisciplinary scholarship. Parallel discourses have emerged over the last few decades and lay a foundation for understanding the stress and trauma impacting healthcare delivery for women with intersecting identities and vulnerabilities.
The healthcare avoidance (and therefore the negative health outcomes) of fat, Black, and disabled women directly connect to white supremacy. While weight stigma, racism, ableism, and sexism have been researched, the medical community has ignored how these intersectional layers of oppression interact. Further research on how these interactions impact healthcare is crucial for improving standards of care. Black people and fat women, for instance, have high rates of healthcare avoidance and lack of trust in doctors, due in part to historical medical exploitation.
I argue that we need an intersectional understanding of various issues and identities to improve health care for Black women in the United States. First, I discuss the United States’ history of medical experimentation and health exploitation of Black people. This includes recognition of how the U.S. disability rights movement was largely led by white men and upheld pillars of white supremacy, which ensured the continuation of unique health inequities facing Black Americans. Second, I explore recent research centering on Cheryl Woods-Giscombe’s (2018) “Superwoman Schema” (SWS) to show how Black women’s daily stress affects their health. I also examine a “Fat Feminist Disability Framework”and discuss the importance of adding lenses of weight stigma and disability to form a more complete picture of American health care. Third, I analyze health care avoidance and how the knowledge of this phenomenon can lead to a reconceptualization of the American medical paradigm. Ultimately, this article shows the need to examine white supremacy in the U.S. medical system and how various forms of discrimination impact the health outcomes of fat, Black, disabled women.
Historical Context
Harriet Washington’s (2006) coining of the term “black iatrophobia” to describe the unique fear and avoidance of medical care by the Black community has been under-utilized despite its value to medical scholarship. When searching “iatrophobia” in WorldCat, EBSCO, and other scholarly databases, the limited results do not include any articles that focused on Black health care avoidance; the search term “black iatrophobia” netted zero results. Indeed, research using the keyword “iatrophobia” prior to the publication of Washington’s (2006) book Medical Apartheid was nonexistent. For example, some scholars use the term to discuss “white coat syndrome” and fear of needles regardless of race (see Stenehjem & Os, 2004; Murata et al., 2006; Martin & McGrath, 2014). Recently, Mara Hollander and Michele Greene (2019) called for further scholarship related to this term and an investigation of how fear of doctors and the health care system is affected by various identities. Importantly, iatrophobia is not irrational (as the original definition states), but is usually the result of trauma and negative past experiences with the medical community. However, Hollander and Greene (2019) neglect to even mention “black iatrophobia” or Washington’s (2006) argument that contemporary Black fear and avoidance of health care stems from historical medical abuse in the African American strata. Regardless of intent, the redefining of iatrophobia is one example of how white supremacy is perpetuated in contemporary medical science; Black women scholars such as Washington (2006) have constructed necessary knowledge, but white scholars and practitioners must use this knowledge to untangle white supremacy from medical institutions.
Popular understandings of how the health care industry has navigated race in the U.S. encourage black iatrophobia. The notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study,<a id="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> for instance, has been widely discussed in popular culture through movies such as Miss Evers’ Boys and numerous podcasts (such as American Scandal and You’re Wrong About). The topic of medical exploitation of Black Americans often centers on Tuskegee and plays an oversized role in the American public imagination. (Once word got out about this study, the U.S. government halted the research and attempted to repair the damage by paying monetary damages and eventually offering a formal presidential apology in 1997. For some white Americans, Tuskegee is a distant memory that has been settled (Washington, 2006). The study was a blatantly racist and a eugenic abuse of power, yet Washington (2006) asserts that Tuskegee is only one of a “pattern of experimental abuse.” Further, “many African Americans understand it as such, because a rich oral tradition has sustained remembrances of pain, abuse, and humiliation at the hands of physicians” (Washington, 2006, p. 179).
Washington’s (2006) Medical Apartheid can be seen as a catalog of this pattern over the past 400 years, and it details the ways white people have tortured the Black body. Stolen Africans quickly learned they no longer had any autonomy as they were chained, starved, thrown overboard, and sold to the highest bidder. They had no right to care for themselves, to protect and care for their children, to adequate food and shelter, and no right to be treated as humans because they were not seen as human. Sick and elderly enslaved people were given, rented, sold, and traded to doctors who would administer experimental treatments prior to dispensing then-tested treatments to white people (Washington, 2006). Ironically, during a time when scientific racism was in full swing and white researchers believed that Black people were naturally inferior, physicians insisted on using their bodies to learn about white anatomy. The knowledge and trauma of these truths have been passed down generations through oral histories and in the DNA of descendants. Meanwhile, the experimentation and exploitation did not stop. For example: Consider Operation Sunshine and other radiation experiments that exploited poor, Black Americans, research on Black prisoners, XYY studies on young Black boys without their parents’ knowledge, the theft of Henrietta Lacks’ cells (which changed medical research forever), and the use of unconscious emergency room patients as experimental subjects without consent (see Washington, 2006). Government admission of racially based medical exploitation has been lackluster at best, occurring very rarely. Although these situations are much rarer in the United States than they used to be, Black people continue to be understandably wary of providers who may appear trustworthy at first glance (Washington, 2006). Almost two decades after the publishing of Washington’s (2006) Medical Apartheid, the U.S. government still has not confessed to various medical studies carried out with state funding.
It is frustrating that the social movement that could recognize and accommodate health concerns in relation to Blackness, the U.S. disability rights movement, has on the whole ignored issues of race. In response, I call for a critical reading of the disability rights movement in relation to the pillars of white supremacy. This is not to say that we need to disregard the good that has come from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ACT) and other related policies. Rather, I argue that we must recognize that white supremacy was intentional in the building of the United States and has influenced all of our institutions – and it will take just as much, if not more, intentionality to dismantle them. This includes, most certainly, U.S. medical institutions. While parts of the disability rights crusade were fashioned after civil rights actions (such as sit-ins) and certain actions were supported by the Black Panther Party and disabled Black people, we must consider how supremacy and white feminism impacted U.S. society’s understanding of disability and the laws that were created as a result. Tema Okun (2021) offers guidance by outlining several characteristics of white supremacy and how it can be seen in our behaviors and social structures: Perfectionism (believing we need to be perfect and others have to meet those standards of perfections, combined with being overly critical and unable to listen to different perspectives), paternalism (power holders assuming they are qualified to make decisions for others), either/or (presenting binary options such as right/wrong or with us/against us), progress is bigger/more (measuring progress with wealth and power), urgency (a sense of emergency facilitates the abuse of power), and individualism characteristics (the assumption that people should be able to do everything for themselves without assistance or accommodations). Exploring the connections between the disability rights movement and white supremacy will help us understand how society ignores fat, Black, disabled women’s experiences.
Recent Research: Linking the Superwoman Schema to Healthcare Avoidance
While the U.S. history of medical exploitation and the disability rights movement is important to this discussion, recent research contributions regarding Black women’s health outcomes help us connect the past to the present-day. Woods-Giscombe (2018) generated the “Superwoman Schema” (SWS) to understand how the daily stress of microaggressions and overt racism interacts with Black culture and creates health disparities such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. In the American culture of racism, the expectations placed on Black women create a feedback loop in which the stress they embody increases the health conditions they experience, in turn causing more stress. The SWS describes a mental model of how Black women show up for everyone in their communities except themselves (Woods-Giscombe, 2018). The framework consists of five major features that describe Black women’s perceived obligations: “to present an image of strength, suppress emotions, resist dependence on others, succeed despite limited resources, and prioritize caregiving over self-care” (Woods-Giscombe, 2018, p. 338). Woods-Giscombe (2018) uses her schema at the University of North Carolina for her ongoing research on mindfulness meditation to educate Black women about self-care and to lower negative outcomes. Research into the connections between the SWS and emotional eating, inactivity, sleep issues, mental health, and other concerns for Black women is ongoing and advances the understanding of cultural paradigms and their effects on health disparities.
However, all of this knowledge does nothing if the patient continues to avoid visiting the doctor; the perception that doctors and hospitals are places where Black women will encounter oppression due to weight status, race, ability level, and gender should be taken seriously. Therefore, it is necessary to devise strategies to encourage women to enter the doctor’s office to begin with. Research reinforces the belief that American medical institutions need to educate providers in cultural competence so that delivery models become more productive. For instance, a study by Seanna Leath et al. (2021) made connections between adverse childhood events (ACES) and negative long-term health outcomes, the SWS, and psychological afflictions. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 2021 that 16% of the general population reported a score of 4 or higher on the ACES screener – a measure of childhood abuse and household dysfunction that connects to leading causes of death in adults – while 34% of the sample of Black women in Leath et al.’s (2021) study had the same score. Leath et al. (2021) explain that SWS is a “double-edged sword” which acts as both “an asset and a vulnerability” in that it allows Black women to cope with chronic stress but also serves to mask long-term depression and anxiety because of the internal and outsider perception of Black women being strong (p. 318). The masking of mental health struggles, along with lack of help from outside their immediate community, can make it difficult for Black women to medically address their emotional well-being. Lack of treatment for the chronic stress that Black American women experience creates further stress and long-term health issues (Leath et al., 2021). These findings emphasize the importance of bringing a balanced and nuanced approach to studying health care in the United States that considers the whole person – including their traumas and lived experiences.
Though there have been advances in studying Black women’s health, research is still prone to weight stigma and posits fatness as problematic. Concepts of the ideal female body began with European colonizers projecting expectations of thinness onto African women, such as in the case of Saartjie Baartman<a id="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a>. Research connects the SWS and Black women’s perceptions of barriers to weight management, for instance (Harris et al., 2022). These barriers are divided into categories of biological (genetics, lack of energy, medical conditions), psychological (lack of self-discipline, lack of motivation, self-conscious), and sociological (lack of access to a gym, financial issues, cultural food beliefs) reasoning for not being able to maintain a BMI of 25 or less. Charlie L. Harris et al. (2022) use weight management as an example of the self-care that is sometimes de-prioritized by Black women who feel pressure to exhibit strength and self-sacrifice for their families and communities. While this study does offer a lot of salient data, it is also an example of the overwhelming bias against larger bodies and the assumption that “obesity” is unhealthy. Rather than seeing weight as either a symptom of preexisting issues or an example of human variation, healthcare providers tend to see fatness as not only the cause of disease and illness, but as a disease unto itself. Harris et al. (2022) assume that women’s perceptions of “barriers to weight management” are factual rather than the result of internalized fatphobia. Fat women are used to having their pain and health concerns brushed aside with comments about how losing weight would alleviate these issues. What is the point of going to the doctor when an individual knows the provider is not going to take their needs seriously? If a health care visit means being humiliated and increased anxiety, it sometimes makes more sense to just stay home.
Research on binge eating and other eating disorders illustrate a need for cross-cultural understanding. Rachel W. Goode et al. (2020) did a systematic review of the literature related to binge eating among Black women. The authors state that Black women have similar or higher rates of binge eating than white women and that this behavior coincides with obesity at an even higher rate. Their research points out limitations in current eating disorders research, including how assessment tools may not be adequate in measuring eating disorder behaviors in Black women. For example, Goode et al. (2020) contend that cultural expectations surrounding the use of food for emotional support and eating larger portions of food may be related to lessened feelings of shame. (Research into Black women’s experiences with eating issues is lacking, but what research we do have suggests that there is less of a link between food and shame in the Black community. It’s not that Black women do not experience shame at all, but that there is less body shame or shame around using food for comfort than with white women.) However, feelings of shame are a criteria in diagnosing binge eating disorder, so this cultural difference appears to affect diagnostic results. There is also more acceptance of larger body sizes within the U.S. Black community, which could also relate to the lower likelihood of feeling shame. Results of another, broader study of eating disorders show that overall, white women and women of color with eating disorders exhibit similar levels of symptomatology, but when there were differences, it was women of color reporting more severe symptoms (Monterubio et al. 2020). Grace E. Monterubio et al. (2020) argue that more research is need on how eating disorders present in women of color and white women so that culturally competent treatment can be offered.
The medical community also disregards the importance of cultural foodways to whole body wellness. Within the Black American community especially, stereotypes about specific foods and appropriate food quantities can be harmful. Many of these ideas can be traced back to a colonial mentality that views difference as inferior. It is essential that medical schools are proactive about weeding out white supremacist concepts that lead to racial inequity in health services. Recent research highlights not only the need for further eating disorder research centered on Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) women, but specifically on the need to interrogate measures and to examine cultural differences in beliefs around food and eating. Amy H. Egbert et al. (2022) point out that eating disorder researchers have discussed the need to study ethnic and racial differences for three decades and that there is an understanding that disordered eating is not just a white woman problem. Neha J. Goel et al. (2022) state that racial and ethnic minorities have already been shown to be underrepresented in the discipline, and an entire paradigm shift is needed despite some efforts to increase representation.
Recent scholarship provides us with the knowledge to bridge knowledge gaps, including understanding how Black women internalize obligations centered on surviving in white-dominated society and how they can be negatively impacted by stereotypes. The SWS shows that when Black people project an image of strength, it reifies the notion of the strong Black woman who needs no help. Black disabled women need to be able to externalize their valid feelings of anger and suffering, but doing so would put them at further risk of experiencing microaggressions and direct racism. Therefore, the feedback loop prompts Black women to stifle their emotions, leading to continued mental and physical illness.
Conclusions
Examining the oppression of marginalized groups has become a viable and necessary academic endeavor, as indicated by the growth of fields such as women’s studies, fat studies, disability studies, and Black studies. Academia has finally begun to look at disability history and how adding the lens of disability advances our understanding of race and gender (Baynton, 2001). Similarly, fat studies has attempted to humanize large bodied people, extracting the pathology that has been projected onto fatness. While these fields have contributed necessary knowledge, we have yet to fully integrate these findings into a productive plan to offer culturally competent and trauma-informed health care to fat, disabled, Black women. In fact, the white medical complex has largely ignored the related scholarship that Black women have worked hard to produce, such as Washington’s (2006) concept of “black iatrophobia”.
We need to investigate the ways that habits of white supremacy have burrowed into the American health care system. The disability rights movement and our cultural expectations about food and eating are two specific areas that require further study. The ways that Black Americans experience and react to being disabled are different from the experience of disabled white Americans, yet that difference is disregarded, and assumptions are made when accommodations are discussed and planned. Dieticians, nutritionists, and other providers also make harmful assumptions about fat, Black, disabled women’s dietary habits. These assumptions are based on unconscious bias, and unpacking these ideas needs to be prioritized among medical students. Changing the way that we think about topics related to race and health will go a long way to improving health care delivery for fat, Black, disabled women.
More inclusive medical research requires more diversity in researchers, as well as in research respondents. Goode et al. (2020) argue that there have been systemic issues with recruiting, engaging, and retaining Black participants in binge eating studies. Goel et al. (2022) call for accountability in recruiting and retaining scientists in the eating disorder field that belong to marginalized groups, as well as in representation of minorities in research studies. Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the discipline despite limited efforts to increase representation, and a serious shift is needed. Recommendations for facilitating this shift include providing and maintaining “safe, inclusive, and supportive spaces” to preserve long-term careers for marginalized identities in eating disorder research, creating approaches to specifically recruit researchers from diverse racial and ethnic groups, and committing to the collection of comprehensive demographic information from interviewees and respondents (Goel et al., 2022).
The work of Moya Bailey and Izetta Mobley (2019) offer further guidance on how to interrogate the disability rights movement and root out white supremacy in the U.S. medical field. They describe their “Black feminist disability framework” as a structure which “centers race, gender, and disability, challenging these generally siloed theories to work together to better understand the realities for those multiply marginalized within society” (p. 19). Bailey and Mobley (2019) write that the historical and continued physical and mental violence experienced by Black people in the United States are traumatizing, and, furthermore, that trauma is disabling. They look at ways disability studies can incorporate the Black experience and how African American studies can include disability history to provide a more complete understanding of how these realms intersect. Bailey and Mobley (2019) raise valuable questions about white masculinity in the formation of the American understanding of disability, as well. The disability rights movement was spearheaded by white disabled men such as Justin Dart Jr., Ed Roberts, and Fred Fay – men who had no lived experience of how Black people in general, and Black women specifically, have experienced disability.
In his essay “Many Thousands Gone,” James Baldwin (1998) puts himself in the place of white Americans when he writes: “Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his” (p. 20). The simultaneous medicalization and dehumanization of fat, disabled, Black women matters not only because they have value as human beings, but also because all health is bound up with Black women’s health.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3">[3]</a> The weight stigma that I experience as a fat white woman is bound up with the weight stigma that Black women experience. The sexism that I experience is bound up with the sexism that they experience. The ableism that I experience is bound up with the ableism that they experience. My liberation from these things is bound up with the liberation of Black women. We must work together to untangle white supremacy from U.S. medical institutions for all Americans to experience liberation.
References
Bailey, M., & Mobley, I. A. (2019). Work in The Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework. Gender & Society, 33(1), 19–40.
Baldwin, J. (1998). Baldwin: Collected Essays. New York: Library of America.
Baynton, D. C. (2001). Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History. In P. K. Longmore & L. Umansky (Eds.), The New Disability History: American Perspectives (pp. 33-56). New York: New York University Press.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). The USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/index.html.
Egbert, A., Hunt, R. A., Williams, K., Burke, N. L., & Mathis, K. J. (2022). Reporting Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Eating Disorder Research over the Past 20 Years. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 55(1), 455–62.
Goel, N. J., Jennings Mathis, K., Egbert, A. H., Petterway, F., Breithaupt, L., Eddy, K. T., Franko, D. L., & Graham, A. K. (2022). Accountability in Promoting Representation of Historically Marginalized Racial and Ethnic Populations in the Eating Disorders Field: A Call to Action. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 55(4), 463–69.
Goode, R. W., Cowell, M. M., Mazzeo, S. E., Cooper-Lewter, C., Forte, A., Olayia, O., & Bulik, C. M. (2020). Binge Eating and Binge‐Eating Disorder in Black Women: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 53(4), 491–507.
Harris, C. L., Goldman, B. M., Gurkas, P., Butler, C., & Bookman, P. (2022). Superwoman’s Kryptonite: The Superwoman Schema and Perceived Barriers to Weight Management Among U.S. Black Women. Journal of Health Psychology, 27(13), 2887–2897.
Hollander, M. A. G., & Greene, M. G. (2019). A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Iatrophobia. Patient Education and Counseling, 102(11), 2091–2096.
Leath, S., Jones, M. K., & Butler-Barnes, S. (2021). An Examination of Aces, The Internalization of the Superwoman Schema, and Mental Health Outcomes Among Black Adult Women. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 23(3), 307–323.
Martin, C. A., & McGrath, B. P. (2014). White-coat Hypertension. Clinical & Experimental Pharmacology & Physiology, 41(1), 22–29.
Monterubio, G. E., Fitzsimmons-Craft, E. E., Balantekin, K. N., Sadeh-Sharvit, S., Goel, N. J., Laing, O., Firebaugh, M., Flatt, R. E., Cavazos-Rehg, P., Taylor, B., & Wilfley, D. E. (2020). Eating Disorder Symptomatology, Clinical Impairment, and Comorbid Psychopathology in Racially and Ethnically Diverse College Women with Eating Disorders. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 53(11), 1868–74.
Murata, T., Narita, K., Hamada, T., Takahashi, T., Omori, M., Yoshida, H., & Wada, Y. (2006). White Coat Phenomenon, Anxiety and Endothelial Function in Healthy Normotensive Elderly Subjects. Blood Pressure, 15(2), 88–92.
Okun, T. (2021, May). White Supremacy Culture – Still Here. Dismantling Racism. Retrieved from http://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/white_supremacy_culture_-_still_here.pdf.
Parkinson, Justin. (2016). The significance of Sarah Baartman. BBC News Magazine, January 7. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35240987.
Sovereign Union. (n.d.). “Liberation” and “You Are On Aboriginal Land.” Retrieved from http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/liberation-and-you-are-aboriginal-land.
Stenehjem, A.-E., & Os, I. (2004). Reproducibility of Blood Pressure Variability, White-Coat Effect and Dipping Pattern in Untreated, Uncomplicated and Newly Diagnosed Essential Hypertension. Blood Pressure, 13(4), 214–224.
Washington, H. A. (2006). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Albany, NY: Anchor Books.
Woods-Giscombé, C. L. (2018). Reflections on the Development of the Superwoman Schema Conceptual Framework: An Intersectional Approach Guided by African American Womanist Perspectives. Meridians, 16(2), 333–342.
© Copyright 2023 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
<a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1">[1]</a> The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study at Tuskegee was conducted between 1932 and 1972 to research untreated syphilis. Researchers did not collect informed consent from participants and they did not offer treatment, even after it was widely available (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.).
<a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2">[2]</a> Human trafficked to Europe by a British doctor, Baartman was paraded around “freak shows” in London and Paris, with crowds invited to look at her large buttocks. Her case is seen by many as the epitome of colonial exploitation and the racist commodification of Black people (Parkinson, 2016).
<a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3">[3]</a> These thoughts are inspired by the quote often attributed to Lilla Watson: “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Although she said this in a 1985 speech at the United Nations, Watson was uncomfortable with sole attribution as it came about collectively with an Aboriginal activist group (Sovereign Union, n.d.).
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/healthcare-liberation-for-fat-black-disabled-women-white-supremacy-in-the-american-medical-system/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM – You Are Not American</title>
<link>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/book-review-symposium-you-are-not-american-by-amanda-frost/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/book-review-symposium-you-are-not-american-by-amanda-frost/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[lkingston54]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Dec 2023 21:44:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Volume XIII, Issue 2]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/?p=1408</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Jachelle Billingsley and Alexander Magrath, Webster University – Saint Louis BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM – You Are Not American, by Amanda Frost [Download PDF] Editorial note: Undergraduate seniors in Webster University’s Department of History, Politics, and International Relations read Amanda Frost’s (2021) book You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers as […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Jachelle Billingsley and Alexander Magrath, Webster University – Saint Louis

BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM – You Are Not American, by Amanda Frost
[<a href="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Book-review-symposium_BillingsleyMagrath.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="http://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/files/Book-review-symposium_BillingsleyMagrath.pdf">Download PDF</a>]
Editorial note: Undergraduate seniors in Webster University’s Department of History, Politics, and International Relations read Amanda Frost’s (2021) book You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers as part of their Spring 2023 “Senior Overview” shared reading project. In this book review symposium, Jachelle Billingsley and Alexander Magrath share their reflections on You Are Not American following their close reading of the text, course discussions, and oral examinations with faculty. Author Amanda Frost is the John A. Ewald Jr. Research Professor of Law at University of Virgina’s School of Law.
Perspective: Jachelle Billingsley
What does it mean to be an American citizen? How secure are you in your citizenship, and is this a right that can be taken away from you? In Amanda Frost’s (2021) book, You are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers, these questions are brought to life through historical case studies of real people who had their citizenship questioned. Frost (2021) argues that citizenship is an essential right and that the practice of citizenship stripping aims to take away that fundamental protection. She demonstrates how citizenship stripping has been used throughout America’s history to oppress and exclude particular individuals and groups from enjoying the full benefits of their American citizenship.
Frost (2021) lays out two main themes to show the precarity of American citizenship. First, she outlines how the U.S. government used citizenship stripping to take away legal rights and privileges from certain people. The rights taken away include the right to vote, the ability to hold political office, and the right to enter and remain in the United States. In this instance, citizenship stripping was used to strip people of rights the government could no longer justifiably take away on the sole basis of race, gender, ethnicity, marital status, or political affiliation. Frost (2021) then describes how citizenship expands beyond legal rights and privileges to also include a sense of identity and belonging. She explains that the stripping of citizenship not only deprived people of their identity as Americans but was also used as a tool to purge the country of those deemed “Un-American”. This allowed the U.S. government to qualify what it meant to be “American” and what type of people could wear that label. With her reliance on archival work and a plethora of primary sources, Frost (2021) provides us with an array of case studies that support these themes.
Though she is critical of the U.S. government and its use of citizenship stripping, I think Frost (2021) avoids the trap of writing either a primarily celebratory or pessimistic brief of American history. Instead, she opts to let her case studies illustrate the lived experiences of citizenship stripping. For example, she does not omit the historical facts that Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis regained their U.S. citizenships after death. In this way, she denies us the opportunity to slide their damaging historical impacts under the rug or to cast them aside as former American citizens. Frost (2021) therefore does an excellent job of making readers examine hypocrisies regarding who should retain American citizenship. This forces us to face and acknowledge the history of a country that struggles with identity – including enduring racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
Although I enjoyed the book, there were some ways in which I found it lacking. For instance, it would have been interesting to see how citizenship stripping affected Muslims living in the United States, especially after 9/11 and the rise of global counter-terrorism security measures. Secondly, there are times when the book’s emphasis on storytelling left me wanting more data to support the author’s core arguments. While I understand the effort to write the book in a way that appeals to a larger audience, more data could have connected the case studies and given readers a more complete view of citizenship stripping as a larger, deliberate strategy. Overall, this book is an excellent starting point for understanding citizenship stripping and encouraging further research on this topic. Frost’s (2021) You are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers ultimately shows us how citizenship stripping has been used for more than 150 years to oppress, silence, and intimidate people to reinforce the ideology of who counts as an “American”.
Perspective: Alexander Magrath
In her book You are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers, Amanda Frost (2021) defines citizen stripping in the United States as an action used as a proxy for taking away the rights of citizenship because other markers (such as race and gender) are barred by protections within the U.S. Constitution. The goal of her book is to share individual stories using voices from historical case studies to show how citizenship stripping impacted peoples’ lives and access to fundamental rights. To do this, Frost (2021) centers our attention on ways the U.S. government has persecuted its own citizens through nation-building and its continuation. Frost’s (2021) emphasis on storytelling also makes this scholarly book more accessible to non-academics, which is a valuable contribution because everyone should understand the negative impacts that citizenship stripping has had on individuals and groups deemed “un-American”.
But what is a citizen? Frost (2021) believes a citizen is a national community member who possesses all the rights and privileges guaranteed by their constitution and government who is subject to the duties that community membership entails. Yet there has been a lot of tension in American history – between different ideologies, laws, and courts’ interpretations of those laws – in determining what it means to be an American citizen. Moreover, America’s dark history has much to say about what it means to NOT be American; awful things have been done to certain individuals and groups because of their customs, religion, racial/ethnic/sexual/gender identities, and even choices of reading material. These people are perceived as threats to the status quo, majority societal opinion, and the government – giving them a status deemed unworthy of being American. Determining who does and does not belong is part of nation-building; in many ways, determining who we are not is just as important as deciding who we are.
Frost’s (2021) method of supporting her arguments is to tell personal stories of “unwanted” people who experienced citizen stripping. She chose these individuals because most of their stories are not widely known by most Americans. From the Dred Scott decision (where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Black Americans could not claim U.S. citizenship) to the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII (illustrated by the case of Joseph Kurihara) to the mass deportation of Mexican Americans in the 1950s, Frost (2021) provides stories of how American citizens were stripped of their nationality or deemed unworthy of citizenship. One example is the story of Emma Goldman, an anarchist who was stripped of her citizenship because of her critical views of the U.S. government during World War I. After her work inspired someone to assassinate U.S. President William McKinley, she was stripped of citizenship via the Espionage Act, imprisoned, and then deported to the Soviet Union. The personal stories Frost (2021) shares seem to have little in common except for the fact that the U.S. government wants to silence and persecute individuals who have been deemed “un-American.” In this way, citizenship stripping serves as a strategy used to deny “unwanted” people their enjoyment of these rights; it is a way to say, “You do not belong here.”
Frost’s (2021) book shows how this strategy was applied to Chinese Americans with the story of Wong Kim Ark (who had to fight for his birthright citizenship because of his race); to Japanese Americans like Kurihara; to military leaders who fought against the United States during the Civil War (including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis); to suffragists who fought for women’s rights (such as Ethel Coope Mackenzie); to enslaved Black Americans; and to “suspect citizens” (such as Goldman, labor leader Harry Bridges, and others); and enemy citizens (including Fritz Kuhn, an American Nazi). Through these case studies, Frost (2021) brings us all the way to present debates about U.S. citizenship and belonging related to U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris and to current discussions surrounding the so-called “birther movement.” These studies all show that because U.S. citizens are entitled to many rights and privileges,<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1">[1]</a> the government has an interest in denying citizenship to people they deem threatening or unfit.
In short, You are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers is a reminder that the question of “Who is an American citizen?” remains a contentious one and that citizenship stripping is used as a tool for excluding certain individuals and groups from the U.S. polity.         
References
Frost, A. (2021). You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers. Boston: Beacon Press.
© Copyright 2023 Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights. All rights reserved. 
Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights is an academic journal that provides space for undergraduate students to explore human rights issues, challenge current actions and frameworks, and engage in problem-solving aimed at tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. This open-access journal is available online at www.webster.edu/rightingwrongs.
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
<a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1">[1]</a> The rights of U.S. citizens include the right to vote, eligibility for holding elected office (although only “natural born” citizens can be president), the right to serve on a jury, eligibility for employment in federal and state governments, and the right to enter and remain in the U.S.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/2023/12/01/book-review-symposium-you-are-not-american-by-amanda-frost/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:

Download the "valid RSS" banner.
Upload the image to your own server. (This step is important. Please do not link directly to the image on this server.)
Add this HTML to your page (change the image src attribute if necessary):

<a href="http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=https%3A//blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/feed/"><img src="valid-rss-rogers.png" alt="[Valid RSS]" title="Validate my RSS feed" /></a>

If you would like to create a text link instead, here is the URL you can use:

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=https%3A//blogs.webster.edu/humanrights/feed/

Home · About · News · Docs · Terms