Enough political and patriarchal violence against women
On 25 November 1960, dictator Leonidas Trujillo assassinated sisters Mirabal, Patria, Minerva and María Teresa in the Dominican Republic. In addition to being persecuted for confronting the de facto government, they were brutally killed for being women who also rebelled against the patriarchal mandates of their time. Today, almost sixty years after that massacre, we strongly dennounce Enough political and patriarchal violence against the women fighters who confront the governments of the austerity measures!
In Chile, the revolutionary mobilisation carried out by the Chilean people against Piñera’s government has been heroically resisting the police repression of carabineros and the military, with a high cost: over 25 people killed and over 2,200 people injured, of which over 200 have partially lost their sight. But the human rights violations of this government are exacerbated in the case of women and people with dissident identities who are also raped and suffer all kinds of sexual harassment when they are arrested. In Bolivia, the coup d’état government of Anez and Camacho, who raised the flags of the pro-imperialist oligarchy of the east with the stalest racism and the mandate of the reactionary Catholic Church against women, is already advancing with all kinds of violent acts against the «pollera women,» the workers, the indigenous and the peasant women, especially beaten and denigrated in the street confrontations. As Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, subservient to the IMF, these capitalist and patriarchal governments are especially vicious against the women who come out to fight, who face their austerity measures and surrender of natural resources.
In countries such as the United States, Brazil, Poland, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, among others, reactionary governments continue to trample on women’s rights such as the right to abortion, access to contraceptive methods, recognition of gender-based violence, and non-discrimination. While in other countries of the world such as Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Peru, the Spanish State, among others, the rates of femicides and transvestices intensify or become more visible.
As great is the attack, so is the organisation and resistance of women who since 2015, have been pioneers in mobilising around the world. With the fourth wave of feminist struggles, not only was the patriarchal violence that beats, rapes, and murders women for being women exposed but also the fact that this system of domination allows the survival of a capitalist-imperialist system in crisis that resists through the super-exploitation of the working people, and especially of the women workers. In the capitalist and patriarchal world, it is the women who are not recognised for their care work, those who are the poorest among the poor, those who are most discriminated against in jobs and social spaces, those who have the most precarious jobs, those who receive the lowest wages for equal work, those who are the majority in charge of families with the least resources, the first to be fired in the face of economic crises and who are denied the right to decide about their lives and their bodies. So from the slogan #NiUnaMenos, the Green Tide’s claim for legal abortion around the world, the #MeToo against sexual violence to the #WorldwideWomen’sStrike against labour discrimination and austerity, it revealed that the only way to end patriarchal violence in all its forms is to take to the streets and confront the capitalist governments that use them to guarantee the extraordinary profits of businessmen, independently organising from the bosses’ parties.
This 25 November we call with Chile Piñera Out! No to the coup and the reactionary Anez government in Bolivia! Stop sexual violence against women fighters! VivasNosQueremos! (We want us Alive!) No more femicides and transvesticides! Down with the austerity plans of capitalist governments around the world! Resources to fight gender violence, not for the IMF! The debt is with the women! For the independent organisation of women workers around the world to conquer all our rights.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
18 November 2019
