On Sunday, I was fortunate to hear a
sermon by Rev. Marion Gledhill, a Deacon with the Uniting Church in Australia
and a guest preacher at Dudley Memorial Methodist Church. Rev. Gledhill, who is
visiting Fiji with her husband Malcom, shared a reflection for “Christ the King
Sunday,” the last Sunday before the Christian season of Advent (the preparation
month leading to the celebration of the birth of Jesus – “Christmas”) which was
also woven with threads from “Breaking the Silence Sunday.”
“Breaking the Silence Sunday,” marked
the Sunday before the 16 Days of Activism agalnst Violence Against Women and
Children, which runs from November 25th to December 10th. In
December 1999, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted
Resolution 54/134 proclaiming 25 November as the International Day for
Elimination of Violence against Women, calling the world to account for
violations of human rights manifested in often unreported and unacknowledged
life-denying experiences faced by women of all ages.
The date of 25 November was selected
because on that day in 1960 three Mirabal Sisters were assassinated by the
dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930-61) in the Dominican Republic. The 16
days of activism also include 6 December, the anniversary of the 1989 massacre
in Montreal when 14 women engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique were
murdered and many others wounded by a student who claimed that he was ―fighting
feminism. These and other significant dates, acknowledged and unrecorded, are
incorporated in the 16-day observance along with three related UN observances:
International Women‘s Human Rights Defenders Day (29 November), World AIDS Day
(1 December) and International Human Rights Day (10 December).
According to a joint paper by the Women
in Church and Society, made up of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the
World YWCA (Young Women‘s Christian Association) and the World Student Christian
Federation (WSCF), “justice and peace are key concerns linked within the
strategic advocacy underlying these 16 days of activism. It is a time for
raising awareness in preparation for a paradigm shift away from the denial of
women‘s human rights and the high HIV infection rates of abused and violated
women, shifting toward the end of a world culture in which violence against
women is tolerated.”
The stark reality continues to cry out
to us : a lot of people are subject to domestic abuse, of one form or another. A
lot. About 1 in 3 women globally and some men as well, from different
backgrounds, rich, poor, young, old. More women are killed or maimed through
domestic violence than through war, AIDS, cancer as well as road
traffic collisions combined. We don’t often talk about it. We don’t like
to acknowledge it. We might even make jokes about it. It may be hidden, but it
is going on all around us.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is
working toward the revival of “Thursdays in Black”, a campaign against sexual
and gender-based violence. The emphasis is pertinent to the theme of the World Council
of Churches’ recently concluded general assembly: “God of life, lead us to
justice and peace”.
On 31 October 2013, during the WCC 10th
Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea, many of us, including the 21 young people
from the Pacific, Pasifika Oikoumene, wore black. Through this simple gesture, we
took our place in the global movement urging an end to violence against women.
Thursday in Black has a link with
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a movement of mothers who protested against the
policy of having dissidents "disappeared", a term used to describe
people killed during the political violence in Argentina between the 1970s and
1980s. These mothers walked around Plazo de Mayo in Buenos Aires, every
Thursday, to register their protest to the responsible authorities.
Thursdays in Black was started by the
WCC in the 1980's as a form of peaceful protest against rape and violence –
especially taking place during wars and conflicts. The campaign focuses on ways
through which individuals may challenge attitudes that cause rape and violence.
“Thursdays in Black”, according to Dr
Fulata Mbano-Moyo, WCC programme executive for Women in Church and Society, is
a “united global expression of the desire for safe communities where we can all
walk safely without fear of being raped, shot at, beaten up, verbally abused
and discriminated against due to one’s gender or sexual orientation.”
Thursdays in Black has influenced
several church and ecumenical initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s, including the
Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women. The campaign was
further strengthened by the “Women in Black” campaign born out of women-to-women
solidarity visits to Serbia and Croatia during the Balkan war in the 1990s.
Through this initiative, Serbian women called people to join them in speaking
against the use of rape as a weapon of war
“Through this campaign we want to
accompany our sisters, who bear the scars of violence, invisible and visible,
in Syria, Palestine and Israel, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Pakistan and the whole world, where women’s bodies remain a battlefield,
whether in armed conflict or so-called ‘peaceful’ situations,” adds
Mbano-Moyo.“Through this campaign we are demanding a world free of rape and
violence!”
Rev. Marion’s message on Sunday was
simple and yet profound, from a Christian perspective, Jesus as the Christ, was
crucified under the sign “King of the Jews”. This symbolism of the powerful
experiencing and accompanying the powerless is an important message for the
Christian community. The Church as a community must be a safe space for those
suffering from violence and also must also be the voice of the voiceless who
suffer within the community and in society at large.
We know that God cares about this. He
hears the cries of those suffering. And we must care because God cares. We may
not have all the answers, but we know that this behaviour is wrong, we must care
about those who are suffering, and the suffering must stop.
I encourage leaders of the Christian
community to make use of the next two Sundays that fall within the 16 Days of
Activism to “Break the Silence” on the issue of violence against women and
children. All faith communities in Fiji are challenged in their own gatherings
to make sure that the significance of the 16 Days is not lost on their
communities.
This coming Thursday (tomorrow) and the
Thursdays to come, wear black to show your solidarity with those who experience
powerlessness and violence, in all its forms in our families, our communities
and our society as a whole.
“Simplicity, Serenity, Spontaneity.”
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