Women rise up against gender violence in the Caribbean
Justin Podur interviews Joan Joy Grant Cummings
Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer who blogs at podur.org.
Joan Joy Grant Cummings, based in Jamaica, is a volunteer at the Caribbean Development Activist Women’s Network (DAWN) and a former President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) Canada.
The complete interview was carried on The Bullet on March 23rd, 2017, an online magazine produced by The Socialist Project (http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/ 1387.php#continue )
On March 11, survivors of violence against women and their allies and supporters held marches in six Caribbean countries. Started by two Barbadian women, Ronelle King and Allyson Benn, the movement had the hashtag #LifeInLeggings.
In Jamaica, one of the groups marching was the Tambourine Army, a movement of activists dedicated to eradicating sexual violence against women and girls. Some of the Tambourine Army are survivors themselves of sexual violence.
A few days later on March 14, feminist activist and trans advocate from the Tambourine Army, Latoya Nugent was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism and Organized Crime Division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and charged with “use of a computer for malicious (This is one of a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
communication” under the Cybercrimes Act. On March 15, the Tambourine Army released a statement about Latoya’s medical status concerned about the denial to her of medical attention.
Joan Joy Grant Cummings (JJGC): It does not look like Latoya or the Tambourine Army (TA) did anything criminal to do with misuse of the internet in terms of their advocacy. Our charter of rights and freedoms were changed some time ago in terms of libel and slander laws through the Defamation Act in 2013. At the time, many journalists were very concerned because it seemed as if their rights were being curtailed. Now we see that they were. The part of the Cybercrimes Act that the state used against Latoya was not supposed to be used to curtail freedom of speech. It was slated to deal with people who were using video recordings of exlovers, “revenge porn” type activity.
JJGC: Yes, as part of the leadership of the Tambourine Army, this is a role she played. This is where there’s disagreement even amongst activists whether this should be done, in terms of naming names. For those who think that names should be named, it has to do with the fact that the justice system is not very helpful to victims of sexual and other violent crimes. It’s actually quite intimidating. If you manage to make a complaint, only 5 per cent of cases make their way through the justice system.
It is also worth noting that it’s not clear whether or not Latoya was the first person to call out the name of this particular perpetrator. A complaint may have already been made or the ‘victim’ may have told others about him. The information, technically, may have already been in the public domain.
In the end, libel or slander is dealt with as a civil matter. So why was there such a show of force? And against both leaders of the Tambourine Army. Latoya was arrested under the Cybercrimes Act. Nadine Spence, the other
leader, had eight police come to her workplace at the University of the West Indies, approaching her under the Detention Act, something that is usually used under a state of emergency when there’s a suspension of people’s rights. That is a show of force, very distressing for all of us.
JJGC: She called out a man who was a Moravian minister, someone who had fingered other Moravian ministers as perpetrators of sexual violence. A young woman came forward to say that, you have done this, too. This man, and his lawyer, have been pressuring her (Latoya) about this.
What he should have done was take it to a civil court – he should not have involved the police. Why are the police involved? The timing is also suspicious. On February 28 the police got the judge to sign the order, but they then waited until after the march was over to make the arrest. We’d love to know their thinking in those three weeks.
Many people have lost the point about why the police did what they did. They are claiming that she taunted the police. We have tried to argue that these are peace officers, they’re trained to be able to deal with taunting. If we ever think it’s OK for police to brutalize us because you taunted them we’re in real trouble. So that’s one piece of education that has to happen, about what is the role of the police. This is the big discussion going on in cafes, on verandas and bars and on the street, people are saying she shouldn’t have named and shamed. But in reply a lot of young women have said, many of us have been raped and there’s no outlet through the justice system, no one saying: we believe you and let this man prove that he didn’t do it. That’s how it gets to this point.
JJGC: It’s huge – everybody knows someone who has been molested, by these same groups – clergy, teachers, policemen, businessmen. And it reverberates. Young women are having a difficult time in the job market and their unemployment rate is higher, twice as high as young men. You wonder why we see young women leaving the job market after they’ve been in a job less than a year. Women are more highly educated, more likely to have a certification or credential. But there is 2024% unemployment amongst women aged 25-34, college graduates. For young men in that cohort it’s 8.9%. And 60 per cent of those women have one or two university degrees. Among the age 20-24 cohort there is 37 per cent unemployment. When the researchers examine the figures as to why so many are in the job only for a year, only then will they reveal the level of sexual harassment that these women are facing that drives them out of the workplace.
JJGC: We’ve been pleading for police to lay charges against perpetrators of violence when women have actually made it to the police post to do so. Police will say, it’s a “lover’s quarrel,” a “domestic dispute.” The high level of impunity is a big part of why men continue to commit these crimes. The police commissioner herself said perpetrators are often men in positions of authority: police, teachers, clergy, counsellors, of course fathers, family members, friends.
JJGC: Tambourine Army wants to talk about sexual violence more clearly than it is being talked about. We have people talking about “sex with a minor” – there’s no “sex with a minor,” you’re talking about rape. Jamaica has one of the earliest, what UNICEF calls “sexual initiation rates,” as early as 8 years old, girls are being raped. It’s a very premeditated act, because usually the abuse will stop just before they turn 16. In cases where the girl has become pregnant before 16, there have been femicides that have occurred. In 2014-15, we saw many cases where girls were being murdered because they had been sexually assaulted, got pregnant, and were then murdered. We had gone through in a three month period in 2014 when 25 young women were murdered. And in many cases they were pregnant.
The Tambourine Army is a new organizing force and a lot of young women are involved. One of the tensions is women who have been in the movement a long time compared to the kinds of strategies these young women have used. There’s a tension in that sense, a few of us who understand that maybe we don’t think these methods are best. But we understand the point that society needs a jolt about what sexual violence is actually doing, and what it’s costing us.
JJGC: Exactly. It shows the disparity of resources. Take for example the victim support system. The number of resources that are applied to it is miniscule. And the cases of sexual violence that have been successfully prosecuted have been when victim support really worked: When the young woman gets the support from when the time she lays the complaint, to go in to make the complaint with her, all the way to the court. But that is not something that happens on the scale that it should.
JJGC: We used to have a wonderful trade union movement in terms of social justice understanding. But I think of late I’m not seeing that in terms of what union leaders will talk about.
And in fact it’s shocking that one of our most decorated trade unionists who’s a Senator, when we were reviewing the Sexual Offences Act, argued very strongly for maintaining a line in that act that allows marital rape! We were shocked. Our union movement is very male dominated…these issues aren’t discussed at the table the way they were in the past…
JJGC: Our leadership has to acknowledge that sexual violence in our country is an epidemic…Even more frightening is we have politicians who have been participating in violence. Second, we have to have an understanding of this, how it affects social development, the economy…The Tambourine Army, in their twenty-point plan, make a good point – we don’t have comprehensive services. Sex education in school, family life education, has all been hijacked by Christian fundamentalism, and many politicians go along with it because of the political power of Christian fundamentalism today. That’s repeated in the Caribbean. [Recently] Jamaica at the UN didn’t support women’s and girls’ rights to sexual and reproductive health, teaming up with countries in Africa that didn’t support it…
The other part is, how do we make sure that there’s a greater balance in the economic independence of women because that is really a limiting factor in terms of their empowerment and feeling that they can leave these situations.
Statistical data confirm this critical lack of gender parity in key areas in our society. As a result, spending priorities reflect this undervaluing of the impact of continued inequality between men and women.
The easiest way for men to demonstrate their power is to show power over women.
Rape culture has been a tool since the enslavement period…our society has refused to name it. So we don’t see it as a problem – it is seen as ‘norm’! So imagine when women in such a society decide that they are going to change this! Even some victims will oppose them – there is serious internalization of sexism as there is with racism.
The struggle now from my perspective is to place this issue squarely back on the national agenda from a broader perspective, to remove the red herring of focusing on individuals whose way of working or strategies we may or may not agree with – certainly we have to deal with our concerns, they are real and credible for the people involved.
Simultaneously, the women’s community and other progressive movements know how the state had relied on this ‘divide and conquer’ and ‘lack of unity’ to maintain the status quo.
The region has to deal with this issue now or risk further undermining the political, social, cultural, and economic development of all Caribbean communities.