Wednesday is cartoon day!

Posted on April 2, 2003 by Ampersand

cartoon

(Here’s a bit of “Alas, a Blog” trivia: did you know the main reason I started this blog was to get more feedback on my cartoons?)

I blogged about this a month ago, and not much has changed since then. A new report from Women’s ENews sums up the issue nicely:

Under international law, refugees seeking asylum must prove they can’t return home because of a “well-founded” fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Though gender is not explicitly included as a category, last year the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees affirmed that a gender-sensitive interpretation should be applied to the refugee convention. Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Ireland, South Africa and Canada all recognize gender-based asylum claims. Before President Bush took office, it looked as though the United States would join this list.

In the waning days of the Clinton administration, the immigration service proposed regulations that recognize that, under certain circumstances, gender can be considered under the social group category in the refugee convention– and domestic violence can be a basis for asylum.[…]

Karen Musalo, co-counsel on the Alvarado case and director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, says she has heard from people within the Justice Department that the Attorney General intends to reinstate the original Board of Immigration Appeals decision […]. If that happens, it will run counter to the proposed gender asylum regulations and set a negative precedent for other women fleeing domestic violence.

“This would be an incredible step backwards and quite a repudiation of our commitment to protecting women who are fleeing violations of their human rights,” said Musalo.

The Department of Justice said the Attorney General has not made a decision on the case and no deadline has been set for that decision.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

The essence of misogyny is considering women’s suffering irrelevant or trivial. There is no legitimate reason to deny women facing battery and death threats the asylum they need to survive; that the Bush administration is even considering taking asylum away is appalling.

The Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights has set up a very easy and quick form page for sending a letter to Secretary Ridge of the Department of Homeland Security, urging him to make the right decision. Please go ahead and send a letter right now (this is a different one than the one I linked to last month, so go ahead and click on the link even if you did it last month).

(Of course, the administration hasn’t officially made it’s decision yet; it could be that they’ll decide to be humane, in which case this cartoon will be wrongheaded and a bit embarrassing. But that’s some egg I’d be pleased to have to wipe off my face.)

.

This entry was posted in Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc. Bookmark the permalink.