YOUth in ACTivism | The camp
After our participation in the \"YOUth in ACTivism: the Camp\" program, in Ommen, the Netherlands, we organized, as a Greek team, a follow-up activity. We took photos from people before and after telling them a story. The stories we told were about violent incidents against femininities that took place in different places around the world. From Greece to Chile. The purpose of the action was to capture the change in the participant's expression and emotional state after listening to the story. This action was inspired by an activitLyett'hs awtortkotookgepthlearc.e during the program. The activity involved the alternation of roles between the speaker, listener, and observer in order to cultivate active listening and empathy. Our main goal as a Greek team is to raise awareness about the daily challenges that femininities face and try stepping into their shoes.
#1 story Dimitris was a transgender Greek who identified as a woman born in Skala, Sikaminias. Blue-eyed and slender, the 64-year-old was last seen wearing a red sweater and white pants. Her life was a life of violence in times of violence for trans people. The family “put her away” to a clinic for the first time when she was young because she wanted to redefine her gender. Dimitris has ping-ponged from chronic incarceration in clinics and years of being fed psychotropic medication to adjust the chemical makeup of her brain and nervous system. These medications were recommended to her family to treat her “mental illness”- declaring herself a female although she has the physical anatomy of a male. Fast forward 40 years and society has finally understood that gender identity and sexuality are not conditions to be fixed. In December of 2020, local teens broke into Dimitris' home in Skala Sykamnia. They uploaded videos jumping on furniture and shouting. The transgender Greek was readmitted to the psychiatric clinic in Dromokaiteio. This time, the return to the clinic was not because of her gender identity. She went involuntarily placed there by her family with psychiatric justification as her environment had deteriorated. Transgender Greek, Dimitri Kalogiannis, missing since April 6, was apparently the victim of a hit and run three days after disappearing. On Thursday, DImitris' brother tentatively identified the body from the traffic accident that occurred more than two months ago.
Jess female | she/her | Ireland student | baking lover I found the experience very enlightening. It raised more questions in my head around how people react to and consume media around human rights violations. It also got me thinking about how these reactions may change over time if people become desensitized to seeing multiple images/hearing various stories about one particular atrocity and if this would change their behaviours around providing support to these people.
#2 story Another incident of gender violence was reported two days ago in a taxi in the center of Athens when a man brutally beat his wife. According to the news, the 30-year-old woman was riding with her husband in a taxi in the center of Athens when they started arguing. Then the man started beating her, with the driver calling the ambulance. The woman had to be hospitalized for two days in the KAT as her husband broke her ribs and caused her fracture injuries. After being treated, the 30-year-old woman returned to Rhodes, where she works, and filed an injunction against her husband.
Fransisca she /her | Latin American female from Chile I found the exercise deeply moving. I feel that most of us women have lived, in our own flesh or know someone who has had an experience in which their rights have been violated. This is a reminder to all of us to stick together.
#3 story In January 2021, a 54-year-old woman living in Meskla, Crete was killed by her 47- year-old husband, who is Norwegian. The man claims that he stabbed his wife, who was the mother of two children, 14 times because he was drunk. In early June, a woman, aged 64, was killed by her 75-year-old ex-husband in the Athenian suburb of Agia Varvara. Her body was found in a pool of her blood just outside her apartment building. Her former spouse claimed that he shot the woman because her “behavior (toward him) was totally despicable.” The most recognized case around the world was last May’s murder of the young British- Filipino woman Caroline Crouch, by her husband, Babis Anagnostopoulos. He initially claimed she was killed by a gang of foreign burglars who broke into their home. He later confessed to strangling his wife. In late July, a 40-year-old Albanian-born man entered the police station in the Dafni suburb of Athens, confessing to killing his 31-year-old wife. Her body was later found in a pool of blood in their apartment. He said he killed her because he was jealous. In the central Greek city of Larissa last August, a 43-year-old woman was murdered when her 54-year-old husband shot her eight times inside a taverna where she was working. Also, early last August in Rethymnon, Crete, 47-year-old Stavroula Syragopoulou was shot in the back by a 49-year-old’s hunting rifle. She died on the spot, while he shot himself and died several days later in the hospital.
Camila female | she/her Colombian Latin American adopted woman living in Berlin | student Listening to the stories of the femicides I felt a deep sadness and impotence, each story had as a perpetrator, not a State, an army, a paramilitary group, but a life partner, a husband, a boyfriend, a person who was allowed to enter a life and decided to end it. I understand femicide as the final and violent action of patriarchy, a fact that can begin with micro-aggressions, with an idea of love from property and with the help of manipulation as a strategy. The stories confirmed to me the urgency of care, of having a support network, of continuing to question the heteronormative relationships and the idea of love that for many years I nurtured by my cultural and family context.
#4 - #5 stories #introduction Living in Colombia is not easy, and being a Colombian woman has certain implications, I know that the exhausting neo-liberal policies and the atrocious capitalist system in which we live should not be reduced to a matter of nationalities, however, in this territory it is felt very close, so evident through the policies of terror; This is understood as the systematic violence against the people, the land grabbing, the privatization of public goods, the elimination of any kind of ideology that does not adhere to the status quo, the appropriation of natural resources, among hundreds of other facts that have historically demonstrated the construction of Colombia as a failed State, perverse, led by a traditional elite which has now extended to the spheres of drug trafficking, agro-industry, and farming. The #4 and #5 stories are two different experiences, two violent events that took place in two different spaces and under a temporal difference. However, with the similarity of responding to counterinsurgency strategies, territorial control, and violation of human rights.
#4 story One was framed in the Atlantic coast, a rural, agricultural zone, with a strong peasant association and prosperous at some point due to tobacco crops. The Salado Massacre took place in February 2000 by the Bloque Norte and Bloque Héroes de los Montes de María, both paramilitary armies. This event took the lives of 60 people, including men and women, with the justification of persecuting members of the FARC guerrillas. This led to the displacement of hundreds of people, who, frightened by the crossfire and the constant threat of death, left their municipality in search of safety and protection for themselves and their families.
Fenia female | she/her Greece | linguist | feminist | LGBTQI+ ally When I was asked to participate, I never thought it would end with me having a shocking facial expression and being photographed at the same time. When you start realizing the cruelty taking place around the world, you can’t help it even when you have nice people around. Definitely an intense experience for me! Thank you, people.
#5 story On the other hand, the false-positive cases of the mothers of Soacha, a group of women who organized in 2008 after the Colombian Army killed their sons to present them as guerrilla members, following the doctrine of democratic security imposed by former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez. These young men were tricked by the army with the promise of a job, only to be murdered and their bodies found in different municipalities, far from what were once their homes.
Anna she/her | USA social work student | feminist | Human Rights advocator The experience for me was very eye-opening. I felt I was a lot more conscious about active listening to the story about human rights violations. I think because I was being photographed, I was in a more vulnerable position so it allowed me to empathize more deeply with the story. I was aware of how my body was reacting to the story on a deeper level. It helped me connect to her story and the people being affected at a greater level.
A follow-up activity for Youth in Activism, The Camp by Dimitris Manousidis Ioanna Lioliou Lefkothea Rizopoulou Stamatina Dimopoulou Special Thanks to: Jess, Francesca, Camila, Fenia, Anna, for their contribution and listening. Agate for the artwork. Active Rainbow for the opportunity. Roes Cooperativa for the support. *Images used to accompany the stories are from the internet. *Images of the participants are taken by the team. Let's work together.
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