 Hello everyone and welcome to the ninth event of the safe havens freedom talk series. This time in collaboration with women chapter international. My name is my time and I'm happy to introduce such as Timashi Monty, the editor of the English section of women chapter that come shumu hug communications director at the women chapter international and shupruti the hard founder of the women chapter international. And today they will have a conversation on the story of this platform and the challenges faced during its journey. And now I will leave the word to shupruti after we see the video clip. Today's meeting for today's, I'd like to say events and he talks in such events. It's really important for us to tell about us. I think because you're, you can say they're fighting for our rights to establish the rights and to talk about our rights. So I'm, as you say that I'm shupruti the hard I'm the editor, a founder editor of women and founder, you can find a chairman of women chapter international. Okay. In the very beginning, I would like to say I put women chapter how I established this women chapter and, and what was the purpose behind this. Maybe we can play our point in this. chapter, our slogan, our main. Choose a to our situation. It's a movement to change women chapter is the first word online feminist taking platform for in Bangladesh. But people say we don't that it is also the first ever feminist portal in the language in the interval. Though we are not sure about this but people's. And if you look at our history that the early 2000s was very important in in the recent history of Bangladesh. This country kept leaning to the culture of Islamic feminism, the state of women became even more difficult and it had ever been in the last. So as an activist and list here I want to mention that I have been working as a journalist for more than 22 years and I start my career in a newspaper. At the same time, I wrote a newspaper and BBC radio and online newspaper and online media on radio. So I just thought that I can as a journalist with my experience working different media houses that I can get a platform where only women will work and just we wanted to see the world through women eyes. So, and that time, as an activist and journalist, I was in full aware of the lake of a safe or platform where once women could open discuss the issues were matter of life or death to. Safety from domestic and gender or gender based violence sexual violence exists to information on their productive rights, etc. It is from this urgency that women after was born but there was another history also. We had a show back movement. We call it a movement in our life was it shaped our new life. So in the late 2000s and early 2000s, but in the youth of the country to come to the to the streets, demanding justice for the crimes committed as a population during the liberation war in 1970 by the Pakistani army collaborators. And most of our know now connected when hitting the numerous pro Islamic fundamentalist political parties such as Jama'at Islam and Hepaz of the Islamic Bangladesh. The whole country woke up with the hope of a of new transformation or a new beginning. But unlike the spring movement widely known as the show back at the popular locality in the Bungalow she capital. Where they started like the reason for Egypt, or we call it project more chapter it made the word for this in in Bungalow. So this is known as shop. They told it opened people's eyes towards areas in the society desperately in the need to reform. So we started the movement and the fifth of February 2000 in the first I can recall that we were. Mainly 70 people maybe at this time is a very big but the other day it was the thousands of thousands that next day it was millions already so you can imagine the how big it was. And the politics of a puzzle fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Maybe you already know about that. It was emerging power of fundamentalism in Bangladesh while the progressive movement started to gain momentum in the country. In 2003, the fundamentalist political parties such as the Hifaz of the Islam also struck back. So they had their 13 demands during a rally on May 5, 2013, who gives an insight, such as to their vision of turning the country in Islamic Republic ruled by the sharia law. Here are 13 demands of just I don't want to mention all the 13 demands. But most of the teams were against men. So we women as a women were so. You are not scared, but we were so much angry because. The bounded that the women should go to the kitchen shouldn't study. They should go to the university with a male. And I say that with man with boys. So, of course, it made us very much angry. And we, we did it. It's a big really, and we tried to hold in the shop of movement. We tried to bring all the organization or other liberal or progressive organization into this really. Is a journalist filled such that a vacuum and this movement because something was missing. I felt that there was no connection between the organization. So I that is a journalist what I can do I can write to put on the street every so I decided to hit a platform. Where women can express their view opinions. Then they can raise their voices so. In May I demand until 20th in 2013 I created this woman chapter. So women chapter started its journey. So immediately following its inception became clear that which chapter had hit the right cold among youth of the country. Filled along felt avoid not all of the women, but progressive minded. With its unique and original content. And with young and fresh writers, it created a new standard even for the long established media here I want to mention another thing that means the mainstream media couldn't publish our articles so we couldn't write it because we were not a writer we are not a columnist. But we had our and we had our voice so there was no place for women chapter where we need space ourselves. So, when we created this platform everyone started writing their every women who wanted to write. Even even mainstream media when they saw the popularity of men's chapter they also brought changes in their policy. So, nowadays we can see the mainstream media loss women are writing in the mainstream media. And even they have, they have open corner for women writer. So it's a very positive things and the suspense to media there are lots of other families for coming out. So women chapter, we can see that the pain of others. I was not so easy to create this path. And it was a which after who launched a me to movement in Bangladesh in 2018. We are very much criticized at the same time with our polarity. And we threatened surveillance many times. Not only me as an editor as an editor and my writer also. Many of our writers talked right in the women chapter because the kids and bullying and all that have continued our journey. So usually women chapter English section in 2016. It's a we have been separate section before it was only one and the whole women chapter. And she just made that she wanted to cover as they did all the English section. Maybe later she will explain how she worked there and why she joined at this section and I can just change here that in this eight years journey. Women chapter has got two. One is international. One is national international award in 2014. The Dutch village is international. Selected women in the block category for the national award. We got based online activism and women chapter by a word of the websites and new polls of 16 different languages. It is a huge win for us because we had to beat and it was if I'm not wrong, it was Japan. So we had to beat them that time in train was so popular of the revolution. So it was not easy to this award. And in 2016. Really, I received the honor award. It's very prestigious award in Bangladesh. They gave this to 10 women for contribution in various. So into it does not in 2016 it was 2015. For my work in women chapter. And if I say about how because it was our army. So it had. Maybe you already don't know that has a ship and digital city. And to eat. All the draconian law in our history, because our government has did this act to silence us to silence. All incidents bloggers thinkers and all their voice. So it's very. Very much. You know, black day for that when they cannot do this digital security act. And the portal kept gaining popular among the progress. It also kept attract in the government that didn't appreciate its publications. It is in various government policies. As it kept ending backwards. It's pro Islamic fundamental allies. And as a result, first it's on official forces. Supporters various lobbying entities started harrisings writers and editors which already mentioned. And online by taking on a massive online campaign against them and when they didn't stop them from writing sharing their option. And freely, they change their strategy launching a full on legal using using these draconian digital security act. It's an available act. So, if you are at least under this act, you can put into jail with asking any question. So it's and women's and me as an editor and this is an editor and our writers, you know, we were this act. And there are some people, fundamentalist people. I don't say that only fundamentally. There are other people so who don't like us so they filed a case. Three cases I can call the file to three cases against us. And recently there was. And that submitted the report to the court. It means the police. We did an investigation against women chapter. We are hardly just sentiment. And we are publishing so much hatred verse. No. Towards one specific region. And, and they did investigation to found us guilty. We are doing such things through our writing, and they have submitted their phone report we call charge sheet against us. Where they asked even the police who was investigator in this place. He has asked in Interpol to call Interpol. It is just so it's a huge investment, of course. Maybe now I can hand over to Smith, maybe she will say something. So to start with, I would like to share a bit of my personal journey because I think for activists. And when we want to share our messages why we are fighting for certain causes. It's important to share a bit of our personal story. So, I started writing when I was young, I used to write sometimes short stories but I was also sharing my political opinions at times. For example, during the Iraq invasion, I wrote a open letter to the US president because I condemned what was happening over there. And also I wrote an open letter to Bangla Bhai who was an infamous terrorist when I was very young, I was going to school at that point. And later on, when I was doing my graduation in India. This is the time when the Shabak movement happened so I was just a. Yeah, I was witnessing it from outside and we were also having discussion because in India there are lots of Bangladesh students and I was involved in youth led peace groups from my college time. So people would ask us about our opinion what do you think about the movement. So this was actually the turning point in the history of Bangladesh and if I talk about the last decade. And so this is the time when I went through a personal transformation because as I had a mixed religious background because of my parents marriage. I always identified myself as someone who is leaning towards the secular ideologies. And for that reason, for a long time I'm really the current ruling party in Bangladesh they were considered as the only savior for the country because the other party Bangladesh Nationalist Party Party already becoming famous, because of their direct connection with fundamentalist groups such as Jamati Islami and Hepazati Islam. So for lots of people who identify themselves as non religious or secular or humanist. Like the only option and that was the same for me and for long time I was having this plan to have the civil service exam and yeah serve the country from yeah serve the state, but in 2015 my ideologies were shaken because first of all the killing of the blogger started and the government instead of condemning the fundamentalist they instead blame them for writing things but it is freedom of expression so how a secular government can say that I thought to myself. And that's when I guess my blind devotion as a young young adult started, you know it be, it was shaken because I didn't expect that from Amilic which is the secular democratic government of our country. And then in 2015 I also had this awkward encounter with CP gang so CP gang is kind of a watchdog for our government. I monitor what people are writing against the government on Facebook and they were very active in, I think from 2014 to 2016. If I'm not mistaken because I don't remember the timeline correctly, but they would threaten the people who would criticize the government even if it's just a one sentence that I don't agree with this policy, or this particular incident before you know there are hundreds of people who are attacking you. And if you're a woman they would give you rape threats so this is what happened to me should be the door who also happens to be my mother she criticized the government in one of the Facebook posts and when I saw it. I was getting rape threats from the CP gang members so when I tried to protest that you, you can't use such vulgar languages I got rep threats as well. And as a result of that for two months during my vacation in Bangladesh I was really afraid to step out by myself. I wanted to request for in my office if they can give me the public transportation because I really felt uncomfortable stepping out because this incident went viral. The screenshot of our Facebook conversation was everywhere so I was just afraid. And, as I mentioned before I was writing from childhood and when I started my master's program I started writing about issues related to women. So, and I joined a platform called safety first for girls, it was founded in Zambia, and I was serving remotely. So, in 2016 I was approached by should be that if I would be interested in the English section of women chapter. And because I was already working on this and I was trying to develop my skills as a writer I took it up as a challenge and because this is the English section I thought it would be important. That I look for translators who can translate some of our best write ups from Bengali to English, so that non Bangladesh audience can also understand the wave of feminism in Bangladesh how the feminine women are thinking about the issues because every context is very different. And secondly I also thought since I had already built an international network because of volunteering with different youth led groups. Why don't I promote a women chapter amongst my own networks and a lot of people were enthusiastic about it they reached out to me with their articles and this is how the journey started and now it's been nearly five years that I'm working as the editor of the English section. So I have encountered a few challenges along the way. I think within few months of starting to work as the editor, I already got threats and criticism for publishing certain articles amongst my own network. Some people were not happy and that also impacted my academic life, because it also led to campus politics and why I was publishing certain articles, even though I tried to be as strategic as possible in the beginning. Also with the volunteers, yes, there were volunteers who out and there were certain situations where the writers kept calling me to remove the articles because they were getting threats within their family. And I also had a volunteer who was forcibly married off I don't know if it had something to do with her volunteering with women chapter but this was this happened all of a sudden that her family just decided to throw a surprise party on her birthday and the surprise was a marriage and she had no clue. And since then she didn't work with our portal and later consequences with this digital security act, which is which you can compare with the blasphemy law of Pakistan like in Pakistan, you don't even need to be an activist under the blasphemy law. Somebody can just use it for the taking a revenge on somebody mostly belonging to religious minority groups. Likewise in Bangladesh if the government doesn't like you on the Islamic fundamentalist don't like what you are doing. You can be charged under the digital security act and there are people who have been imprisoned for several months and even a year. And only few have been released and these are the people who are mostly having who mostly come from the elite backgrounds of Bangladesh who have people to back them up but what about people in villages who get charged under digital security or act or its predecessor ICT 57 act. And because now media is also under the pressure of the government so we don't get to know a lot about these people later on okay this person has been arrested but what happened after that did this person come out at all what happened to the families because being accused of hurting religious sentiments it's a it's a very dangerous situation in Bangladesh so yeah we don't get to know because newspapers cannot publish things as and when they wish and when they do their consequences so these are some of the challenges we are also dealing with ever since this platform was created and personally I don't feel safe to go to Bangladesh with all these cases because in past there have also been instances where people have been detained from the airport. And as I said it takes a lot of lobbying and you need to really have powerful lobbying to get you released, but you never know if you will be alive in the prison to be released. The current situation is just getting worse and worse and the government which is which still claims to be a secular democratic government they have they have compromised with the radical groups. Now a lot of these oppressive policies against women before it was just Jamaat Islam me or Hifazat Islam. Organizing public demonstrations on the streets that we don't want women to go to school or we want women to the kitchen but now government is I don't know how to say it in English like it's it's becoming part of the official policies of the country with child marriage with domestic violence. The government just wants to stay in power at the moment in Bangladesh so they will compromise with anyone, be it the Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh, or because India is our powerful neighbor in the region. So, to keep a good relationship with India, sometimes the government is silent on the matters relating to operation of minorities in India. But in recent times that have changed but yeah, the current party just keeps changing its narrative. It's about what suits them at that moment just to stay in power. Yeah, that's all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe I'll take this platform for a little while. And then, okay, you have come to know about chapter and women chapters learning. Now, after eight years, actually, we were planning to move further. So, we decided to create an international. When I'm living in Sweden, you know that I was trained in 2015, 16, 17, so I had to move from the country. So, I came here in Sweden. Here, I was thinking that how we help women and other human rights, at least from such, and are, you know, what is, what's happening in Bangladesh. So, and that's why we created this international, maybe I can hand over now to she will explain very clearly how we started our journey and actually what's our plan to do in future. Thank you safe and then freedom paths for giving women chapter international and women chapter.com this opportunity to present our organizations here it's a great honor to be here today. So, should pretty and should just meet that has already given you quite a bit of background before we move on to more details about the women chapter international, or what we address as WCI. So, let's watch a quick video that kind of captures the essence of this transition from the portal to the organization. So here it comes. And also the video will have a little bit of a message from two of our other board members who couldn't be here today. So here it goes. My name is Camilla Carlson and I'm a board member of women chapter. And I have been a board member from the start. And I live in Sweden. And I think this, the work who women chapter is planning to do is very important. And we are in a lot of, we have connections in a lot of other countries. And it's specially important for the children and for the jungles. So this work is very, very important. Greetings from Bangladesh. I'm Monju Nahar. I'm a founder member of women chapter international. I'm taking immense pleasure to introduce you all with women chapter international. Actually, women chapter international as your organization isn't new, but its journey has begun since long time through an online portal, women chapter raising the discriminatory issue against women, marginalized people, and also developing the capacity of women writer to write the women issue, gender issue and identify the issues that has created discrimination among the marginalized people and women all over the globe. So that is the basic point of starting point of women chapter international. Later women chapter international took its restoration from Sweden with the aim to create a just society. Our focus on to reduce the discriminatory practice against women and girls in different countries. Primarily we focus on Bangladesh as you all know that Bangladesh is highly class based and gender based society. So we are focusing to reduce gender bias violence and especially during the public period we are focusing on early child marriage, safe pregnancy, safe motherhood and also domestic violence. Along with this, our dream is to work all over the globe and people like you, the similar minded people to fight together to work together. So that is the brief introduction of women chapter international. Thank you. Finally, we created it. And what are some of the areas that we want to work in. I am. We had a presentation prepared for reviewing but after all this PowerPoints, I thought, let's just talk and share our ideas with you instead. And then I started writing for women chapter in 2014. I also felt some backlash from people around me. I got some threats as well. I no longer, I do not have any cases filed against me but when I do go back home. I do have to deactivate my social media, I cannot move around freely and people would steal our articles and publish them with distorted titles that would make it look like we're trying to insult the sentiments of people, people's religious views. So things back home in Bangladesh to say the list is not very conducive to creating an environment where you can write or share your ideas freely. And you would imagine that country that is 50 and celebrating its 50 years of independence would have more freedom for its women. But unfortunately, things started going backwards. So we realized that we needed to create a platform that will have the organizational structure and will be able to have that global force that will give us the freedom to work freely will give us the freedom to work on the policy level will give us the conversation across the globe and do lobbying if necessary from one government to the other to network with other similar organization so that this issues can be addressed. And as you know, with globalization these issues are not only limited to Bangladesh. All South Asian countries have similar issues, when it comes to human rights abuse, when it comes to gender based violence when it comes to women suffering because of not having the basic rights as human beings so we wanted to work in those areas. So women chapter international was formed as an NGO, it is registered in Sweden but we plan to work, not only in Bangladesh and Sweden we want to work in African countries we want to work in the Bangladesh and North America we want to work in Europe, and we have started networking with a lot of organizations all over the globe already. So some of the, some of the issues that we have addressed already, and that are very important to us are, for example, rape as a war crime. If you're familiar with the history of Bangladesh, you know that it is one of the countries that has the highest amount of rape committed during its liberation war in 1971 highest in terms of what has been recorded in history. So, we started working about working around that topic, and then we realized that because of that trauma that has not been addressed properly, those, those survivors were not given the support that they needed that trauma has been handed down to generations to their descendants. And people are still suffering as a result of that. And this is not an unique issue to Bangladesh. So we started doing this webinars where we connected to survivors from Rwanda Genocide. We started connecting with people from Europe from possible from Poland from all over the world. And we want to continue on that road, we want to work with survivors of sexual violence we want to create a support system for them. We want to make sure that they have a rehabilitation program so that they can also reach their potential as complete human beings in the society today. We want to address issues such as female genital mutilation. That is a very, very serious and a very real problem in Europe today. So we talk about feminism in Europe, because it used to be such a very white collar feminism, even 20 years ago, when you talk about third and fourth wave feminism. It has gone way beyond those basic things. But if you look at today's Europe because of the globalization, the, the population and their needs have changed. If you look at the demographic today, it's not any longer that particular population that would relate to those fourth wave or third wave feminism, right, so their needs have become much more basic. So we felt that there is a vacuum there. There is a need for those crimes such as honor killing such as honor, honor based crimes such as forced marriage. Those things that are very, very real threat to South Asian diaspora all over the world. So we want to make sure that those things are addressed and that we can work in the policy level. We want to make sure that we work with, we create that support system so that no one, no one can ever fall to the crack ever again. And it's a very women chapter international is a very new organization, and we have only completed our first year. And to be specific, it's been only 15 months or so. So it's a very new journey, but we do have a lot of dreams and we have been connecting with some amazing organizations, and we have been getting a lot of response from the diaspora from the Bangladeshi diaspora from the African diaspora from all over the globe, and we want to continue on that path. We want to make sure that those without the voices, the survivors of war crimes, the survivors of those trauma that couldn't voice their stories because because of the shame because of the stigma that is connected to them. We want to make sure that their voices are heard. We want to create that platform globally, not just within Bangladesh, we want to make sure that platform exists wherever it's needed. Be it Rwanda or in South America or in Kosovo or it can be South Asian community in Toronto. We want to make sure that everybody gets the support that they needed. So that is where WCI wants to be there. And we hope that everyone will help us and guide us on that journey. Thank you everyone. Thank you Shumu for clarifying that what we actually want to do in future. And I want to just add here and I want to take this advantage, this program and that we have started our new venue with women chapter intentional. And we registered in June, 2020, so 15 or 16 months already. So but in this pandemic, we were not sitting I'd, you know, we were so many network have done and we have done so many webiness. And of course, you know, we don't have any for this, don't have any budget for this. We are doing it, you know, with our ambition. I don't know how to explain that. We have loved this work and what we do, it's a chapter internationalist organization, but what's the difference in other organizing with women chapter international is that we would be, we focus on domestic violence and for marriage, child marriage in our south Asian countries and south Asian diaspora all over the world and trauma course, trauma war rape victims and rape victims. So we have lots of other, you know, perspective to do so. Here is the difference when other organization with women chapter international that we won't focus on women things what you know don't do other organizations so we maybe women rights device we we feel the pain. What is happening with women all over the world. So we want to bring women all our organization to work with us and I hope that who is leaving us our program, they will, they will feel the necessity of this organization and they will extend their hand also to us. Thank you so much. Thank you safe happens you free dogs for such a program. It was a immense pleasure for us to introduce, you know, express ourselves. Thank you. Thank you all. I think it's been a very rich and informative talk. Thank you again women chapter international and also our web partner how round and the freedom talk series is a concept closely connected to the annual safe havens conference and it focuses on the issues regarding threats towards artistic freedom, free press and intangible heritage. These talks are organized by the safe havens freedom talks and sponsored by the Swedish Institute. And the next freedom talk will be in collaboration with the artistic freedom initiative very soon. Thank you again for joining us today and have a good day everyone.