Khadija Magardie
Several pressure groups attending the World Conference against Racism in Durban have complained bitterly that their plight has been drowned out by the hype over the Israeli/ Palestinian impasse and the debate over reparations for slavery and colonialism.
With the full title of the conference including “Racism, Xenophobia and other forms of Related Intolerance”, they argue that the United Nations platform was intended to give a voice to victims of discrimination, but instead turned into a political debacle.
At the back of the NGO exhibition stands, Doreen Nelson and Dean Tabbett hand out pamphlets. Short on funds, they arrived only two days before the conference ends, and sent their display materials by bus from Harare.
Tabbett whips out his Zimbabwean identity card. The two zeros at the end of his identification number denote him and all whites and Indians in the country, regardless of whether they were born there or not as an “alien”.
Nelson and Tabbett are activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Mixed Race Coloureds in Zimbabwe.
They say they are ignored and marginalised in Zimbabwe because they are “neither here nor there”. As the children of black mothers and white fathers and vice versa, they are refered to in Shona as “mwana mahure” children born of whores.
“Our own government has alienated us. At independence we thought they would embrace us, but now we are still racially classified as not pure Zimbabwean,” says Nelson. She describes as “sad” the fact that discrimination against people of mixed race has had limited conference coverage.
She adds: “We are the ones who feel racism most. They will tell us to give up our other passport, but what do you say when you don’t have another passport, and only know Zimbabwe as your home?”
In an adjacent hall, a caucus of indigenous people from countries as diverse as Alaska and Australia are debating a clause in the draft declaration which appears to limit land ownership rights of indigenous people.
Though a fairly vocal group when combined to thrash out issues, splinter groupings earlier complained their issues were being sidelined in the build-up to the release of the conference’s final plan of action.
Native Americans in the United States and Canada are one of them. Earlier this week, groups clad in traditional dress made mileage out of the departure of the US and Israeli delegations to finally put their own issues on the table.
“Our rights are not-negotiable” screamed banners, and Native American leaders told how governments were trampling on international human rights protocols by, for instance, restricting settlement of indigenous peoples in certain areas, as well as perpetuating general racist policies reflected in their treatment by police officials and other government agencies.
“The world press always focuses on sensational issues, but we are the real people, with the problems,” says Madonna Thunder Hawk, a Native American leader.
She laughs when asked whether the conference will make any impact in changing racism in the world. “Let us not forget this is all about networking meeting with people in similar situations, that is the real way things can change,” she says.
From the Romany community of Europe to the Dalit or “untouchable” castes of India, various groups lobbying against discrimination have been chasing press attention throughout the conferences. In some cases, successfully; in others, not.
Tuba Akyuz and Fatma Bostan Unsal’s cause has received virtually no publicity at the conference. The Turkish women are from women’s rights organisations fighting a ban on the hijab or Islamic headscarf in Turkey.
Secular Turkey has a predominantly Muslim population almost half of the country’s women wear headscarves, but there has been increasing pressure against the Islamic dress-code because it is viewed as a “terrorist symbol”.
Akyuz and Unsal have been forced to halt their studies because the hijab is forbidden in universities. The ban, which began in 1998 at medical universities in Turkey, soon spread to include all campuses, schools and government offices. Any woman refusing to take off the headscarf faces dismissal.
There is no specific law outlawing its use, but the ban is being enforced through various by-laws.
“The Turkish constitution forbids denying anyone access to education so the world is sitting by while our human rights are being destroyed,” says Akyuz.
The issue of xenophobia, hotly debated in South Africa, has also received marginal attention. An official from a local refugee rights organisation attending the conference remarked that it was “absurd” that the question of anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa, especially directed against black foreigners from Africa, had been negligibly treated.
Few leaders of African countries attending, with the exception of Rwanda, spoke of ethnic and racial tensions within their own borders.