On International Women's Day

On this International Women's Day 2022, MPPM pays tribute to women around the world and their struggle for peace, equality, freedom, justice and the elimination of all forms of discrimination. A fight they have fought in the past and continue to fight today, sometimes discreetly and simply, sometimes at great risk.

Special tribute to women who, as a result of wars and other aggressions, are deprived of their freedom, forced to leave their homes, subjected to physical and psychological abuse, or lose their lives.

Constant homage to Palestinian women, who live on a daily basis a system of occupation, colonization, and apartheid with its procession of violence and discrimination.

Of the approximately 4500 Palestinian prisoners, in February 2022, 34 were women and 180 children. Since 1967, some 10,000 women have been detained by Israeli occupation forces. Often the detainees, like other Palestinians, are subjected to mistreatment and torture. Beatings, insults, threats, body searches, forced "confessions," sexual violence, all serve to intimidate and humiliate them.

Pregnant Palestinian women do not have the protection due to them under the Convention to end Discrimination against Women that Israel has ratified. Women in detention are forced to give birth in prison, or those who are transferred to hospitals are under strict supervision of the occupation forces. They are chained to their beds in the delivery room and handcuffed again a few minutes after delivery. Many Palestinian women have lost their babies because they gave birth at Israeli checkpoints where they were held up on the way to the hospital.

Palestinian women are present in resistance - in demonstrations, in political struggle, in civic organizations. Palestinian women are present in education - they constitute the majority of the university population - and in culture, whether in the visual arts, literature, dance, or music. Palestinian women are present in economic activity - in agriculture, handicrafts, trade. Palestinian women are present in the family, where they are the support of parents, partners, children and grandchildren.

Palestinian women still have to fight an arduous struggle against the gender prejudices of their society and for their own rights as women, an inseparable part of the general struggle of their people for freedom.

International solidarity has been essential to end other systems of occupation, colonization, racism and apartheid. Solidarity with dominated peoples is a right and a duty. It is an imperative of justice. International solidarity cannot privilege ethnic or geographical origins.

In the same way, international law and international humanitarian law must protect and must oblige, indiscriminately, all countries. International law, like the sun, when it rises is for all.

The Palestinian women, all the Palestinian people, all oppressed peoples, count on the international solidarity, count on the solidarity of the portuguese people!

March 8th 2022

The National Directorate of MPPM