They present the organisation Per Elles to denounce human rights violations against Muslim girls… but without mentioning «Islam.»
Two leisure monitors from the Raval have broken their silence to denounce the restrictions and abuses suffered by Muslim girls and the indifference of the institutions.
Image from the Per Elles presentation
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On 29 October, the organisation Per Elles, founded by two leisure animators from the Raval, was presented in Barcelona. According to them, after the pandemic they observed a disturbing pattern: Many teenage girls stopped attending mixed activities —swimming, summer camps or games with boys— while their brothers continued to take part without any problems.. Some girls still attended after-school tuition but under conditions of gender segregation. The situation is so serious that, In some public leisure centres in the neighbourhood, segregation has already become normalised. as the only way for girls to be able to participate. They also explained that the measure also applies to public secondary schools in the neighbourhood under the pretext of «cultural respect.».
When they took the matter to the institutional channels, “Everything came to a standstill” and they were pressured to forget the matter.. They decided to take their complaint to the Ombudsman, where they set out in writing their concern about the girls' situation. The Ombudsman commissioned a report and ordered an inspection of all the secondary schools in the Raval. According to Per Elles, The official conclusion was that “this is not a structural problem, but isolated cases.”.
The price of speaking out was being sacked after twenty years working in the Raval. From that injustice, however, came the impetus to create Per Elles., an entity that denounces what others prefer to silence under a very clear slogan: “For them, everything. Without them, nothing.”
“Girls must be pure. If they are not, the family is dishonoured.»
Aside from the progressive abandonment of mixed activities, Huma Jamshed (President of ACESOP, Cultural and Educational Association of Pakistani Women) She described what happens to girls who rebel.She explained that some are punished, expelled from home or even returned to Pakistan. She added that In family conflicts, parents “call in an imam or a community leader” to speak on their behalf. He also revealed that there is a patronage link between imams and politics. “at the mosque there are 50,000 men praying… then they pledge their votes; the women are not there”—, which Fuels the institutional silence on the lives of girls..
She recounted that the family's honour rests with the women, who are controlled by the men of the family and by outsiders: “Girls must be pure. If they are not, the family is dishonoured. Their parents, uncles or neighbours keep an eye on them..Explain that They are prevented from carrying out activities that are an essential part of learning., ...such as going on camping trips, getting around the city, or socialising with other groups. They consider these experiences fundamental to developing autonomy and confidence — and precisely for that reason, they say, “they don't want them to learn too much.”.
Huma Jamshed speaks out and denounces that Girls' education is designed so that they don't question anything., so that they learn the bare minimum — “just reading and writing” — and do not develop critical thinking or an awareness of their rights. Attendance at school is merely a formality, a matter of appearances and obligation, yet they cannot participate in the educational and social life it entails.
Image of the event poster
“Racism is looking the other way.”
Najat El Hachmi denounced the silence and the discomfort. that generate issues like this within certain political and institutional spheres. He explained that, When it comes to the abuse suffered by some Muslim women or girls, many prefer to remain silent for fear of appearing racist. So, instead of tackling the problem, The collective's image is prioritised over the rights of the victims.. “The scandal is not that this is happening, but that no one is talking about it,” he said. For El Hachmi, this silence—justified in the name of anti-racism—ultimately becomes complicity.
He added that In Europe, it has become normal to look the other way whenever these practices clash with equality values.. He said that there is an “anti-racist paternalism” that translates cultural respect into permissiveness, and that this is a serious mistake: “True racism is thinking that there are women who do not deserve the same freedom as others.”He criticised that, while any discrimination in our environment is condemned, patriarchal impositions are tolerated if they are wrapped in religion or community identity.
He stated that there cannot be authentic feminism without questioning religious inequality and she defended a feminism “radically egalitarian, also within Muslim communities”. For El Hachmi, the multicultural discourse that avoids conflict “has ended up justifying oppression”, and the result is that The girls of the Raval are less protected than any other girl in the country..
From Isolation to Forced Marriage
The toughest intervention of the day came from the representative of the association Valentes i Acompanyades, an organisation that has been working for years on cases of forced marriage and domestic violence. She warned that, in Catalonia, these cases “are not an exceptional occurrence” and that they often… They go unnoticed under the label of cultural respect.. She explained that often the process begins subtly, when girls stop taking part in school or leisure activities and are gradually sidelined from their social circle.
As she pointed out, “isolation is the first step towards forced marriage,” because it allows the girl to lose her bearings, friendships and autonomy. Once the ties have been broken, it is much easier to force them into marriage or to return them forcibly to their country of origin.. The speaker reminded us that this practice has been a recognised offence since 2015, pBut institutions often do not act with sufficient diligence.. She called for more training for social and educational service professionals, and above all for real detection and protection mechanisms for young women who are trying to resist.
Boycott the research on women
The sociologist Silvia Carrasco, president of Feminists of Catalonia and a researcher in migration, She denounced at the table that there is no systematic research on the daughters of immigrants in Catalonia. He pointed out that, while resources and theses have been devoted to studying racism, the lives of girls and women within immigrant communities, and the mechanisms of control that oppress them, have not been investigated. “We have no data. We don't know the scale of the problem. And without knowing it, we cannot intervene,” she said. She explained that even within the university, talking about this issue has been almost taboo.
Remember that in 2019, when she invited the UAB research groups on migration to a day-long event to discuss the situation of girls of immigrant origin, Six of the eight teams boycotted in order not to “align with right-wing discourse.”. According to Carrasco, this academic silence is not neutral: It is the result of a climate in which researchers avoid the topic for fear of being labelled racists..
Najat Driouech and the other invited politicians ignore Per Elles
The presentation of Per Elles left an image that sums up the institutional silence the organisation denounces: No political or institutional representative attended, despite having been formally invited.. The organisers had sent invitations to officials from the City Council, the Generalitat and various feminist MPs. Among the guests was Najat Driouech of ERC, who in the end also did not turn up..
If any official had attended, they would have been able to hear the voices of the affected teenage girls themselves: Per Elles played a recording in which they explained how they experience isolation, fear and the prohibition on living like any Western girl. Those testimonies, recorded in hushed tones and under anonymity, struck the audience and gave voice to what until now had only been whispered.
Caught between criticism of the left and rejection of the far right«
Criticism of politics hovered over the entire presentation. Both the founders of Per Elles and Najat El Hachmi, Huma Jamshed and Silvia Carrasco agreed to point to the responsibility of all institutions and all parties. They accused governments, administrations and political forces of having tolerated for years violations of fundamental rights in the name of “cultural respect”. No political space emerged unscathed.
However, the majority of the interventions They directed their harshest criticism at an «extreme right» that had no responsibility but was present in the room incognito.. The speakers insisted, almost obsessively, on rejecting the discourses that call for banning the religious veil as a visible symbol of the oppression of women. The reason? It's racism.
The result is a paradox that is hard to ignore and a completely deadlocked debate. For Elles and the panellists denounce that, from within feminism, they are accused of racism for speaking about the violations suffered by Muslim girls. At the same time, They themselves label as racist those political parties that propose limiting or banning the veil as a symbol of oppression..
The founders of Per Elles have anti-fascist activism in a left-wing party and denounce situations that their own political space prefers to ignore. During the event, Neither they nor any of those who have always lived under the privilege of Western values uttered the word “Islam.”; Only Najat El Hachmi and Huma Jamshed, who came from Islamic societies such as Morocco and Pakistan, did so. An incongruity that sums up the underlying dilemma: No one wants to say the name of the problem, and so the problem continues.
Until they are clarified, In the Raval, there will still be twenty-year-old girls who can't leave the house without their nine-year-old brother., as reported in the article in the newspaper Ara that exposed the issue a few months ago.
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