Allegations of apartheid - Misplaced Pages

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It has been suggested that Israeli apartheid be merged into this article. (Discuss)

It has been suggested that Hafrada be merged into this article. (Discuss)

It has been suggested that Global apartheid be merged into this article. (Discuss)

It has been suggested that Gender apartheid be merged into this article. (Discuss)

It has been suggested that Sexual apartheid be merged into this article. (Discuss)

It has been suggested that Apartheid (disambiguation) be merged into this article. (Discuss)

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Apartheid. (Discuss)

The term apartheid is most commonly used in reference to the South African apartheid, a former official policy of political, legal, and economic racial discrimination against nonwhites. However, the term has also come into general usage to refer to any policy or practice involving the discriminatory separation of different groups. This usage is controversial and disputed; as there is little international agreement on how to establish standards for what constitutes officially-sanctioned apartheid, the term is considered by some to be a mere political epithet outside of a historical South African context.

Definition of the International Criminal Court

Main article: Crime of apartheid

According to the International Criminal Court, "'The crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime".

Accusations against countries

Afghanistan

Afghanistan, under Taliban religious leadership, has been charactered as a "gender apartheid" system where women are segregated from men in public and do not enjoy legal equality or equal access to employment or education.

Australia

While there is no existing Australian government policy that segregates Aborigines, their poor socio-economic conditions typically leave them somewhat segregated from the rest of Australian society. This situation has led a number of commentators and civil rights groups to characterize the situation as "Apartheid". In fact, Australia's government policies are viewed by some as the original impetus for the Apartheid system in South Africa.

Brazil

Growing inequities in the economic and social status of Afro-Brazilians in Brazil have been described as "social apartheid". According to São Paulo Congressman Aloizio Mercadante, a leading member of Brazil's leftist Workers' Party (PT), "Just as South Africa had racial apartheid, Brazil has social apartheid." The exclusion of youth (particularly street youth) from Brazilian society has also been described as "social Apartheid". Carlos Verrisimo states these two inequities are often inter-related, and Cristovam Buarque, Governor of the Federal District from 1995 to 98, Minister of Education from 2003 to 2004, and currently PT senator for the Federal District argues that "Brazil is a divided country, home to the greatest income concentration in the world and to a model of apartation, Brazilian social apartheid." The Nation has described Brazilian president Lula as "fighting to bring the poor of Brazil out of economic apartheid".

Canada

Canada's treatment of its native peoples has been described as "Canada's Apartheid". In 1966, Thomas Berger stated:

The history of the Indian people for the last century has been the history of the impingement of white civilization upon the Indian: the Indian was virtually powerless to resist the white civilization; the white community of B.C. adopted a policy of apartheid. This, of course, has already been done in eastern Canada and on the Prairies, but the apartheid policy adopted in B.C. was of a particularly cruel and degrading kind. They began by taking the Indians' land without any surrender and without their consent. Then they herded the Indian people on to Indian reserves. This was nothing more nor less than apartheid, and that is what it still is today.

In the 1980s, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations compared Canada's practices to Apartheid, and stated "Perhaps the most severe and yet overlooked example of discriminatory practices towards Canadians is to be found in the treatment of our own indigenous people, the Native Canadians". Canada's citizenship laws (described as "apartheid laws") did not grant full citizenship to native peoples until 1985. Even in the 21st century, according to Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, "Economically, socially, politically, culturally, we have come to accept a quiet apartheid that segregates, and thus weakens, native and non-native society", and in 2004 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation described Canada's Indian Act, and reserve system for native Indians, as "Apartheid: Canada's ugly secret".

China

China's houku system of residency permits, which has effectively discriminated against China's 800 million rural peasants for decades, has been been described as "China's apartheid". According to Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, this system has been "one of the most strictly enforced "apartheid" social structures in modern world history. He states "Urban dwellers enjoy a range of social, economic and cultural benefits while peasants, the majority of the Chinese population, are treated as second-class citizens."

France

Muslims in France have recently been accused of apartheid due to their unwillingness to integrate into the French society. Many Muslim quarters in France are no-go areas for non-Muslims, and even the police avoids them. An internal security agency in France reported in 2004 that 300 communities across the country were marked by Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and violence, coupled with hatred of France and the West. Some Muslims are already calling for the imposition of sharia in predominantly Muslim districts; in some areas, they have imposed Islamic dress, chase away French shopkeepers selling pork and alcohol, and shut down cinemas on the basis that they are "places of sin".

India

India's treatment of its lower-class dalits has been described by UNESCO as "India's hidden apartheid". According to Rajeev Dhavan, of India's leading English-language newspaper The Hindu, "casteism is India's apartheid which will continue in its most vicious and persistent forms for decades to come." Eric Margolis has claimed that India "frantically tr to prevent its caste system, which is often called ‘hidden apartheid" from being put on the agenda of the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban.

Iran

Iran has also been accused of implementing a "gender apartheid" system at the behest of religious leaders.

Israel

Main article: Israeli apartheid

The phrase "Israeli apartheid", or the description of Israel as an "apartheid state", is a controversial method of criticizing Israel's policies by drawing an analogy between the policies of the Israeli government towards Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel to those of the apartheid-era South African government towards its Black and mixed-race populations. Critics of the term argue that it is historically inaccurate, offensive, antisemitic, and a political epithet used as justification for terrorist attacks against Israel.

The analogy was used as early as 1987 by Uri Davis, an Israeli-born academic and Jewish member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in his book Israel: An Apartheid State (ISBN 0862323177), which provided a detailed comparison of Israel and South Africa. The highly controversial World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa adopted resolutions describing Israel as an "apartheid state".

Malaysia

In 2006 Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia's former Prime Minister, and a campaigner for women's rights, described the status of Muslim women in Malaysia as similar to that of Black South Africans under apartheid. She was apparently doing so in response to new family laws which make it easier for Muslim men to divorce wives, or take multiple wives, or gain access to their property. Mahathir stated ""In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women." According to the BBC, she sees Muslim Malaysian women as "subject to a form of apartheid - second-class citizens held back by discriminatory rules that do not apply to non-Muslim women." Her comments were strongly criticized: the Malaysian Muslim Professionals Forum stated "Her prejudiced views and assumptions smack of ignorance of the objectives and methodology of the Sharia, and a slavish capitulation to western feminism's notions of women's rights, gender equality and sexuality," and Dr Harlina Halizah Siraj, women's chief of the reform group Jamaah Islah Malaysia said "Women in Malaysia are given unlimited opportunities to obtain high education level, we are free to choose our profession and career besides enjoying high standard of living with our families."

Northern Ireland

Many Irish nationalists and republicans have described Northern Ireland as being a gerrymandered or even apartheid state, on the grounds that it was created to ensure a built-in Protestant minority, resulting in discrimination against Catholics in government, education, housing and employment. One legacy of this has been that most state schools in Northern Ireland are either Protestant or Catholic, although there now also a number of integrated schools. This has often exacerbated religious, political and cultural differences between the two comunities.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's practices against women have been referred to as "gender apartheid" and "sexual apartheid". Saudi Arabia's treatment of religious minorities has also been described as "apartheid". Until March 1, 2004, the official government website stated that Jews were forbidden from entering the country.

Soviet Union

Soviet propaganda often used the term "apartheid" as a political epithet during the Cold War, in order to contrast the "rotting capitalism" as colonialist and racist, with declared advantages of Marxism-Leninism such as proletarian internationalism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the pejorative is still being used in the political discourse, for example to describe national problems within Russia, or the status of ethnic Russian minority in the Baltic states or the situation in Crimea.

Other accusations

The term "apartheid" has been used to describe differential treatment of women in institutions such as the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church. See, for example, Patricia Budd Kepler in her 1978 Theology Today article "Women Clergy and the Cultural Order".

Sexual apartheid is also a term specifically used by some same-sex rights advocates to describe a legal system that "subjects lesbians and gays to separate and unequal treatment in terms of the laws governing sexual behaviour, marriage, employment, child adoption, membership of the armed forces and so on." The concept of "sexual apartheid" is used to argue against legal discrimination in age of consent between heterosexual and homosexual sex and the non-recognition of same-sex marriage or the advocacy of civil unions as a substitute are cited.

References

External links

UN January 2006 report "Question of the Violation of Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine - Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, John Dugard, on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (see also this and Israel/Occupied Territories, Briefing to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
"Brothers in Arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria", in The Guardian, February 7, 2006
"Worlds Apart" in The Guardian, February 6, 2006
Apartheid Israel by Lawrence Davidson, Professor of Middle East History at West Chester University
"Israel: an Apartheid State?" in Le Monde diplomatique, November 2003
"Israel and Apartheid", in Le Monde diplomatique, March 2006
Against Israeli apartheid by Desmond Tutu and Ian Urbina in The Nation (July 15, 2002)
The Movement pro-Palestinian site
Israeli Apartheid and Terrorism by Edward S. Herman
Battling Israeli 'apartheid' BBC article on Adel Kaadan's legal battle for the right to live in a Jewish town.
Oxford holds "Israel apartheid" week Jerusalem Post
Israeli Apartheid - Time for the South African Treatment by Omar Barghouti
Israel Is Not An Apartheid State, Jewish Virtual Library
Apartheid? Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote by Benjamin Pogrund, a former anti-apartheid activist from South Africa now living in Israel.
Abusing 'Apartheid' for the Palestinian Cause by Gerald M. Steinberg, Jerusalem Post August 24, 2004