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March 2008
SOUTH ASIA: 'We Can' create gender equity
NORTH KOREA: A long winter after the floods
CHINA: A teacher, women's rights activist, mother
PHILIPPINES: From the army to the 'light of peace'
CHINA: Snowstorm in the news
HONG KONG: Poverty news poll and Poetry
O.N.E celebrates
a woman in China
named Huang Shuhua
who s tood up to the
police and courts. After Shuhua’s
daughter died, with bruises on the
naked body, Shuhua persevered to bring
the case to court. The trial became very
influential, with huge media coverage,
and significant public support for
women’s rights.
The roots of International Women’s
Day date back to the 1850s, when
women in New York garment factories
staged a protest on the eighth of March
against inhumane working conditions.
mark International
Women’s Day, which
falls on the eighth of
March, and Oxfam would
like to celebrate her life and
dedicate this edition of O.N.E to her.
This edition of O.N.E also celebrates
a volunteer in Bangladesh named
Beauty Ara who tries to make peace
and justice by visiting homes where
domestic violence has occurred. She
returns again and again “like a cat” that
may or may not be wanted, she says.
More than anything, Beauty wants to
change the way that men and women
think about gender and power.
Today, over 150 years later, inequality
remains: women comprise about 70
per cent of impoverished people,
and domestic violence is the leading
cause of injury and death to women
worldwide.
Please, listen to Beauty and Shuhua
and Yuen-ling.
Please listen to the voice of peace
and justice.
It’s the most beautiful weather.
Madeleine Marie Slavick
Editor, Oxfam News E-magazine
Oxfam Hong Kong
Maybe everything is about the
weather.
Here in Hong Kong, most homes
and offices have no indoor heat, and
in February, people were struggling
with temperatures at about 12 degrees
Celsius for three straight weeks. Every
day a scarf, and sometimes wool hats
as we sit inside at the computer. Climate
change is being seen as an explanation
for the cold streak, as well as for the
huge snowstorm still affecting millions
of people in mainland China. The winter
in North Korea is also bitter, as harvests
were flattened by floods last year.
For some emotional and political
weather, O.N.E follows the journey of
a Filipino who has struggled to commit
himself to peace in Mindanao after
years of being an army commander
there. His transition has taken time and
determination and mutual support.
O.N.E also presents a new book by
Wong Yuen-ling (1958-2008). Nature
features in her writing. “Hold me,” she
asks the wind in the title poem – Yuen-
ling always connected self to universe.
She had a strong and beautiful voice in
various circles in Hong Kong and Beijing,
from women’s rights to filmmaking
and more, and was a colleague at
Oxfam. Her book is being launched to
Bangladesh: These women all volunteer in Oxfam’s ‘We Can’ campaign against gender-based violence and for gender equity.
About 70 per cent of the poor people
in the world are women or girls, and
in South Asia, the chance of girls and
woman living in poverty is probably
higher – with a likelihood of being out
of school as children, being illiterate as
adults, earning very little cash, if any,
for the work they do, living a shorter
life than men do, and a life that is full of
inequality, discrimination and
possibly gender-based
violence. Bangladesh,
India, Nepal and
South Asia:
POVERTY, VIOLENCE AND ‘BEAUTY’
in North Korea
Beauty as seamstress and
campaigner.
Nearly every August, floods from the
summer monsoon. And every winter,
snowfall and snowstorms.
For the past thirteen years, North
Koreans have faced food shortages,
and this is especially difficult to bear
in the wintertime, which is long, with
six months of frost, and as cold as -30
Celsius. With the floods of August 2007
said to be the worst ever, this wintertime
is therefore one of the hardest to
endure.
The 2007 floods hit the country from
the 7th to the 14th of August. On 15
August, Oxfam Hong Kong received a fax
from the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea (DPRK) government through
our counterpart, the Korea Committee
for the Promotion of International Trade
(KCPIT), an organisation in Pyongyang
we have been working alongside for
three years.
The crisis was severe, the fax said: the
floods came before the harvest could
and washed away over 200,000 hectares
of farmland, hundreds of thousands of
people were struggling, schools and
hospitals and reservoirs and irrigation
channels and other infrastructure was
damaged or destroyed.
Food was the top priority need,
and after negotiations with KCPIT and
finding an appropriate supplier of non-
genetically modified food (which is a
requirement by the DPRK Government),
Oxfam sent 100 tons of nutritious
soya bean oil across the border from
mainland China. The beneficiaries were
thousands of farmers in Hwanghae, one
of the hardest hit areas. Hwanghae is
part of the ‘Cereal Bowl’ that normally
provides most of the country’s food
supply, so the loss of the harvest had a
huge impact on the nation.
Two staff members from Oxfam Hong
Kong’s Humanitarian and Disaster Risk
Management Team recently returned
from a monitoring trip in the DPRK. It
was the first time that both Oxfam staff
members had been to the country. They
felt that despite the hardship of the
floods and the harsh winter, people
were very hearty and thankful, not
blaming anything or anyone for their
difficulty, and maintaining a positive
attitude towards life.
The team visited three farms, all of
which are run collectively in the DPRK.
They saw the devastation caused by the
floods and observed that humanitarian
assistance from Oxfam and other
agencies, and the government too, had
definitely helped people get through
the crisis. Food was not aplenty, but it
was sufficient, and Oxfam knew that
the crisis could have been much worse.
Farmers said, “I have never experienced
such a devastating flood before” and
Improving the quality of people’s lives
means working with men and women,
together – wives and husbands, children
and parents, teachers and students.
Only in this way can everyone reach
their potential.
This holistic thinking is at the heart
of Oxfam’s ‘We Can’ campaign in South
Asia, an initiative to end gender-based
violence in Bangladesh, India, Nepal,
Pakistan, Afghanistan (for which the
UN has no gender-based statistics)
and Sri Lanka (which ranks exactly
in the middle of the GDI, at 68 of
136 countries). The Oxfam campaign
recruits and trains volunteer activists to
mobilise their communities to change
people’s attitudes and actions towards
women. These activists, numbering
over 350,000 in the six countries, are
called ‘change makers’, and there
are many reports that behaviours
are already beginning to change. By
2011, We Can wants to have recruited
5 million change makers who will
have mobilised some 50 million other
people.
The change makers visit people’s
homes, persuading married couples to
find ways to address their differences
without violence. They go to schools
and talk openly with schoolchildren
about conflict in the family home.
One Oxfam change maker in rural
Bangladesh named Beauty Ara had
once suffered abuse from her husband
for years and years. “The psychological
abuse was 24 hours a day,” she says.
When she was pregnant with her one
and only child, her husband said he
would divorce her if the child was
a girl. It was a boy, so they stayed
together, but his violence soon flared
up again. When the boy was about
two, he threw Beauty out of the home
and she has not seen her son for over
fifteen years. Beauty started a new life
elsewhere, joined a village committee,
was able to buy a sewing machine and
set up a small home-based tailoring
business, raises chickens and ducks,
and volunteers as an Oxfam change
maker.
Beauty – which is a fairly common
name in Bangladesh – says, “What
happened in my life, I don’t want
anybody to go through that, that’s
the reason I talk about it [as a change
maker]… This violence in women’s
lives… Why can’t we change it?”
Pakistan all rank in the lowest third
in the 2006 Gender Development
Index (GDI) developed by the United
Nations.
Worldwide, domestic violence is
the single biggest cause of injury and
death for girls and women, and in
South Asia, this violence in the home
can also include honour killings (if a
woman is suspected of adultery) and
infanticide. In fact, the violence can
begin in the womb: female fetuses
are more likely to be aborted than
male ones are. Amartya Sen calls
these millions of murdered people the
‘missing women’ of South Asia.
Promoting equality in the South
Asian context is not a short-term
task. It is also never about separating
women out for privileged treatment.
All around the world – not just in
South Asia – violence against girls and
women is condoned and supported,
tacitly or explicitly. All around the
world, there is a deep-seated belief that
girls and women are fundamentally
less important, less valuable, and less
capable than boys and men are, and
so therefore the violence is not really
seen as being so wrong. It is these
misperceptions that Oxfam wants to
change.
All photos by G.M. B Akash / Oxfam
To see a short video about the Oxfam change maker named Beauty, visit:http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/impact/success_stories/beauty_wecan_video.html
For more about gender issues in Hong Kong and mainland China, visit:http://www.oxfam.org.hk/public/contents/category?cid=3707&lang=iso-8859-1
“The whole village was washed away,
our houses damaged, our crops gone.”
The head of one farm said that some
families have been sleeping in their
neighbours’ homes for safety and for
added warmth.
Oxfam Hong Kong began supporting
projects in the DPRK in 1996, mostly of
a humanitarian nature. In 2004, when
we began partnering with KCPIT, the
work shifted more to rehabilitation
and development, with a focus on
improving food production through
sustainable agriculture. From 1996 to
2007, Oxfam allocated over US$2.5
million on a variety of emergency,
training, rehabilitation and community
projects. Recent assistance has included
bio-fertilisers and bio-pesticides,
sheeting for crops, diesel oil for tractors,
and small machinery for collecting and
grinding grain, particularly corn and
rice. Productivity had improved before
the August 2007 floods ravaged the
land, and farmers are looking forward to
replanting and then the next harvest.
Wendy Wong is a member of Oxfam Hong Kong's Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Management Team.
SUMMER RAINS, WINTER SNOW Text and photo
by Wendy Wong
South Asia:
POVERTY, VIOLENCE AND ‘BEAUTY’
Holly Chan (centre) with some members of the Joint Monitoring and Assistance Team, consisting of Bantay Ceasefire (a community monitoring group), International Monitoring Team – Mindanao and other groups. Genela Buhia (2nd to right) manages Oxfam Hong Kong’s Philippines programme.
Haji in the office of the peace alliance, Sindaw, telling Holly Chan of Oxfam Hong Kong his life story of giving up guns for pacifism. Upstairs is where he and other Sindaw members pray, five times a day.
ChinA: A Mother Devoted to Women’s Rights
“Huang Shuhua is an ordinary
teacher. Like tens of thousands of
Chinese women, she had expected to
live a normal life, giving her daughter a
new family, watching the growth of her
grandchildren, leading on to aging and
death. However, the unexpected and
mysterious death of her daughter has
made her into a “well known” mother.
Huang Shuhua’s daughter, Huang
Jing, was also an ordinary primary
school teacher in Xiangtan, Hunan
Province of China. On February 23, 2003,
Huang Jing died in her hostel after her
boyfriend came to spend a night with
her. When discovered, she was naked
lying on the bed with many bruises to her
lower body and private parts. The next
day, Huang Shuhua received a call from
her daughter’s school. She rushed there,
but nothing could bring her daughter
back. Knowing her daughter well, she
believed that the school was keeping
something from her. The fact that Jiang
Junwu, her daughter’s boyfriend, had
spent the night in Huang Jing’s bedroom
and had left the next morning at 7 came
to light only later….
The Public Security Bureau issued
three separate autopsy reports res-
pectively dated February 25, March
19 and June 8, 2003. They all came to
the conclusion that Huang Jing died of
sudden physical illness.
Huang Shuhua knew her daughter
was an active athlete and was physically
fit with no medical problem. She and her
family members could not accept the
conclusion that her daughter had heart
disease. She believed her daughter was
murdered and the murderer was Jiang
Junwu. So she turned to experts and
scholars for assistance….
Professor Chen Yuchuan of Zhong-
shan University, an expert in forensic
science, conducted a fourth autopsy
on August 14, 2003. The report showed
that the police did not have sufficient
evidence to substantiate their claim of
sudden physical illness.
Because she took up her daughter’s
case, Huang Shuhua came under
enormous attack from some sections of
society. She was threatened and beaten
by people related to the suspect, but she
refused to give up….
Huang Shuhua’s effort eventually
bore results. On June 2, 2003, Jiang
Junwu was detained by the police as a
suspect. He was arrested on July 8, 2003
with a charge of rape. To her dismay, the
Procuratorate did not accept the reports
by Nanjing University and Zhongshan
University. In April 2004, Jiang Junwu
was released on bail after nine months
in detention.
Huang Shuhua did not give up...
the Supreme People’s Court sent five
experts to Xiangtan to re-examine the
cause of death… On July 2, 2004, they
reached the conclusion that ‘Huang Jing
died because of the abnormal sexual
intercourse by Jiang Junwu.’
[On 7 December 2004], more than
600 days after the death of Huang Jing,
the People’s Court of Xiangtan started
to process the persecution of Jiang
Junwu on the charge of rape… [On 10
July, 2006, the Court found Jiang not
guilty.]
As a mother, Huang Shuhua has
unfulfilled tasks and unceasing sorrow.
Her life has changed, so have many
others. ‘The latter half of my life is to
be devoted to public welfare. I have to
work on protecting the rights of women,
and to repay so many people who have
helped me.’”
The interview excerpted here first appeared in PeaceWomen Across the Globe (a profile of 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005) and Colours of Peace (featuring 108 nominees in and around Hong Kong). To order the books, and related DVDs: www.1000peacewomen.org , www.1000peacewomen-hk .org , and www.1000peacewomen-china.org.
Oxfam Hong Kong supported Garden in Heaven, a film which documents Huang’s long pursuit for justice: NGOs and universities use the film, and it has also been a powerful policy advocacy tool for judicial reform. The director Hu Jie says, “The film is the people’s history. I allow people to copy it freely.”
of Mindanao, but it too had needed
time to develop, having been formed
only after three years of community
development and peace advocacy
work supported by Oxfam Hong Kong
and other NGOs. Seven core member
organisations of Sindaw are strategically
located in different peace zones set up
by local governments, so the alliance
can reach far and wide: Sindaw has
facilitated constructive dialogue among
the Philippine government and the
separatist groups, empowered various
stakeholders in Mindanao to take up
peace advocacy, and has mobilised
peace zones to carry out their work.
Haji feels at ease these days,
peaceful. He has a new set of skills
as a peace advocate than as a soldier-
commander. “I have learned how to
organise people to uphold our rights
for peace and security, and I learned
how to do this in a sustainable way,”
he said. He has learned to integrate
peace into many areas of his life, for
himself, his family, the community and
the next generation, too. He regrets not
attending his daughter’s graduation
from kindergarten and considers that
as one of the saddest mistakes of his
life. “I don’t want to miss my beloved
daughter’s school graduation again
because I am fighting in the mountains,”
he says, tears filling his eyes.
Haji is endearingly popular among
youth, and is frequently asked to talk
with university students around the
region. When he shares his life story,
he makes sure he always says, with a
forceful peace, “War makes everyone a
loser, and civilians lose the most.”
For another O.N.E article about peace-making in Mindanao:http://www.oxfam.org.hk/one/200708/index.html
Holly Chan is a member of the Archipelagic Southeast Asia team at Oxfam Hong Kong. She was in the Philippines for a disaster management workshop and to meet with organisations involved with conflict resolution.
this movement after a group of about
100 military men stormed his village in
1974 and shot many of his neighbours
dead. His instinct was to fight back,
and he thought he would always be
fighting. He was so opposed to the
Marcos government and so dedicated
to the MNLF that he was fearless, even
when his relatives were in danger.
Even when family members were taken
captive, Haji did not give in. “Why
would I be afraid? I was so used to the
sound of gunfire, it was like music to
me,” he says with a bitter smile.
Gradually, he found it harder and
harder to justify the war with the
military. The military was taking lives,
which they do not have the right
to do, but what about us, he asked
himself, we are also taking up arms
and fighting, sometimes killing. Do we
have this right? So, Haji left the MNLF
in the early 1990s. But when a spate of
bombings in 1998 killed civilians and
destroyed public facilities, his response
to the chaos was to pick up the gun
again.
He did not fight for long. Around
the year 2000, Haji committed himself
to peace and to monitoring the ceasefire
that had been officially negotiated, but
was proving hard to implement. Being
involved in the Sindaw peace alliance
has been a big part of Haji’s life ever
since.
Sindaw is now a leading peace
advocate in the conflict prone region
His name is Haji Quirino L. Oranto.
I call him Haji, as his friends and
colleagues do.
Later, I learn that the term ‘Haji’
is a title of respect given to devotees
who have made the long, and often
expensive, pilgrimage to Mecca. Yet, in
the first few minutes of meeting I had
already felt him to be a man committed
to a cause.
A devout Muslim, he is also a
determined pacifist. Haji works with
an alliance of peace advocates in
Mindanao called Sindaw Ko Kalilintad,
which can be translated as ‘Light of
Peace’, and when I interviewed him
in his office, he said that one of the
happiest times of his life was at the
International Peace Conference in
Guangzhou, China, in 2006. Meeting so
many people working for peace was a
very emotional experience, he said. He
felt part of a large movement for peace
and human rights, and felt happy to be
able to contribute in his way.
Yet, in the past, Haji was a fierce
fighter, a commander of an army. In the
1970s, he explains, when the country
was led by Ferdinand Marcos, the
government infrastructure was corrupt,
martial law was enforced, and many
innocent people were massacred. The
Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
was established in 1972, soon after the
beginning of martial law, and led the
armed resistance for an independent
Islamic state in Mindanao. Haji joined
By Holly Chan
The following court case is one of the most influential cases in China, with
widespread coverage, particularly on the Internet. Although Huang Shuhua lost
the case, and nearly lost herself with the years of fighting in her daughter’s
name, in the name of all women, and for women’s rights, she has won the res-
pect, admiration and support of many people throughout China and the world.
PhiLiPPinES: One Man’s Way to Peace
What can people do about
Climate Change and Poverty?
Please tell us at:
http://forum.oxfam.org.hk/?c_lang=eng
Straw brings a better grip in snow and ice
1 2
3 4
7
65
98 10
OXFAM HONG KONG WEBSITEwww.oxfam.org.hk
OXFAM BOOKSOxfam Hong Kong has created
more than 30 books, some in Hong
Kong, some in Taiwan, some on the
Mainland, some in Chinese, some in
English, some bilingual, and some
mostly with images, which cross all
languages. Through publishing the
voices of poor people around the
world, we want to change the way
people think about poverty. We
want justice.
To order books: www.oxfam.org.hk/public/bookstore/list?lang=iso-8859-1
OXFAM in the NEWS CHINA: Oxfam Trailwalker was nominated for a
2007 Rhino Award in recognition of the pioneering
nature of the global event and its environmental-
ism. Oxfam Trailwalker began in Hong Kong and
is now also held annually in Australia, England,
Japan, New Zealand and in mainland China in 2009. Thousands of people challenge
themselves to walk, or run, 100km of often mountainous terrain, and to raise as
many donations as possible for Oxfam. Oxfam Hong Kong holds the ‘world record’
of raising over HK$27m at the 2007 event. The Rhino Awards are presented by China
Outdoor Adventure Magazine (��外探��雜志), which is well read among hikers. See
www.oxfamtrailwalker.org.hk for more.
MOKUNGOxfam Hong Kong publishes this quarterly
magazine in Traditional Chinese. Mokung,
which means both “no poverty” and “infinity”,
highlights a different aspect of development
in each issue. The Editor is Tung Tsz-kwan. The
April 2008 edition looks at the poverty news
poll in Hong Kong.
To subscribe: www.oxfam.org.hk/public/bookstore
/?lang=big5
Mokung is online at www.oxfam.org.hk/public/contents/category?cid=1017&lang=big5
ONEO.N.E – Oxfam News E-magazine – is uploaded
at the beginning of every month at www.oxfam.
org.hk/one.
To receive a copy in your inbox, please
subscribe – it is free.
To subscribe: www.oxfam.org.hk/one/subscribe.html
CO
VER
: Mad
elei
ne M
arie
Sla
vick
17th Floor, 28 Marble Road, Northpoint, Hong KongO.N.E, published in the middle of each month, is also online:
www.oxfam.org.hk/one//
Hong Kong
The worst blizzard in 50
years brought much of China
to a standstill in January
and February. News stories
have mostly focused on the
power cuts, the collapsed
houses, people relocating to
safer areas, and the frenzy
of the millions of migrant
workers trying to return
home but getting stranded
and sometimes trampled at
train stations.
There has been less cover-
age of all the livestock that
have died: animals which
provided a food and income
source for millions of rural
people. All the farmed trees
that have cracked and fallen
have also been a huge loss,
but less reported.
Oxfam Hong Kong is assist-
ing thousands of people in
three provinces through the
crisis. Emergency relief teams
worked through the Spring
Festival, China’s major holi-
day marking the new lunar
year, trying to get supplies
through to people who need-
ed it most. It has not been
easy, with snow and ice on the
roads and rails. The HK$10.4
million in donations from the
Hong Kong public and the
Hong Kong SAR Government
(as of 19 February) is being
used for blankets, coats,
food and other basics.
Oxfam is equally com-
mitted to the rehabilitation
and rebuilding ahead: there
will be a lot of work to do,
including with livestock
and forestry. Oxfam is also
concerned – along with
meteorologists in China
O.N.E remembers Wong
Yuen-ling (黃婉玲) (1958-
2008) who worked with
Oxfam Hong Kong’s educa-
tion team and with several
other organisations and art
groups in Hong Kong and
坐下來寫封信
沒有紙就托付風
擁抱我
言語之前敞開的世界
此時呼吸最是回事
生命之流起伏
還是讓我坐下來寫封信
靠近你
從時間領土裡
摘下文字的花串
讓風帶給你
Think I’ll Sit down and Write a Letter
Since there’s no paper, I ask the wind
Hold me
The world before the beginning of speech
Here, breathing is everything
The ocean of life rises and ebbs
Think I’ll sit down and write a letter
To get close to you
To pluck from the realm of time
A garland of words
And send to you on the wind
– that the snowstorm may
be indicative of the extreme
weather patterns related to
climate change. Adaptation
to c l imate change wil l
need to be a component of
any disaster management
response, in China, and
around the world.
For more on the snowstorm, visit: http://www.oxfam.org.hk
Feng Ming Ling is a member of the Oxfam Hong Kong rural livelihoods team. She is based in Kunming, China.
Beijing. She made many
contributions to social justice,
in her very own creative and
open-minded and open-
hearted way, and a circle
of friends is celebrating her
life by publishing a book of
her poems, with visual art
by Wong Yankwaï (黃仁逵).
Here is the title poem, in
the original Chinese, with a
translation by Jacob Wong
(王慶鏘), and the painting
‘Tea’ by Wong Yankwaï.
POEM and PERSON
Launched for International Women’s Day 2008, the book (in Chinese only) is available on-line http://www.cp1897.com.hk/Index?Page=1 and at various bookshops in Hong Kong.
CHINA: Working through the snow
By Feng Ming Ling
For two weeks in January, Oxfam Hong Kong and the Ming
Pao, a leading newspaper in Hong Kong, ran an on-line poll
(in Chinese) to determine what the public saw as the most
important poverty news in 2007. These ten news items received
the most votes.
POVERTY NEWS
Climate Change: food and water shortages will result if temperatures rise by 4.5oC, according to a report by the IPCC
522 votes (8%)
Patents in India:courts protect India’s right to produce affordable no-brand medicine, dismissing the law-suit by pharmaceutical giant Novartis; India is the leading manufacturer of low-cost medicine
251 votes (4%)
Cyclone in Bangladesh: at least 3,260 people die and 40,000 injured when super-cyclone Sidr strikes the country, according to UN
222 votes (3%)
Homless in the Democratic Republic of Congo: 1.3 million people have fled their homes for safety during the armed conflict
268 votes (4%)
Hunger in Iraq: 15% of the people face food shortages, according to Oxfam Intermational
332 votes (5%)
Rising Food Prices: people demonstrate around the world
481 votes (7%)
WTO: poor countries at risk as governments of wealthy countries use regional and bilateral trade deals to get what they could not get through multilateral WTO-regulated deals
421 votes (6%)
Floods across South Asia: Millions of people affected, particularly in India and Bangladesh
413 votes (6%)
UN Millennium Goals: 18 million more teachers needed toreach the goal of universal education by 2015 (72 million children out of school now)
374 votes (6%)
Inflation in China: poor people at great risk with inflation at an 11-year high (November)
339 votes (5%)