Accent of Women

January 26.  Australia Day.  It marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson and the start of genocide against the original owners of this land.  We should not celebrate Australia Day.  It's a day that has been sanctified and sanitised.  Instead, we should be protesting and fighting for land rights, sovereignty and self-determination for all Aboriginal people. This week's show features Celeste Liddle and Kim Bullimore

Across the Pacific and Torres Strait, rising seal levels are forcing many communities to seek a new home. And while climate change denialists bicker over the validity of the claims, people are being evacuated because their islands are uninhabitable.This week I chat to radio broadcaster Maureen Mopio about her documentary - No Land, No Livelihood, No Home.No Land, No Livelihood, No Home is a ten part series about what happens when communities are displaced by climate change.  The series was distributed with the support of the Community Radio Network.GuestMaureen Mopio is a Presenter on Women's Profile - Radio 4EBProduced/Presented Ayan Shirwa

In this episode, we chat with Saba Alemayoh the owner of Afro Hub and Saba’s Ethiopian Restaurant, and the winner of the 2017 Multicultural Impact Award.But this episode isn’t about how to succeed in the restaurant business or a tale of the ‘good migrant’. Today we are shining the light on ordinary people doing extraordinary things.Produced by Ayan Shirwa

Today's show is about about developments within the feminist movement in Algeria.The facilitator is Fatemeh Masjedi, an Iranian academic historian and activist based in Berlin. She is a former political prisoner in Iran because of her women’s rights activities.And the person being interviewed is Selma Oumari. She’s an Algerian French member  of the New Anticapitalist in France.  She is  involved in antiracist struggles as well as international solidarity.

In under 24 hours, a number of academics, community activists, artists and writers will gather at the University of Melbourne for a three day forum called ‘Black-Palestinian Solidarity Conference’. To mark this historic event, I spoke to Irene Watson, a Professor of Law at the University of South Australia and Tasnim Sammak, a PHD candidate and an advocate for the rights of young people and women of colour.Produced by Ayan Shirwa

On today’s show we will broadcast just the first question of a panel discussion between women of colour involved in the Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African socialists. You’ll hear when the compare introduces the panel, that the whole discussion goes for about two hours, but of course we don’t have time for all of it on Accent of Women. We will post a link to the whole call on our facebook page. The discussion took place in August 2019, which was at the height of the recent uprisings in Sudan and Algeria. A content warning on today’s program, there is discussion about the use of rape in war, and the struggle for women in the context of these rapes.

For the first time since the fascist military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, tanks rolled into downtown Santiago, Chile, this weekend, deployed against protesters demonstrating against a drastic fare hike of the Santiago metro, from the equivalent of USD $1.12 to $1.16.On Saturday, the right-wing government of billionaire Sebastián Piñera invoked the still-standing 1980 Constitution established by Pinochet to declare a state of emergency across the country and to impose curfews.This is off the back of a massive strike wave earlier in the year where 17,000 walmart workers, 80,000 school teachers and other workers across mining and railways took strike action amidst massive state repression.This week's show features Marisol Salinas, a Mapuche Indigenous woman from Chile, based here in Melbourne, and one of the founders of the Latin American Solidarity Network, and also with Friends of the Earth Melbourne.

This week we look at the circumstances that bring Tamil refugees to Australia and in the second half of the show, two of the founders of the online talk show ‘Set The Tone’ discuss their pilot episode.GuestsNiro Kandasamy is a Tamil studies researcher at the University of Melbourne.Yar Biar and Adier Maluk are young women from the African diaspora and members of the platform Set the Tone.

On today’s program we continue with the broadcast of Flesh, the law and black humanity, that Ayan started on the program last week.  Firstly, Flesh, the law and black humanity was an event hosted in Melbourne Victoria by the Feminist Book Collective, and particularly, by Nilmini Fernando, a Sri Lankan born woman living in Australia.  According to the event description, Flesh, the law and black humanity aims to stand outside of white Western colonial frames to discuss, theorize and address the outcast locations of the intellect, literature, art and bodies of First People, raced and gendered others in the settler colony.

This week we look at some of the issues affecting trans and gender diverse communities in Australia and play a snippet from the event ‘Flesh, the law, and black humanity’.GuestsAmao Leota Lu is a proud Samoan Fa'afafine and trans woman of color. She is an international speaker, performing artist, writer, activist and storyteller who infuses the intersectionality of gender, culture and life experiences in her performance works and talks.Associate Professor Sandy O'Sullivan is a Wiradjuri (Aboriginal) academic, researcher and creative practitioner. Produced by: Ayan Shirwa