Voice of Freedom - Leila Segal meets formerly enslaved women in Israel
Leila Segal spent January in Israel, putting down the foundations for a PhotoVoice project with formerly enslaved women in a safehouse in Petach Tikva. These are extracts from her diary during her trip. For more information about the project - Voice of Freedom - and to support us in raising the funds to start the workshops please see below.
3 January
The women I am working with were raped and kept in chains in the Sinai desert. They were forced to phone home then tortured so their families could hear their screams. When the families paid the ransom, the women were set free to run to the border with Israel where soldiers picked them up and took them to jail.
6 January
Today I made a cup of tea for an Eritrean woman who crossed the border into Israel three days ago with her eight-year-old son. She is 20. He is nearly as tall as she is and walks slightly in front, reaching back for her arm.
‘Make it very sweet,’ says Didi. I put three teaspoons of sugar in. The woman is shivering; she has come in to the shelter off the street.
‘How long were you in the Sinai?’ asks Didi.
‘Two months.’
‘Good, in the Sinai?’ The woman looks down at her lap. ‘No good in the Sinai,’ says Didi.
There are chocolate biscuits. The woman will not eat hers, but gives it to the boy.
9 January
In the shelter lives a three-year-old girl whose brother was shot dead by Egyptian soldiers as he raised the barbed wire for them to cross into Israel. The girl was in her brother’s arms.
11 January
An Eritrean girl. She speaks fluent Hebrew. Four years here, she goes to school. An Eritrean girl who lives in a room with three other families; a small bare room crowded with beds. A small dark bare room where three families and their children must live. Israel has taught her Hebrew but all the little brothers cry in Tigrinya.
13 January
I spent this afternoon talking with the Eritrean women in the shelter; they showed me their beautiful children, and we played.
It is hard for me to understand: why would you crush these flowers beneath the heel of your boot?
16 January
Some of the women arrive in Israel pregnant. Children of the slave masters; of fathers with no face, of gang rape. One woman can not keep the child within her; she must put him out. She is too many months. She fights to stop it. She fights against the birth.
19 January
Delina (name changed) came with her three children from Eritrea. Her mother paid the journey across the desert - through the Sinai. She married when she was 16 - ‘little marry, no good!’ She points to her eldest child: ‘first, 17, I have this! ... 18, I have this!’ - points to the second boy. ‘And now this!’ - the baby, in her arms.
Her husband is in jail in Eritrea for refusing to serve in the military. She will never see him again. ‘I go Eritrea, I jail.’ She can never go back.
21 January
It is very cold in Tel Aviv. Three families do not have enough blankets to stay warm tonight. Delina has no bedding at all. I have put out a call to friends in Tel Aviv, if anyone has spare blankets, please call.
22 January
I have seen a man look down at two Eritrean children playing like puppies in the soft blanket he brought them and afterwards weep tears.
23 January
I knocked on the door of Delina’s room but there was nobody there. I put the hand cream and baby flu medicine on a shelf, and the chocolate and two yoghurts on the sink beside her pot. There was no kitchen so Delina kept her pot and knife on the sink.
Her two boys ran about the street outside. A man named Thomas, who said he was from Nigeria, played with them in the darkness.
‘Abodah! Abodah!’ the women shouted up at me, waving their fists. ‘Delina - abodah!’
Glossary: Abodah - work, Hebrew, as spoken by the Eritrean women (normally avodah)
Voice of Freedom - Photography by formerly enslaved women
PhotoVoice, in partnership with advocacy organisation René Cassin and photographer Leila Segal, are seeking funding to launch Voice of Freedom, a participatory photography project in Israel for formerly enslaved women. This project will empower the women by enabling them to document their lives, feelings and experiences through the camera, and by supporting them to create texts in their own words to accompany the images they create. It will culminate in high-profile exhibitions of their words and photography in both Israel and the UK, and a high quality coffee table book of their work, thereby raising awareness of the broader issue of modern-day slavery and of the responsibility of individuals in society to play their part in eradicating it.
The project will be based at the Ma’agan Safe House for trafficked women in Petach Tikva, Israel. The safe house, run by the Israeli Ministry of Welfare, shelters women who were trafficked to Israel for the purpose of sex slavery, and who have now escaped. Some of the women in the shelter have given evidence against their former captors, as well as suffering traumatic and violent journeys to reach Israel.
Israel’s unique position at the juncture of Asia, Africa and Europe; its state of development; and its relatively democratic system make it prone to abuse by traffickers and those who exploit and dehumanise persons through slavery. Sex trafficking (both internal and external), child labour, forced labour and bonded labour all exist in Israel.
Sex traffickers prey on women seeking to leave desperate conditions in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Over 80% of the women involved in the prostitution trade in East Jerusalem have been trafficked. However, the incidence of sex trafficking has declined markedly since Israel passed its Anti-Trafficking Law in 2006. In contrast, the incidence of child labour has reportedly risen by 130% in the last decade; and forced labour and bonded labour are also on the rise.
Please help us make this project happen
We need your help to make this project a reality. Any support you can give will help us move forward and change the lives of these women, and work towards a society that will not tolerate exploitation and enslavement.
Donate here (quote ‘Voice of Freedom’ in the message box to have your donation restricted to this project)
Thank you