Dear colleagues,
I'm drawing your attention to the email petition below, which is to do with the untimely death of a young researcher, Giulio Regeni. You may not feel that this is directly to do with Caribbean Studies or with Black Studies, but I think it has a number of connections with recent discussions and campaigns amongst our academic communities, because it intersects with all the wrongful deaths of people who ask too many questions. It relates to the capacity of academics everywhere to be critical, to inform, to engage with societal concerns, and so intersects with a number of other issues around academic freedoms that are gathering pace in our universities, and that can impact minority voices and minority area studies first and foremost. It's not just about the freedom of UK/European academics being able to go to other places and study (I know that there's a difficult postcolonial politics around that), but it's about how the death of one researcher can become a metonym, a placeholder, for the deaths of so many researchers, so many critical voices, globally. And for me, as a teacher, it's about what can happen, despite numerous risk assessments and reflections, to a young researcher who might have made a difference in the world.
Obviously it's up to you if you want to sign the petition or not (you have to be a UK citizen - 10,000 signatures triggers a UK parliamentary debate), but I'd be interested to hear people's takes on how this death, and the publicity building around it, relates to our concerns.
All the best,
Pat
Dr Patricia Noxolo,
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston,
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK
________________________________
From: Sara Fregonese
Sent: 11 February 2016 11:16
To: Adam Ramadan; Arshad Isakjee; Austin Barber; Cristiana Zara; [log in to unmask]; DiXiang Xie; Dominique Moran; Emmanouil Tranos (Geography); Emmet Fox; Graham Squires; Irina Kuznetsova; Jessica Pykett; Joanna Southworth; John Round; Jonathan Oldfield; Julian Clark; Lauren Andres; Lloyd Jenkins (School of Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences); Marie Anne Hutton; Martin Muller; Matthew Anthony Cocks; Melanie Rohse; Michael Beazley; Patricia Noxolo; Peter Kraftl; Peter Lee; Rosie Day; Sara Fregonese; Sophie Alice Hadfield-Hill (School of Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences); Steven Emery (Earth and Environmental Sciences); Vlad Mykhnenko
Subject: Petition to UK Parliament: Statement on UK steps to ensure a full investigation of Giulio Regeni's death
Dear HG-CURS colleagues,
Some of you may have read about the disappearance and brutal murder of Giulio Regeni in Cairo (Egypt). Giulio was an Italian citizen and PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge and was in Egypt on university business, doing fieldwork for his thesis on independent trade unions. On 25th January, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution in Egypt, he disappeared. His body was found on 4th February in a ditch of Cairo's outskirts with evident signs of torture.
Sadly, what happened to Giulio happens to hundreds of Egyptians opposing Al-Sisi's government. There have been several open letters by academic organisations and individuals to the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi asking for a full and conclusive investigation. These include letters by Giulio’s supervisors at Cambridge, the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA), the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES).
Italy has demanded a joint investigation with Egypt. However, several among us feel that an investigation must extend beyond these two countries. Giulio was in Egypt on university business while being a PhD student at a UK university. Neil Pyper (Giulio's friend and Senior Lecturer at Coventry University) recognised that there are limits to what academic institutions can do to protect their researchers, but has stressed that the UK government has the duty to make clear that abuses against them will not be tolerated (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/06/murder-giulio-regeni-egypt-academic-freedom-students).
As geographers whose research (and the research of our own graduate students) involves fieldwork in a vast range of locations, it is extremely important that the UK government is active in ensuring accountability in case of violations against employees of its universities. Therefore, a petition to the UK government and parliament has been launched this week to ask the UK government for an investigation into Giulio's extrajudicial killing:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120832
Please consider signing and circulating among your networks.
With thanks and best wishes,
Sara
(Original text circulated by Dr Diana Martin at the University of Portsmouth)
Dr. Sara Fregonese
Birmingham Fellow
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences &
Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security
University of Birmingham B15 2TT
+44 (0)121 414 3635
http://tinyurl.com/k8b66yc
Please note: I do not work on Fridays
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