Photojournalist speaks about injustices against women

Injustices against women spotlighted Thursday's, presentation in the Cape Florida Ballroom by activist and photojournalist Paula Allen.

Her presentation, "Against All Odds: Women Around the World Demand Justice," featured photographs and stories of women from Chile, Asia, and the Congo.

The program, continuing the 2009-2010 university-wide theme of "Covering the World: Journalists Speak," was co-sponsored by the UCF Global Perspectives Office, Political Science Department, Women's Studies Program, International Services Center, Women's Research Center, UCF Life and the Chastang and Global Connections foundations.

Allen started taking photographs at age 20, eventually working for Newsweek and other magazines.

"I found a vehicle that could speak to the contradictions that I felt about the world," she said about becoming a photographer. "It gave a voice to how confused I was."

In 1990, her focus was the 16-year search for mass graves of lost husbands, brothers, and sons of Chilean women.

Due to Augusto Pinochet's military coup of Chile, in 1973, 26 innocent males were "disappeared," some of which were never found; they were executed by the "Caravan of Death," a Chilean Army death squad.

Allen mentioned how death was easy to deal with, but it is hard to not search for something that's been lost.

When she returned in 2008, 32 years after the disappearances, the women had finally been told what had happened to their loved ones.

"The man who came forward and testified was a pilot," she said. "He loaded the bodies from the mass graves to a plane...and dropped the bodies into the sea."

In May 2007, Allen traveled to Africa to document the genocide occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"As a documentary photographer for 30 years, I was certain that I had witnessed the worst atrocities and listened to the most terrifying stories of horrors in the world," Allen said.  "Then...I went to an invisible war where, until recently, there was almost no published information, real concern, or indifference; for the past 13 years in the [DRC], more than 5 million people have died, making it the deadliest war since WWII."

Allen doesn't see these women as victims anymore, but now as survivors.

"I really look at these women and what I see now are the next leaders of Congo," she said, referring to a photograph. "If you can be gang raped and have what's happened with sexual violence, and get up and dance like this, you are the person that I want to lead me."

The women were asked what they wanted, which was a safe place, so money was raised for the women to build their own city. Named the "City of Joy," this safe haven opens May 25.

"This [happened] between May and November of the same year in the center of Africa in a war zone," Allen said. "If this can be accomplished there, really, anything can get accomplished."

She was asked during the question and answer session how she deals with her work emotionally; Allen replied simply that she believes this is her calling.

She also said she has a trauma therapist and friends that help her "survive the world."

"I have built up a community of like-minded people who will either do what I do or understand my need to do it," she said.

Junior Interdisciplinary Studies major, Tamara Hoffman, also feels a calling towards helping empower sexually abused women.

She mentioned how hard  it is to get involved, the fear of going to some of these places because of violence and disease, and Allen's mentioning of the issue of funding.

"I have so much to do as far as my homework and my life; I'm poor, I can't send money really," Hoffman said. "I want to do something eventually and I feel a calling towards this--it's just I still feel kind of paralyzed by it, like I don't feel I can do anything."