-----Original Message-----
From: Debbie O'Reilly
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 9:43
To: Mary Pye; Bernie Lang; Cheryl Perrin; Roslyn Reilly; Kathleen Fahy;
Nicchia Schutt
Subject: FW: Afghanistan women
-----Original Message-----
From: Kaye Fry
Sent: Wednesday, 11 August 1999 9:10
To: Gayle Gilligan; Janelle Martin; Karen Smith; Debbie O'Reilly
Subject: FW: Afghanistan women
-----Original Message-----
From: Ellen Gibson
Sent: Wednesday, 11 August 1999 9:05 AM
To: Kaye Fry
Subject: FW: Afghanistan women
This is really sad indeed. Please take note of the instructions at the
bottom of the petition.
Please spare a minute to read this mail. Thank you.
The government of Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. The situation is
getting so bad that one person in an editorial of the Times compared the
treatment of women there to the treatment of Jews in pre-Holocaust Poland.
Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and have
been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even if
this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes. One
woman was beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of fundamentalists for
accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned to
death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a relative.
Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male
relative; professional women such as professors,translators,doctors,
lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed
into their homes, so that depression is becoming so widespread that it has
reached emergency levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic
society
to know the suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating
that the suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and
treatment
for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such
conditions,has increased significantly. Homes where a woman is present must
have their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They
must wear silent shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of
their lives for the slightest misbehaviour. Because they cannot work, those
without male relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging
on the street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s.
There are almost no medical facilities available for women, and relief
workers have mostly left the country. At one of the rare hospitals for
women,a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on
top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do
anything, but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen
crouched in corners,rocking or crying, most of them in fear. One doctor is
considering, when what little medication that is left finally runs out,
leaving these women in front of the president's residence as a form of
peaceful protest.
It is at the point where the term 'human right violations' has become an
understatement. Husbands have the power of life and death over their women
relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right
to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or
offending them in the slightest way. David Cornwell has said that those in
the West should not judge the Afghan people for such treatment because it is
a 'cultural thing', but this is not even true. Women enjoyed relative
freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, and drive and appear in
public alone until only 1996 -- the rapidity of this transition is the main
reason for the depression and suicide; women who were once educators or
doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms are now severely restricted
and treated as sub-human in the name of right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It
is not their tradition or 'culture',but is alien to them, and it is extreme
even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule. Besides, if we
could excuse everything on cultural grounds, then we should not be appalled
that the Carthaginians sacrificed their infant children, that little girls
are circumcised in parts of Africa, that blacks in the US deep south in the
1930's were lynched,prohibited from voting, and forced to submit to unjust
Jim Crow laws. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence, even if
they are women in a Muslim country in a part of the world that Westerners
may not understand. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name
of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, then NATO and the West can
certainly express peaceful outrage at the oppression,murder and injustice
committed against women by the Taliban.
*************
STATEMENT: In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in
Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves support and action by
the people of the United Nations and that the current situation in
Afghanistan will not be tolerated. Women's Rights is not a small issue
anywhere and it is UNACCEPTABLE for women in 1999 to be treated as sub-human
and so much as property. Equality and human decency is a RIGHT not a
freedom, whether one lives in Afghanistan or anywhere else. *****
1) Shahana S Ahmed, Nairobi, Kenya
2) Tashmin Khamis, Karachi, Pakistan.
3) Frank Haupt, Bern, Switzerland
4) Adrian Coad, Strasbourg, France
5) Brian Skinner, Loughborough, England
6) Paul Chung, Loughborough, England
7) Bryan Knell, Woodhouse Eaves, England
8) Richard Tiplady, Chesham, England
9) Carolyn Skinner, Ilford, England
10) Mark Birchall, Putney, England
11) John Field, Wimbledon, England
12) Mark Northage, Brisbane, Australia
13) Justin Northage, London, England
14) Gustav Schloms, Durban, South Africa
15) Graham Lapthorn, Durban, South Africa
16) Liz McHugh, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
17) Debbie O'Reilly, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
18) Kathleen Fahy, Toowoomba Queensland, Australia
**** Please sign to support,and include your town and country.
Then copy and e-mail to as many people as possible. If you receive this list
with more than 50 names on it, please e-mail a copy of it to: Mary
Robinson, High Commissioner, UNHCHR,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and to:
Angela King, Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women,
UN, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not kill the
petition. Thank you. It is best to 'copy and paste' rather than forward the
petition.
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