Hi all,
Here are a few articles I found on the issue discussed in Ira's forwarded
email (most of them are from CNN).
http://www.afghan-web.com/woman/
http://cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9904/17/AM-Afghanistan-Women.ap/
http://cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9902/04/taliban.01/index.html
http://cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9810/11/afghanistan.hidden.poor/
http://cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9810/21/taliban.women/index.html
All I can say is that I'm convinced that this is true, and I've signed the
email to show my support for the oppressed Afghan women and send it to
people I know so that they also can do the same.
Hope you will, too.
Regards,
Desiree Tilaar
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Indonesian Students in the US [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of Ali Simplido
Sent: Monday, April 26, 1999 11:56 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: CEWE', PRIA DAN WAPRI BOLEH BACA!!!
Kalo nggak salah saya pernah baca article di Washington Post (bulan
lalu kali) yang isinya hampir sama dengan ini. Cuman waktu itu yang
jadi issue adalah organisasi (saya lupa namanya) yang chairperson-nya
istri Jay Leno. Organisasi ini berusaha menunjukkan kekejaman
pemerintah Taliban thdp kaum wanita Afghanistan dengan mengambil
contoh2 similar dengan e-mail yang di bawah ini.
Tapi organisasi ini ditentang oleh beberapa sukarelawan/sukarelawati
Afghanistan karena malah menjadi counter productive, meaning: nanti
bantuan dari luar negeri malah berkurang.
Furthermore, ada seorang sukarelawati Afghanistan mengadakan surveyed
ttg this issue di Afghanistan dan hasil survey ini bertentangan dengan
apa yang diributkan organisasi istri Jay Leno tsb. Malah overall hasil
survey ini menyimpulkan bahwa keadaan Afghanistan women sekarang jauh
lebih bagus dibandingkan dengan waktu pemerintahan Najibullah
(communist).
Jadi alangkah bagusnya kalo kita lebih berhati-hati dalam menanggapi
issue yang kayak gini karena PROVOKATOR bukan hanya di Indonesia loh:-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Indonesian Students in the US [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of Ira Damayanti
Sent: Monday, April 26, 1999 10:18 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Another Version of CEWE' JANGAN BACA!!!
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 17:03:04 +0900
From: Kantei <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
===================================================================
Hi everyone!
I apologise to those who have already received this email from
someone else. For those who have not seen it yet: please take some
time to read it! Thanks,
Pali (and a couple million women in Afghanistan)
Original message
I know that most of you probably don't like reading group emails but
this one I think is worth reading and thinking about. I know you don't
know whether this will actually make a difference to the situation but
I think it is worth a try when it really doesn't cost us anything.
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 every 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 misbehavior. 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, in protest, have mostly left the country, taking medicine and
psychologists and other things necessary to treat the sky-rocketing
level of depression among women. 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, perpetually 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 rights violations' has become an understatement. Husbands
have the power of life and death over their women relatives,
especially their wives, but an angry mobhas 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.
