[ALBSA-Info] Afghanistan's war against women

[irma spaho]

Please consider signing this petition.
Thank you.


The government of Afghanistan is waging a war upon
women. Since they 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 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 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 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.

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.


Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence,
even if they are in ountry. If we can threaten military force in
Kosovo in the name of
human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians,
citizens of the world 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
> > > United Nations and that the current situation
> > > overseas will not be tolerated. Women's Rights is not
> > > a small issue anywhere
> > > and it is UNACCEPTABLE for women in 2000 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 elsewhere.
> > >
> > > 1) Donna VERNON,  Cairns, AUSTRALIA
> > > 2) Joanne LANGHAM, Cairns, AUSTRALIA
> > > 3) Robyn AULMANN, Darwin, NT,AUSTRALIA
> > > 4) Liz McCall, Byron Bay NSW
> > > 5) Megan ROUGHLEY, York, ENGLAND
> > > 6) Clare WALLACE, Prague, CZECH REPBLIC
> > > 7) Cheryl HERR, Iowa City, USA
> > > 8) Andy Clinton, Iowa City, USA
> > > 9) Gerri Engelman, South Africa
> > > 10) Tandi Njobe, South Africa
> > > 11)Irma Spaho,Boston, USA
> > > 12)
> > > 13)
> > > 14)
> > > 15)
> > > 16)
> > >
> > > PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign the bottom and 
>forward
> >it
> > >
> > > to everyone on your distribution lists. If you receive this list with
> >more
> > >
> > > than 200 names on it, please e-mail a copy of it
> > > to:  sarabande at brandeis.edu
> > > mailto:sarabande at brandeis.edu
> > > ( Send after every 200 names.)
> > >
> > > Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate
> > > and do not kill the
> > > petition. Thank you. It is best to copy rather than
> > > forward the petition.
> > >
> > > LOUIS ARMAND
> > >
> > > Department of English & American Studies
> > > Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University
> > > Nam. Jana Palacha 2, 116 38 Praha 1, CZ
> > >
> > > lazarus at praha1.ff.cuni.cz         tel.: (+4202) 206 12 407
> > > louis_armand at yahoo.com            fax.: (+4202) 248 12 166
> > >
> > > http://members.tripod.com/~louis_armand/seances.html

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