Please sign and pass on if you feel comfortable doing so:
-----Forwarded Message-----
Subject: Please sign and pass on.
The Taliban's War on Women:
**** Please sign at the bottom to support, and include your town.****
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 [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 rather than forward the
petition.
Melissa Buckheit - Brandeis University
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 todeath 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 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.
David Cornwell has told me that we in the United States 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 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 Americans do not
understand. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name
of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, Americans
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 this Earth 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 any where in this
Globe.*****
1) Leslie London, Cape Town, South Africa
2) Tim Holtz, Boston, MA
3) Joyce Millen, Cambridge, MA
4) Diane Millen, Falls Church, Va.
5) Bill Millen, Falls Church, Va.
6) Milt Eisner, McLean VA
7) Harriet Solomon, Springfield, VA
8) Arlene Silikovitz, West Orange, NJ
9) Susanna Levin, New Rochelle, NY
10) Rabbi Gary Greene, Framingham, MA
11) Danny Siegel, Rockville, MD
12) Rabbi Neal Gold, Highland Park, NJ
13) Michael German, North Brunswick, NJ
14) Lauren VanO, NJ
15) Tony Polubinski, Whidbey Island, Washington
16) Amanda Miuccio, Charleston, SC
17) Lori L. Faulk, Florence, SC
18) Roberta L. Weir, Conway, SC
19) Barbara Garrison, Myrtle Beach, SC
20) Cindy Long, Boone, NC
21) Rev. Barbara Campbell, Northumberland, PA
22) Joseph W. Adams, Johnson City, TN
23) Horst A. Stollberg, Blountville, TN
24. Ursula Lowe, San Martin de los Andes, Argentina
25 Tony Ryan, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
26 Elaine Scott, Wellington New Zealand
27 Michael and Jeannie Knott, Wellington, New Zealand
28 John & Yvonne Walton, Palmerston North, New Zealand
29 Ann & Brent Fearnley, Kaikoura, New Zealand
30 Michael and Alison Bare, Christchurch, New Zealand
31 Jamie and Sai Yim Donaldson, Hong Kong
32 Kelly & Irene TONG, Hong Kong SAR/New Zealand
33 Arron & Monika Baker, Hong Kong SAR & New Zealand
34 Pat & Michelle English, Shanghai, China, and New Zealand
35 Craig & Jenny Johnston, Auckland, New Zealand
36 Fiona Murray, Auckland, New Zealand
37 Rachael Craven, Auckland, New Zealand
38 Mary June Pettyfer, Victoria, Canada
39 Caspar Davis, Victoria, BC, Canada
The information contained in this document is confidential to the
addressee and is not necessarily the views nor the official communication
of the Department of Labour.
All final/official papers which are sent from the Department will be sent
by non-electronic means, on appropriate letterhead, signed by authorised
personnel.
