-----Original Message-----
Sent: 05 January 2000 09:49
Subject: FW: Please please read this!
Not sure how this is going to get back to anywhere relevant, but makes you
feel vg and saintly for putting your name to it.
> 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
> 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 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 up
> until
> 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 trad ition 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 life 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.
>
> 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,
> webadmin.hchr@unorg.ch and to:
>
> Angela King,
> Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the
> Advancement of Women, UN,
> daw@undp.org
>
> Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do
> not
> kill the petition. Thank you.
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