AUT: Taliban war on women

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 11:29:55 -0600 (CST)
From: Hal Wylie <hwylie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: carolyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, sgasster@xxxxxxxxx, susane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
     bmelvin@xxxxxxxxxxx, bmelvin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
     birdsong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Taliban

Subject: Taliban & the women question

Dear friends:

I received the following note from a friend, Anita Adams of Haan Books.
I though it is worthwhile for you to review and circualte.

Kassahun Checole
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

sarabande@xxxxxxxxxxxx



Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not kill

the petition. It's better to copy than forward this message.Thank you.



Melissa Buckheit

Brandeis University



TEXT:



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  skyrocketing

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

purqua, 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 subhuman 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 the United States and the U.S. Government 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 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 the United

States.



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) Erica J. Lippitz,  South Orange, NJ

10) Joyce Nussbaum, Highland Park, NJ

11) John R. Goldberg, Indianapolis, IN

12) Constance Macy Koharchik, Indianapolis, IN

13) Robert M. Koharchik, Indianapolis, IN

14) Kenneth Albers, Ashland, OR

15) Catherine Davis, Ashland, OR

16) Suzanne Irving, Ashland, OR

17) Carolyn Iyoya Irving, San Francisco, CA

18) Amelia Wu, Oakland, CA

19) Rey M. Rodriguez, Los Angeles, CA

20) Taline Aharonian, Los Angeles, CA

21) Dino Barajas, Los Angeles, CA

22) Phyllis Carli, Los Angeles, CA

23) Jennifer Kasper, Boston, MA

24) Ali Noorani, Boston, MA

25) Juli-Ann Carlos, Boston, MA

26) Elaine Alpert, MD, Boston, MA

27) Ben Siegel,  Boston MA

28) D. Paul Robinson, Columbia, MO

29) K. Fothergill, Washington, DC

30) Kent Klindera, Washington, DC

31) Amy Duncan, Alexandria, VA

32) Anna Mussman, Springfield, VA

33) F.L.Shad Hayes, Sarasota, Fl

34) Elaine M. Silver, Denville, NJ

35) Pamela Towne,  Camarillo, CA

36) Seena B. Frost, Watsonville, CA

37) Sylvia Senensky Guelph, ON. CAnada

38) Bill O'Reilly, Guelph, ON Canada

39) Kenneth Wilson, Upavon, Wilts, United Kingdom

40) Anita Adam, London, UK

41) Kassahun Checole, Lawrenceville, NJ,USA & Asmara, Eritrea

42) Hal Wylie, Austin, TX
Hal Wylie
Dept of French & Italian
Univ of Texas
Austin TX 78712
512/471-5531     FAX 512/471-8492
hwylie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---