The paragraph above is from an email petition I recently signed and passed on. It occurs to me that you, Joe, and other Christians here, as well as we non-Christians, might well have an interest in this situation and be interested in doing your part to try to end this barbarity.
If you decide to sign it and forward to your email list, please put your name at the top, the number you are on the list, and your town and country, like this:
1. Joe Smith, Akron, Ohio, USA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a
war upon women. If you decide not to forward this,
please send it to: sarabande@brandeis.edu.
This is an actual petition, and "signatures" will be lost if
you drop the line.
Dear Friends,
Please do not ignore this e-mail. This is something
that we as women essentially as human beings need to
support - I don't know if this is going to help but
take 3 minutes out of your life to do your
part! Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is
waging a war upon women.
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. Homes where a woman is present
must have their windows painted so that outsiders can
never see her. 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 a Ph.D.
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 must be extraordinarily
high; those who cannot find proper medication and
treatment for severe depression and would rather
take
their lives than live in such conditions. 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.
When what little medication that is left finally
runs
out, one doctor is considering leaving these women
in
front of the president's residence as a form of
protest. It is at the point where the term "human
rights violations" has become an understatement.
Husbands have the power of life and death of 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, to
generally
dress as they wanted, and to 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 it is alien to them, and
it is extreme even for those cultures where
fundamentalism is the rule. Everyone has aright to a
tolerable human Existence, even if they are women
in a Muslim country.
If we can threaten military force in Kosovo the name
of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians,
citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful
outright 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 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 subhuman and as so much property.
Equality and human decency is a fundamental RIGHT,
not a freedom to be granted, whether one lives in
Afghanistan or elsewhere. |
