& Nature Folk !
There
There was a time when you were not a slave,
remember that.
You walked alone, full of laughter,
you bathed bare-bellied.
You say you have lost all recollection of it,
remember.....
You say there are no words
to describe this time,
you say it does not exist?
But remember........
"*by Monique Wittig
From: "Les Guer'rille'res"
Another Women's Holocaust!
Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan:
And Other International Atrocities
Against Wonderful Females!
If Somehow, Any Oppressed
or Endangered Females
Manage to Read this:
We want you to know that
we are
crying out for you
and you are not forgotten
by us!
We will not give up until
you are Free!
Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan:
On September 27, 1996, the
Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic militia, seized control of the capital
of Afghanistan, Kabul, and violently plunged the occupied territories of
Afghanistan into a brutal state of gender apartheid in which women and
girls have been stripped of their basic human rights.
"If this was happening to any other class of people around the world, there would be a tremendous outcry. We must make sure these same standards are applied when it is women and girls who are brutally treated." Eleanor Smeal
Spread The Word!"
Please encourage them to
join the fight against gender apartheid by writing President Clinton, Secretary
of State Albright and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and urging
them to do what they can to restore the rights of Afghan women.
Click on these *Take Action
Now* Links for email addresses
& more info.
To
Take Action Now
For Afghan Women:
Intro.-Info.-Click
Here
If Somehow, Any Oppressed
or Endangered Females
Manage to Read this:
We want you to know that
we are
crying out for you
and you are not forgotten
by us!
We will not give up until
you are Free!
A Young Woman on an elist
we are on
made a very good suggestion:
You can help just by purchasing
the hand-made crafts
made by some of the refuge
Women.
They have a beautiful colourful
purse
just right for keeping your
cards in.
You will have something beautiful
& help someone maintain
freedom in the process.
What more can you ask for?
Try
Here:
Here is a copy of a petition
that was circulating!:
The situation in Afghanistan,
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 the 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. Women are virtually deprived
of any sunlight. One woman was beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of fundamentalist
men who claimed she accidentally exposed 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.
A little girl was stoned
to death for trying to ride her bike to school , as soon as this right
was first denied females..
A women have been shot
for leaving their homes to
seek medical care....
the list of atrocities is
endless.....
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 imprisoned into their homes, so that depression
is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency levels. There is
no way in such a currently extreme Fundamentalist-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 pain or 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 over, 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 accusations against
them, of "trivial misbehavior". Because they are not allowed to work for
wages, those without male relatives or husbands are either starving to
death or trying to find a way to beg for food,
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
abuse against women and girls
and 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 burquas', fearfully unable or or unwilling
to speak, eat or do anything, but are slowly wasting away. Others seemed
to have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners,
perpetually rocking or crying,
most of them in terrible fear.
One doctor was 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.
But it is likely that would
just seal their death warrants.
The Taliban claim to be following
a pure, fundamentalist Islamic ideology, yet the oppression they are perpetrating
against women has no basis in Islam.
It is at the point where the
term 'human rights violations'
have become an understatement.
Male relatives have the power
of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but
an angry mob of men has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often
to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or if men claim to take offense
to them in the slightest way.
David Cornwell has told people
the absurd excuse, that we in the United States should not judge the Afghan
men for such treatment
of females, because it is
a 'cultural thing',
but this pathetic rationalization
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 one of the main reasons for the traumatic 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 should we not be appalled that the Carthaginians sacrificed their
infant children, , that blacks in the deep south in the 1930's were lynched,
prohibited from voting and forced to submit
to unjust jim crow laws?
Or that Nazis committed genocide
to further their own culture?
Few would still rationalize
these things
& expect to go unchallenged!
So why excuse it away when
it is gender apartheid
& persecution of females
then?
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 (or others) do not understand. If we
can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the
sake of ethnic Albanians then Americans, Canadians, Europeans & The
United Nations can certainly express outrage at the oppression, murder
and injustice committed against women by the Taliban.
Kathleen Barbosa
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 the U.N. 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 1998/99
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, Canada,
Europe, Africa, Asia
or anywhere else in the world!*****
Free Our International Sisters
Now!
"A Flower For The Women of Kabul"
Een bloem voor de vrouwen in Kaboel
Eine Blume für die Frauen von Kabul
Une fleur pour les femmes de Kaboul
Uma flor para as mulheres de Cabul
Una flor para las mujeres de Kabul
En pmuntring til Kabuls kvinder
A flower for the women of Kabul
En blomma till Kabuls kvinnor
Un fiore per le donne di Kabul
Anna kukka Kabulin naisille
The European Parliament has called on the
international community to show its support of Afghan women by joining
them in a campaign entitled "A Flower For the Women of Kabul,"
on March 8, 1998-International Women's
Day.
Now Let's Keep It Going Till They Are Free!
Spread The Word!"
Please nominate someone you
have found...or
Those who make a webpage
or perform another valuable service to help create awareness as a means
for Freeing The Afghan Women
may to view or apply for
& recieve this
Unity
Award.
Spread The Word!
Help End Gender Apartheid!
Please nominate someone you
have found...or
Those who make a webpage
or perform another valuable
service
to help create awareness
as a means for
Freeing The Afghan Women
&/or Other Endangered
Females
or those helping The Dine'h
American Indians!
may apply for & recieve
a
Unity Award.
Also Help The Dine'h!
You may also use the pictures
& recieve an Award for
work on behalf
of The Dine'h Indians
of Arizona!
It has come to our attention
that
The Dineh Grandmothers have
been leading a peaceful resistance
to try to stop the abuse
of their people
which is still happening
as we speak.
This is not the fault of
The Dine'h
or the The Hopi.
Find out why.
Find out the truth about
the relocation of The Dine'h
to radio-active land at a
toxic dump site,
that will continue to kill
their people!
To learn more about this,
this on-going Human Rights
crisis in
The United States,
(carried out without the
vote
of U.S. citizens,)
you may go to the Big Mountain
link
first & then come
back for your images to make
a web page
if you like..
Big
Mountain
Please
Find Out The Truth
You may also recieve this
Unity Award for helping The Dine'h-American Indian Grandmothers
in the peaceful resistance
to stop
the forced relocation &
genocide of their people.
This is happening as
we speak!
This is not the fault of
The Dine'h or The Hopi.
Find out what is actually
the truth about this.
It is pure treachery.
How can we stop this,
before it's too late?
Who will be next? Wake up! Unite!
You may also apply for unity
awards for work on behalf of other endangered Females !
Unity
Awards.
To Help You Make Your Own
Pages
& For Free
Images To Use
To Create Awareness for our
less-fortunate Sisters &
Earth Friends.
Click
Here
"Honour Killings"? Or False
Ego-Killings?
How Many More Unjust Slaughters
for the Arrogant Pride of
Brutish Men?
20 year old Yasmine of Jordan,
betrayed & murdered....by
her own brother...
& some other ego-killings
world-wide.....
In progress
Click
Here
To View A Childs Imagery
& Story of a True Event:
A Little Girl is Stoned To
Death
by grown men in Afghanistan
while trying to ride her
bike to school.
In Progress
Click Here Soon
What
is a Burqua?
Click
Here
Women are forced to wear the burqa-a voluminous
garment which completely shrouds the body under thick layers of fabric,
leaving only a small mesh opening through which to breathe and see.
To Send Free Afghan Women
Postcards
(like this one)
& Other Cards To Help
create awareness:
Postcards
From Feminist Majority Foundation
Online
Click
Here
To
Take Action Now
for Afghan Women & Girls!
-Click
Here-Outside Link
Intro.-Afghan
Women-Info.
"Please Be. Save Me. I Cry."
Click
Here
For Tori Amos Backgrounds
like this one, by a talented
young lady.