| This was sent to me by my friend Michael, quite recently. I cannot stress the grave importance of taking action to help our Sisters, who are currently living under torturous, even murderous, conditions in lands where a raped woman or girl-child is imprisonned, the attacker left free and often praised by the community. Sadly many of our Sisters have been corrupted to the paternalistic viewpoint and have become traitors to their own gender.
This was most evident in a report by Diane Sawyer airing last night on "20/20" which documented the wholesale slaughter of women deemed "sexually unpure" by their fathers and brothers, who themselves were quite proud of having carried out the atrocities and felt no remorse. One Mother praised her son's crime, agreeing with her daughter's murder before two yonger daughters present. Dear Gaea, this has to stop. I implore you in the name of Athena, in the names of your own Gods, please help put an end to this. The human race cannot move forward as ONE so long as one half of it subjugates and holds in terror the other. By all that is sacred, I implore you. Please read this, sign it, and send it on. This is a human rights petition sent to me by a friend. It is very much NOT JUNK MAIL - Just something very provokative to read. It is suggested one CUT & PASTE the petition, add their name to the list and passes it on to their email correspondents, if they feel compelled to act in the slightest way for the people(s) described here: |
| Please Sign at the bottom to support and include your town. If you receive this list with more than 50 names on it, please email a
copy of it to sarabande@brandeis.edu 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 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 are 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' have 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 commited against women by the Taliban. |
| 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 1998 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, USA 3) Jennifer Kasper, Boston, MA, USA 4) Ali Noorani, Boston, MA 5) Juli-Ann Carlos, Boston, MA, USA 6) Elaine Alpert, MD, Boston, MA USA 7) Diane Morse, MD, Rochester, NY 8) Mark Winsberg, MD, Rochester, NY 9) Elizabeth Hirsh, Rochester, NY 10) Ellen Goldstein, Rochester, NY 11) Kathryn Fiske, Rochester, NY 12) David H. Hunt, Seattle, WA 13) Dan Freeman, Kent, WA 14) Sheryl Allen, Bellevue, WA 15) Larry Allen, Bellevue, WA 16) Nancy Kahn, Seattle, WA 17) Jim Ekberg, Olga, WA 18) Carol Summers, Seattle, WA 19) Ken Jenkins, Petaluma, CA 20) Daniel B. Holeman, San Rafael, CA 21) Patti Greenwood, Gainesville, FL 22) Julie E. Johnson, Melrose, FL 23) David Beede, Melrose, FL 24) Kenn Thomas, St. Louis, MO 25) Robert F. Tatman, Jenkintown, PA 26) Terry A. Irish, Jenkintown, PA 27) Philip G. Anthony, Roslyn, Pa. 28) Chloe Flynn, Northfeild, MN 29) Ange Thielke, Middleton, WI 30) Anna Lindgren-Streicher, Middleton, WI 31) Lisa Farwell, Concord, NH 32) EC Cummings, Concord, NH 33) Moira Cahill, Suffield, CT 34) Allison Ball, Windsor, CT 35) Matt Tuozzoli, Fairfield CT 36) Erin Morgaine, Marshfield, VT 37) Dorothy Singleton, East Calais, VT 38) Heather Purvee, Buies Creek, NC 39) Miko, Austin, TX |
