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Forwarded mail.... (off-topic)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:31:52 PDT
From: Shuki1 Punk1 <shukipunk@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: israel@tao.ca
To: Israel@tao.ca
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, and (???) 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 same
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 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.
1) Patrick Ballin, Brighton, UK
2) Ben Ballin, Birmingham, UK
3) Jill Denham, Yeovil, UK
4) Ali Brownlie, Brighton, UK
5) Cathie Holden, Exeter, UK
6) Suniti Namjoshi
7) Elke Ruehl, Frankfurt, Germany
8) Birgit Albrecht, Frankfurt, Germany
9) Sabine Behrends, Germany
10) Ingrid Fuehrer, Germany
11) Jutta Willand, Frankfurt, Germany
12) Antje Vogdt, Paris, France
13) Barbara Bova, Naples, Florida
14) ruth Cavin, White Plains NY
15) Serita Stevens, LA, Ca
16) Adrian Muller, Bristol, UK
17) Lauren Milne Henderson, Tuscany, Italy
18) Tom Hope,Chianti,Italy
19) Sophie Rose,Chianti,Italy
20) Tim Hull, London,UK
21) Sven Holly Nullmeyer, Berlin, Germany
22) Bo Oliver Beckmann, Bremen, Germany
23) Thomas Gr&tsadi;ne-Hincke, Bremen, Germany
24) Torsten Gr&tsadi;ne, München, Germany
25) Beate Kunhardt, Berlin, Germany
26) Gernot Matzke, Berlin, Germany
26) Bodo Schmidt, K&tsadi;ln, Germany
27) Bodo Busch, K&tsadi;ln, Germany
28) Shanti R. Strauch, Berlin, Germany
29) Tilo Wieser, Berlin, Germany
30) Alexander v. Vietinghoff, Berlin, Germany
31) Susanne Michel, Jena, Germany
32) Dr. Thomas Liehr, Jena, Germany
33) Oskar A: Haas, M.D.
34) Julie R. Korenberg, Ph.D. M.D.
35) Andre L. Vanderhal, MD
36) Chana Arnon, Jerusalem, Israel
37) Tosha Schore, CA, USA
38) Nili Nimrod, Holon Israel
39) Shuki Vaknin, Jerusalem Israel
40) Idan Sofer, Ramat-gan Israel
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.
It is best to copy rather than forward the petition.
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