[Newspoetry] petition

[Paul Kotheimer]

PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message,sign the bottom and forward
it to everyone on your distribution lists. If you receive this list
with more than 200 names on it, please e-mail a copy of it to :

sarabande at brandeis.edu <sarabande at brandeis.edu>

who will forward it to the United Nations.

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

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Please don't accept injustice - even though it's not happening to you.

Subject: Please read - Woman in Afghanistan

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, so that depression is
becoming so  widespread that it has reached emergency levels.

There 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. 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.

Everyone has a right 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 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 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 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 elsewhere.

Signatures:

1. Andrea Superti-Furga, Zurich, Switzerland
2. Anselma Lanz-Superti-Furga, Zurich, Switzerland.
3. David L. Rimoin, Los Angeles, California, USA
4. Ann Garber-Rimoin, Los Angeles, CA
5. Richard C. Krueger, MD, PhD, Los Angeles, CA
6. Paul Kotheimer, Urbana, IL, USA.