[Newspoetry] FW: Afghanistan

[Bill Wendling]

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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 arelative. 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 suiciderate 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 in the street, even if
they hold Ph.D. 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-rocketinglevel 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.
Men 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 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 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 1930s 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 we can threaten military forcein Kosovo in the name of
human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians,then we  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
subhuman and so much as property. Equality and human decency is a RIGHT
not a freedom, whether one lives in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

1) Sanna Yrjdnd, Oulu, Finland
2) Andrea Righini, Bologna, Italy
3) Carla Chiarini,Bologna,Italy
4) Claudia Farabegoli, Bologna, Italy
5) Michelle Armand, Hull, Quibec, Canada
6) Marie-France Paradis, Quibec, Quibec, Canada
7) Chantal Dorf, Kigali, Rwanda
8) Belinda Buysse, Houtem, Belgium
9) Griet Deforce, Gent, Belgium
10) Gertie Brughmans, De Pinte, Belgium
11) Kristel Moncarey, Ninove, Belgium
12) Carlo Janssens, Londerzeel, Belgium
13) Didier Martiny, Kampenhout, Belgium
14) Katrien Goudmaeker, Rixensart, Belgium
15) Claire Steenberghen, Sint-Joris-Winge, Belgium
16) Sven Aerts, Antwerp, Belgium
17) Pavla Jandakova, Brno, Czech Republic
18) Nicole Etchart, Santiago, Chile
19) Lee Davis, Budapest, Hungary
20) Lisa Cannon, Washington, DC
21) Susan Kelly, New York City, US
22) Tom Crippen, New York City, US
23) Christina Pretto, New York City, US
24) Jo LaFontaine Van Buskirk, Fayette, IA, US
25) Laura D. Bellmay, Collinsville, CT, USA
26) David Long, Brattleboro, VT, USA
27) Mark Pfohl, Brattleboro, VT, USA
28) Melanie Sroka, Montague, MA, USA
29) Arieh Kurinsky, Wendell, MA, USA
30) Oralia Preble-Niemi, Chattanooga, TN, USA
31) Hill Craddock, Chattanooga, TN, USA
32) Cathy Sanford, Somerset, KY, USA
33) Hall Critz, Little Rock, AR, USA
34) Kelly Doan, Memphis, TN, USA
35) Carol Davidson, Chattanooga, TN, USA
36) Dale Gerrietts, Springfield, IL, USA
37) Geoffrey Gerrietts, New Britain, CT, USA
38) William Wendling, Jr., Urbana, IL, USA

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 at unorg.ch and to:
* Angela King, Special Advisor on Gender
  Issues and the Advancement of
  Women, UN, daw at undp.org

If you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not kill the
petition.

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-- 
|| Bill Wendling			wendling at ganymede.isdn.uiuc.edu