war on women

[This arrived from three separate directions on the same day: Fresno and
Santa Monica (both starting in South Africa) and Washington DC
(beginning in China).]


THE TALIBAN'S WAR ON WOMEN:

    Please sign at the bottom to support, and include your town. 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
    sarabande@brandeis.edu 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

TEXT:

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 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
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 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
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 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, MA
3) Joyce Millen, Cambridge, MA
4) Diane Millen, Falls Church, Va.
5) Bill Millen, Falls Church, Va.
6) Milt Eisner, McLean VA
7) Harriet Solomon, Springfield, VA
8) Arlene Silikovitz, West Orange, NJ
9) Susanna Levin, New Rochelle, NY
10) Rabbi Gary Greene, Framingham, MA
11) Danny Siegel, Rockville, MD
12) Rabbi Neal Gold, Highland Park, NJ
13) Aimee Sousa, Highland Park, NJ
14) James Sousa, Highland Park, NJ
15) Peter Tatiner, Highland Park, NJ
16) Roberta Elins, New York, NY
17) Margaux Baran, NewYork, NY
18) Stephanie Donohue, New York, NY
19) Debbie Russ, NYC
20) Ariel Yan, NYC
21) Erin Burns, NYC
22) Shannon Slanker, New York, NY
23) Debbie R. Nadolney, New York, NY
24) Arlene Stein, Eugene, OR
25) tova stabin, eugene, OR
26) Rita Falbel, New York, NY
27) Marcia Kerwit, Oakland, CA
28) Linda Berry, Fairfax, CA
29) Patricia Royer, Ben Lomond, CA
30) Zoe Sodja, Brookdale, CA
31) Marcia Levitsky, CA
32) Michelle Dohl, Aptos, CA
33) Susan Holt, San Leandro, CA
34) Alex Antonowitsch, San Jose, CA
35) Tony Phillips, San Francisco, CA
36) Robyn Jones, Palo Alto, CA
37) Ellen Pendleton, Monterey, CA
38) Keith Ayres, Kaunakakai, HI
39) Jonathan Pope, OR
40) Betsy Flack, San Francisco, CA
41) Sean O'Hara, Oakland, CA
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