---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 23:31:13 -0700
From: Arnie <nmangoff@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Bonita Murdock <bmurdock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, CoolCats <coolcats@xxxxxxxxxxx=
m>,
CoolKids <coolkids@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Orpheus <cw_duff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Taliban's War on Women
----- Original Message -----
From: <werdna@xxxxxxx>
To: <doctornic@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 1999 9:19 PM
Subject: The Taliban's War on Women
>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 sara-bande@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:sara-bande@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>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 misbehaviour.
>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 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 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 other countries and their
>Governments 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 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) Rachel Murray, London, England.
>2) Katie Murray, London England
>3) Mercedeh Sanati, London, England
>4) Maryam Sanati, Toronto
>5) Stephanie Campbell, Toronto
>6) Barbara Campbell, Ottawa
>7) Marcia Carlyln, Ottawa
>8) Carol J. Sutton, Vancouver
>9) Catherine Swift, Ottawa, Canada
>10)Rejeanne Lalonde, Ottawa, Canada
>11)Linda George, Ottawa, Canada
>12)Heather Kovacs, Nepean, Canada
>13)Rosemary Mills, Winnipeg, Canada
>14)Caroline Piotrowski, Winnipeg, Canada
>15)Laura Sokal, Winnipeg, Canada
>16)John Sokal, Winnipeg, Canada
>17) Andrea Sokal, Winnipeg, Canada
>18) Betsy Palko, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
>19) Amanda Palko, Winnipeg. MB,Canada
>20) Lynn Nolden, Matlock, Manitoba, Canada
>21) H=E9l=E8ne Swanson, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
>22) Genevi=E8ve Swanson, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
>23) Anna Swanson, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
>24) Erin Pearson, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>25) Meena Hasnany, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>26)Cassie Deeprose, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>27)France Deeprose, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>28)Peter Deeprose, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>29)Jacqueline Desautels,Calgary,Alberta,Canada
>30)Maureen Hanlon, Frankville, Nova Scotia, Canada
>31)Melissa Ross, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>32) Stephanie Madjet, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>33) Kristin Arsenault, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>34)Troy Arsenault, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>35)Janine Arsenault, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>36)Tricia Sampson, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>37) Monique Schluff Soboren, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>38) Wendy Northrup, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>39) Jackie Hawkins, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>40) Christine Willson, Caledonia, Ontario, Canada
>41) Jason Hughes, Brampton, Ontario, Canada
>42) Sean Cuthbert, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
>43) Andrew Hagan, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
44) Nicola Mangoff, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada
45) Arnie Hoffman, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
46) Clifford Duffy, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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