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(Off topic for some recipients (mailing lists)... don't delete it,
though... )

Petition for women's rights in Afghanistan
Ptition pour le droit des femmes en Afghanistan

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 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,
EUROPEAN UNION and the U.S. Government and EUROPEAN COMMISSION
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) Filip Kempenaers, Kessel-Lo, Belgium
2) Mark Thijs, Antwerpen, Belgium
3) Anke Thijs, Antwerpen, Belgium
4) Dolores Souto Iglesias, Brussels, Belgium
5) Adela Rey Aneiros, La Corua, Espaa
6) Ana Fernndez Perles, Brussels, Belgium
7)Susana Blanco, Brussels, Belgium
8)Birgit Gocht, Brussels, Belgium
9) Claudia Casin, Bridel, Luxembourg
10)Severine Jacquemart, Messancy, Belgium
11)Annick Sacr, Lige, Belgium
12) Christine Mainguet, Seraing, Belgium
13) Louis Bronne, Lige, Belgium
14) Thierry Andry, Neupre, Belgium
15) Benjamin GOLINVAUX, Lige, Belgium

****
Please sign 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
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.
Fdo. ADELA REY ANEIROS
Derecho Internacional Pblico
y Relaciones Internacionales
Facultad de Derecho
Campus de Elvia s/n
15.071 La Corua
Tfno: 34.981.167000 ext. 1597
Fax: 34.981.290310
e-mail: adela@udc.es



