Posted
20th August 2001
Stone-Age War On Women
Photo
shows Afghan women begging to survive Petition* to the United
Nations Background Information:
Madhu,
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 restricted to their homes. 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.'s. 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 must be extraordinarily high: those who cannot find proper
medication and treatment for severe depression and would rather
take their lives than live in such conditions. 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. 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, to dress generally as they wanted,
and to 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 it 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. Email
for petition:
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