Subject:
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 it to 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. Suicide has increased significantly.
Homes where
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. avid 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 sub-human in the name of right-wing fundamentalist
Islam.
Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence.
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 sub-human and so much as property.
Equality
and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives
in Afghanistan
or anywhere else.
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