You can send your name, city, state (if applicable), and country to sarabande@brandeis.edu
She is also collecting signatures.
I read this article in Aberration
(To join, click here mailto:AberrationMag@aol.com?subject=Subscribe )
I was apalled at the horribly happenings as of recent in Afghanistan. So I asked to help. I e-mailed the president of Aberration and she told me she would love for me to include the article, especially because it would help a VERY worthy cause. Read the following true story and then send your name, city, state, and country here.
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Fight the Taliban
The following is a forward I recieved from my Dad... I thought I would include it. Whoever started this forward would like someone to return it to her at sarabande@brandeis.edu if it ever reaches 3,000 signatures. My signature was number 289 on the forward I received. The copy of this forward that I have has been signed by people from the UK, Sweden, US, Canada, Norway, Italia, Switzerland, India, Hong Kong, Germany, Ecuador, New Zealand, France and Spain. If you would like me to add your name before I forward it on, let me know. Please include your name, city, state and country in your email!
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 stuffed into 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 on 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, who cannot find proper medication
and treatment for severe depression and would rather take their lives than
live in such conditions,has increased significantly. There are almost no
medical facilities available for 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 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.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
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 in 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.
STATEMENT:
In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in
Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves action by the United Nations 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 2000 to be treated as subhuman and so much as property. Equality and human
decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Once again, to sign the petition send your name, city, state, and country here.
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