From: "Brandi M. Johnson" <[log in to unmask]> (by way of
[log in to unmask])


Subject: Human Rights Petition


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 [log in to unmask]

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
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 out-rage 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) Leslie London, Cape Town, South Africa
>>>2) Tim Holtz, Boston, MA
>>> 3) Joyce Millen, Cambridge, MA
>>> 4) Diane Millen, Falls Church, Va.
>>> 5) Bill Millen, Falls Church, Va.
>>> 6) Milt Eisner, McLean VA
>>> 7) Harriet Solomon, Springfield, VA
>>> 8) Arlene Silikovitz, West Orange, NJ
>>> 9) Susanna Levin, New Rochelle, NY
>>> 10) Rabbi Gary Greene, Framingham, MA
>>> 11) Danny Siegel, Rockville, MD
>>> 12) Rabbi Neal Gold, Highland Park, NJ
>>> 13) Aimee Sousa, Highland Park, NJ
>>> 14) James Sousa, Highland Park, NJ
>>> 15) Peter Tatiner, Highland Park, NJ
>>> 16) Roberta Elins, New York, NY
>>> 17) Margaux Baran, Ne wYork, NY
>>> 18) Stephanie Donohue, New York, NY
>>> 19) Debbie Russ, NYC
>>> 20) Ariel Yan, NYC
>>> 21) Erin Burns, NYC
>>> 22) Jenny Laden, NYC
>>> 23) Daedre Levine, NYC >>
>>> 24) Tina Stoll, Bethesda, Maryland
>>> 25) Karen Mulhauser, Washington, DC
>>> 26) Karen Seiger, Washington, DC
>>> 27) Torie Keller, Silver Spring, MD
>>> 28) Larissa Yocum, Washington, D.C.
>>> 29) Matthijs den Otter, Enschede, The Netherlands.
>>> 30) Elske Leenders, Enschede, The Netherlands
>>> 31) Rijanne Assen, Enschede, The Netherlands
>>> 32) Tiemen Jan Bos, Enschede, The Netherlands
>>> 32) Boukelien Bos, Emmen, The Netherlands
>>> 33) Frank van Schaik, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 34) Lisette de Boer, Delft, The Netherlands
>>> 35) Metha de Vries, Utrecht, The Netherlands
>>> 36) Carla van den Bos, Wageningen, the Netherlands
>>> 37) Erna Krommendijk, Krommenie, The Netherlands
>>> 38) Caroline Houtman, Zutphen, The Netherlands
>>> 39) Hanneke Vreugdenhil, Lelystad, The Netherlands
>>> 40) Clara Doesburg, Enschede, The Netherlands
>>> 41) Vladimir Chorchordin, The Netehrlands
>>> 42) Charlotte de Sauvage Nolting, The Netherlands
>>> 43) Jacqueline Hoogerbrugge, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 44) Liseke Hoogerbrugge, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 45) Marie-Louise F|nfst|ck, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 46) Marjolein Marreveld, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 47) Jacqueline Oskamp, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 48) Thea Derks, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
>>> 49) Sumire Nukina, Maastricht, Nederlands
>>> 50) Rob van Veen, Hong Kong
>>> 51) Paul G Norris, Hong Kong
>>> 52) Margaret Lowe, Orlando, Florida, USA
>>> 53)Maxine Lowe, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
>>> 54)Elizabeth Anne Cruz, Vancouver, BC, Canada
>>> 55) Katherine-Anne Cruz, Northampton, MA
>>> 56) Amy C Shim, Northampton, MA
>>> 57) Andrea C. Brown, Northampton, MA
>>> 58) Brandi M. Johnson, Madison, WI
>>> 59) Ines Robbers, Bristol, UK
>>> 60) d. Thales Brown, OH
>>> 61) Sharon M. Brown, OH
>>>


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