thal wrote:
> Cybersoc - http://www.cybersoc.com/
>
> 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
> >>>
>
> _maria eugenia esté, Caracas,
> Venezuela_____________________________________________________________________
>
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