Not sure that this petition is worded brilliantly, but I thought it should
be passed on to crit-geog-forum anyway.

Now that Osama bin Laden is reported to be in Pakistan, the Taliban may be
seeking a new legitmacy in terms of international trade.

Fraser MacDonald

______________________________________________

Taliban & Barbarism
______________________________________________

Please spare a minute to read this mail. Thankyou.

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, ranslators, 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 as
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 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. 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 US
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 Westerners may not
understand. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of
human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, then NATO and the West
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 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 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 anywhere else.

*****

> 1) Bruce J. Malina, Omaha, NE
> 2) Raymond Hobbs, Hamilton, ON, Canada
> 3) Elizabeth Demaray, Kanata, ON, Canada
> 4) Fred Demaray, Kanata, ON, Canada
> 5) Leslie Penrose, Tulsa, OK
> 6) Susan Ross, Perkins, OK
> 7) Jeannie Himes, Tulsa, OK
> 8) Lois Adams, Tulsa, OK
> 9) Mona M. Miller, Fort Collins, CO
> 10) Kara A. Sheldon, Colorado Springs, CO
> 11) Gay Victoria, Colorado Springs, CO
> 12) Catherine Euler, Leeds, UK
> 13) Faith Muimo, Leeds, UK
> 14) Sanna Vehvildinen, Helsinki, Finland
> 15) Jussi Onnismaa, Helsinki. Finland
> 16) Marjatta Hahkio, Helsinki, Finland
> 17) Jouko Hahkio, Helsinki, Finland
> 18) Colin Sydes, Helsinki, Finland
19) Gavin Cowie, Helsinki, Finland
20) Andrew Walker, London, UK
21 Roberto Battista, London, UK
22) Richard Wolfstrome, Brighton, UK
23) Louise Jorden, London, UK
24) Lucy Kay, London, UK
25) Saffina Rana, Brussels, Belgium
26) Camilla Hawkes, London, UK
27) Belinda Totton, London, UK
28) Lucy Buttress, London, UK
29) Alistair Bool, London UK
30) Terence Hay-Edie, Cambridge, UK
31) Fraser MacDonald, North Uist, Scotland, UK

> **** Please sign to support, and include your town and country. 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:
>
> Mary Robinson,
> High Commissioner,
> UNHCHR,
> [log in to unmask]
>
> and to:
>
> Angela King,
> Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women,
> UN,
> [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.


_______________________________________

Fraser MacDonald

School of Geography / Environmental Change Unit
University of Oxford
5 South Parks
Oxford
0X1 3UB






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