On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Caspar Davis wrote:
> Please sign and pass on if you feel comfortable doing so:
>
>
> -----Forwarded Message-----
>
> Subject: Please sign and pass on.
>
> 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 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
>
>
> 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 todeath 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 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 this Earth 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 any where in this
> Globe.*****
>
> 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) Michael German, North Brunswick, NJ
> 14) Lauren VanO, NJ
> 15) Tony Polubinski, Whidbey Island, Washington
> 16) Amanda Miuccio, Charleston, SC
> 17) Lori L. Faulk, Florence, SC
> 18) Roberta L. Weir, Conway, SC
> 19) Barbara Garrison, Myrtle Beach, SC
> 20) Cindy Long, Boone, NC
> 21) Rev. Barbara Campbell, Northumberland, PA
> 22) Joseph W. Adams, Johnson City, TN
> 23) Horst A. Stollberg, Blountville, TN
> 24. Ursula Lowe, San Martin de los Andes, Argentina
> 25 Tony Ryan, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
> 26 Elaine Scott, Wellington New Zealand
> 27 Michael and Jeannie Knott, Wellington, New Zealand
> 28 John & Yvonne Walton, Palmerston North, New Zealand
> 29 Ann & Brent Fearnley, Kaikoura, New Zealand
> 30 Michael and Alison Bare, Christchurch, New Zealand
> 31 Jamie and Sai Yim Donaldson, Hong Kong
> 32 Kelly & Irene TONG, Hong Kong SAR/New Zealand
> 33 Arron & Monika Baker, Hong Kong SAR & New Zealand
> 34 Pat & Michelle English, Shanghai, China, and New Zealand
> 35 Craig & Jenny Johnston, Auckland, New Zealand
> 36 Fiona Murray, Auckland, New Zealand
> 37 Rachael Craven, Auckland, New Zealand
> 38 Mary June Pettyfer, Victoria, Canada
> 39 Caspar Davis, Victoria, BC, Canada
> 40 Mehtap Cakan, Turkey
>
>
> The information contained in this document is confidential to the
> addressee and is not necessarily the views nor the official communication
> of the Department of Labour.
> All final/official papers which are sent from the Department will be sent
> by non-electronic means, on appropriate letterhead, signed by authorised
> personnel.
>
>
>
