DO NOT ADD YOUR NAME to the petition... apparently the email contact did not
anticipate the enormous response that she got and her email has been closed
down.
 I will send a list of other contact organziations that you can get in touch
with if you are interested/concerned about this issues.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Burman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 1999 3:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: women's rights in Afghanistan


This is for a very serious cause that touches humanity, mainly women.
Please take few minutes and give full consideration.
Please sign at the bottom to support, and include tour 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
sreet,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 arthaginians 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 the United States and the U.S. Government 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 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) Erica J. Lippitz, South Orange, NJ
10) Joyce Nussbaum, Highland Park, NJ
11) Deborah Silverman, Coral Gables, FL
12) Shira Silverman, Lancaster, PA
13) Judy Shenk, Landisville, PA
14) Joan Wachstein, Wilmington, De.
15) Judith O. Rosenkranz, Tampa, FL
16) Gail Bernucca, Tampa, FL
17) Ilayne Finkelstone, Coral Springs, FL
18) Marilynn Rothstein, Coral Springs, FL
19) Michelle Rothstein, Oxford, MS
20) Deborah Siegel, Ann Arbor, MI
21) Melanie Egorin, San Francisco
22) Julia Owens, San Francisco
23) Sarah K. Peterson, Santa Cruz, CA
24) Sheila P. Youngblood, Butte, MT
25. Sallie Bowen Ulsher, Butte, Mt.
26. Elsie D. Popkin, Winston-Salem, NC

27. Amy Funderburk, Winston-Salem, NC
28) Dani Dorresteyn, Norfolk, VA
29) Di Molloy Merseyside UK
30) Arsinee Donoyan, Montreal, QC, Canada
31) Gabriel Bluteau, Montreal, QC Canada
32) Damien Francoeur, Montréal,  QC, Canada
33) Michel Beluet, Valcourt, QC, Canada
34) David Burman, Toronto, ON, Canada