What a peculiar response!   Chris

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:          [log in to unmask] (Wojtek Zakrzewski)
Subject:       Re: (Fwd) women's rights in Afghanistan
To:            [log in to unmask]
Date:          Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:56:47 +0000 (GMT)


I agree with the aim of the message but I do not want to let the US
goverment know what I think it should be doing.
This should be sent to the UN!

Wojtek



> We have already added our names to this previously, and sent it to a
> batch of people then - but why don`t you sign now?   Chris
>
> ------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
> Date:          Sun, 31 Jan 1999 18:11:13 -0500
> Reply-to:      Health Promotion on the Internet <[log in to unmask]>
> From:          David Burman <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:       women's rights in Afghanistan
> To:            [log in to unmask]
>
> 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, Montr=E9al,  QC, Canada
> 33) Michel Beluet, Valcourt, QC, Canada
> 34) David Burman, Toronto, ON, Canada
> 35) Chris Birt, Worcestershire, UK
> 36) Angela Thein, Worcestershire, UK
>


--
Wojtek J. Zakrzewski
Department of Mathematical Sciences,
University of Durham,
Durham  DH1 3LE UK
tel (44) 191 3742382
fax (44) 191 3747388
email [log in to unmask]