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