Peculiar, maybe, but raises a good point about forwarding not only to US
govt but to Canadian govt and UN. Adeline

At 02:01 PM 2/1/99 GMT, you wrote:
>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]
>
_______________________________________________________________

"This is the future: to fight in favor of change or to fight in favor of
keeping the present" Freire