This is the original online petition. I have changed it so the petition is directed
to the spokesperson for the Taliban regime in the U.S. (Diplomatic relations between
the U.S. and the Taliban regime do not exist except through the U.S. Consulate in
Peshawar, Pakistan.)
I don't know how long this will last but it is worth the effort.
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ONLINE PETITION TO HELP THE WOMEN OF AFGHANISTAN
Copy and paste this petition into the body of an email. Send to as many friends as
you can. Do not change the wording of the text. The 50th person to receive it sends
a copy of it to: AMujahid@aol.com
Alternatively, print out this page and collect signatures by hand. A paper petition
can be sent to:
Mulawi Abdul Hakeem Mujahid
or to: Noorullah Zadran
55/16 Main Street
Flushing, New York
Background:
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 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 waste 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 said 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 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
2000 to be treated as sub-human and as so much property. Equality and human decency
are a RIGHT, not a freedom, whether one lives in Afghanistan or the United States.
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Send to: AMujahid@aol.com when 50th person
receives and signs the email petition.
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