Government of Afghanistan is waging war upon women

Please sign the statement to support, and include your town and country. Then copy and e-mail to as many people as possible.

Please spare a minute to read this mail. Thank you. 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 misbehaviour. 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 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 said that those in the West 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 culture 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 US 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 Westerners may not understand. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, then NATO and the West 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 Nations and that the current situation in Afghanistan will not be tolerated. Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere and it is UNACCEPTABLE for women in 1999 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 anywhere else.

1) Lisa Gray, Perth, Australia
2) Michelle Calligaro, Perth, Australia
3) Mark Falvey, Perth, Australia
4) Jacqui Watson, Perth, Australia
5) Tracey Ash, Perth, Australia
6) Steven Ash, Perth, Australia
7) Richard Philipsz, Perth, Australia
8) Trisha Philipsz, Perth, Australia
9) Michael Rathbone, Perth, Western Australia
10) Connell Maskrey, Perth, Western Australia
11) Robert Poole, Hobart, Australia
12) Kirsten Adams, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
13) Holly Taylor, Hobart, Australia
14) Danielle Hanns, Perth, Australia
15) Iain Struthers, Perth, Australia
16) Michelle Hale, Albany, Australia
17) Kerrie Beech, Perth, Australia
18) Debbie Rosten, Perth, Australia
19) Judy Shurlock, Reading, UK
20) Amanda Slark, Surrey,UK
21) Antonia McGathan, Surrey, UK
22) Vicky Hart, Middlesex, UK
23) Sarah Kirkwood, Ilford, UK.
24) Sarah Hobbs, Hounslow, UK
25) Henriette Gyland, London, UK
26) Karyn McDonald, London, UK
27) Barbara Luthi, Basel, Switzerland
28) Patrizia Zihlmann, Basel,Switzerland
29) Michael R. Clarke, Basel, Switzerland
30) Pauline Frank, Basel, Switzerland
31) Beatrice Fiechter, Basel, Switzerland
32) Beatrice Pidoux, Basel, Switzerland
33) Markus Mueller, Basel, Switzerland
34) Robert Buess, Zurich, Switzerland
35) Ulrich Thielemann, St. Gallen, Switzerland
36) Katja Knauer, Basel, Switzerland
37) Annette Borchard, Gelsenkirchen, Gerrmany
38) Dorothea Palenberg, Berlin, Germany
39) Barbara Staib, Berlin, Germany
40) Veit Hannemann, Berlin, Germany
41) Martina Teichelmann, Köln, Germany
42) Ursel Stapelfeldt, Bremen, Germany
43) Uwe Mädger, Bremen, Germany

**** Please sign to support, and include your town and country. 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:

Mary Robinson,High Commissioner, UNHCHR, webadmin.hchr@unorg.ch  and to:
Angela King, Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, UN, daw@undp.org

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.
Robert Buess The Boston Consulting Group AG Zollikerstrasse 226 CH-8008 Zürich Switzerland Phone +41-1-388 86 39 Secretary +41-1-388 86 45 (Karin Mahnig) Fax +41-1-388 86 86 Mail buess.robert@bcg.com