Archive for the 'World' Category

Save Iranian Teen Prisoner on Death Row

Published by
Sarah
at April 24, 2007 in Ayatollah's Theocracy, Politics, World, fundamentalism, law and violence. 2 Comments
COURTESY OF LILY MAZAHERY- President of the Legal Rights Institute, Washington DC.
Approval of Delara’s Death Sentence in Distinction Branch of the Supreme Court

A source familiar with Delara’s case reports that Delara’s death sentence has been approved and the order will be soon issued to her lawyer.

Delara Darabi, accused of murder, has spent the past 3 years in prison. Recent beatings in prison have left her with a broken arm and she is not feeling well.

Yesterday, Delara’s father filed a letter with the head of the judiciary, seeking a transfer of prison for his daughter. In this letter, Delara’s father states: “Delara is in dire condition and is suffering greatly. She is only accused. We have reasons to show that she is not a murderer. However, even if she were guilty, she has a basic right to be treated fairly in prison, not to have her arm broken. If Delara is a murderer, she should be executed once, not a thousand times. Yet, in Rasht prison, she is executed a thousand times a day. I need your help to save my daughter.”

According to our reporter, given the approval of Delara’s death sentence by the Distinction Branch of the Supreme Court, the only person who can commute this sentence is the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi. By finding fault in the case, he can issue a new trial.

Click HERE to view the original report in Farsi.

Please take immediate action to prevent the execution of Delara Darabi by taking the follwing steps:

1. Sign the petition objecting to the impending execution of Delara Darabi and encourage your friends, colleagues, associates, and family members to do the same.

2. Contact the office of Ayatollah Shahroudi by fax or mail to voice your objection:

Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Ministry of Justice,
Panzdah-Khordad Circle,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
(From United States, dial 0 first)
Phone: 98 (21) 391-1109
Fax: 98 (21) 390-4986
You can also send your appeals electronically via the judiciary website:http://iranjudiciary.org/contactus-feedback-fa.htmlNote: The fields are written in Persian. 1st line is for your Name; 2nd your Email; 3rd the Subject (which should read “URGENT LETTER TO AYATOLLAH HASHEMI SHAHROUDI REGARDING DELARA DARABI“); 4th is for your Comments.

Should you have any questions, please contact info@SaveDelara.com . For more information, visit: www.SaveDelara.com

I have just…

Published by
Sarah
at March 12, 2007 in Culture and World. 0 Comments

discovered a gorgeous band “Outlandish”- an amazing Danish band with beautiful songs that will make you shiver. This stuff confirms my belief in Pain and dislocation as the crucible for Art and Beauty.

The band form a web of complex identities, two of them - Danish-Moroccan Sam Bachiri Azouaoui and Danish-Pakistani Waqas Ali Qadri are both devout muslims and the third Lenny Martinez from Honduras is a strict Catholic. The combination is an explosive synergy of rap, desi punk, arab melody and latin-spanish sounds.

My favourite:
“Fatima’s Hand”

Fatima is 21
And around here - when your 21
u gotta start thinking about getting a man
getting a son - getting it done
just like her mom when she was 21
but even though Fatima’s not ready for it
she not gonna say some
she feels she gotta do this for the parents
cuz they’ve been on her for the last 5 years
a lotta men from motherland
came up here hoping she say yeah
but she ain’t down
wants somebody that can make her feel alive
chill every time she wanna cry
the one in a million type of guy
but her mom keeps telling her
“compromise, this ain’t no fairy tale my child
do not waste your time
u’ll regret u didn’t say yes to this guy”
everyday is the same
like a battlefield
she gets the blame
bringing shame on the family name
just cuz the streets be babbling
like a Bedouin in a dessert storm
she lays low from all their songs
try to make’em understand
but it’s like talking to the wall
her desire’s burning to change her ill state
it’s strange - for the first time
in a long time - she sees the light in the end

Continue reading ‘I have just…’

“Our Nights are Nightmares”

Published by
Sarah
at March 4, 2007 in Iraq, Politics, Saddam Hussein, World, death, imperialism, law, struggle, violence, war and women in power. 2 Comments

A brilliant documentary (Part One, Part Two) aired on the American Al-Jazeera channel today called “Everywomen”- an account of Iraqi women’s experiences under occupation.

Four brave Iraqi women talk about their experiences in Baghdad and the daily struggles to survive, take care of their families and work as the world around them descends into civil warfare, sectarian violence and chaos.

They are not without humour- the most compelling interviewee Iraqi television journalist Amna Frayeh amusingly reflects on the normalisation of her insane daily reality.

“I wonder what the French talk about. We talk of explosions and car bombs. I expect they have nothing to say and that’s why they are such quiet people.”

Continue reading ‘“Our Nights are Nightmares”’

UNICEF report: 7000 fewer girls born in India every day

Published by
Anna
at December 15, 2006 in World, struggle and violence against women. 1 Comment

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

“The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies,” Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

“They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry,” she said.

“We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children.”

That’s the Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury talking about the still prevalant practice of female infanticide in India. According to her 10 million girl children have been killed in India in the past 20 years.

Unfortunately it will continue to hapen until women gain even a semblance of equality in that country but that’s far from realised. Girl children will continue to be thought of as not only worthless but a burden until they have the means to economic equality, education and social acceptance.

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet?

Published by
Sarah
at December 4, 2006 in Islam, Politics, World, feminist media, religion and women in power. 0 Comments

“100 of the savviest, smartest, most motivated, and influential Muslim women” have met this month in New York for the first ever Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (WISE) conference.

The way in which the western landscape has formed a crucible for the birth of Muslim feminism, and also broader calls for “Islamic Reformation” is interesting.

It seems appropriate that the most powerful catalyst for change will come from the “smart, savvy and influential Muslim women” that have flourished and achieved power and position within the west. The location of New York seems symbolic of this melding of cross-currents.

The way these women navigated the differences of opinion was laudable. They seemed to recognise their goal in the end was the same- empowerment and recognition of the basic human rights and dignity of the female person within both secular and religious contexts. Which is feminism at it’s basic really.

The question is can they work to effect real-world change in the places that really need it?

The speech of Mukhtaran Mai, a gang-rape survivor who now dedicates her life to building schools for girls in her village seemed to remind everyone where it was all at.

“Our only hope is the fight for justice. End oppression with education. To remain ignorant is a crime. To remain apathetic is a crime. It is a crime to avoid oppression. To remain silent about a crime is a crime.”

Change can only come from within and it seems western muslim women in particular, have the skills and knowledge to challenge authority, the opportunity to support activists; and the freedom to engage in serious lobbying efforts internationally.

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When (women) stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

Most powerful woman in America but it’s all about the clothes

Published by
Anna
at November 22, 2006 in Politics, World and women in power. 9 Comments

What is it about a woman in power that turns men into childish cry-baby morons? ‘Wah! Wah! The skirt’s telling me what to do!’

Lame. pathetic. idiots.

Women’s lives don’t matter: Nicaragua

Published by
Anna
at November 21, 2006 in Politics, World, abortion, religion, struggle and violence against women. 2 Comments

Abortion has long been illegal in Nicaragua but had, up until now, been allowed where it would save the woman’s life if three doctors testified that the woman would die if she didn’t undergo the procedure. Now even that exception has been ripped away from Nicaraguan women.

Some figures from the Guttmacher Intstitute to keep in mind. In Nicaragua:

  • A quarter of all births (35,000) are among 15-19 year-olds but 86 per cent don’t want a child within the next two years and 36 per cent don’t have adequate access to contraception.
  • Half of 20-25 year old women had had a child before their 20th birthday
  • Nearly half of all births are unplanned
  • The rate of childbirth among adolescents is the highest out of any other Central American country.
  • Also higher than any other Central American country is the rate of maternal deaths which is 230 for every 100,000 births.

The WHO estimates that 78,000 women die from illegal and unsafe abortions each year (13 per cent of maternal deaths). Most of those of course occuring in developing countries such as Nicaragua. So even if access to a cheap illegal abortion is possible there’s no real out for these women. Imagine being powerless knowing that your death was imminent because your government couldn’t give a fuck. Pro-life indeed.

The leftist, Sandanista and former president Daniel Ortega sold women up shit creek in order to try to gain support from the Roman Catholic voting block and regain presidency. According to the linked NYTimes article his support for the ammendment was critical.

Pakistani women protest rape law ammendments

Published by
Anna
at November 21, 2006 in Islam, World, liberalism, religion and violence against women. 2 Comments

What do you make of this?

Hundreds of female supporters of Pakistan’s largest Islamic group protested today against government amendments to controversial rape laws.

Some 800 women, many wearing veils, attended the rally in a downtown district of the capital, Islamabad.

They were supporters Jamaat-e-Islami, a militant-linked Islamic charity.

These are strong women, with a strong voice. Not just puppets of the radical Jamaat-e-Islami wing from what I can tell. And yet they are protesting ammendments that could prevent a lot of suffering on behalf of women who are locked up for things such as ‘adultery’ - even if the sex act was forced.Shakira Hussein explores their mission in an article for New Matilda :

The JI women have no time for the likes of Jehangir. They claim that they are the true defenders of Pakistani women and that secular advocates of women’s rights are puppets of the West. They say that without the protection of the Hudood Ordinances, Pakistani women would suffer the plight of Western women — forced to dress and behave according to the lewd desires of men. Just as many in the West refuse to believe that a woman might choose to wear the hijab, JI women find it hard to believe that a woman would choose to wear jeans that display her bum cleavage.

In viewing Western or Westernised women primarily as victims, the JI women differ from their male counterparts, who view ‘immodest’ women in terms of the threat they pose to social order. While Islamist men tend to believe that it is immoral women who lead men (and other women) from the path of virtue, many Islamist women believe that ‘fallen’ women have been coerced or manipulated into sin. By outlawing immorality, they believe that it is possible to free women from being sexually exploited, or having their families broken up by their husbands’ extra-marital affairs.

The JI women are well aware that the Hudood Ordinances have caused immeasurable pain to many women who are entirely innocent of adultery. Through their welfare work in providing legal aid and emergency shelter to women in crisis, they have witnessed the damage at first hand. Such programs provide useful propaganda for JI, but there is also no doubting the women’s passionate belief in their work. They speak of their satisfaction in helping women who have been falsely accused, and they angrily denounce the common practice of a husband divorcing his wife and allowing her to remarry, only to go to the authorities with the claim that the first marriage was never dissolved and that his former wife is therefore guilty of adultery with her new husband.

And yet, they continue to support the Ordinances under which such women are jailed. They insist that the main problems lie in the implementation of the law, rather than the law itself. For instance, if marriages and divorces were properly recorded (most are not), it would be much more difficult for disgruntled former husbands to lay false charges. If the legal system were not so grindingly inefficient, women would not languish in jail for years only to be found not guilty (as most often happens) when they finally come to trial.

Is there a comparison here between christian anti-feminists and the Islamic women of JI? Or is it more complicated than that? It seems Western feminists and the Islamic women of JI hold similar views about one another. I guess we have to ask whether their agenda is to uphold the power of their patriarchal religion, or if they indeed are acting on behalf of women. Christian anti-feminists seem beholden to maintaining the patriarchal notion of women’s place as ‘God’ stipulates. However the JI women seem to be about ‘liberating’ women- Just in a completely different way to the ideas and actions of western feminists. Does anyone know more?

Egypt mass sex assault update

Published by
Anna
at November 7, 2006 in World, sexism, street harassment and violence against women. 2 Comments

This story kind of died, which I think is really disturbing. It seems, either the Egyptian Government’s official denials are working or people don’t think it’s newsworthy. How is it not newsworthy? Shows where the mass media’s priorities lie.

An alleged mob attack on women during last week’s Islamic holiday has escalated into a political fight involving President Hosni Mubarak’s government.

Witnesses accuse police of doing nothing to protect the women as they walked on a downtown street, and democracy activists have cited the controversy as a sign that Egypt is mismanaged and corrupt.

But the government has accused the bloggers who publicised the incident of defaming the country, and some police officials have said there is no evidence that anything happened.

A handful of internet bloggers, who said they either witnessed or spoke with eyewitnesses in downtown Cairo the nights of October 23 and 24, reported that women of all ages and styles of dress were attacked by crowds of men and boys who groped them and tore their clothes, trying to remove them.

Struggle in Oaxaca

Published by
Anna
at November 4, 2006 in Politics, World, struggle and violence against women. 2 Comments

Brownfemipower has written about the Indigenous struggle in Oaxaca, women’s role within it and feminism’s oversight of the state oppression and worsening crisis playing out there:

 

All feminists MUST pay attention to what is happening in Oaxaca. Indigenous women are leading the way to female liberation–which means that just as their demands for access to birth control carry the same weight in their actions that their demands for access to community radio do, they are also taking the brunt of the violence liberation often brings. But thier entire community recognizes that they will never have liberation (aka community health, freedom from poverty, clean air to breath, workers rights, sexual freedom, control of the land etc) as long as the nation/state has ultimate control over what happens to their bodies and souls–or as long as violence against women is acceptable in any form.

The current crisis saw the military invade the area on October 27-8 as the Teacher’s union is demanding the resignation of the governor because of his anti-labour policies. Anyway read the original post and there is addresses and contact info of people to write to and lobby.

And there are continuing updates on Women of Color BlogÂ