tagged w/ Afghan women
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Afghan wives turn to a fiery self infliction
as a way out
Alissa Rubin, New York Times
Even the poorest families in Afghanistan have matches and cooking fuel. The combination usually sustains life. But it also can be the makings of a horrifying escape: from poverty, from forced marriages, from the abuse and despondency that can be the fate of Afghan women.
The night before she burned herself, Gul Zada took her children to her sister’s for a family party. All seemed well. Later it emerged that she had not brought a present, and a relative had chided her for it, said her son Juma Gul. This small thing apparently broke her. Ms. Zada, who was 45, the mother of six children and who earned pitiably little cleaning houses, ended up with burns on nearly 60 percent of her body at the Herat burn hospital. Survival is difficult even at 40 percent.
The hospital here is the only medical center in Afghanistan that specifically treats victims of burning, a common form of suicide in this region, partly because the tools to do it are so readily available. Through early October, 75 women arrived with burns — most self-inflicted, others only made to look that way. That is up nearly 30 percent from last year.
It is shameful here to admit to troubles at home, and mental illness often goes undiagnosed or untreated. Ms. Zada, the hospital staff said, probably suffered from depression. The choices for Afghan women are extraordinarily restricted: Their family is their fate. There is little chance for education, little choice about whom a woman marries, no choice at all about her role in her own house. Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family. Outside that world, she is an outcast.
Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man. Women and girls are still stoned to death. Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women.
The most sinister burn cases are actually homicides masquerading as suicides, said doctors, nurses and human rights workers. Doctors cited two recent cases where women were beaten by their husbands or in-laws, lost consciousness and awoke in the hospital to find themselves burned because they had been shoved in an oven or set on fire.
For a very few of the women who survive burnings, whether self-inflicted or done by relatives, the experience is a kind of Rubicon that helps them change their lives. Some work with lawyers who are recommended by the hospital and request a divorce. Most do not.
Unlike many women admitted to the burn hospital, Ms. Zada showed no outward signs of distress before she set herself on fire. Her life, though, was hard. Her husband is a sharecropper. She cleaned houses and at night stayed up to clean her own home — a nearly impossible task in the family’s squalid earthen and brick two-room house buffeted by the Herati winds that sweep in a layer of dust each time the door opens.
Two weeks after his wife set herself on fire, he stood by her bed as she stopped breathing.
Alissa Rubin, New York Times
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Many words come to mind after reading this article.
Democracy is not one of them.Afghan wives turn to a fiery self infliction
as a way out
Alissa Rubin, New York... more
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Read story and find out why these Afghan women are considered the bravest women in Afghanistan
http://tiny.cc/q3268Read story and find out why these Afghan women are considered the bravest women in... more
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Karzai Push for Talks With Taliban Renews Risk to Afghan Women, Group Says
By James Rupert - Jul 13, 2010
U.S.-backed efforts by President Hamid Karzai to reconcile with the Taliban and other Islamic militants threaten to reverse improvements in the lives and rights of Afghanistan’s women, Human Rights Watch said.
The revival of Taliban control in southern and eastern Afghanistan has forced women to abandon jobs and social work, the New York-based advocacy organization said in a report today. Guerrillas have destroyed at least 456 girls schools, the Afghan human rights commission said in March.
Interviews with Afghan women in Taliban-controlled regions show that “as the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban draws closer, many women fear that they may also pay a heavy price for peace,” Human Rights Watch said in its report.
The Taliban’s renewed campaign against any public role for Afghan women has focused on Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second- largest city, which served as the Taliban’s headquarters during their rule in the 1990s. The Taliban last year claimed responsibility for shooting dead Sitara Achakzai, a women’s activist who served on the provincial legislative council.
On April 13, a gunman in Kandahar ambushed and shot dead a 22-year-old woman named Hossai who worked as an aid worker with Development Alternatives Inc., a consulting firm based in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. The following night, another woman aid worker in the south received an anonymous letter warning that she, too, would be killed if she did not stop working for her employer, an international organization, Human Rights Watch said.
Sanctions
Since January, Karzai has pushed for the lifting of UN sanctions on some Taliban leaders, curbs which freeze their assets abroad and prevent them from traveling, in a bid to pull them into peace negotiations. The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, has supported a revision of the list of 137 Taliban leaders subjected to the sanctions.
In March, Karzai’s administration held several days of direct talks with another militant insurgent group, the Hezb-i- Islami (Islamic Party) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which Human Rights Watch said “is also known for its repressive attitudes towards women.”
Any insurgents who rejoin Afghanistan’s society and politics “must respect women’s rights,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said May 13 at a conference with Karzai in Washington. Afghan groups have criticized Karzai for surrendering women’s rights to win political support. In March 2009, he signed into law a bill that required women of the Muslim Shiite sect to submit to their husbands’ demands for sex and to restrictions on their movement outside the home.
‘Active Role’
Karzai’s efforts to reconcile with Taliban leaders “should not be seen as a zero sum process and women are fundamental to the future development of Afghanistan,” State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said in response to a reporter’s question yesterday.
While Karzai included women as 20 percent of delegates at a national conference last month to plan a peace process, women have had little presence in the government bodies preparing peace feelers, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said in March. Women “must not only be consulted” in preparing peace talks, “but must play an active role at the negotiating table,” the commission said.
http://www.thedailygetup.com/wp-content/uploads/ai_images/44785AfghanWomen01.jpgKarzai Push for Talks With Taliban Renews Risk to Afghan Women, Group Says
By James... more
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by Malialai Joya. "bears witness to horrific experience of being female in Afghanistan."by Malialai Joya. "bears witness to horrific experience of being female in... more
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Malalai Joya has been called the bravest woman in Afghanistan. Joya was elected the youngest member of the Afghan parliament and suspended for her outspoken criticism of the country's top officials. According to the Toronto Star, these days Joya sleeps in safe houses with a rotating squad of bodyguards securing the doors. She only goes out in public wearing a burqa. Her wedding was held in secret.Malalai Joya has been called the bravest woman in Afghanistan. Joya was elected the... more
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It is sad that so many women are being mistreated and are not given equal rights, but thankfully there are those who will not just sit idly by. Hopefully will encourage more women to stand up for their rights and freedoms, not only in Afghanistan, but everywhere.It is sad that so many women are being mistreated and are not given equal rights, but... more
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Barack Obama – Mass Murderer
By Dan Spielberg
"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names"
~ Chinese Proverb
May 13, 2009 "Lew Rockwell" -- If you are a poor, hapless Afghan civilian whose family's bodies were ripped apart by U.S. bombs, does it really make a difference to you if the air "strikes" were ordered by the Moron from Texas, George W Bush, or the Agent of Change, Barack Obama? I would think not. If you were a Pakistani civilian whose village had been bombed by the U.S. would your heart be comforted by the fact that the mad bombers have a new, young, hip "Commander-in-Chief" who makes funny jokes to all the stenographers known as "The Washington Press Corps"? I sincerely doubt that as well.
Barack Obama sold himself to the country as someone who would bring massive "change" to the policies of the U.S. government, but of course when it comes to the favorite activity of that cancerous organism, warring against wholly innocent civilian populations in foreign countries, there will be no change. In fact, even the pleas of the President of the supposedly free and democratic country of Afghanistan are meaningless in the face of the U.S. government's desire to enforce its will on as much of the Earth as possible. I wonder if Americans would feel like they lived in a "free democracy" if the U.S. was occupied by a foreign military power that regularly killed our people and refused to stop? A power that calls refraining from murder as fighting with "one hand tied behind our back" as White House "National Security" Advisor James Jones recently did? I am pretty sure they emphatically would NOT.
This morning's news brings more information to us of "Barry's" latest slaughter, with at least 8 people in Pakistan dead, none of whom ever hurt a single innocent American. If they had hurt any U.S. soldiers in the region, that, of course, is wholly a result of the imperialists in Washington invading the region in the first place. To kill someone for defending themselves against aggression is the definition of tyrannical is it not? Or is the U.S. Government so holy, so infallible and morally upright that any who defy it are to be disposed of, like so much human garbage? Is a country that claims to be Christian really ready to accept the blasphemous idea that the U.S. Government is above any laws, even those of the God that the majority of Americans claim to believe in?
The Chinese proverb that opens this piece is true in all times and places, so let's call Mr. Obama by his real names: Wall Street Stooge, Zionist lickspittle, National Socialist, liar and above all, mass murderBarack Obama – Mass Murderer
By Dan Spielberg
"The beginning of... more
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Beauty and the East TV's Samira Atash interviews Dr. Massouda Jalal, a brave and heroic woman who ran for President in Afghanistan's first democratic elections in 2004. She discusses why she decided to run, the challenges Afghan women face, and why the upcoming elections in Afghanistan are so important for the international community to be concerned about. The interview was conducted in New York City when Dr. Jalal visited the States to promote "FrontRunner", a documentary about her 2004 campaign.Beauty and the East TV's Samira Atash interviews Dr. Massouda Jalal, a brave and... more
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The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty of gang raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.
The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.
“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced and found guilty by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”
Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan president and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.
The men were freed discreetly but the rape itself was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty... more
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They call them Olympic "Games" but for Mehbooba Andyar, representing her country as the fastest runner in Afghan, it's about accomplishment and being recognized as equal in all ways to her male counterparts. She trains at Ghazi stadium, where the Taliban used to execute women for adultery, trains under cover of darkness from the disapproval of neighbors and officials, who believe she is culturally stepping out of line. She is forced to compete in a full track suit and head scarf, and runs a full minute slower than her competitors, but she is determined -- despite death threats if she does compete, and retribution against her family by imprisonment if she does not.
In a small way it reminds me of the kind of personal courage that the Olympics highlights, such as swimmer Eric Moussambani, a novice swimmer from Equatorial Guinea back in 2000, who brought the crowd to its feet as he labored to finish the heat. They call them Olympic "Games" but for Mehbooba Andyar, representing her... more
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