2009 April » Feminist Peace Network

A few days ago, I suggested that men sit down, shut up and listen because what they might hear if they did is the truth. And one of those truth-tellers is Ruth Conniff, writing in the Progressive:

Goldman Sachs reports better-than-expected profits this quarter. Wells Fargo cleared record profits last week. The President, understandably, points to signs of hope and encourages Americans to be optimistic about the economy. But when do we move from healthy confidence to a confidence game? The banks are reporting profits thanks to massive infusions of taxpayer bailout funds. It’s simply silly to be lulled by cheery-sounding reports when the institutions are actually insolvent. At some point we have to take a clear-eyed look at the massive failure of our financial system. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

Over the last few weeks as the stock market has rebounded, I’ve been having similar thoughts–it just doesn’t make any sense that the economy is magically on the road to better, so what kind of Koolaid are they drinking on Wall Street and the White House. Bailing out the banks without fixing the structural problems makes about as much sense as plugging the New Orleans levees with bubblegum, it isn’t going to hold, a point that I suspect most of the American public understands, which really makes me wonder if we’re being set up for another fall.

Note–Conniff’s piece goes on to talk about Elizabeth Warren’s thoughts on the subject, something we also highlighted in Part 11 of this series.

From Yanar Mohammed, President of the Organization Of Women’s Freedom In Iraq (OWFI):

After two years of fact-finding and months of lobbying over local and regional televisions, newspapers, websites and radios, OWFI’s activism receive the first results: the legislaors have forwadrded a draft law against trafficking of women and girls.

As usual, our NGO was not informed of the draft law and we had to hear it from the media.

As usual, the govenment encourages their “SELECT NGOs” to hold meetings and raise their timid demands about the same issue albeit too late. They continue to call them “key” organizations in spite of their feable agenda on VAW.

As usual, the officials announce that they will someday set up shelters and visit prisons to help the trafficked women with the help of their “SELECT NGOs”.

The attempt of undermining our efforts to lead women’s struggle for their rights will not deter us from continuing to fight.

For more background, please read this article in the Time Magazine. Please note that the writer of the article has misunderstood details on the registration of OWFI. Although we run informal shelters which have saved tens of women from honour killings, domestic abuse, sectarian abuse, and trafficking, our organization is fully registered at the government.

At this point, we need to document our main debates on media with officials:

March 6: A shocking article on Time Magazine about OWFI activists who risk their lives while visiting brothels and “no light” districts. Previous victim of trafficking who is an OWFI shelters resident speaks out.

March 12: Spokesperson of the Iraqi government, Ali Al Dabbagh admitting to existence of the problem of trafficking of women in answer to facts brought forward by OWFI president, Yanar Mohammed: Al Arabiya.net website. As a result, 360 people joined the debate and forwarded their opinions.

March 16: Female Parliamentarian rejecting the possibility that Iraqi women can be trafficked or practice prostitution. Sameera Al Mousawi is the in charge of the Women and Children’s Committee in the parliament. She waived away the issue that Yanar Mohammed brought forward in Al Diyar TV talk show, claiming that the discussion was an insult to Iraqi women.

April 1: From Iraq show on Al Arabiya Satelite TV, interviews OWFI president and also interviews a previous victim of trafficking(resident of OWFI shelters) who discloses being trafficked to a Arabic Gulf country where she and her many women were exploited by royalist princes of the gulf: the show was not aired for reasons which were not disclosed.

April 13: Media exposing the new Draft Law against Trafficking in Persons. Another article on the Time Magazine which leaked the news and interviewed government and ngo women about the issue as mentioned above.

Our utmost thanks go to the courageous Rania Abou Zeid who ventured into the Iraqi scene and collected the facts. We also thank the Time Magazine for allowing their pages to become reason for protecting a population of exploited Iraqi females.

We will still be watching the Draft Law as the State Shura Council (a newly founded council of clerics in the “democratic” Iraq) reviews it and takes the final decision.

Many thanks to Yanar Mohammed for bringing this to our attention. We need to find ways that American women can support this very important measure to stop the trafficking of women in Iraq.

President Obama recently labeled the new Afghani law that would legalize marital rape referred to in the first item below as “abhorrent”, not to be confused with the supposed potential of terrorism against the United States that is our stated reason for the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. This is not an adequate response in the face of the unrelenting war against women. Until the following recent events are labeled what they are, namely patriarchal acts of terror, we cannot have a realistic strategy in Afghanistan.

1. A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration of 300 women protesting against a new conservative marriage law on Wednesday. The women were pelted with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart.Women’s rights activists scheduled a protest Wednesday attended by mostly young women. But the group was swamped by counter-protesters — both men and women — who shouted down the women’s chants.

Some picked up gravel and stones and threw them at the women, while others shouted “Death to the slaves of the Christians!”

2. Taliban militants publicly executed a man and girl on Monday for eloping when she was already engaged to marry someone else, an official said, in a sign of the grip the Islamists have over parts of Afghanistan.Hashim Noorzai, head of Khash Rud district in southwestern Nimruz province, said the two were executed by gun shots in front of a crowd of villagers.

3. A female provincial official known for fighting for women’s rights was gunned down in southern Afghanistan yesterday, following a day of fighting in the region that left 22 militants dead, officials said.

A Taliban spokesperson, Qari Yousef Ahmedi, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Over the weekend, I wrote a post about Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian writer who, when trying to return to her home in Palestine from the United States, was held for 36 hours at the Cairo airport, and ultimately refused passage to Palestine and forced, along with her two young children to return to the U.S. As a result of the ordeal both she and her children became quite ill and it has taken her a few days to write the details of her horrendous experience. It is now posted on her blog, where she writes about why she was not allowed into Palestine:

I hold a Palestinian Authority passport. It replaced the “temporary two-year Jordanian passport for Gaza residents” that we held until the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid ’90s, which itself replaced the Egyptian travel documents we held before that. A progression in a long line of stateless documentation.

It is a passport that allows no passage. A passport that denied me entry to my own home. This is its purpose: to mark me, brand me, so that I am easily identified and cast aside without questions; it is convenient for those giving the orders. It is a system for the collective identification of those with no identity.

It is a long post, but one which I will excerpt no further because it should be read in its riveting entirety.

I got a bad case I can’t shake off of me
The fevered walking round wondering how it ought to be
You work in the system
You see possibilities and your glistening
Eyes show the hell you’re gonna give ‘em
When they back off the mic for once and give it to a woman

Last week when Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) spoke out against President Obama’s supplementary funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, her words were the embodiment of the lyrics above from the Indigo Girls’ “Pendulum Swinger”. In a statement, Woolsey said,

“As currently proposed this funding will do two things – it will prolong our occupation of Iraq through at least the end of 2011, and it will deepen and expand our military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely. I cannot support either of these scenarios. Instead of attempting to find military solutions to the problems we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama must fundamentally change our mission in both countries to focus on promoting reconciliation, economic development, humanitarian aid, and regional diplomatic efforts.”

Imagine…if women like Woolsey had full and equal access to the microphone and those last words (emphasis mine) were the basis of our domestic and foreign policy. Then we probably wouldn’t be reading Kate Michelman’s gut wrenching accounts of our disfunctional healthcare system or reports that healthcare in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly impossible to obtain because of attacks on healthcare facilities and healthcare workers.

And we would be putting our resources to use fighting terror in the form of domestic violence in this country instead of bankrupting our economy fighting endless wars at the cost of the human rights of the citizens of the countries we invade, while dismissively suggesting in response to reports of a new law that would effectively legalize rape in Afghanistan that the human rights of women are incidental relative to protecting the U.S. from ‘terrorism’.

The new law denies Afghan Shi’a women the right to leave their homes except for “legimitate” purposes; forbids women from working or receiving education without their husbands’ express permission; explicitly permits marital rape; diminishes the right of mothers to be their children’s guardians in the event of a divorce; and makes it impossible for wives to inherit houses and land from their husbands – even though husbands may inherit immoveable property from their wives. –RAWA

Unfortunately, not only are women in Congress a small minority, they also persistently get less media coverage than their male counterparts, and Woolsey’s remarks were for the most part either ignored by the media or given one paragraph buried in coverage of Obama’s spending request. Until women like Rep. Woolsey are given their fair turn at the microphone, and until those who are in charge (overwhelmingly men or women who are equally invested in maintaining the destructive mindset that has overtaken our country) sit down, shut up and listen, truly listen, until then I fear for my country and indeed the whole world.

Feminist Peace Network

The Girls’ Guide To The Economy Part 12–The Difference Between Confidence And A Con Game

OWFI Campaigns For Anti-Trafficking Law In Iraq

The Continuing Reign Of Terror Against Women In Afghanistan

Laila El-Haddad Writes About The Ordeal Of Trying To Return Home To Palestine

Our Turn At The Microphone–Sit Down, Shut Up And Listen, Truly Listen

Recent Posts

Pages

Meta

Archives

Follow FPN

Translate this Page

Friends