Newsgroup: it.sociale.scout
Titolo: women in Afghanistan

Hi everyone - I have received this e-mail and I think it is worth
circulating. The situation in Afghanistan today is a terrifying one
that may only escalate to other extremist countries.  We are certainly
fortunate to live where we do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please sign at the bottom to support, and include your town.  Thencopy
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
sara...@brandeis.edu
Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not kill
the petition.  Thank you.
Melissa Buckheit
Brandeis University
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TEXT:
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
suiciderate among women, who cannot find proper medication and
treatment forsevere depression and would rather take their lives than
live in suchconditions, 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 ewith them
medicine and psychologists and other things necessary to treat the
skyrocketing 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 theirburqua,
unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but slowly wasting away.Others
have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rockingor
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 told me that we in the United States should notjudge
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
subhuman 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 rightsfor  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 US 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 1998 to be treated as subhuman and so much as property.
Equality and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives
in Afghanistan or the United States.
1) Leslie London, Cape Town, South Africa
2) Tim Holtz, Boston, MA
3) Joyce Millen, Cambridge, MA
4) Diane Millen, Falls Church, Va.
5) Bill Millen, Falls Church, Va.
6) Milt Eisner, McLean VA
7) Harriet Solomon, Springfield, VA
8) Arlene Silikovitz, West Orange, NJ
9) Erica J. Lippitz,  South Orange, NJ
10) Joyce Nussbaum, Highland Park, NJ
11) John R. Goldberg, Indianapolis, IN
12) Constance Macy Koharchik, Indianapolis, IN
13) Robert M. Koharchik, Indianapolis, IN
14) Kenneth Albers, Ashland, OR
15) Catherine Davis, Ashland, OR
16) David A. Dreyfoos, Ashland, OR
17) K Williams, Washington, DC
18) Erik Haagensen, New York City, NY
19) F. Joseph McConnell, New York City, NY
20) Carol Lucha Burns, Portsmouth, NH
21) John M. Burns, Portsmouth, NH
22) Corbe Burns, Portsmouth, NH
21) Alison Flynn, New York, NY
22) Ginger Christie, New York, NY
23) Laura Rankin, York Harbor, ME
24) Carol Lolley-Harris, Hampstead,NH
25) Jeffrey Harris, Hampstead, NH
26) Joan M. Beauparlant,  Palm Bay FL
27) Joseph O. Beauparlant,  Palm Bay, FL
28) Danielle Beauparlant Moser, San Diego, CA
29) Amari Vorwerk, Mountain View, CA
30) Deborah Saas, Oxford, OH
31) Reva Youngstein, New York, NY
32) Melissa Fogarty, New York, NY
33) Andrea Saposnik, New York, NY
34) Orestes Morfin, Tucson, AZ
35) Alicia Saposnik, Tucson, AZ
36) Andrea Pi-Sunyer, New York, NY
37) Lisa Grogan, Baltimore, MD
38) Ursula Oertli Wallef, Lausanne, Switzerland
38) Nicolas Fremaux, Lausanne, Switzerland
39) Beat Oertli, Genève, Switzerland
40) Kristin Becker, Préverenges, Switzerland
41) Ariane Rudaz, Berne, Switzerland
42) Kathrin Wenger, Berne, Switzerland
43) Anne Thimonier, Zurich, Switzerland
44) Mark Bakker, Nancy, France
45) Johan Bos, Saarbruecken, Germany
46) Malvina Nissim, Pisa, Italy
47) Francesca Di Palma , Pisa , Italy
48) Alessandro Del Ministro, Pisa, Italy

Ciao a tutti, mi scuso per aver lanciato la petizione senza essermi prima
informato in merito, ma spero di rimediare con questa spiegazione trovata su
un sito (
http://www.hoaxkill.com/hoaxes/petitions.html
 per ulteriori
informazioni)
Scusate ancora, a presto... aspetto notizie per il torneo...(vedi sopra a
Torneo di Pallascout)
                      Women in Afghanistan
         When sending a message to the address mentioned in the petition, the
         following reply is sent back:
         Please read this message carefully, especially the next two
sentences. Do
         not reply to this email. Do not forward this email to anyone else.
Anyone
         who needs a copy, already has one. Do not make things worse. Do not
         "help" by forwarding this message to everyone who has corresponded
         with you on this subject.
         Due to a flood of hundreds of thousands of messages in response to
an
         unauthorized chain letter, all mail to 
sara...@brandeis.edu
 is
being
         deleted unread. It will never be a valid email address again. If you
have a
         personal message for the previous owner of that address, you will
need to
         find some means other than email to communicate.
 
sara...@brandeis.edu
 was not an organization, but a person who was
         totally unprepared for the inevitable consequences of telling
thousands of
         people to tell fifty of their friends to tell fifty of their friends
to send her
         email.
         It is our sincere hope that the hundreds of thousands of people who
         continue to attempt to reply will find a more productive outlet for
their
         concerns. There are several excellent organizations and individuals
doing
         real work on the issues raised. Some of them were mentioned in
         sarabande's letter. None of them authorized her actions. We suggest
that
         you contact them through non-virtual channels to help. They all have
web
         sites with information and contact points. Unlike sarabande, they
can
         channel your energy in useful directions. Do not let this incident
         discourage you.
         Please do not forward unverified chain letters, no matter how
compelling
         they might seem. Propagating chain letters is specifically
prohibited by the
         terms of service of most Internet service providers; you could lose
your
         account.
         Please also read:
http://athos.rutgers.edu/~watrous/pbs-funding-chain-letter-petition.html
 
http://www.wish.org/craig.htm
 
http://www.nbi.dk/~dickow/stop-chain-letter.txt
 
http://www.cancer.org/chain.html
 
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa021198.htm
 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-run-adverts-00.txt
 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-run-spew-07.txt
 
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACChainLetters.html
         Any replies to this message will be deleted unread. The issue is
closed.
         Please read this message carefully, especially the next two
sentences. Do
         not reply to this email. Do not forward this email to anyone else.
Anyone
         who needs a copy, already has one. Do not make things worse. Do not
         "help" by forwarding this message to everyone who has corresponded
         with you on this subject.