Stop the Colonial Train

Women in Black, Italy support the international campaign against the building of a high speed train that will link Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in which the Italian firm , Pizzarotti, is involved.

A report produced by the Israeli coalition of women for peace, as part of their research projectt Who profits?, shows that the train's route passes through the occupied territory and involves further losses of land for the Palestinian communities - who won't even be able to use the train. The construction in which Pizzarotti is taking part is illegal since international law prohibits the use of resources from an occupied territory by the occupying power for the benefit of its own citizens.

The choice of building in the occupied territory wasn't even necessary to the project. According to Dalit Baum, researcher with the Coalition of Women for Peace:

it is significant, even though not surprising to discover that Israeli planners found it easier to take land from the Palestinians and run the risk of being prosecuted for violations of international law rather than face the possible complaints of Israeli citizens who might object to the building of the train line close to their houses and the consequent devaluation of their real estate or the worsening of the air quality and the view from their windows. It seems that the internationally recognised borders of Israel are totally insignificant in the eyes of Israeli engineers and that they can cross them whenever it is more convenient or easier for their projects.

Alarm for Afghan Women: The Kabul government threatens to take control of women's refuges

The Italian coordination in support of Afghan women (CISDA) condemns the law promoted by the Afghan Council of Ministers in January 2011 according to which, within 45 days of the law being passed, management of women's refuges will be controlled by the Ministry of Women's Affairs, rather than the Afghan NGOs.

The decree is based on a previous decision of the Afghan Supreme Court - the most reactionary legislative body in the country - that defined it a Crime for a woman to leave her home and seek shelter in one of the refuges for abused women run by the NGOs.

The decision of the Afghan Supreme Court already restricted the possibilities for women victims of violence to appeal to judicial bodies.

Moreover, the law requires the closure of some refuges, the accompaniment of women by a mahram (male relative or husband), the teaching of Islan and the obligation of women to submit to continual "medical examinations" in order to monitor their sexual activity. The government affirms that management by the MoWA will guarantee a better administration of funds and a better choice of staff.

We maintain that this measure has been taken to satisfy fundamentalists and the Taliban, whith whom negotiations have been started. The refuges have been labelled by some as brothels and the choice has been made to bring them under control.

The consequences of this will be disastrous for the women victims of violence. :

• No male relative - and much less a husband - will accompany a woman to a refuge: in most cases, it is they who are the perpetrators of the violence from which the women want to escape.
• In Afghanistan, rape is reason for shame and for the repudiation of the woman. If the medical examination were to show that a woman has been raped, under government control, the woman would be condemned instead of being helped.
• If a woman were to escape from a forced marriage, once she arrives at the refuge she would be denounced by the government, since leaving home is considered a crime.
• Young women sent home would live a life of shame and marginalisation , if they are not killed, as is shown by various cases of stoning in different parts of the country in recent months.
• If the family were to ask for the return of the woman - whatever the reason, including a forced marriage, the staff of the refuge could not refuse. As if this were not enough, many women who have been in refuges will be accused of adultery within their community.
• Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world: there will be no guarantee that the funds donated by international agencies for women victims of violence will be properly controlled.

The Karzai government, set up and maintained by the US-NATO occupation, is certainly not distinguished by its respect for human rights. :

• In March 2009 the Karzai government passed a law against women - particularly those from the Shiite community. According to this law, women could not refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands and they could not go to work, to the doctor, or to school without his permission.
• In March 2007, the Karzai government guaranteed an amnessty for all the crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan in the last 20 years.
• In January 2007, the journalist Parwez Kambashkh was condemned to death by a tribunal in Balkh, after being accused of blasphemy because of his ideas about equal rights for women. Though Parwez was pardoned following international pressure, dozens of other journalists operate in the same situation.
• In July 2006, the Karzai government reintroduced the “Ministry of Vice and Virtue”, - sadly well known under the Taliban regime.
• Moveover, Afghan human rights organisations denounce constant pressure from the government to legalise the “informal justice informale” (tribale) which provides for the stoning of women.

E l’Italia?

Between 2001 and 2011, the Italian government has invested hundreds of millions of Euro in a project to rebuild the justice system in Afghanistan. We call on the Italian government and the political forces that have supported - and still support - the military intervention in Afghanistan to explain how the funds for the rebuilding of the Afghan justice system have been spent, given that in recent years laws have been passed that penalise rather than favour human rights and the rights of Afghan women.

INFO CISDA: cell. 3336868938
COORDINAMENTO ITALIANO SOSTEGNO DONNE AFGHANE Onlus
BANCA POPOLARE ETICA – Agenzia Via Melzo, 34 – Milano
IBAN: IT64U0501801600000000113666 – SWIFT: CCRTIT2T84A



Afghan Women

To Be a Woman is to Fly

On February 13th (the day of the mass demonstrations against the decline of public life symbolised by Berlusconi) there were so many people - women and men in Rome's Piazza del Popolo that you just couldn't get in and once in couldn't get out. Cell phones weren't working, so it wasn't possible to meet up as we'd planned. The only thing to do was to relax, listen, and talk with those beside us in the Piazza.

The speeches from the platform weren't particularly great. It wasn't a real public meeting with professional speakers. There were quite a few readings, some of them boring - as reading often are when performed by people who don't know how to project their voices and maintain a rhythm. There were also some rather dubious speeches... but the demonstration was peaceful and relaxed, made up of people who, in all simplicity and without moralism, were standing up for their dignity, their right to live in a civilised country.

And it was a marvelous gathering. People of all sorts, tolerant acceptance of all political positions and all life style choices from nuns to sex workers. There was the feeling that you have at the theatre when the comedy ends - you didn't like it, it was all to overdone, vulgar and farsical. It didn't make you laugh, in fact it was a little nauseating like a joke in bad taste told over and over again by pimply adolescents.... Finally it ends. You can leave without disturbing everyone on your row and when you get outside in the fresh air, you realise that the play has bored and nauseated everyone.. you can see the it written on their relieved faces .

There wasn't just Piazza del Popolo. Some women who didn't manage to get in, started an improvised march throuh the streets of central Rome, which because more and more joyful and liberating and which arrived in front of the seat of government. They really enjoyed themselves. Free, indecorous, autonomous, not ready to delegate. Rebels are beautiful, because they have the scent of freedom.

The Rome women in black were in the Piazza and in the march. Those who managed to get into Piazza del Popolo unfurled their banner -Donna é volare (to be a woman is to fly)- in memory of a dear friend. It was a prophetic slogan. All the women who experienced that demonstration know that they won't turn back. It took us some years, but it's clear that we've taken flight and we really can't go back.

Solidarity with the Struggle of Civil Society on the Other Mediterranean Shore

In recent days we have all seen the tremendous courage of Egyptian civil society, which inspired by the revolution in Tunisia has fought - and continues to fight - to be free of a dictatorship that as lasted more than 30 years.

We use the words of the Seville Women in Black to express our admiration and solidarity.

From civil society in Tunisa and Egypt, enormous waves - tenacious, strong, and decided in their will for social just and freedom - have made the Mediterranean the great lady of the revolution for human rights. a revoultion of active non-violent resistance that reveals the daily reality of life under regimes that have been maintained and supported by both the US authorities and the powers of the EU. Regimes that translate the forms of neo-colonialism, that perpetuate contempt for civil society in support of geostrategic and social economic interests. A double standard, which our western world uses as a characteristic of patriarcal power. So, Egyptian civil society, thanks to the Sadat regime, followed by the Mubarak regime, has been living for decades as a political prisoner under the control of the explicit interests of Zionism within a framework of western interests.

Then, all at once, our western universe discovers that in the mediterranean world "on the other shore", there are societies that are lively and full of aspirations. Almost always, the information we've been given has favoured an image of stagnation and reactionary traditionalism. The media have seized everthing that feeds islamophobia, fear of "terrorism" among our people, rarely mentioning rebellions that succeeded over the years and remaining silent about the systematic violation of human rights.

This veil that covered and protected the US and EU puppet regimes, with measures that went from outrageous levels of aid to sales of arms to be used for repression; a veil cast over the violations of human rights that is only lifted in a few countries, when their goverments come into conflict with the interests of western countries; countries that then the West does not hesitate to threaten and occupy, creating a disaster for the lives of millions of women and men (Iraq, Afghanistan), or instigating civil wars (Rwanda, Ivory Coast).

And while we recognise that such policies are part of the right wing in western politics - whose identification with the culture of death is implicit in their defence of the capitalist, neoliberal economy - we are scandalised by the fact that so-called progressive sectors have favoured, in one way or another, the maintenance of these corrupt, dictatorial regimes (one example among the many: the parties led by Mubarak and Ben Ali are even today part of the Socialist International). With the argument of the "lesser evil" and the fight against "radical Islam", they contribute to the creation of a "demon" which facilitates the miitarisation of the world and of our minds, reinforcing the structures of patriarcal power based on violence and exclusion.

From our position of absolute refusal of any regime that stands in the way of free development of popular sovereignty and of the rights of women, and because of our conviction that every form of violence - including obviously social and economic inequality and sexist, racist, cultural and religious exclusion - generates oppression and violence, in particular towards women, we demand that:

All EU governments must immediately

• Explicitly condemn these regimes and their violations of human rights
• Stop the export of arms
• Show their support for the civil society without interference and with full respect for their sovereignty.
  

We express our complete solidarity with:

The greater part of the civilian populations of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan.... and with the pacifist opposition in Israel who are mobilising to condemn their current political regimes.

Civilian populations, women and men, who will be able to take the road to the realisation of their demands for political, social and cultural freedom.

People who today in their uprising for human rights expose the many disturbing aspects of our democracies, calling upon us to reinforce the bonds of solidarity and banish from the Mediterranean those interests that are an obstacle to intercultural coexistence, and so to favour peace, social justice, and the emancipation of women and men from all types of oppression.