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Monday, March 13, 2006
Spreading freedom to Iraq's women.
It hasn't been any secret that the increasing violence since the US-led invasion of Iraq has hit Iraqi women hard, and that this climate of violence certainly hasn't been helped by the increasing public power of Islamic fundamentalists. While the Western press has taken only episodic notice of this violence against women, Iraqi bloggers such as Riverbend at Baghdad Burning have chronicled how the daily world of Iraq's women has shrunk as the threat of violence has grown. So it was no surprise when I ran into this item at Feminist Daily News today. According to the story, acts of violence against Iraqi women who fail to wear headscarves have tripled since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. Given that Feminist Daily news is basically a headline service, I immediately went to the source of their info, the UN's IRIN news service, where I found many more details: "Women are being killed because they don't wear headscarves and veils," said WRA [Women's Rights Association] spokeswoman Mayada Zuhair. "A life is being taken because of a simple piece of cloth, and someone should prevent more women from being killed by these ignorant people who that believe honour depends on what you?re wearing." According to Zuhair, many women are afraid to report harassment and violence to authorities, and WRO is often approached by these women [or their families] for help. There's usually little WRO can do, however: "Police interference is very difficult. In most cases, the husband is the one who has to search for help because we can't interfere in issues related to traditional values," Zuhair noted. "The husband is the only one who has this right." Lovely, huh? But it doesn't stop here. After I read the story about the headscarf-related violence, I noticed a week-old story in IRIN's sidebar. That story reported on statistics compiled by a different Iraqi women's organization that show that all types of violence against Iraqi women have increased since the 2003 invasion. "We've studied reports from local NGOs on women's rights in the past three years, including violence, kidnappings, forced prostitution and honour killings," said WFO [Woman Freedom Organisation] President Senar Muhammad. "And the extent to which women have lost their rights in Iraq is shocking." So why isn't the 'mainstream' press all over these stories? We just searched Google News on the terms 'Iraq women violence' and couldn't find anything recent of consequence. And, given the Dubya administration's lip service to helping the women of Iraq [an example is this 9 March statement by under-secretary of state Karen Hughes], why isn't the US government raising its voice against the violence? [Okay, so that's just a rhetorical question we all already know the answer, I'm certain.] More: Inter Press Service has a good story on the difficulties faced by women in post-Saddam Iraq, and has some info not in either of the IRIN stories. You'll find the IPS story here. | | Posted by Magpie at 2:01 PM | Get permalink |
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