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NEWS & LETTERS, JUNE 2003
HELP IRAQI WOMEN FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS!
SUPPORT THE PUBLICATION OF AN INDEPENDENT WOMEN’S NEWSPAPER IN BAGHDAD!
“Our vision is that women should not bend down under
the burden of religion, nationalism, tribalism, and Political Islam. Women
should stand upright. We should be strong. We are beginning to organize,
starting from the north where we can function better, and we will spread to the
center and the south.” --Yanar Mohammed, Coordinator of Defense of Iraqi
Women’s Rights * * * Iraqi women have a long and valiant tradition of
fighting for their rights. In 1958, 45,000 women demonstrated in the streets for
their civil rights--a good decade before the modern American feminist movement
was born. Due to Saddam Hussein’s brutal Ba’ath party regime,
repeated U.S. imperialist war and genocidal UN sanctions on Iraq, most of the
gains of women have been overturned. However, Iraqi women continue their fight. Two independent women’s organizations, Defense of
Iraqi Women’s Rights (DIWR), and the Independent Women’s Organization (IWO)
with the support of the Worker’s Communist Party of Iraq, have been working in
Northern Iraq to run a women’s shelter and fight against Iraqi civil laws
based on Shari’a that sanction “honor killings” and other misogynist laws
and practices. IWO has 2000 members, and since the opening of their
shelter in the ‘90s, have saved 250 women from “honor killings.” In the wake of the latest U.S. assault on and occupation
of Iraq, IWO and DIWR are launching an independent newspaper EQUALITY in Baghdad
to fight for the rights of women to be included in the political debate over
Iraq’s future. But they need your help! Show your solidarity with the women of
Iraq by making a donation to: Yanar Mohammed and DIWR, 5 Sunny Glenway, Unit #115, Toronto, ON M3C2Z5, Fax: 416-724-7104, Yanar2002@hotmail.com |
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