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NEWS & LETTERS, June - July 2009
WOMEN WORLD WIDE
by Mary Jo Grey
Hewad High School, a co-ed school for Afghan refugees in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, operated by the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), is under threat of being bombed by the Pakistani Taliban because they are co-ed. The people who live around the school asked that the school close or separate benches be made for boys and girls, because they feared such an attack. The Afghan Embassy refused to protect the school, and the Pakistani police ordered the school closed and moved within two days. The new location they found has much higher rent, and no security for refugees and poor Pakistanis. Donations to help them continue can be made online at www.sawa-australia.org
--Information from RAWA
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A march of 5,000 people in May protested Joe Arpaio's reign of terror over prisoners in the Durango Jail in Phoenix, Ariz. More than 500 women prisoners there then organized and declared a hunger strike. Five days later, 400 male prisoners joined those women and together they are demanding an end to the human rights abuses, racist intimidation, wretched living conditions and mistreatment, rotten and poisonous food, and sexual misconduct by the guards. Joint action within prisons is not easy, so it is very significant that the women's hunger strike sparked solidarity from the men.
--Information from Urszula Wislanka
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Rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been soaring in recent months, as part of a growing tactic to use rape as a weapon of war. In Sud-Kivu, during just the last three months, there have been more rapes reported than half of the total reported in all of last year. Thousands of Congolese women marched in Kinshasa in late 2008 to protest these atrocities. Also, a survey of women in a Chad refugee camp who had fled violence in Darfur revealed at least a third had been raped by either militiamen in the Sudan, or villagers around their refugee camp.
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Hundreds of students, women and men, protested sexual assault and rape at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., in April. Feminists from all walks of life stormed the campus to say that sexual violence is a problem on all campuses and students are fighting back.
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The Dominican Republic's National Assembly has voted to amend its constitution to say "the right to life is inviolable from conception until death." Apparently, women's lives are not included since there are no exceptions for abortions in case of rape, incest, or the endangerment of a woman's life or health. Both the doctors and women face prison sentences.
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