Iraqi women fear for their rights

[ECH1969]

Women's groups in Iraq are stepping up a campaign to try to ensure that the country's constitution does not restrict their rights.

With the approach of the 15 August deadline for completing the new constitution, the role of women in society has become a political battlefield.

"There's very little time left," says Maysoon al-Damluji, president of the Iraqi Independent Women's Group.

Activists have also been busy lobbying members of the committee drawing up the constitution.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4715051.stm

[alarcojon]

1. See also this forgotten post from yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1650338

Yanar Mohammed, quoted in the BBC article, has sent out the following e-mail:

An era of post-occupation atrocities unfolded to disclose the final chapter of human rights abuse in Iraq: A constitution of legalizing women’s discrimination.

The constitution draft which was circulated secretly eliminated the minimal rights women had under the previous 1959 “Personal Status Law”. Although this law was partly based on Islamic Shariaa, it included much reform that secured minimal standards of human rights for women, such as preventing marriage for female children and making polygamy more difficult for men – a practice that is allowed under Shariaa in addition to beatings, stoning, flogging and forced veiling.

The draft constitution indicates in its article 14 the elimination of the current law and refers family laws completely to Islamic Shariaa and to other religions in Iraq. In other words, it leaves women vulnerable to all inequalities and social hostility in addition to designating females as second rate citizens or semi-humans.

Since the beginning of the occupation, the US administration has recognized Iraqis according to their ethnic/nationalist and religious identities. This predetermined polarization of the society around its most reactionary forces has resulted with a most lethal weapon which is a government of division and inequality - a potential timed bomb for a civil war that has already started. Furthermore, the only mutual agenda for the parties in power is one of oppression, bigotry and misogyny in addition to representing the US occupation interests.

The enemies of the people seated in the panel of writing the constitution have decided to give life to resolution 137. This resolution isolates Iraqis from the modern world and turns Iraq into an Afghanistan under Taliban where oppression and discrimination of women is institutionalized under Shariaa.

We have witnessed stages and kinds of atrocities under this occupation. The time comes for the US occupation to leave an unprecedented hallmark of abusing human rights by forcing a constitution that turns 13 million women into semi-humans.
We need your support in rejecting a constitution that gives way to decades of silent massacres against women.

Let the freedom loving people of the US know what is being committed in their name and in the name of democracy.

Write open letters to the US administration, to its allies, and especially to the UN. Remind them that women’s rights cannot be the price for a hideous democracy of racism, ethnicity, religiosity, sectsrianism and misogyny.
Help us find a way out of the never ending attack on our freedoms and lives.

[eissa]

2. How ironic

that women had more rights under a secular government than one run by religious extremists. Why, I'm shocked :eyes:

Pretty soon, all women in the Middle East will enjoy freedom, just like those enjoyed by our allies, the Saudis.

[Ripley]

6. Well golly, do you think the neocon criminals give a shit about WOMEN?

I'm pretty sure Smirkaholic isn't exactly on the side of women's rights since his first act after stealing the White House was to install a gag order regarding abortion along with aid to Africa.

It's too bad the Iraqi women are begging us American women to help fight for their rights when we pretty much have our hands full here trying to fight for ours.

You are so right eissa about being like the Saudi's. Remember the boy king holding hands and kissing the Saudi Prince in the field of bluebells? How romantic for them.

How horrible for the women.

[grahamhgreen]

3. This is where the current justification for war falls...

We are not bringing freedom to Iraq - just ushering in an Islamic Republic with Sharia Law - one of the most repressive systems of governance on the planet. As I like to say to my conservative friends, "How many more Americans should die in order to set up an Islamic republic in Iraq?"

[eissa]

4. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[alarcojon]

5. Yes, welcome to DU

and thanks for posting Yanar's e-mail yesterday. My wife received it also, and I was going to post it, but you beat me to it. B-)

[deadparrot]

7. BBC: Iraqi women fear for their rights

Women's groups in Iraq are stepping up a campaign to try to ensure that the country's constitution does not restrict their rights.

With the approach of the 15 August deadline for completing the new constitution, the role of women in society has become a political battlefield.

It pits secular Iraqis against newly powerful religious parties who want a greater role for Islam written into the document.

"There's very little time left," says Maysoon al-Damluji, president of the Iraqi Independent Women's Group.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4715051.stm

[goforit]

8. Not as much as they fear for their life via US military perversions.