19 May, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“The political climate in Iraq is such that anyone can carry out crimes against women. You can come upon women’s bodies anywhere.”
This is a quote from Houzan Mahmoud, Kurdish feminist and activist based in London. The quote appeared in today’s Guardian in an article by noted US feminist author Katha Pollitt, who wrote about Dua Khalil Aswad and the upsurge of brutal and unspeakable acts of violence against women in Iraq since the US-led war began. It is truly horrifying but necessary reading. Women in Iraq were already subjected to horrible violence under Saddam, but now, with the complete and total breakdown of social order, it’s open season on women. Literally.
I corresponded with Ms. Mahmoud briefly this week regarding a meeting tonight at Amnesty International concerning the situation regarding Dua Khalil Aswad and the larger issue of violence against women in Iraq. I trekked over to the Amnesty Int’l Human Rights Centre in Shoreditch this evening for the meeting, but there was a power outage in most of Shoreditch, which affected the Tube and shut down Amnesty’s office. Sigh. I got there very late and found out the meeting was moved to Amnesty’s office in Clerkenwell, which is apparently not easily accessible by public transport (or so said their security guard). And it was raining and there were no cabs. So to make a long story short, I didn’t make it. But I did meet other people who had also planned to attend the meeting, one who had come all the way from Germany. I will try to find out what action is being taken as a result of the meeting and let you know.
Nearly 4,000 people hit my blog on Friday alone while searching for information about Dua Khalil Aswad. I am truly astounded. I hope that we can all turn our collective disgust and rage into something productive to help the women in Iraq. Those of us who are American and British really have an obligation to help, even if we were against the war. Ms. Mahmoud is a representative of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, described in today’s Guardian as an “underground railroad” for Iraqi women at risk of being murdered. Supporting their campaigns is one way to help. I will keep posting updates as well on everything I find out. I think it’s worth pointing out that bloggers have brought this story to the world’s attention and now the media is catching up.
Link: CNN reports that four have been arrested so far in Dua’s murder.
[tags]Dua Khalil Aswad[/tags]
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heather harvey Says:
May 21st, 2007 at 2:17 pmHI: we did lay on 2 coaches to take people to the new venue, sorry if you were too late for that but we can made available one of the speeches and on the webiste there is an amnesty letter writing action on Du’a’s case.
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Sorry you missed it. For all of those people visiting: the best way to donate to Houzan and co is through http://www.madre.org.
