Revolution #80, March 4, 2007
From A World to Win News Service:
On March 8, 2007, International Women’s Day, united and in harmony, let us call for "another world"!
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February 12,
2007. A World to Win News Service. Following is the call for a
demonstration in The Hague 8 March by the Campaign for the Abolition of
all Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in
Iran (Karzar).
Do you hear the screams of Iraqi women, crying out against honour
killings by Islamic groups or against being raped by American and
British troops?
Do you hear the protests of Afghan women whose bodies and souls are the
battleground in the rivalry between the Taleban, other Islamic forces
and the Western occupiers and their protégés?
Do you hear the screams of an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to
be whipped and forced to wear a veil, and now faces death by stoning?
Do you hear the protests of American women who face the rape of one of
their sisters every six seconds?
Are you a witness to the rise in patriarchal violence against women in
the European countries?
The perpetrators of repression against women are on the one hand the
patriarchal imperialist powers who try and justify their aggressive
wars by claiming to defend “women’s
rights” and “human rights” in the region,
and on the other the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who have
enslaved women.
The murder of thousands of women and children with napalm, phosphorous
and cluster bombs, the rape of Iraqi women by US soldiers and the
imposition of misogynist Islamic constitutions by fundamentalist forces
helped by US and Western advisors in Iraq and Afghanistan are only part
of the “women’s liberation” heralded by
imperialist forces. At the same time, the political programme of
reactionary Islamic forces steps up the repression and destitution of
women. Legislation confirming inequality as well as Islamic punishments
against women and the forced veil are all manifestations of the male
supremacist Islamic power structure. The rape and execution of women
and young girls in Afghanistan is a sign of the militarist, reactionary
Islamic power in that country.
All these events teach us, women of the Middle East, that it would be
as wrong to seek emancipation and liberation within the framework of
the current international order as it would be to seek
women’s liberation within the framework of Islamic ideology.
We Iranian women will continue on the path we started last year,
seeking to build “another world” based on the
participation and power of the people, who have no interest in
maintaining the power structures based on exploitation and injustice.
We seek a world where mutilating women is considered a crime, not a
tradition. We seek a world where no female child will be forced to
submit to “matrimonial” rape, where no woman will
face “honour killings”, where no woman is forced to
commit suicide or to set fire to herself to escape patriarchal
violence, a world where no woman is punished or faces stoning by death
for loving someone or for sexual relations. We seek a world that does
not consider homosexuality a crime, a world where a woman’s
identity is not determined by her marriage or motherhood. We are
fighting for a world where no one can force women to stay in the
kitchen or indoors, where no one can deprive women of the right to
participate in social production and in politics. In such a world women
will control their own bodies and will make their own decisions about
whether they want children, a world in which men and women are truly
equal in all aspects of life.
These are some aspects of the horizon for our liberation, a horizon
that must be within the reach of millions of oppressed women, a horizon
that gives us hope, a hope that gives us courage and the strength to
continue our struggles for emancipation from all forms of sexual and
class oppression.
On March 8, 2007 we will raise the slogan “No to reaction,
No to Imperialism, Advance toward another world” to unite
and widen our ranks. In the current world situation, women’s
emancipation sets a clear demarcation line between the
world’s oppressed and all the assorted imperialist and
Islamic fundamentalist reactionaries.
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