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It is not their tradition or 'culture', but is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule. Besides, if we could excuse everything on cultural grounds, then we should not be appalled that the Carthaginians sacrificed their infant children, that little girls are circumcised in parts of Africa, that blacks in the deep south in the 1930s were lynched, prohibited from voting and forced to submit to unjust Jim Crow laws. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country in a part of the world that Americans do not understand. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, Americans can certainly express peaceful outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women by the Taliban. Origins: With every passing day, our inboxes play host to a growing number of calls to arms. People we've never heard of pop up to demand we protest this, boycott that, or eschew whatever from our diets, as they fill our e-mail and our minds with one frightening story after another. At first all such messages are taken to heart as we naively assume there must be some fire lurking beneath all that smoke. With time comes a more jaundiced view of such things, as incitement after incitement proves out to be naught but yet another group of crazies' attempt to inflame others with their particular brand of paranoia. We grow used to discovering that the studies underlying the scare are flawed, or the facts misstated, or the event we're supposed to get riled about never happened. The easily-herded Internet newcomer evolves into a properly skeptical Netizen who knows better than to believe scaremongering. And yet . . . every now and then one of those heavily-worded missives turns out to have something to it. This is one such piece. Conditions in Afghanistan are pretty much as described in this petition. Since the Taliban's ascension to power in 1994, the civil rights violations have been numerous, with women bearing the brunt of the repression. It's a deplorable situation, one the U.S. State Department is all too aware of. What this petition decries is real. Even so, signing it won't do any good. The petition -- a well-meaning individual effort of one person at Brandeis University -- isn't going anywhere. The e-mail address it was to be directed to has been turned off. These days, anything sent to sarabande@brandeis.edu bounces, with the sender receiving a standard note from the Mailer-Daemon to the effect that the account has been disabled due to volume. Earlier inquiries prompted the following auto-reply response: Please read this message carefully, especially the next two sentences. Do not reply to this email. Do not forward this email to anyone else. Anyone who needs a copy, already has one. Do not make things worse. Do not "help" by forwarding this message to everyone who has corresponded with you on this subject. Due to a flood of hundreds of thousands of messages in response to an unauthorized chain letter, all mail to sarabande@brandeis.edu is being deleted unread. It will never be a valid email address again. If you have a personal message for the previous owner of that address, you will need to find some means other than email to communicate. sarabande@brandeis.edu was not an organization, but a person who was totally unprepared for the inevitable consequences of telling thousands of people to tell fifty of their friends to tell fifty of their friends to send her email. It is our sincere hope that the hundreds of thousands of people who continue to atмЅe#Р ёa-Ep*,Dl,DlDD D ЊG(DьD˜DTюDGTimes New Roman Symbol ArialTimes New RomanWomen in Afghanistan Petition Claim: Though women in Afghanistan are subject to almost unthinkable violations of basic human rights, signing this petition won't help because the names aren't being collected. Status: True. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1999] The government of Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. The situation is getting so bad that one person in an editorial of the times compared the treatment of women there to the treatment of Jews in pre-Holocaust Poland. Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes. One woman was beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a relative. Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male relative; professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed into their homes, so that depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such conditions, has increased significantly. Homes where a woman is present must have their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those without male relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging on the street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. There are almost no medical facilities available for women, and relief workers, in protest, have mostly left the country, taking medicine and psychologists and other things necessary to treat the skyrocketing level of depression among women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear. It is at the point where the term 'human rights violations' has become an understatement. Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or offending them in the slightest way. David Cornwell has told me that we in the United States should not judge the Afghan people for such treatment because it is a 'cultural thing', but this is not even true. Women enjoyed relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, and drive and appear in public alone until only 1996 -- the rapidity of this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; women who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms are now severely restricted and treatedtempt to reply will find a more productive outlet for their concerns. There are several excellent organizations and individuals doing real work on the issues raised. Some of them were mentioned in sarabande's letter. None of them authorized her actions. We suggest that you contact them through non-virtual channels to help. They all have web sites with information and contact points. Unlike sarabande, they can channel your energy in useful directions. Do not let this incident discourage you. Please do not forward unverified chain letters, no matter how compelling they might seem. Propagating chain letters is specifically prohibited by the terms of service of most Internet service providers; you could lose your account. Any replies to this message will be deleted unread. The issue is closed. And there you have it. Though the petition was real, it never went anywhere. Signing it and persuading others to add their names is pointless -- the signatures aren't being collected. Even if they were, it's not at all likely that an Internet petition would have any appreciable impact on anyone. It's too easy to cook up lists of fake names and phony e-mail addresses and festoon a petition with them for anyone charged with gauging public reaction to give such documents any weight. If you feel strongly enough about this issue (or any other) to want to get involved, you should certainly do so. But remember, as with most endeavors, your results are likely to be proportional to your efforts. Adding your name to an Internet petition is quick, easy, and virtually useless. If you want to help, make a real effort such as writing or calling your Congressmen or contacting humanitarian groups to find out what you can do to assist their causes. Barbara "muzzle 'em fundamentalists" Mikkelson Additional information: Feminist Majority Restore Women's Human Rights in Afghanistan page International Women's Issues Afghanistan fact sheet Last updated: 31 January 1999 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/spoons/faxlore/afghani.htm Please use this URL in all links or references to this page Urban Legends Reference Pages Љ 1995-1999 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson Sources: Goodman, Ellen. "Nation of Women Silenced by Taliban." The Baltimore Sun. 9 December 1998 (p. A23). Thomas, Cal. "Taliban Terrorizing Females in Afghanistan." The Buffalo News. 15 January 1999 (p. C3). 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