GIRLS INTERRUPTED
*to da real page*
before goin to muh main site,this is going to be a page where i express some stuff that have been quite disturbing to me.
to make u people actually read this i had to do something like this.and this is a very serious subject involving the rights of females in this world.
i first came across this issue in the october,1999 issue of Seventeen magazine. i knew that it was happening but didn't really grasp how serious this actually is.
in the article that ellen byron wrote for the october issue it started out by saying
places such as afghanistan,pakistan,jordan,togo and ghana, are the worst places women can live. here are some examples of how women are treated in the following places:
AFGHANISTAN:
"if you are a female teenager,there's no worse place to be than afghanistan," declares Nazira Karimi, an afghani journalist-turned-refugee.if the Taliban sees a tv they break it, cassettes, they rip it, books, they burn it.girls here are not ALLOWED to goto school.around 12 or 13 you're married off or chosen for a Tabilan member like a piece of meat.
women have been stripped of rights and are virtual prisoners in their own homes.recently a young woman's thumb was cut off, the reason? because she was wearing nail polish.The Tabilan is a right-wing militia group that seized control of the central asian nation's government in 1996 and began a war on women that is medieval in its fury.Girls here cannot attend school nor work.she can not leave the house without a male relative, if she goes out she must wear a BURQA, a heavy dark garment that covers the entire body,with only a small mesh window to see through.Women here are not allowed to be treated by male doctors,and since only a small number of women are permitted to practive medicine, if girls get sick, they may die.
If you're not accompanied by a man you are beaten,if your ankle shows under the burqa your foot is amputated.Before the Taliban took over 70% of the country's teachers were women and 40% were doctors, now they are threatened and killed like they aren't worth anything.
to volunteer or find out more about the topic of human rights visit the Amnesty International website at www.amnesty-usa.org
PAKISTAN:
the story of Samia Sarwar is a perfect example of the way women are treated here in Pakistan.
Samia was a law student who lived in pakistan.for years she tried to divorce her abusive husband(who was also her first cousin),a man so violent he had thrown his wife down a flight of stairs when she was pregnant. samia had a new, kind man in her life whom she dreamed of amrrying. but first she had to end her disastrous union to Imran Saleh.
when samia's mother agreed to meet her daughter at a lawyer's office, samia thought she'd won her family's permission--crucial in her culture--to end the marriage. instead, her mother stepped out of the way so the hit man the family ahd hired got a clear shot.moments later samia lay dead.In Pakistan, samia's murder is called an honor killing. it was the only way her family felt they could be cleansed of the shame she'd brought by seeking divorce. such executions claim the lives of hundreds of young women yearly.
to volunteer or find out more about the topic of human rights visit the Feiminist Majority Foundation website at www.feminist.org
JORDAN:
honor killings are also a reality here. a 16 year old girl named kifayah was raped by her own brother,when kifayah realized she was pregnant,she told her parents.her brother tried to kill her,she survived and got an abortion.her family married her off to a man in his sixties. 6 months later he claimed kifayah had robbed him and divorced her.another brother went to pick her up and when they got home he tied kifayah up,made her recit from the Koran(their religious bible)and slahsed her throat,then he went outside screaming that he'd cleansed the family honor and brandishing the bloody knife.
alot of the women killed were all victims of honor killings.their offense might be anything from dating a man to having a child out of wedlock.many of their so called crimes were based on only rumor.the honor killers are often not punished, girls are put in jail for protective custody.they can only be released only to a male relative and usually the family only wants to bail her out just for another chance to kill her.
to volunteer or find out more about the topic of human rights email International Needs,Ghana at intneeds@ghana.com
TOGO:
females here have to undergo FGM(female genital mutilation).it's a common practice in parts of Africa.the external genitalia including the clitoris and labia are cut off.The job is done without anesthesia, by a tribal woman using an unsterilized knife. for those of u like me who did not know what the genitalia,clitoris and labia are, here's the meaning for it: GENITALIA=the reproductive organs, CLITORIS=small erectile part of the female genitals at the upper end of the vulva(external female genitals),LABIA=(not stated in the dictionary...i wonder why)Anyways, if u still don't understand what the FGM procedure is about lets just say...if u undergo it, it would HLH(hurt like hell).
the culture there says that it keeps a girl clean and makes her the best wife a man can have.Most women who undergo the FGM procedure has side effects such as menstrual pain,and difficult childbirth.alot of girls die from it as well.women were treated with respect here but men dictated their lives.
to volunteer or find out more about human rights visit the Physicians for Human Rights website at www.phrusa.org
GHANA:
In Ghana as well as Togo and Benin, girls were sent to fetish shrines to atone for supposed crimes commited by their ANCESTORS...(what da..that aint fair).This custom is called trokosi.once there the girls become sex slaves and labor slaves to the shrine priests.a girl names juliana shares her story about her parents lying to her. they told julianna that they were going to a village 400 miles away from home to visit an uncle. in reality she was actually sent away to make up for hte alleged sins of a grandfather she'd never met.10 or 15 women and girls lived in one mud room. torn mats on the floor were their beds.they weren't allowed to wear sandals and only got one piece of cloth to wear around the waist or the chest.
from dawn to dusk the women tended the shrine and worked on the priest's land.at night the priese would decide which girl will warm his bed, in other words have sex with him.Julianna at only 12 years of age was chosen to sleep with the priest and she had her first child at 18.at 21 julianna was pregnant again,she remembers one afternoon when she was starving, she had no food the previous evening and would not get any until the next day.she decided to go to the priest's farm and pick an ear of corn. the priest and his assitants beat her unconscious.she decided to run away and she did. julianna made her way to adidome, a small town on the volta river where she took refuge with the human rights organization International Needs.She told her story on radio and tv and won the reebok award in 1999.4000 women are still in bondage, and julianna quotes that "i cannot rest until all are freed"
to volunteer or find out more about human rights visit the Tahirih Justice Center website at www.tahirih.org
it is hard to imagine that these types of things are actually happening to women. our own neighbourhoods seem so safe,i always thought that sexism was no longer a reality, but i was wrong. these stories are real, and it is happening to thousands of women everywhere. i'm not really sure how we can help, maybe by writing a letter to the government, or to oprah..that'll work..or volunteering at the nonprofit groups mentioned above.
i just hope that yall took time to read this, its hard to imagine and grasp huh?all of the above is taken from the october 1999 issue of seventeen magazine.
Email: babyblue_soda_pop@yahoo.com
