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Afghanistan Women Plead for Help
By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press, April 28, 1999ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Carrying placards denouncing Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, Afghan women marched on U.N. offices in Pakistan today to demand world attention for their plight.
"We get only silence from the international community ... we need help,'' said Huma Saeed, a spokesman for the protesters, who were led by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.
In a one-page letter, the group criticized the international community and media, saying their central Asian country had received only sporadic attention while the plight of refugees from Kosovo had received extensive coverage.
"Is it because European blood is (more important) than the blood of the people of Afghanistan?'' said the letter, which was delivered to the U. N. office.
In the 90 percent of Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban, women are banned from working outside the home and girls are not allowed to go to school. Health care is segregated and there are complaints of insufficient doctors, beds and medicines for women.
The association says the anti-Taliban alliance, made up of Islamic groups who ruled Kabul from 1992 until the Taliban took over in 1996, are not much better.
Association members have received numerous threats from Afghans who identify themselves as Taliban.
In December in northwestern Pakistan, men saying they were Taliban threatened to break the legs of women who went ahead with an anti-Taliban march. The march was canceled.
The women today also criticized U.N. peace efforts that offer radical Islamic groups a share of power.
"We demand to know why the United Nations and other world bodies insist on delivering the destiny of our people into the hands of fundamentalist murderers,'' the statement said.
However, the United Nations has had very little success at negotiating a peaceful end to the protracted and bitter conflict.
Like previous U.N.-negotiated accords, the latest agreement reached in Turkmenistan in March quickly fell apart and the two sides returned to the battlefield.
A U.N. team from New York is in Pakistan to determine how civilian monitors being sent to Afghanistan can assess human rights.
Afghan Women Hold Anti-Taliban Rally in Islamabad
XINHUA, April 28, 1999 ISLAMABAD (April 28) XINHUA - Around 300 people, mostly Afghan women and children, held a rally here Wednesday, demanding an end to fundamentalist rule in Afghanistan, witnesses said.
The demonstration was organized by a human rights group called the "Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)."
The demonstrators shouted such anti-Taliban slogans as: "Taliban another stab in the back of Afghanistan," "down with fundamentalists," and "freedom, democracy, women rights."
Huma Saeed, spokeswomen for RAWA, handed over a memorandum to Muhammad Maqbool, a U.N. official based in Islamabad. The memorandum is entitled "Human Rights Disaster in Afghanistan Can Only End When Fundamentalist Domination Is Put to An End,"
Maqbool said he would forward the memorandum to the U.N. Secretary General.
Afghans hold rally against HR abuses
New Network International, 29th April, 1999
ISLAMABAD (NNI): Afghan women and children Wednesday staged a demonstration in Islamabad against human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
The human rights group "Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan" (RAWA) organized the rally in front of the United Nations office.
The demonstrators were holding banners and placards, inscribed with slogans against Taliban and demanding of the United Nations to take note of violation of women rights in Afghanistan.
Huma Saeed, spokeswoman of the RAWA, handed over a memorandum to a UN official Muhammad Maqbool, who assured the demonstrators that the memorandum would be sent to the Secretary General Kofi Annan. The demonstrators were standing in front of the UN office for 30 minutes and later peacefully dispersed.
The RAWA leader regretted that the world community has for the most part remained a spectator to the multitude of atrocities committed in Afghanistan and no country or world authority has undertaken any meaningful step against the fundamentalists in the interest of ending the human rights tragedy in this country.
The memorandum reads, "According to Amnesty International, Afghanistan continues to remain "to world's largest forgotten tragedy". World media has lashed itself and world opinion into a frenzy over Kosovo, but the brutally savage massacre of ten of thousands of innocent people by the fundamentalists in Kabul alone did not even get into the news. Is it because European blood is thicker than the blood of the people of Afghanistan? Has providence decreed that our people should everlastingly swim in an ocean of tears and blood of and be doomed to an existence of agony as far prey of world bullies and their indigenous henchmen?
It adds, "The United Nations and other world forums sleep the sleep of the just when every now and then they manage to bring the fundamentalists together and tether them to the same peg as a sign of their 'concord' and laying aside of their irreconcilable self-interests".
Afghans hold rally against HR abuses
The Nation, April 29, 1999
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD - Hundreds of Afghan women and children on Wednesday morning protested against the human rights violations in Afghanistan by the Taliban government. The protest was organized by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Protesters had come from Peshawar on six buses. They first demonstrated in front of the UN office, located in Saudi Pak Tower, Blue Area, then they went to Peshawar More, G-9/4 from where they left for Peshawar.
The protesters who were holding placards in their hands were chanting slogans against the present Afghan government. While talking to The Nation one of the protesters alleged that the Jihadi and Taliban forces are being moved like sinister chess pieces across the political chessboard which Afghanistan has been reduced to.
She said, deprivation of the entire population, women in particular, of their very basic human rights, boarding up of the doors of schools in the face of women and calling institutions of learning "Gateways to Hell", looting to destruction of all vestiges of culture and art have become a routine practice by the Taliban leaderships.
Furthermore, she said heinous violations of the honor of mothers, daughters and young boys, fanning up of ethnic, tribal and linguistic antagonisms, savage tortures and murders of thousands of innocent people, foul misuse of the people's hollowed beliefs have become the order of the day.
Another protester pointed out that the world community has for the most part remained a spectator to the multitude of atrocities committed in Afghanistan and no country or world authority has undertaken any meaningful step against the fundamentalists in the interests of ending the human rights tragedy in Afghanistan.
She said that according to Amnesty International, Afghanistan continues to remain "the world's largest forgotten tragedy".
She said world media has lashed itself and world opinion into a frenzy over Kosovo, but the brutal and savage massacre of tens of thousands of Afghans have so far not even been highlighted in any of the world's electronic media, with the same force.
RAWA asks UN to check HR abuses in Afghanistan
The Frontier Post, April 29, 1999
ISLAMABAD (PR) - Afghan women and children Wednesday staged a demonstration here against human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
The human rights group "Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan" (RAWA) organised the rally in front of the United Nations office.
The demonstrators were holding banners and placards, inscribed with slogans against Taliban and demanding of the United Nations to take note of violation of women rights in Afghanistan.
Huma Saeed, spokeswoman for the RAWA, handed over a memorandum to a UN official Muhammad Maqbool, who assured the demonstrators that the memorandum would be sent to the Secretary General Kofi Annan. The demonstrators were standing in front of the UN office for 30 minutes and later peacefully dispersed.
The RAWA leader regretted that the world community has for the most part remained a spectator to the multitude of atrocities committed in Afghanistan and no country or world authority has undertaken any meaningful step against the fundamentalists in the interest of ending the human rights tragedy in this country.
The memorandum reads, "according to Amnesty International, Afghanistan continues to remain "to world's largest forgotten tragedy". World media has lashed itself and world opinion into a frenzy over Kosovo, but the brutally savage massacre of ten of thousands of innocent people by the fundamentalists in Kabul alone did not even get into the news. Is it because European blood is thicker than the blood of the people of Afghanistan? Has providence decreed that our people should everlastingly swim in an ocean of tears and blood of and be doomed to an existence of agony as far prey of world bullies and their indigenous henchmen?
It adds, "The United Nations and other world forums sleep the sleep of the just when every now and then they manage to bring the fundamentalists together and tether them to the same peg as a sign of their 'concord' and laying aside of their irreconcilable self-interests".