In collaboration with concerned women and men worldwide, Mission Free Iran is leading an international effort to rebuke the United Nations for the reprehensible act of including the Islamic Republic of Iran on the UN Commission on the Status of Women. We rebuke the governments (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) that condoned this unacceptable act and find them equally guilty, and we demand the immediate removal of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Facing down the world’s most repressive and violently anti-woman regime, Iranian women have struggled for their rights for the last 31 years against a government that legalizes rape of the girl child by setting the legal age of marriage at 9 years, provides 74 strokes of the lash for not wearing hijab in public, sets the value of a woman’s life according to shari’a penal code as worth as half that of a man, ensures intergenerational economic subordination to men by stipulating that a woman’s inheritance can be no more than half that of a man. Women in Iran have been fighting against a vicious government that rapes female prisoners to the point of destroying their reproductive organs, that kill women by burying them chest-deep in the earth to be stoned to death or by suspending them from the sky, by their necks, from a construction crane.
The very existence of the Islamic regime is dependent first and foremost upon the subordination and repression of women.
Yet the United Nations chooses to seat a government that is an affront to all of humanity on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW). The UNCSW touts itself as being “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women,” yet it has freely bestowed one of its seats upon the virulently misogynistic Islamic regime, with the silent consent of our national governments. In so doing, the UN has highlighted the role that it plays in maintaining the global status quo, characterized by poverty, violence, and systematic oppression of women. The UN has not lifted a finger to stop atrocities against Iranian or Saudi women, to prevent genocide, to protect refugees and asylum seekers. They have over time accumulated elements of a very ugly picture; they now are forced to face this ugly portrait of themselves, and in so doing they show their real face to the whole world.
The international community of citizens fundamentally rejects this travesty, which not only shows clear animosity towards the women of Iran but threatens women worldwide by allowing the world’s most anti-woman regime to set policy on gender at the global level. The UN has fully undermined itself and its legitimacy in the eyes of the global public.
The international community recognizes the struggles of Iranian women and honors their sacrifices. We stand in solidarity with women in Iran. And we stand against the UN and its Commission on the Status of Women for as long as it takes to see justice done: the Islamic regime must be removed from the Commission on the Status of Women.
We hereafter, and as long as the Islamic Republic remains a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, declare this Commission illegitimate. This declaration is backed by a global coalition of concerned citizens that demand immediate justice.
Maria Rohaly
Mission Free Iran
Originally written on May 2, 2010 here.
Mission Free Iran on Facebook
UNCSW Facebook Group
Today's recommendation is for the campaign 4WardEver UK. As many of you already know we offer online and offline support to five 'spotlight' campaigns of our choice per year, and raise awareness about global injustice and various other campaigns in general. We offer full time back up in terms of awareness raising and frontline activism to these five spotlight campaigns because we feel particularly strongly about them. All five spotlight campaigns will soon be displayed on the campaigns page but right now I'd like you to go peep 4WardEver UK because it is among the spotlight campaigns we will be undertaking to support. 4WardEver UK deals with injustices within the police, penal and mental health sectors and the 4WardEver UK site provide "a one-stop-resource for profiles, news, and event details, useful information, appeals, and more in relation to deaths and abuse whilst in custody, other injustices in the UK and internationally." One of it's main issues is the abolition of the death penalty worldwide so not only is it connected to both Capital-'X', and The Welfare Poets, but it also links into our campaign against the murderous theocratic regime in Iran, and the work of our activists against the death penalty in the United States. I think once you look at the site you will understand why it's essential that we connect with this particular campaign because it's aims are very similar to our own.
4WardEver UK in association with the Mikey Powell Campaign, Habib Ullah Campaign and Leicester Civil Rights Movement are presenting a major event called Remembrance United4Justice on May 15th at 6.30pm taking place at The Highfields Centre in Leicester. The AIM will be attending the event and hosting a stall in the main hall to promote the movement, our artists and poets, our pending mixtape Lyrical Warfare Volume One and the causes we are involved with. The event will mark what would have been Mikey Powell's 45th birthday, and it will showcase other families that have suffered the loss of a loved one in police, prison or psychiatric custody. It will also pay tribute to Tony Egbuna Ford and others facing capital punishment in the United States. Furthermore it will include information, banner displays, stands, films, live music and poetry to remember our lost loved ones. All proceeds of this event will be passed on to affected families involved in the planning and participation of this event. If you live near the area please come down, and if you help us on the stall we'll send you some AIM goodies via snail mail. Hit us up at theaim@hotmail.co.uk if you're down for chilling with your favourite hip-hop activist movement.
Updates: Article added to Political Oppression by Solomon Commisiong and content added to Awkword Political Hip-Hop page, Lilith Protest Poetry Page and AK47 Protest Poetry Page.
Take AIM Against Global Injustice!
~AK47~
~President of The AIM~
"If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four witnesses from amongst you against them; if they testify, confine them to houses until death [by starvation] claims them."
(Qur'an 4:15)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment