Kristof: Sentenced to Be Raped (A Brave Woman in Afghanistan)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29kris.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

I'm still trying to help out President Bush by tracking down Osama bin Laden. After poking through remote parts of Pakistan, asking for a tall Arab with a beard, I can't say I've earned that $25 million reward.

But I did come across someone even more extraordinary than Osama.

Usually we journalists write about rogues, but Mukhtaran Bibi could not be more altruistic or brave, as the men who gang-raped her discovered. I firmly believe that the central moral challenge of this century, equivalent to the struggles against slavery in the 19th century or against totalitarianism in the 20th, will be to address sex inequality in the third world - and it's the stories of women like Ms. Mukhtaran that convince me this is so.

The plight of women in developing countries isn't addressed much in the West, and it certainly isn't a hot topic in the presidential campaign. But it's a life-and-death matter in villages like Meerwala, a 12-hour drive southeast from Islamabad.

In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status tribe sexually abused one of Ms. Mukhtaran's brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a high-status woman. The village's tribal council determined that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy's sisters, so the council sentenced Ms. Mukhtaran to be gang-raped.

[Eye and Monkey]

1. "we're still sitting on the fence" - SOME of us are, some of us are not

Some of us put it on the line to "chip away at that oppression".

Doctors Without Borders Shocked by Killing of 5 Staff in Afghanistan (June 04)
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/pr/2004/06-03-2004.shtml

[drfemoe]

5. "Oppression"

doesn't even begin to describe the effects on this world under the current regime.
EVIL!!

...
"MSF has been active in Afghanistan since 1980, through the Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban regime. The politicization of aid underway since the fall of the Taliban, condoned by the international community with the tacit acceptance of many non-governmental organizations, has proven dangerous for humanitarian organizations and has undercut Afghan’s access to assistance that is truly needs based. " ...

WHO felled the Taliban? None other than our great Monkey Leader!

OG! My heart aches.

[drfemoe]

2. Evil

...
"Ms. Mukhtaran, who had never gone to school herself, used the money to build one school in the village for girls and another for boys - because, she said, education is the best way to achieve social change. The girls' school is named for her, and she is now studying in its fourth-grade class."
...
"I wish the story ended there. But the Pakistani government has neglected its pledge to pay the schools' operating expenses. "The government made lots of promises, but it hasn't done much," Ms. Mukhtaran said bluntly." ...

And there we have the answer for the destruction of education in our own nation.

The rape victim dilemma is strongly spelled out in this article as well. Violence against Women.
WHEN will it END?

[2Design]

3. as backward as womens rights are here - they are so much worse

elsewhere

I can't imagine living in any country that does not respect women which are a lot of them. this one is bad enough with the likes of BushCo and the self-righteous christian right who are really haters of women

[aquart]

4. How very biblical.

Ancient morality in the service of modern corruption. Both worthless.

[pelagius]

11. I get your point...

...but there's nothing like this in the Bible. Or the Koran, for that matter. This is a tribal custom. It is beyond repugnant, but not biblical.

[bloom]

6. "members of the high-status tribe danced in joy"

Will they be happy after alll the women have killed themselves?



Who would want to be their wives/mothers/sisters/daughters....

[athena]

7. This is so unbelievably horrible ...

So many of us (including me, until I read this article) are living here, obsessing about our job, our money, or our weight, comfortable in our oblivion, while societies elsewhere in the world freely celebrate the gang rape, public humiliation, and suicide of women. How can we just sit here and do nothing when our sisters are suffering such injustice just because they happened to be born in a place that doesn't view women as people? We need to spread this information, and do something. Such things should not be happening anywhere in the 21st century. I'm going to forward this story to the people I know.

[AmyDeLune]

8. Kick! n/t

[RainDog]

9. What Bush doesn't want you to know

I read this editorial yesterday.

Kristof and others need to mention what Bush and all his military contractors don't want to admit, but which is demonstrably true:

The education and emancipation of women is THE best indicator of democracy's hope across the world.

Emmanuel Todd illustrates this truth in his book, After the Empire, by examining the demographic evidence from various nations.

His analysis was the reason he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union way back in the 1970s when Regan and the neocons were wasting our tax dollars on SDI bullshit, running up the deficit (sound familiar), and trying to scare Americans into voting for them.

The current strategy of running huge deficits here, gutting our manufacturing base and leaving us with a govt which cares only about military spending also is a warning for the advance of democracy in our own country.

Obviously we need to be able to defend our own country. Just as obviously, you cannot bomb a people into democracy. In fact, it appears the opposite is true. According to a recent article in the NY Review of Books, by a guy who was instrumental in negotiating the problems in the old Yugoslavia, a majority of Iraqis would prefer Saddam to Bush's "democracy."

We need a smart president, not "smart" (not) bombs as our first line of defense against terrorism.

Bush has done more than any president in this country to increase ignorance in our country by his appointment of religious nut ideologues who censor scientific information because they don't like the truth.

This woman's heroic efforts in her country should make Bush ashamed of his actions since he took office.

[geek tragedy]

10. A-men.

Progress will be found only when women are treated as human beings equally deserving of human rights and respect as are men.

This woman is unbelievably brave. A true inspiration.