Revolution #80, March 4, 2007


 

From A World to Win News Service:

On March 8, 2007, International Women’s Day, united and in harmony, let us call for "another world"!

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (awtw.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations. 

February 12, 2007. A World to Win News Service. Following is the call for a demonstration in The Hague 8 March by the Campaign for the Abolition of all Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran  (Karzar).

Do you hear the screams of Iraqi women, crying out against honour killings by Islamic groups or against being raped by American and British troops?

Do you hear the protests of Afghan women whose bodies and souls are the battleground in the rivalry between the Taleban, other Islamic forces and the Western occupiers and their protégés?

Do you hear the screams of an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to be whipped and forced to wear a veil, and now faces death by stoning?

Do you hear the protests of American women who face the rape of one of their sisters every six seconds?

Are you a witness to the rise in patriarchal violence against women in the European countries?

The perpetrators of repression against women are on the one hand the patriarchal imperialist powers who try and justify their aggressive wars by claiming to defend “women’s rights” and “human rights” in the region, and on the other the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who have enslaved women.

The murder of thousands of women and children with napalm, phosphorous and cluster bombs, the rape of Iraqi women by US soldiers and the imposition of misogynist Islamic constitutions by fundamentalist forces helped by US and Western advisors in Iraq and Afghanistan are only part of the “women’s liberation” heralded by imperialist forces. At the same time, the political programme of reactionary Islamic forces steps up the repression and destitution of women. Legislation confirming inequality as well as Islamic punishments against women and the forced veil are all manifestations of the male supremacist Islamic power structure. The rape and execution of women and young girls in Afghanistan is a sign of the militarist, reactionary Islamic power in that country.

All these events teach us, women of the Middle East, that it would be as wrong to seek emancipation and liberation within the framework of the current international order as it would be to seek women’s liberation within the framework of Islamic ideology.

We Iranian women will continue on the path we started last year, seeking to build “another world” based on the participation and power of the people, who have no interest in maintaining the power structures based on exploitation and injustice. We seek a world where mutilating women is considered a crime, not a tradition. We seek a world where no female child will be forced to submit to “matrimonial” rape, where no woman will face “honour killings”, where no woman is forced to commit suicide or to set fire to herself to escape patriarchal violence, a world where no woman is punished or faces stoning by death for loving someone or for sexual relations. We seek a world that does not consider homosexuality a crime, a world where a woman’s identity is not determined by her marriage or motherhood. We are fighting for a world where no one can force women to stay in the kitchen or indoors, where no one can deprive women of the right to participate in social production and in politics. In such a world women will control their own bodies and will make their own decisions about whether they want children, a world in which men and women are truly equal in all aspects of life.

These are some aspects of the horizon for our liberation, a horizon that must be within the reach of millions of oppressed women, a horizon that gives us hope, a hope that gives us courage and the strength to continue our struggles for emancipation from all forms of sexual and class oppression.

On March 8, 2007 we will raise the slogan “No to reaction, No to Imperialism, Advance toward another world” to unite and widen our ranks. In the current world situation, women’s emancipation sets a clear demarcation line between the world’s oppressed and all the assorted imperialist and Islamic fundamentalist reactionaries.

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