I see this message is doing the rounds again - yours was the second version I received within the week. I thought I should explain why I won't be signing a copy or forwarding it to anybody. It has many of the characteristics of being a 'chain letter' hoax. There is no indication at all of where it originated, i.e., it's anonymous. It sounds very convincing, and your gut feeling is that it must be right because of what's in it that you already know. An emotive issue. Guilt inducement if you don't respond. A plea to send it on even if you're not convinced - it won't do any harm.

On the last point though, it has a mechanism to cause general or specific havoc on the Internet, so even if it's not a hoax as such, then what amounts to well meaning naivete should not be perpetuated. The first version I saw a few months ago gave a woman student's e-mail address who supposedly wanted to collect these petitions. I understand that her address went down within a day and her ISP a day or so later. Think through the maths and pity the two UN ladies whose addresses have been given (two - so doubling the UN load straight off).

Just on the point of authenticity, WEF Religious Liberty Commission routinely does not publish any report that has not been independently verified by a known reliable source or contact. So WEF RLC doesn't often have scoops, but I can't remember it ever having to make a retraction.

I hope you may find the odd point or two of the above helpful in some way.

=============================

Blessings,

Ron Clough

~~~

Now, the petition:

Subject: PLEASE READ AND PASS ON PETITION

Subject: Human Rights Petition

Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 06:06:47 -0700

Please spare a minute to read this mail.

One woman was beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. The government of Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. The situation is getting so bad that one person in an editorial of the Times compared the treatment of women there to the treatment of Jews in pre-Holocaust Poland. Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes.

Another was stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a relative. Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male relative; professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed into their homes, so that depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such conditions, has increased significantly.

Homes where a woman is present must have their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for the slightest misbehaviour. Because they cannot work, those without male relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging on the street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. There are almost no medical facilities available for women, and relief workers, in protest, have mostly left the country, taking medicine and psychologists and other things necessary to treat the sky-rocketing level of depression among women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but slowly wasting away.  Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear.

One doctor is considering, when what little medication that is left finally runs out, leaving these women in front of the president's residence as a form of peaceful protest. It is at the point where the term 'human rights violations' has become an understatement. Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or offending them in the slightest way. David Cornwell has said that those in the West should not judge the Afghan people for such treatment because it is a 'cultural thing', but this is not even true. Women enjoyed relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, and drive and appear in public alone until only 1996 - the rapidity of this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; women who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms are now severely restricted and treated as sub-human in the same of right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or 'culture', but is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule. Besides, if we could excuse everything on cultural grounds, then we should not be appalled that the Carthaginians sacrificed their infant children, that little girls are circumcised in parts of Africa, that blacks in the US deep south in the 1930's were lynched, prohibited from voting, and forced to submit to unjust Jim Crow laws. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country in a part of the world that Westerners may not understand. If Iife can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, then NATO and the West can certainly express peaceful outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women by the Taliban.

STATEMENT:

In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves support and action by the people of the United Nations and that the current situation in Afghanistan will not be tolerated. Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere and it is UNACCEPTABLE for women in 1999 to be treated as sub-human and so much as property. Equality and human decency is a   RIGHTnot a freedom, whether one lives in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

PLEASE COPY AND PASTE ON ANOTHER SHEET AND INSERT YOUR NAME:

1) Marianne Giroud, Zurich, Switzerland

2) Vera Koehli, Zurich, Switzerland

3) Hartmut Stiess, Zurich, Switzerland

4) Michael Sturm, Zurich, Switzerland

5) Adrian Jakob, Berne, Switzerland

6) Christian Jakob, Zurich, Switzerland

7) Barbara Rieker, Zurich, Switzerland

8) Chiara Lo Presti, Zurich, Switzerland

9) Kathrin Koch, Zurich, Switzerland

10) Fred R. Willitzkat, Kiel, Germany

11) Susanne Heckoetter, Giessen, Germany

12) Beate Schugk, Turku, Finland

13) Mike Cofferon, Dublin, Ireland

14) Paul Crossan, Dublin, Ireland

15) Martin Vahey Dublin,Ireland

16) Wendy Vahey,Dublin Ireland

17) Lorcan de brun, Belgium

18) Tom McManamon, Dublin, Ireland

19) Celia Houlihan, Dublin, Ireland

20) Matt Rudman, Gloucester, England

21) Peter McNally; Melbourne; Australia

22) Laura Hughes, Melbourne; Australia

23) STEVEN FELICE, MELBOURNE,AUSTRALIA

24) Tristan Galindo, Melbourne, Australia

25) Matthew HIllier, Melbourne, Australia

26) James Duncan, Melbourne, Australia

27) Ana Casiano, Melbourne, Australia

28) Anne - Maree Ryall, Melbourne, Australia

29) Simeon Parker, Melbourne Australia

30) Sally Edmonds, Melbourne Australia

31) Andrew Jones, Melbourne Australia

Please sign to support, and include your town and country. Then copy and e-mail to as many people as possible. If you receive this list with more than 50 names on it, please e-mail a copy of it to:

Mary Robinson,High Commissioner,UNHCHR,

and to:

Angela King,Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, UN, mailto:

Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not kill the petition. Thank you.

It is best to copy rather than forward the petition.