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Zoya
is 23 years of age. She is a member of RAWA, the Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan. I met her
in July at a conference on "Violence and Religion"
at which she shocked all the participants. Her voice
was calm and her life, as the lives of Afghan women,
absolutely harrowing. She showed us a video recorded
by one of the members of her organisation.
Under
the "burka" that Afghan women are obliged
to wear in order to cover their body the RAWA member
had carried a small video camera. The film showed
the executions that on a weekly basis take place in
Kabul's football stadium. We saw human beings gathering
in the capital enjoying the slaughter of other human
beings. We saw a Taliban pointing his AK47 to a woman
on her knees before her body fell on the ground surrounded
by blood.
Some
minutes later we saw what Zoya described as "the
camel's dance." A man had his throat cut. Regulars
to this horrendous show of death were particularly
happy to see the deceased's body move while the decapitated
head, separated from the body, made noises similar
to those camels make. The inferno went on and one
including hand's amputations.
Zoya
had been showing that video around the world. But
other than shock she had got very little help from
governments and politicians. Some weeks before the
Taliban had made international headlines because some
Buddhist statues had been blown up in Afghanistan.
Zoya was disgusted that the human rights violations
of Afghan women had not received so much attention.
At the end of the summer hundreds of Afghan refugees
were stranded in Australian territorial waters. Nobody
wanted them and nobody really cared much about them.
All
of a sudden, after 11 September Tony Blair and George
Bush have remembered that Afghan are also human beings.
It was particularly repulsive to hear both of them
justifying their so called "War on Terrorism"
in the name of the Afghan people that the Taliban
have oppressed. The Taliban conquered Kabul in 1996,
but it seems that all those years in between and all
the cruelty that has taken place since then never
mattered.
On
the same day that the atrocities in New York and Washington
took place, it has been estimated that over 30,000
children died of hunger in the world. We haven't heard
much of them and we haven't seen a "War on hunger
and Poverty." If the political will existed this
enemy would be easier to defeat than Osama Bin Laden,
but probably it wouldn't require the display of the
war machinery the Americans are arrogantly displaying
on our TV screens.
The
ultimate insult by the American government has been
the cynical combination of bombs and food. Previous
international experiences showed how that kind of
aid is never going to reach the starving and most
needed population. As happened in the past, it may
even kill some of them when they try to reach it.
Humanitarian agencies have denounced the action pointing
out that American deliveries will disrupt food programmes
and will raise prices worsening the already terrible
situation endured by the Afghans.
In
the middle of this worldwide hypocrisy it was disappointing
to hear somebody like Fr. Aidan Troy saying that Northern
Ireland together with Afghanistan are the only countries
in the world where children are denied the right to
education. A man who is tirelessly working for a resolution
of the disgraceful protest in Ardoyne and who has
worked in some of the most deprived countries in the
world before coming to Belfast should know better.
Perhaps
the children in Sierra Leone who are taken away from
their villages by the Army, drugged and trained to
kill their own would have something to say about their
rights too. Chema Caballero is a Spanish missionary
who has lived in the African country for some years.
He is in charge of a project which tries to rehabilitate
children who have been made soldiers at a very early
age - some are as young as four. Sierra Leone's civil
war has caused tens of thousands of victims and amputees
but this country who is one of the main sources of
diamonds in the world doesn't fit in the current "War
on Terrorism" waged by the so called "international
coalition." Chema works and lives with children
who have murdered their own parents. As part of the
ritual to initiate them, these children are brain
washed and ordered to murder a relative. Then they
must sever a limb which they will always carry with
them because - so they are told - it will protect
them while in combat. They are children too but we
don't care enough to do anything about them.
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