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NEWS & LETTERS, June-July 2006Malalai Joya speaksEditor's note: Malalai Joya, outspoken critic of the warlords and jihadis in government, was attacked in the Afghan parliament on May 8. She was hit with water bottles and rushed by legislators who insulted and threatened her. Others formed a protective circle around her. We print excerpts from her recent tour. * * * Berkeley, Cal.--I come from a land still burning in two-fold fire. On the one hand, there are the brutal and horrific jihadi fundamentalists of the Northern lands, who are supported by the USA. On the other hand, there are the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists who have the support of all the fundamentalists and anti-democracy regimes, parties and organizations around the world. The same warlords who committed atrocities during the war now dominate our parliament. DISASTERS IN AFGHANISTAN Our country is facing disasters worse than a tsunami. Seven hundred children and 15-20 women die daily due to the lack of health services. Ironically, this is happening in a country that has received $12 billion in aid, and another $10 billion more has been pledged at a recent conference in London. Not even a fraction of this aid has been used for the welfare of our people. I come from a land where violence against women comes easily, because the husband is sure he has the support of the misogynist warlords of the Northern Alliance, and he knows that there is no implementation of a law that might bring him to justice. Despite the presence of more than 6,000 UN peacekeeping troops in Kabul, local women as well as NGO and foreign workers are kidnapped in broad daylight. U.S. bombs and thousands of U.S. troops have not established democracy. Democracy has meant simply the imposition of the Northern Alliance jihadis. The U.S. relies on the Northern Alliance, who turned Afghanistan into hell for its people from 1992 to 1996 when they murdered 65,000 citizens in Kabul alone. Chief Justice Fazl-e Hadi Shinwari is affiliated with the most hard-line terrorist Islamic party of Gulbuddin. His judicial activities attack women's rights, stop TV channels, cable networks and ban music. I won the elections with nothing except my people's trust and love. I will always defend the truth and will not be degraded to the level of those intellectuals and politicians who, because of fear for their lives or their own interests, have made compromises with the enemies of our people. They killed lots of innocent people in Afghanistan, lots of freedom-loving and democratic people. Maybe one day, physically they kill me also, but because my voice is the voice of the suffering people of Afghanistan, they will never kill this voice. CLINIC THREATENED BY WARLORD After I made a speech in the Loya Jirga [challenging the right of the war criminals to be in the parliament] they closed our local clinic, the only clinic which cares for those who have nothing. I invited the local warlord to come and inspect the clinic before it opened. Instead, he warned me that if we open, he will send soldiers and I will be responsible for all the killing. I insisted that I want to open the clinic that will help the poor. So many people agreed [that we prevailed]. We had beds for 50 patients, but because of lack of money, we have only 20. There are 68 women in the parliament. Some were warlords' candidates. Some agree with me but are afraid. When I speak at the Parliament, no one defends me there. But afterwards some of them hand me pieces of paper with their names and phone numbers, telling me they support me. In Parliament they don't respect me as a human. I said "hello" to a delegate who does not have legs. He said, "I should say 'good morning' to you? You are human?" Freedom, democracy and women's rights are not a gift that somebody can give us. If we do not take this chance to expose those criminals, then we are giving them more time to continue to commit crimes under the name of democracy, just as they committed lots of crimes against our innocent people under the name of Islam and Jihad. |
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