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New law that gives a husband the right to demand sex every four days sparks protest; activists say empowering females in patriarchal society requires males

By Heidi Vogt | Associated Press

KABUL—There are a handful of them at every women’s rights gathering in Afghanistan: men.

Crowds of men threw stones and shouted insults at women last week protesting a restrictive marriage law that critics say legalizes marital rape in Afghanistan, but a few men marched and chanted alongside the women.

These are the men—many of them prominent male politicians and intellectuals—who are taking up the battle for women’s rights and calling for change in this patriarchal society. The act of solidarity is more than just a bright spot; activists say men’s support for women’s rights is vital in a country where men hold sway in government and in families.

Many people working on women’s issues agree: To empower the women, you first need to enlist the men.
Sherwali Wardak, who runs women’s literacy and small-business training programs in rural Afghanistan, said the key to getting women involved is to persuade the men in their lives to allow it.

“The most important factor of working with women is to encourage the men to allow their women to enroll in the rehabilitation or development project,” Wardak said.

When he doesn’t get permission from the men, Wardak says, they often don’t let their wives or daughters leave the house to travel to the centers he sets up. He says he’s received threats because of the work he does.

“They write, ‘Close this project because it is working for Christianity,’ ” he said. It’s a common accusation of those who support women’s rights in Afghanistan—that the advocates are stooges of the Christian West.

Crowds that swamped a group of women protesting a law Wednesday that they say legalizes marital rape were full of similar vitriol. The law gives a husband the right to demand sex every four days and regulates when a woman can leave the house. The law is not being enforced pending a judicial review ordered by Afghanistan’s president after the legislation sparked an international uproar.
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(Submitted by Rohila Pritam)

The South Asian Peoples Forum is holding a 4 day conference from April 23-26, 2009, to address the crises facing our respective countries and how we can build unity across borders to jointly tackle the problems of sub-nationalism, militarism, conflict, and poverty. Speakers and activists from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal as well as from Canada, the US and the UK will discuss people’s common struggles against poverty, militarism, insecurity, and racism, and the women’s movements in the region.

The Opening will be on Thursday, April 23rd, at 6:30 pm at the University of Toronto, Law school, 78 Queens Park.
Abid Hassan Minto, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of Pakistan, and President of the National Workers Party, Pakistan will be the Featured Speaker, along with Dr Sherene Razack, Professor at OISE. There will be music and a reception that follows the lectures. The registration fee for the conference is $15 including the Opening Reception.

The panels from the 23-26th will cover Imperialism and South Asia, Violence and the South Asian State, a special discussion on the conflict in Sri Lanka, and Neo-liberalism and Resistance. The question we want to raise through this conference is, how can we, South Asian people, collectively join to develop an alternative view of our region which reflects our minds and hearts – for a region without conflict, wars, borders, insecurity, violence and poverty. We have brought together valuable thinkers and activists from the region and the diaspora to lead us in this discussion. We also recognize that the peoples of South Asia include a large number of progressive and Left-leaning people in the diaspora who left our countries for political and economic and sometimes family reasons but are deeply concerned with the political and economic situation of South Asia.

We intend that the impact of the conference will encourage isolated people to join our movement, create space for further South Asian Left ideas in the diaspora amongst multiple generations, and will strengthen our ability to counteract the existing religious and right wing networks that are bringing our region to destruction. The conference will generate a space for this multi-faceted dialogue.
There will also be a special international literary session on Sunday 26th at the Port Credit School, 70 Mineola Road East, Mississauga at 2:30 pm.

The conference will conclude on April 26th night with the 2nd annual Faiz Peace Festival held in coordination with the first International Festival of Poetry of Resistance, Toronto. This will be at 7:00 pm at the Port Credit School.

This conference is organized jointly by the South Asian Peoples Forum, the Ghadar Heritage Foundation, the Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups (AIPSG), and is co-sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Canada, and the South Asia Programs at York University and the University of Toronto, and with the support of many donors.

Please contact sara.abraham@sympatico.ca for a full program of the conference. Please contact 416-399-7602, or 416-856-7212 or bashani2000@yahoo.com for tickets for the Faiz Mela.

Matuschka is a New York based artist of many talents who recently gave an interview to MAMM. Her personal website is http://www.matuschka.net/

My 1993 self-portrait became a worldwide sensation
The picture is taken from her website.
The interview

The Body Beautiful

In her famous self-portrait, photographer Matuschka gave the world its first look at mastectomy. Now she explains how she turned herself into a work of art.

By Matuschka
I never wanted a tattoo. Not even by the time I’d booked the session. It was the summer of 1968, and my friend, Nona, and I were two unruly nymphets hanging out with a motorcycle club whose rite of initiation involved engraving your man’s name on your belly. I was only 13, so I needed a fake ID and Nona to chauffeur me across state lines, since tattoos were illegal in New Jersey at the time.
We went to a guy named “Danny” who operated a tattoo parlor out of his parents’ garage. His needles were the size of hypodermic syringes, and the ink he would use on my body looked like a mixture of soot, cigarette ash and motor oil.
…

Seven years later I was a fashion model going by only my last name. In the ’70s and ’80s, it was rare for a model to have either breasts or tattoos. I had both. I knew there was no intrinsic beauty in this tattoo, and the modeling agents and photographers thought the same way, but I couldn’t afford the laser surgery to remove it.
…
By 1980 I discovered another way to make a living off my body and became a photographer specializing in nudes. I didn’t have to worry about modeling fees—I just employed myself. Sometimes I became annoyed seeing that little black blob in the photos, but finding ways to get around it led to a highly successful series sold in galleries and published in magazines.

Soon enough I’d have bigger concerns than Joanne splayed upon my belly: In 1991, I underwent a lumpectomy for a tiny tumor in my voluptuous right breast. Then my surgeon misread the pathology report, leading to what I call a “mistake-to-me,” and sliced my right breast off. [Matuschka won a malpractice suit against her surgeon for the unnecessary mastectomy.]

Back then, a one-breasted woman had three options to transform her asymmetry into something society might find acceptable: prosthesis, implants or a prophylactic mastectomy of the other breast. None seemed suitable, comfortable or right for me.

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2005 Stoning

The US government and Mr. Karzai mostly rely on Northern Alliance criminal leaders who are as brutal and misogynist as the Taliban.”
Rady Ananda

Last month, the new Afghanistan parliament passed the “Shia Family Law” which legitimates marital rape and child marriage for Shia Muslims who make up ~15% of the population. At least 300 women protested the law, with their faces exposed. Nearly 1,000 Afghan men and their slaves turned maniacal and stoned the protesters. Police struggled to keep the two groups apart, reports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

Supporters of the law redefine ‘rape’ to fit their narrow patriarchal views. Forced sexual relations, to them, is about loyalty to the husband. One counter-protester reportedly described rape as marital infidelity – by the wife!

“Rape is what you see in the West where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.”
Well, honey, that is not the definition of rape. That’s called cheating. Afghan protesters object to insane Taliban views that promote stoning women to death for perceived affronts to their masculine godview:

Last week widespread objection erupted to the stoning of a 16-year-old for leaving her house with a male non-family member, while the man was left unmolested and unpunished. The Taliban’s femicidal misogyny is infamous, world wide. RAWA and others hope to neutralize the psychopathic influence of Taliban thought in the Middle East.

Treating Shia women separately than all other citizens sets them up for violence, as the counter-protesters proved. RAWA tracks this violence, posting photos, reports and, recently, its statement on the 7th Anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan:

Neither the US nor Jehadies and Taliban,Long Live the Struggle of Independent and Democratic Forces of Afghanistan!

“The government of President Hamid Karzai has said the Shiite family law is being reviewed by the Justice Department and will not be implemented in its current form. Governments and rights groups around the world have condemned the legislation, and President Barack Obama has labeled it ‘abhorrent.’

“Though the law would apply only to the country’s Shiites – 10 to 20 percent of Afghanistan’s 30 million people – it has sparked an uproar by activists who say it marks a return to Taliban-style oppression. The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001, required women to wear all-covering burqas and banned them from leaving home without a male relative.

“Shiite backers of the law say that foreigners are meddling in private Afghan affairs, and Wednesday’s demonstrations brought some of the emotions surrounding the debate over the law to the surface.

Afghan Shiite women carry banners, one on left reads “Yes law, but no petrifaction,” during a march against a new conservative marriage law in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, April 15, 2009. (Photo: AP)
“‘You are a dog! You are not a Shiite woman!’ one man shouted to a young woman in a headscarf holding aloft a banner that said ‘We don’t want Taliban law.’ The woman did not shout back at the man, but told him: ‘This is my land and my people.’
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NDTV correspondent

The eleven-year-old girl, who was on life support in a city hospital in Delhi after being allegedly tortured by her school teacher, has succumbed to her injuries.

The teacher and the principal of the school have been suspended.
The girl was punished by a teacher at a government school in Bawana on Wednesday. The child’s parents allege she slipped into coma after her teacher banged her head and made her stand out in the sun for two hours.

The child was admitted with a severe seizure. Doctors had conveyed to the girl’s father that chances of survival are remote.
The class-two student was apparently brutally punished for not doing her homework.

The family has lodged a complaint but there has been no progress in the case. Police say they are waiting for full medical reports of the child before filing an FIR.

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(Submitted by Aslam Merchant)

Cartilage cells introduced into joints form new cartilage, attach to bones

By Robert Mitchum

An Ironman triathlete, Gregg Szilagyi never could have expected the hazard that destroyed his knee and effectively ended his athletic pursuits: a runaway poodle.

The blind-side collision led to knee surgery for Szilagyi, 46. And with the accident, surgery and his years of triathlon training, Szilagyi’s left knee was left with virtually no cartilage, producing painful arthritis and limiting his ability to run and work out.

A doctor advised Szilagyi that his only option was a total knee replacement, which would permanently end his athletic pursuits and limit his ability to hike and ski with his teenage children. But another told the Deerfield resident that a procedure to implant cartilage tissue from a cadaver into Szilagyi’s knee might allow him to maintain an active life.

“I think it’s hard to say anything out there might be the magic bullet, and I’m just hoping I can be as active as I can be,” said Szilagyi, who expects to have the surgery soon. “If I can, I’d like to remain relatively bionic parts-free.”

If he’s found suitable, Szilagyi will undergo what is known as an allograft meniscal transplant, which would transfer cartilage—the spongy white material that fills and cushions the joints between bones—into his left knee. The surgery would be performed by Dr. Brian Cole, team physician for the Chicago Bulls and one of the country’s foremost experts on cartilage transplant surgery.
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Recent Increase Is Blamed on Islamist Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai Last Fall

By Emily Wax

MUMBAI — The sunny apartment had everything Palvisha Aslam, 22, a Bollywood producer, wanted: a spacious bedroom and a kitchen that overlooked a garden in a middle-class neighborhood that was a short commute to Film City, where many of India’s Hindi movies are shot.
She was about to sign the lease when the real estate broker noticed her surname. He didn’t realize that she was Muslim, he said. Then he rejected her. It was just six weeks after the November Mumbai terrorist attacks and Indian Muslims were being viewed with suspicion across the country. He then showed her a grimy one-room tenement in a Muslim-dominated ghetto. She felt sick to her stomach as she watched the residents fight over water at a leaky tap in a dark alley.
“That night I cried a lot. I was still an outcast in my own country — even as a secular Muslim with a well-paid job in Bollywood,” said Aslam, who had similar experiences with five other brokers and three months later is still sleeping on friends’ sofas. “I’m an Indian. I love my country. Is it a crime now to be a Muslim in Mumbai?”
In the months after the brazen three-day Mumbai terrorist attacks, stories like Aslam’s are common, even among some of the country’s most beloved Bollywood actors, screenwriters and producers in India’s most cosmopolitan city. The accusations of discrimination highlight the often simmering religious tensions in the world’s biggest democracy, where Muslim celebrities can be feted on the red carpet one minute and locked out of quality housing the next.

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To the Charity Commission,

I have been travelling for many weeks in North Africa and the Middle East, Europe, and North America . I have returned to a London address I seldom visit to find a blizzard of correspondence from you. Your correspondence, when read together, as I have just done, seems to represent a wildly disproportionate and inappropriate reaction to our recent delivery of aid to the suffering Palestinians in Gaza , and must raise the question: Why?

The peremptory letters from you, and by you I mean the Charity Commission, are full of bluster and threat, issuing absurd deadlines to people it does not seem to occur to you are not even receiving your letters, either because they are working abroad (Ms Razuki and Mr Al-Mukhtar), travelling abroad on high profile political business (myself), or you are writing to them at the wrong address.

In my own case, Easter Saturday opened with your, latest, threat to go before a High Court judge in a bid to force me to appear before you. That will not be necessary. I look forward to telling you to your faces what I think of you. Which is this.

I have become increasingly concerned about the abuse of your powers displayed in your brazenly obvious political double standards. About your attempts, under the guise of regulating British charities, to police the democratic efforts of political activists in Britain in a way never envisaged by parliament. About your preparedness to waste large sums of public money in political stunts, either at the behest of others or in the hope that you are properly anticipating their wishes. And above all, in the context of this issue, your almost laughably obvious prejudice against the Palestinian cause and against Britain ‘s two million-strong Muslim community.
…

I understand from my colleagues that you have now frozen more than £100,000 intended to help the suffering Palestinian people. Shame on you. I suppose it is too much to hope that you might have that on your conscience. But be sure I intend to let as many people as possible know, here and abroad, what you have done.

Viva Palestina’s work has effectively come to a halt since your intervention in its affairs and in my absence. This was, I’m sure, your intention. Viva Palestina has not spent any money improperly. It would not do so. Indeed it could not do so. It has spent hardly anything at all – thanks to you. But it intends to get its money back from you. Viva Palestina have instructed lawyers to deal with you and a barrister will accompany us to the meeting with you. If necessary we will start a new organisation free from your wrecking efforts. But we want this money back, please be sure about that. There are Palestinians dying as a result of the malignant, sinister, cynical actions taken by you. Trust me you’ll be hearing more about this.

Yours faithfully

George Galloway MP

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(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)