OWFI’s Statement for IWD: Women of Iraq have gradually let go of most of their 20th century gains and privileges in the last 4 years of occupation. Iraq turned from a modern country of educated and working women into a divided land of Islamic and ethnic warlords who compete in cancelling women from the social realm. Millions of women’s destinies are wasted between the destructive US war machine and different kinds of Islamic rule who have turned women into helpless black objects of no will or worth.
After 4 years of “democratizing” Iraq, systemic group rapes of detained women have become a routine procedure to be practiced in police stations and detainment camps. It has also become another ugly face of the atrocious sectarian war where assaulting females of the other sect is considered a political victory and punishment.
Abeer, Sabrine, and Wajidah’s sufferings were known, heard, and ended, but hundreds of unknown assaulted women still get beaten, raped and videotaped daily in the Iraqi ministries and around the American bases.
Sectarian genocide and gynocide have horrified millions of women speechless and paralyzed. In the same time, the occupation unleashed the freedoms of religious legislators to abolish any possibility of constitutional rights for Iraqi women to leave them vulnerable to misogynist religious norms of their clans, thereby committing a new crime of humanity against generations of unsuspecting female citizens to come.
In a time of unprecedented poverty and destitution in Iraq, the oil resources are awarded to foreign companies in generous deals which deprives 25 million Iraqis of a most needed wealth, meanwhile only rewarding a minimal share to the ruling parties to be divided on ethno-religious and sectarian basis. This division, a first timer in Iraq, will only fuel the civil war to higher and deadlier levels.
The occupation forces have chosen to support and empower the enemies of women and freedoms in Iraq. Their relentless efforts of weakening and destroying women of Iraq have hit the highest point of inhumanity and barbarism. Nevertheless, the free women and people of Iraq can organize their ranks and refuse these atrocities. They struggle for freedom and equality to be achieved under a secular non-ethnic government in which the aspirations of women, youth and workers are represented.
OWFI calls on this IWD upon the freedom loving millions around the world to stand by us in this Dark Age of the New World Order. Do not watch in sorrow. Come forward. Contact us and become part of a worldwide movement to end the occupation and build a free secular egalitarian alternative in Iraq.
Long live freedom and equality. Our struggles continue.
Yanar Mohammed
President of Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq
March 1, 2007