While
Kurdistan government celebrates women's rights
campaign, Kurds protest.
“Why 20 Million Kurds in Turkey live without
Polygamy and 3,5 Million Kurds in Iraq should have
it?”
November 27, 2008
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', —
Various independent Kurdish Rights have gathered in
a initiative called 25th of November to step up
activities against a law that recently passed the
Kurdish Parliament. This law allows polygamy with
some restrictions.
The 25th of November activists have therefore called
for a boycott of all Kurdish Governmental sponsored
celebrations Tuesday. The Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) has held a week of conferences and
activities against “Violence against Women”
culminating Tuesday
in a celebration which was
attended by Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan
Barzani. Barzani has recently outraged secular Kurds
with a statement that no Kurdish law should
contradict Sharia.
Although being invited to the celebration nine
organizations decided to boycott these festivities.
And hold a demonstration instead. Various groups and
individuals expressed their solidarity and support -
both from inside Iraqi-Kurdistan,www.ekurd.net
Iraq and abroad. They
are demanding that the law has to be re-discussed.
Tuesday members of the initiative gathered in Nahli-Park
in Sulaimaniyah for protest. With slogans like “Why
20 Million Kurds in Turkey live without Polygamy and
3,5 Million in Iraq should have it?”?” and “Silence
about Polygamy is Violence against Women” they
gathered at 2.pm. Both men and women were equally
present.
“They want to tell us
polygamy is belonging to our culture” a student
says, “but then we ask ourselves: why the majority
of Kurds in Turkey live without Polygamy and 3,5
Million in Iraq should have it?”
With an approximately total population of 20
million, Kurds in Turkey outnumber the ones in Iran,
Syria and Iraq.
With stripes glued over their mouths the protestors
kept silent during the whole duration of the
demonstration.
“Today we have symbolically closed our mouths, so
our cry could be heard louder“, explains Tara
Hussein, member of the Sulaimaniyah based Women
Rights NGO Women Law Center (WOLA).
“We want to show that the people who fight for the
rights of women the other 364 days in the year keep
silent today not joining the meaningless talk of the
officials,www.ekurd.net
who are not doing enough
to fight violence against women on the ground“, says
Aram Jamal from the Kurdish Election Institute (KIE)
Such forms of creative protest have not been seen in
Sulaimaniyah before. The action found an extremely
positive resonance in the local media. Even today’s
headlines of major Kurdish Rozhnama Newspaper were
dedicated to this protest. (
Rozhname in
Kurdish).
The 25th of November Initiative understands this
demonstration, which was organized spontaneously and
only within 48 hours, only as a starting point for a
much larger campaign to ban polygamy.
“This action was planned and implemented in a very
short time and almost without any money. We spend
less than 100 Dollars on it, while the Government
hast tens of thousands for conferences and seminars
without any long term impact” Jamal smiles. “But we
think this demonstration said more about what people
here think and want than all official conferences
and festivals together“.
It was the first demonstration Mrs. Hussein ever
joined in her life. But she insists,www.ekurd.net
for sure, it will not be
her last: “We are slowly learning how to make our
voices heard, but still we have a lot to learn,
since demonstration were not allowed under the
dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, except in order to
support him.”
A lady from Baghdad found a warm welcome, when she
spontaneously joined the demonstration; expressing
her hope that one day polygamy will be banned all
over Iraq. |
The 25th of November activists have called for a
boycott of all Kurdish Governmental sponsored
celebrations Tuesday.
“We want to show that
the people who fight for the rights of women the
other 364 days in the year keep silent today not
joining the meaningless talk of the Kurdish
officials,
A lady from Baghdad found a warm welcome, when she
spontaneously joined the demonstration; expressing
her hope that one day polygamy will be banned all
over Iraq.
Photo:Wadinet.de
Women demonstration against Polygamy in
Sulaimaniyah, photo: Rozhname |
®
