|
A Call for Women’s Rights in Kurdistan
20.12.2011
By Namo Abdulla - Rudaw |
|
|
|
US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Photo: Namo
Abdulla
December
20, 2011
On Friday, I was at a dinner event at which
prominent businessman Marc Lasry said he used to
dance with and have “a secret crush on” US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton. “She was quite a dancer,”
he added, while calling Mrs. Clinton on stage to
speak on women’s rights.
Mrs. Clinton was sitting at a different table than
her husband, former US President Bill Clinton, who,
like the rest of the audience, laughed. The
audience’s tables included Platinum, Golden and
Silver, which cost $100,000, $50,000 and $25,000
respectively.
As I am not from this society, I can’t know if Mr.
Clinton’s smile genuinely represented his feelings
or not. I don’t know if Mr. Lasry’s comments made
him jealous at all. But I am certain that even if
Mr. Lasry had said his relationship with the
Secretary of State was more than just a crush, Mr.
Clinton, whose affair with Monica Lewinsky remains
historic as much as it is notorious, wouldn’t cause
the same reaction as it would in a Kurdish man, who
could slay his wife in an “honor killing” over such
a comment.
This is, of course, just a matter of how two
different cultures treat women. But the question is:
Should we leave it this way merely because it is a
cultural matter? In post-Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a
woman, no matter how old she is, still can’t get a
passport without the approval of a “male guardian” –
i.e. a brother or father.
Held in New York City’s Chelsea Piers along the
Hudson River, the dinner was organized by the
International Crisis Group under the title, “In
Pursuit of Peace,” and award four women who have
made extraordinary accomplishments in their
patriarchal societies.
The women included prominent Tunisian journalist
Sihem Bensedrine; Somali human rights activist
Shukri Ismail; Guatemala’s attorney general, Claudia
Paz y Paz; and Afghan human rights activist Sima
Samar.
In a room where the marvelous golden and silver
tables had their surfaces decked with glasses of
vintage wine, it gave a harmonious feeling to see,
for instance, Shukri Ismail, wearing a headscarf and
confidently approaching the stage get her award.
“So let us pledge ourselves to the proposition that
women must be equal citizens and equal partners with
men,” Mrs. Clinton said, “recognizing that the
changes we seek and the aspirations of the people
that we support will not be realized overnight.
That’s true around the world; it’s true even in our
own country.”
Mrs. Clinton went on to recall a number of
influential examples. With hearing of each one of
them, I felt sorry for women in my country. As a
journalist working in Iraqi Kurdistan, I remembered
the days in which murdering women became so frequent
that it no longer became newsworthy.
Of the stories that I recalled that evening was the
pale 22-year-old woman who had married a man without
the approval of her family. She had miraculously
survived an intense shooting that left her husband
dead with 17 bullets in his chest. Four bullets
struck her hip as well. The culprits, one of whom I
interviewed, were at large.
At this time, I was stringing for the New York
Times, and finally managed to convince them that the
story was worth publishing and different from other
typical honor killings.
Another touching event that remains with me was a
young woman who was too shy to talk to me over the
phone about the miserable situation engulfing her
after she underwent female genital mutilation in
Kurdistan. “My husband hates me. I can’t fulfill his
expectations,” she told a female friend of mine over
the phone.
Let me be short and clear. I know, as any other Kurd
or perhaps Muslim does, that there are cultural
differences between the West and us. I also know
when westerners such as Secretary of State Clinton
talk about women’s rights, they may speak from a
Western point of view.
But there are certain universal things for which
cultures truly need to compromise. There has to be
no justification for taking the life of a woman.
Men must convince themselves that beating a
vulnerable woman does not represent manhood; it
rather represents lack of it. When our sisters and
mothers want to work outside and show that they have
more ability to serve the society than merely being
confined to a kitchen,www.ekurd.net
we should not prevent them from doing so. We should
admit that it is wrong to determine a girl’s future
husband while she is still in the cradle or her
mother’s womb.
More importantly, we should pressure our government
to enforce the beautiful laws it has passed;
otherwise, the society is nothing more than a jungle
where only the strongest can survive.
* Follow the author on Twitter at #namo_abdulla,
or email him at: naa2138@columbia.edu
Copyright ©, respective
author or news agency,
rudaw.net
Top |
The opinions
expressed in this commentary are solely those of the
author
|
®
