27 February 2005. A World to Win News Service. Somebody’s knocking at the door! Who is it? If we don’t open up, they’ll break in! Is it American soldiers? They raid homes and terrorize children and the whole family. We’ve seen it on TV. They insult, beat and arrest the men…

"In Fallujah many women were killed. Seventy-two women were killed the same way, shot once in the head, and their only sin was they opened the door to their homes", said a witness at the International Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. But the men at the door might be just common thugs and criminals who break in and rape the women. None of this was common before the US invasion. An Iraqi woman at the Tribunal testified that from the day that Iraq was invaded, there has been growing violence against women and systematic denial of their rights. They have been kidnapped, raped and even hunted to be traded to foreign countries for the vast global prostitution network. An Iraqi woman told a journalist, "Kidnapping and raping women has become so widespread that every woman worries that she may become the next victim. Very few women are seen on the streets. It was not like that before the war, no! Many are frightened to step out of their home."

Since the invasion, especially in the southern city of Basra governed by US and British-backed Shia clerics, women have been pressured to cover their heads. Barbers have been warned not to shave men, and tailors have been told how women must be dressed. So many women have been driven out of their jobs, especially young women, that now only 10 percent work. "Honour killings" are increasing at an alarming rate all over Iraq, even in Kurdistan.

After last year’s approval of the new constitution and the establishment of an Islamic regime based on Sharia (religious law), the kind of things that were happening to Iraqi women in day to day life became enshrined in law.

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Vous trouverez en pièces jointes en pdf (version acrobat reader 6) l'exemplaire n°2 de Basta ! jeune fanzine féministe non-mixte fait à Lille.

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Pour servir à une discussion sur l'Amour et le couple