International Women’s Day – The choice is ours! The choice is yours!
On 8 March 2008, we intend to proclaim, “Enough is enough!” We no longer want to tolerate the hell created by the patriarchal systems stretching from Kosovo to Iraq, Afghanistan to Philippines, the USA to France, Britain to Turkey and Iran to Pakistan.
The year behind us was a bitter year for the majority of women in the world:
Despite all the atrocities, women of Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey and Afghanistan are not silenced. In the heart of the Middle East, Iranian women endeavour to send the news of their struggles against the misogynist and religious regime in Iran to the progressive forces all over the world. They try to connect the stream of their struggles to the global sea of women’s struggles.
The reactionary regimes in the USA and Iran are each offering us different versions of hell: either stoning to death, the gallows, forced veil and rape by the “Revolutionary Guards” in Iran, or, like in Iraq, a regime supported by the USA and its allies brought in by economic sanctions, bombing and military attacks – with the obvious enslavement of women. Should we allow the ranks of the women’s movement to be shattered by the two dreadful options of the imperialists and the reactionary Islamic regime in Iran? Or should we rely on the 28 years of experience, knowledge and struggles of Iranian women to prove that both hostile poles are the two versions of the patriarchal and anti-woman systems and any support for one will inevitably strengthen the other?
Can we convey to the people all over the world the demands of the majority of Iranian women, who are determined to get a future independent of both the Islamic regime and the patriarchal forces of the USA and its allies? Can we be the bearers of the positive news that Iranian women have chosen a separate path independent of the dominant reactionary world order?
The choice is ours! The choice is yours!
On 8 March, we will be in the streets to proclaim our choice: We are determined to write new pages of Iran’s contemporary history by achieving our emancipation and equality. Our minimum demands are the abolition of all barbaric and unequal laws against women, including execution by stoning, forced veiling, gender apartheid. We are determined to obtain the right to divorce, to keep our children after divorce, to achieve total control over our bodies, the right to choose our partners as heterosexual or lesbians, and the elimination of any religious control over or interference in various aspect of women’s lives. We demand women’s freedom and emancipation from any oppression and exploitation. These demands are achievable only with the overthrow of the Islamic regime in Iran.
The presence of each one of us at the 8 March demonstration will reinforce our demands and determination to achieve those demands.
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