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The Dual Oppression on Women In Iraq as a result of the sanction and war
- Stories - People's Health Assembly - December 2000
The Dual Oppression on Women In Iraq as a result of the sanction and war.
It has become very clear that Iraqi women were the victims and target of almost all
continuous internal and external wars in addition to the burdens that came with the sanctions and embargo.
Corruption and absence of democracy have been the main reasons behind most of the catastrophic situation prevailing in Iraq during the last 3 decades. The factor behind these disasters is the widely totalitarian dictatorial Iraqi regime, which almost has become unique in the world of today.
With the end of 1st Gulf war during which ½ million Iraqi were killed, the Iraqi regime has started the genocide campaign in Northern Kurdish area of Iraq which has been called Anfal operations, resulted in the disappearance of 182,000 human beings most of them were women and children.
This notorious operation was shortly followed by a massacre that targeted the same area on the 16th of March 1988, chemical weapons have been used widely in the Kurdish town of “Halabja” resulted in immediate death of 5000 innocent civilian, by this the regime has set a precedent being the first regime that uses chemical weapons against its own people.
The policies of sectorial, ethnic and tribal discrimination of the Iraqi regime has caused forcible immigration and internal and external expulsion of thousands of Arab and Kurdish families disseminating the Iraqi people to all parts of the world estimated numbers is more than 2 millions.
And then the Iraqi regime decision to occupy Kuwait came to maximize the misery of the Iraqi people, which gave an excellent excuse to USA and its allies to came back heavily to the Golf area and other Arabian Lands from which the British colonialism was expulsed from.
Another period of the misery of the Iraqi people has started with the attacks of the allied forces on Iraq that caused mass destruction of infrastructure of the country, such as electricity, communications, bridges, water purification and sewage disposal systems not avoiding health centers hospitals and other civilian constructions. Now it has appeared and was admitted by the allied forces, the use of depleted uranium in their attacks against Iraq, which caused dangerous pollution to the environment and caused the appearance of new diseases such as rare types of cancer, congenital abnormalities and miscarriages.
Things came to its worse with the international sanctions imposed on Iraq when crucial deficiency of food, medications and medical equipment paralyzed hospitals and health centers and affected negatively the quality of services provided to the people mostly women and children and the vulnerable groups.
The oppression of women has reached its zenith by the disintegration of the social network of the Iraqi people that reflected it self in the form of increased poverty that forced some Iraqi woman into acts that were unknown previously among Iraqi families such as prostitution, the phenomenon that was dealt with by the Iraqi regime by beheading number of women and throwing their bodies in front of their houses. Frequently accusations were imposed on innocent women politically rejected by the officials such as the doctor who was beheaded for simply criticizing the government’s policy in discrimination in medicine distribution.
Also women were forced to quit their career lives, and to regress back to their homes.
Pre requisite for change:
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