Friday, August 21, 2009
Iraqi women in prisons....
Sunday 16 August 2009
Peace be upon you…
For about a year now I’ve heard about Iraqi women held in prisons, sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment, but nobody knows the details of their stories; people always asked what their crimes were, what are their conditions, why aren’t their faces and stories shown on TV and newspapers so we can learn the truth about what is happening, so we can decide how to stand; with or against their punishments?
A few weeks ago I was asking a journalist who came from Baghdad about that issue; has he any knowledge of it? He said he heard from a close friend of his in the police dpt. that these women were actually involved in terrorist acts, and some of them trained Iraqi women to blow up themselves. I asked him: why would they do something like this? But he said he doesn’t know.
The issue kept nagging in my mind, with a lot of questions- women blowing up themselves? Why?
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Yesterday, by chance, I found an article on the website of the New York Times, on a recent date: August 13th., 2009, it was titled: (How Baida wanted to die-NY Times.com). It was a 6 page article, showing the photograph of a woman with a black head cover, seeming to be at the end of her twenties, whose name was “Baida’…. The title: how she wanted to die…
The journalist told in full detail how she met Baida in a police prison in Baquba, as she was among those suspects caught at the beginning of 2008, where she told her tale in boring details; her childhood in a poor family, how her mother stopped her from going to school after 8th grade. Her mother died when she was 17, then her father married her to a cruel man who used to hit her. She told how she saw her neighbor in 2005 being shot in the neck by the Americans, how he kept bleeding and rolling in the mud until he died. She saw all this with her own eyes, and then decided to help her brothers and father in making explosives that were put on the streets to blow up the American convoys. Then the occupation forces came and blew up their house at dawn on one Ramadan day, killing her father and brothers. And she was driven by the need to revenge from that date on. She started working with her cousins who made up new cells for manufacturing bombs and explosive belts, they asked her to blow up her self against the Iraqi police but she refused, saying- this is sinful, no Muslim must be killed, but I would blow myself in the middle of the occupation forces, for they do deserve this…
Weeks later, the journalist met Baida at Al-Rushod Psychiatric Hospital, where she was sent for an evaluation of her mental conditions, then she was sent back to prison after being sure of her sanity.
********************************************
In the cell with Baida there was a young girl of about 16 called Rania, who is also accused of wanting to blow up her self. She said her mother tried to force her to blow up her self but she refused and run away. She was caught at a check point, and now- she and her mother were in prison… I think the mother was accused of joining a cell that manufactured explosive bombs and belts, and training girls to blow up themselves. I think the mother’s sentence will be the execution, but these girls will probably be sentenced to many years in prison….
Those are the samples of Iraqi women in prisons now, accused of terrorist actions…
**************************************************************
I kept thinking of them all day and night…. I mean; they are poor women from rural families, from provinces around Baghdad, Baquba or Ramadi; where life is dry and revenues are scarce as it is, before the war and occupation, the life of women there is not like the lives of city women like me- I grew up in Baghdad in a middle-class family, I studies in schools with my brothers and sisters, finished university in Baghdad, got married, built our houses, careers, a good income, kids, families we love and care for, and a secure future… would one of us; of my sisters or relatives or friends, think of going to blow her self up? To join a terrorist cell that makes explosives that would explode on street sides?
All of this wouldn’t have happened except for the hateful occupation…
These country women would’ve kept working in the wheat fields, or the orange, pomegranate, or date orchards, they would’ve remained at home to take care of their children and husbands, and perhaps of a few chicken or sheep owned by the family. A hundred different things could’ve kept these women and families busy, every thing that can come to our minds, except to turn into terrorists who make roadside explosives or explosive belts they put on then explode themselves among people…. This is what we reaped out of the occupation violence doesn’t breed anything but violence. These women who saw violence and bloodshed in stead of flowers and rose gardens, who saw their relatives and neighbors sinking in blood after direct shootings from the occupation forces, and die in front of their eyes…
Who is the unjust judge who will sentence them to prison or death? The ones who should be sentenced are those who spoiled these women’s lives, who drove them into these ugly choices and this bitter end. They are the ones who deserve prison, and death. These women are nothing but victims, they need psychiatric therapy to change the ideas of violence and revenge from their minds, to forget the past and open new leafs of a new future and life. We shall not ask them to forgive the ones who killed their families, destroyed their houses and ruined their lives… the occupation does not deserve any forgiveness… the occupiers must leave Iraq first, then compensate these families for whatever damages they caused them… and we shall never forgive them… ever…
But we need to forgive each other, help each other, so we can pass the ordeals. But not to punish the Iraqi sons and women for resisting occupation! In what law the victim is punished, and the executioner is rewarded?
Peace be upon you…
For about a year now I’ve heard about Iraqi women held in prisons, sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment, but nobody knows the details of their stories; people always asked what their crimes were, what are their conditions, why aren’t their faces and stories shown on TV and newspapers so we can learn the truth about what is happening, so we can decide how to stand; with or against their punishments?
A few weeks ago I was asking a journalist who came from Baghdad about that issue; has he any knowledge of it? He said he heard from a close friend of his in the police dpt. that these women were actually involved in terrorist acts, and some of them trained Iraqi women to blow up themselves. I asked him: why would they do something like this? But he said he doesn’t know.
The issue kept nagging in my mind, with a lot of questions- women blowing up themselves? Why?
***************************************************
Yesterday, by chance, I found an article on the website of the New York Times, on a recent date: August 13th., 2009, it was titled: (How Baida wanted to die-NY Times.com). It was a 6 page article, showing the photograph of a woman with a black head cover, seeming to be at the end of her twenties, whose name was “Baida’…. The title: how she wanted to die…
The journalist told in full detail how she met Baida in a police prison in Baquba, as she was among those suspects caught at the beginning of 2008, where she told her tale in boring details; her childhood in a poor family, how her mother stopped her from going to school after 8th grade. Her mother died when she was 17, then her father married her to a cruel man who used to hit her. She told how she saw her neighbor in 2005 being shot in the neck by the Americans, how he kept bleeding and rolling in the mud until he died. She saw all this with her own eyes, and then decided to help her brothers and father in making explosives that were put on the streets to blow up the American convoys. Then the occupation forces came and blew up their house at dawn on one Ramadan day, killing her father and brothers. And she was driven by the need to revenge from that date on. She started working with her cousins who made up new cells for manufacturing bombs and explosive belts, they asked her to blow up her self against the Iraqi police but she refused, saying- this is sinful, no Muslim must be killed, but I would blow myself in the middle of the occupation forces, for they do deserve this…
Weeks later, the journalist met Baida at Al-Rushod Psychiatric Hospital, where she was sent for an evaluation of her mental conditions, then she was sent back to prison after being sure of her sanity.
********************************************
In the cell with Baida there was a young girl of about 16 called Rania, who is also accused of wanting to blow up her self. She said her mother tried to force her to blow up her self but she refused and run away. She was caught at a check point, and now- she and her mother were in prison… I think the mother was accused of joining a cell that manufactured explosive bombs and belts, and training girls to blow up themselves. I think the mother’s sentence will be the execution, but these girls will probably be sentenced to many years in prison….
Those are the samples of Iraqi women in prisons now, accused of terrorist actions…
**************************************************************
I kept thinking of them all day and night…. I mean; they are poor women from rural families, from provinces around Baghdad, Baquba or Ramadi; where life is dry and revenues are scarce as it is, before the war and occupation, the life of women there is not like the lives of city women like me- I grew up in Baghdad in a middle-class family, I studies in schools with my brothers and sisters, finished university in Baghdad, got married, built our houses, careers, a good income, kids, families we love and care for, and a secure future… would one of us; of my sisters or relatives or friends, think of going to blow her self up? To join a terrorist cell that makes explosives that would explode on street sides?
All of this wouldn’t have happened except for the hateful occupation…
These country women would’ve kept working in the wheat fields, or the orange, pomegranate, or date orchards, they would’ve remained at home to take care of their children and husbands, and perhaps of a few chicken or sheep owned by the family. A hundred different things could’ve kept these women and families busy, every thing that can come to our minds, except to turn into terrorists who make roadside explosives or explosive belts they put on then explode themselves among people…. This is what we reaped out of the occupation violence doesn’t breed anything but violence. These women who saw violence and bloodshed in stead of flowers and rose gardens, who saw their relatives and neighbors sinking in blood after direct shootings from the occupation forces, and die in front of their eyes…
Who is the unjust judge who will sentence them to prison or death? The ones who should be sentenced are those who spoiled these women’s lives, who drove them into these ugly choices and this bitter end. They are the ones who deserve prison, and death. These women are nothing but victims, they need psychiatric therapy to change the ideas of violence and revenge from their minds, to forget the past and open new leafs of a new future and life. We shall not ask them to forgive the ones who killed their families, destroyed their houses and ruined their lives… the occupation does not deserve any forgiveness… the occupiers must leave Iraq first, then compensate these families for whatever damages they caused them… and we shall never forgive them… ever…
But we need to forgive each other, help each other, so we can pass the ordeals. But not to punish the Iraqi sons and women for resisting occupation! In what law the victim is punished, and the executioner is rewarded?
# posted by Faiza Al-Araji @ 9:15 pm 
