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Dr Sima Samar
(Shuhada Organization)
(Dr Sima's
Official Web-site)
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Dr Sima Samer |
"I have three strikes
against me," she says by way of introduction. "I'm a woman, I
speak out for women and I'm a Hazara, one of the minority tribes."
The road she travelled from Helmand, the Afghan province where she
grew up, to this refugee centre in Quetta, is strewn with the
history and customs of her beloved Afghanistan. Her father had two
wives (a usual practice for many Islamic men and one she doesn't
approve of). She won a scholarship to go to medical school but her
father told her she couldn't leave the family because she wasn't
married. So a marriage was arranged (another usual custom) and she
went to Kabul University. But during the upheaval that finally
rousted the Communists, and soon after she'd given birth to their
son, her husband was arrested, never to be seen again. Samar
managed to finish medical school and wound up practising medicine
in a rural district. Her experiences there brutally demonstrated
that the lives of women were nearly unbearable and that lack of
education was a direct cause of the turmoil her country was in.
She decided to do something about both conditions.
Today she runs medical clinics in Quetta as
well as Kabul. And she has clandestine schools in rural
Afghanistan for more than 4,500 girls, as well as a school for
refugee girls here in Quetta. Her steadfast refusal to observe
purdah and the stand she takes on equality for women have made her
anathema to the fundamentalists and a hero to the women she
serves.
When asked how she gets around the
paralyzing rules of the extremists' interpretation of the Koran,
she shakes her had in astonishment at her own audacity. "Let me
tell you a story," she begins. "A 16-year-old girl came with her
parents to my clinic. A quick urine test and cursory examination
told me what I suspected She was six months pregnant and
terrified. She had been raped. The law according to the extremists
is that a woman who is raped must have four male witnesses to
prove that she didn't cause the rape. Naturally no such witnesses
are ever available. Without them the family is obliged to kill the
girl to protect the family honour. This kid had kept her terrible
secret until she could hide it no longer. I had to decide what to
do. I don't approve of abortions unless there is absolutely no
other way. But if I didn't do something for this girl, she would
be killed. I chose life.
"Remember, most people here don't have any
education, so I can get away with saying things they may not
question. I told them their daughter had a tumor and needed
surgery. I said she was too sick to have it now and she would have
to stay at my clinic. I kept that girl for three months. When the
baby was due, I did a cesarean section. The family waited outside
the operating room because it is the custom here to show them what
was found in the surgery. I put the placenta in the surgical
basin, showed them the so called tumor and told them their
daughter would be fine. Then I gave the baby to a woman who was
also in trouble because she is married and infertile."
Dr. Samar can't change the law by herself
but she's part of a group that hopes it can. It's an international
network called Women Living Under Muslim Laws and it presently has
links to 40 countries and an increasingly powerful voice at the
United Nations. Farida Shaheed, the Asian co-ordinator of the
association in Lahore, Pakistan, won't even use the word
fundamentalist. "It suggests a return to cherished fundamentals of
Islam, which it certainly is not," she says. "Extremists aren't
religious at all. This is political opportunism. Their strength is
in disrupting the political process and using that to blackmail
those in political power."
It worries her that such groups are gaining
momentum because of what she calls "a refusal of mainstream
political parties in Muslim countries to produce democratic rule."
But women are gaining as well. There's an unprecedented number of
women coming into the workforce [in Pakistan] at the same time
that the extremist groups are saying, "Stay home."
They fight back at their peril. Members of
the association have been harassed on the street and had firebombs
thrown at their houses. And Sima Samar receives so many death
threats from the Taliban, she simply replies, "You know where I
am. I won't stop what I'm doing."
The rhythms of life rock uncomfortably at
Samar's clinic. Her patients, who pay about 30 rupees ($1
Canadian) per visit, come with their full wombs and fears of
infertility. They suffer all the ills that refugee camps are heir
to: malnutrition, anemia, typhoid fever, malaria. In the lineups
at the door, they whisper news of the latest atrocities and
decrees of the Taliban. Today, there's a terrible message from
Jalalabad, a city across the border of Afghanistan. Yesterday a
woman tried to leave. She was wearing her burqa but walking with a
man who was not a relative. She was arrested by the Taliban and
stoned to death. The man she was with was sentenced to seven years
in prison. There's still a hush in the clinic, when suddenly the
curtain is pushed aside and a woman appears with her Taliban
husband. He tells Samar that his wife bleeds from her nose
whenever she works hard in the fields. Samar raises her voice:
"She's full-term pregnant, she shouldn't be working so hard." The
man replies, "She has to work. Fix her nose." Another young woman
has been menstruating for 11 months. Her blood pressure is
dangerously low. She's as weak as a sparrow. The doctor says she
needs a simple D and C (dilatation and curettage) but culture
interferes again. She's a virgin. The simple operation would
destroy her virginity, which in turn would destroy her life. So
abdominal surgery is scheduled.
As the war against women rages on, a new and
menacing problem is turning up at the clinic. "Almost every women
I see has osteomalacia," Samar says. "Their bones are softening
due to a lack of vitamin D. They survive on a diet of tea and naan
because they can't afford eggs and milk and, to complicate
matters, their burqas and veils deprive them of sunshine. On top
of that, depression is endemic here because the future is so
dark."
Samar is angry with what she sees as all talk and no action on the
part of world organizations that claim to be pressing ahead with
issues for women. "Recently the UN held a meeting in Quetta for
all the various factions to discuss Afghanistan," she says. "They
met at a hotel for three days. Can you imagine what that cost?
Well, the meeting was for men only. The women were invited to meet
for one hour on a different day." There's more. She was invited to
attend a meeting in Washington, also held to discuss the situation
in Afghanistan. Each delegate was allowed six minutes to speak.
Samar was the only woman. She told the gathering, "I represent
more than half the people in Afghanistan. How come I only get the
same six minutes as all these men?"
When the phone rings in her small office she
speaks English to the caller, wanting to know, "Where's my wheat?"
The caller explains that her wheat is in Kabul but the priority
delivery is to women and girls. "My wheat is going to a school for
girls in Ghazni. It's the only school still operating for girls.
Why aren't my girls part of that priority?"
Amid the international sound of silence, a
lone voice in London is sounding a clarion call for the women.
Fatina Gailani, who holds a master's degree in Islamic
jurisprudence, is the daughter of Pir Sayyid Ahmad Gailani, the
spiritual leader of the Sunni Afghans. He is also descendant of
the prophet Mohammed, which means they both carry a lot of clout.
Gailani is outraged with the Taliban's interpretation of Islam. "A
woman with a covered head is not more honourable than a woman
without a covered head. I can prove than any action of the prophet
has nothing to do with this. It goes against the Koran, in fact.
The Taliban are against Afghan tradition, against Islam. They only
continue because presently there is no alternative." With that in
mind, she and her father recently travelled to Rome to meet with
the exiled monarch. "My hope is that an Afghan element—the king,
the leaders of the tribes, my father—can do something. The Taliban
need aid of every description. They need money. They'd respond to
pressure." So far there hasn't been any.
Meanwhile, the lineup at Dr. Samar's clinic
grows longer. Her schools for girls are working in shifts, since
she doesn't have the money to rent more space. The women in Kabul
have given up a resistance movement. And some international
agencies are caving into the classic consequences of gender abuse
and saying, "At least there's peace under the Taliban." For the
women, living in prison isn't peace. The threat of being stoned to
death isn't peace. Painting your windows black isn't peace. Being
without music isn't peace. And so they wait, for
peace.
Official Web-site of Shuhada Organization:
www.shuhada.org or
www.simasamar.com |