| URGENT:
Please sign the following by Wednesday to be included at a vigil and
press conference in Washington, DC this Thursday, 17 June 2004. ACTION ALERT…ACTION ALERT…ACTION ALERT… ACTION ALERT… Stop the rape & other torture of Iraqi women and US servicewomen by US military personnel, and women in US Prisons a.. Send this letter to your Congresswoman/man to demand immediate action. b.. Sign-on below to endorse as an individual and/or for your organization. c.. Email the letter and action alert to your email groups and listserves (contact us for e-mail version). d.. Make copies of this letter and circulate it wherever you can. e.. Raise this in your church, neighborhood association, family, friends and neighbors, urging their support and endorsement. f.. Write a letter to your local newspaper. g.. Encourage other individuals and/or organizations/networks to endorse. h.. Call or meet with your Congressperson to demand they take action. Go to www.globalwomenstrike.net to get copies of the letters, demands and information from Black Women’s Rape Action Project, Women Against Rape, STAAAMP (Survivors Taking Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel), and Global Women's Strike. Please print, sign and fax or send email to the International Women Count Network/US: la@crossroadswomen.net or Phone/Fax: 323-292-7405; philly@crossroadswomen.net or Phone 215-848-1120; Fax 215-848-1130 Name and/or organization: __________________________________________ City, State _____________________Email: ______________________________ Letter to US Congresswomen from International Women Count Network/US Dear US Congresswomen: The International Women Count Network and the Global Women’s Strike are outraged by the suppression of information about the rapes of women who are imprisoned in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons by US, UK and other Coalition troops, as well as the rapes of US servicewomen by male colleagues. We join our sisters in Britain who have written to women in both Houses of Parliament, and ask that you as a woman legislator help ensure that this information is no longer kept from the public so that strong action is immediately taken to stop the rapes and prosecute all those responsible, beginning with those at the top who bear the greatest responsibility. We enclose the letter to women Members of Parliament and to US Congresswomen from the British-based Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape, "Neither Blood Nor Rape for Oil". We have been reliably informed, including by religious supporters of President Bush, that photos of rape and other sexual torture of women in Iraqi prisons are commonly used as pornography among US troops. Yet these rapes, if referred to at all, have been described as "sex with a female prisoner". We understand that Congress has seen photos of women being gang-raped, and there is ample evidence that orders to torture, including through sexual abuse, have come from the highest levels – The New Yorker has mentioned Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s involvement. We also understand that some of the top ranking US officials in Iraq presided over torture in Guantánamo, Central America, Haiti and elsewhere. This includes Ambassador to Iraq Negroponte who was directly connected with torture in Honduras. We have also been informed that rape and other sexual torture is common in US prisons, where women prisoners are kept naked in cages, and that some of the military accused of sexual torture in Abu Ghraib were originally prison guards. Please urgently confirm or deny this, bearing in mind that such things, if true, come out sooner rather than later: nowadays fewer and fewer people are willing to be complicit with such crimes by staying silent. We also have hard evidence that US military women are raped by their male colleagues. About 10 days ago National Public Radio reported that 100 servicewomen who returned from Iraq claimed to have been raped. Why have we had to hear it from the media and from the women themselves but not from any official source? Below is a document on rapes of US servicewomen, military wives, partners and children, from Dorothy Mackey, founder of STAAAMP (Survivors Take Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel), a former US Air Force captain and commander who was herself raped in the military. She testifies to the fact that such criminal conduct goes unpunished, and that it has wide consequences not only for the US military but for civil society generally. The widespread rape and other torture in Viet Nam, and Central and South America at the hands of US personnel or by those funded and trained by the US in such places as School of the Americas, is well documented. There are now reports (including in The New Yorker and some of the most reputable British media such as Channel Four News) that thousands of people are being detained in secret CIA centers around the world who may be suffering unbearable torture without any of us knowing. We demand to know the truth of these allegations. Have their loved ones been informed about where they are, what their situation is and what their prospects for release are? Are there women or children among those detained? Women have constantly made the case that rape is not treated seriously by either police or courts or legislators. What has happened in Iraq proves that case. Not only are Iraqi women and US servicewomen being raped by the military and hired mercenaries (‘civilian advisers’), but there is a conspiracy of silence and a screen of protection for this brutalization of women, beginning with women of color. (Those of us who know the civil rights movement were shocked into recognition by the torturers’ use of hoods and dogs.) We are urging Congresswomen to respond immediately to what we are raising, which is of crucial importance to women and men who abhor this latest descent into barbarism. Either the Pentagon and its military command are incompetent and don’t know what is happening under their command, or they are brutes with the power of life and death over millions of people. In either case they must be prosecuted. We will not allow this to be imposed on any human being, at home or abroad, in our name. Will you? We look forward urgently to hearing from you. Margaret Prescod and Phoebe Jones, co-coordinators International Women Count Network/US; Global Women’s Strike/US. Margaret Prescod, phone/fax: 323-292-7405 in Los Angeles la@crossroadswomen.net Phoebe Jones, 215-848-1120; fax: 215-848-1130 in Philadelphia philly@crossroadswomen.net The IWCN worked with the Congressional Black Caucus in the 1990s to get The Unremunerated Work Act introduced in Congress. The legislation sought to implement the 1995 decision we had won at the UN Decade for Women Conference in Beijing, with the support of 2000 non-governmental organizations worldwide, to get women’s unwaged caring work recognized, measured and valued in economic statistics. The Global Women Strike is a network of grassroots women in over 60 countries campaigning under the banner "Invest in Caring Not Killing" to demand that the $1 trillion world military budget be used to support the care of people and the planet, beginning with payment for all caring work. (www.globalwomenstrike.net). |