by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
This year for the first time in the history of the Anti-imperialist Summer Camp, delegations from Afghanistan attended the meeting. Among them is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an independent revolutionary women´s organisation.
In the forum that RAWA held, the dramatic situation of women in the Taliban-ruled country was reported. Through the help of a video, the participants could witness the unbelievable cruelty of the reactionaries in power. Images of public executions in Afghan sport stadiums were shown, where thousands of people are forced to watch these brutal slaughters every week.
Social Centres for Women
Because films and photographs are forbidden in Afghanistan, the members of RAWA see it as a duty to inform the world about these criminal acts. By filming in the stadiums, the women take a very high risk.
Beside this the main task for the women of RAWA is the organisation of women and girls for the resistance against the regime. This political activity happens in secret social centres, wich are also the only possibility for Afghan women to learn how to read and write, get medical treatment or simply take part in social life outside of their families. RAWA takes special care of the widows and women who have lost all their relatives in the civil war. These women are on the low end of the society forced on the people by the Taliban. They are not allowed to go in public, a right, which is granted only to women who are under guidance of their husband or a close male relative. Therefore these women are threatened in their very existence each and every day.
The USA is responsible
Another important point of the political work of RAWA is their activity in the refugee camps in Pakistan. There, at least from time to time, it is possible for the organisation to act in public, to stage demonstrations and public meetings. This happens also in collaboration with different revolutionary organisations based in Pakistan.
The comrade of RAWA stressed in her speech the fact that the Afghan Taliban regime was only able to take power by the help of the Western imperialism, especially the US imperialism. Despite the current conflict around Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban were build up by the USA. This means that the western world has a part of responsibility for all the crimes, which happen right now in Afghanistan.
Therefore according to the activists of RAWA the fight of the Afghan women is directly combined with the fight against the imperialist domination of the world.