Today I continue what has turned out to be a series on colonization, militarism, and their impacts on women. Today also marks the 67th anniversary of the armistice that ended the war on the Korean Peninsula so let’s keep that in our hearts.
On past shows, my guests discussed Memorial Day, and US colonization and occupation of Okinawa and the Pacific. In our show titled Suffering from Three Viruses: Occupation, Corona, and Patriarchal Culture, we broaden the earlier discussions by shifting to Afghanistan and Palestine. In interviews recorded on July 22, my guests Sima Samar and Faiha Abdulhadi shared what’s happening in Afghanistan and Palestine respectively. Next month, we’ll hear about Sudan.
Dr. Faiha Abdulhadi has extensive experience as a writer, poet, oral-historian, researcher and research-consultant, community activist, and lecturer, and has been working on gender and other issues of human interest. She is the founder and director of Al Rowat for Studies and Research, which seeks to rewrite social history by documenting stories of marginalized groups and of witnesses to key historic events. She is a member of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian Central Council, the deputy Commissioner General for the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Palestine.
Dr. Sima Samar is a medical doctor for poor people by profession, and a women’s and human rights activist. She was the first Minister for Women’s Affair after the fall of the Taliban. Since 2004, she is the Chairperson of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the first established in the country, which holds human rights violators accountable, a commitment that has put her own life at great risk. She has established and nurtured the Shuhada Organization that, in 2012, operated more than one hundred schools and 15 clinics and hospitals dedicated to providing education and healthcare, particularly focusing on women and girls. She was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award in 2012.
Resources:
Free Women Writers https://www.freewomenwriters.org/2016/09/14/afghan-women-history-post-taliban/
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling www.wclac.org