SEXISM RUNS RAMPANT; POLICE BRUTALITY ENSUES; TWO-HEADED ELVIS CLONE BORN TO ALIEN.
Okay, so there's no two-headed Elvis Clone. And there's really nothing funny about this situation. However, it seems to me as though far too many members (not all, but a great many) of the general public pass up news reports like this as easily as it ignores outlandish statements like "two-headed Elvis clone born to alien." The thing is, this is real. This is happening now. We Americans enjoy rights to free speech and dress. We enjoy much more equality between sexes and religions than many other parts of the world. Unfortunately, in those "other parts of the world," people are still being beaten, harassed, and brutalized for standing up for their rights. Today in Sudan, a crowd of female protesters were beaten and gassed by police, simply for standing against the absurdity of Sudanese women's dress codes.
The women were protesting a trial in which a journalist by the name of Lubna Hussein faces 40 lashes for breaking public indecency laws. Her great sin? Wearing trousers in public. Hussein says the law is oppressive and un-Islamic. She says she doesn't care about the punishment, she just wants to change the law, and that she is willing to take the case all the way to Sudan's constitutional court, and is willing to take up to forty thousand lashes if that's what it takes to change the law. She even had to quit her job as a journalist for the UN just so that she could be tried and make a political statement.
She has to be one of the bravest people I've ever heard of.
Still... it is obscene that police would beat and gas a crowd of women protesting this trial. It is obscene that police would beat and gas anyone at all, simply for exercising freedom of speech. Which isn't actually one of the freedoms enjoyed in Sudan.
So. Not only are human rights being oppressed, but they're being oppressed with corporal punishment. I can only wonder what kind of barbaric and savage species we are to allow things like this. To do things like this.
It certainly makes me feel ill. Anyone else?
Here's the article, if you want to see it for yourself.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_sudan_women_flogged
2 comments:
Mankind is brutal by nature. Nothing surprising here. Granted I'm a wee bit numb to the whole human oppression thing, but mostly because I'm an insensitive ass. Glad to hear someone is standing up for what they believe in.
Only takes one person to start a landslide, no?
I agree with you. We evolved to be brutal. At the same time, though, we are capable of such goodness and beauty.
I thank you for your support, and yes. One person, one landslide. That's what I'm hoping for.
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