Dear friends of Iran Solidarity,
It is my strong regret that i cannot be with you today, July 13, 2009, for the launch of the campaign in London.
The network ’Secularism Is A Women’s Issue’ extends its warmest support to your initiative.
The people in Iran who are on the streets everyday - as well as the many anti-fundamentalist people who, in our countries, pay with their lives their opposition to fundamentalist regimes and fundamentalist political parties, as well as their struggle against non state fundamentalist armed groups - need and deserve to be supported.
It has been a grave failure of States in general and European states in particular as well as the UN, not to defend anti-fundamentalist protestors more vigourously in the past. It has been a grave failure of the Left at large and of the anti-globalization movement world wide to give priority to the anti-imperialist struggle at the cost of defenders of democratic rights in Iran and in our countries.
The people in Iran who are daily demonstrating need to be supported in all possible ways:
– The fact that some Third World dictators pretend to stand against the USA should not give them a political virginity and command an inconditional support from the Left, regardless of their national political programs. The Left and the anti-globalization movement should change their short sighted policies ; they should understand that progressive anti-fundamentalist popular forces should not be cynically sacrificied on the altar of combatting imperialism and globalization. Without these demonstrators and opponents, without secular people and organizations, fascist regimes stay in power for decades, while they keep in bondage and slaughter the people in total impunity, — as we all know from the examples of Franco, Salazar and now Ahmadinejad.
– Democracy should be defended in Iran. By defending democracy, I mean supporting the people who want to decide about their fate, vote their own laws that can be changed as many times as need be, according to their will and their vote,
- and therefore it also means opposing regimes that want to enforce supposedly divine laws, which are, by definition, unchangeable and a-historical. Religious regimes are by essence against the very principle of democracy.
– Human rights organizations and the UN, which are so frilous when it comes to addressing violations committed by regimes that pretend to govern in the name of religions, should go back to the fundamentals of the Declaration of human rights: the rights of the individuals whether or not they are said to transgress cultural or religious norms and morality. International human rights organisations should widely mobilize to bring out of jail those already in detention, to prosecute their torturers in international courts, and to put the wounded in the care of international medical teams. As for the UN, it should stop hiding behind ’defending religions and their prophets’ to justify its abandonment of human rights defenders at the hands of oppressors.
– In Europe , wide internal popular pressure should refrain governments to further trade people’s rights and women’s rights for lucrative commercial business.
The Iran Solidarity Campaign should have an impact in redressing these past errors.
It is urgent to defend those who stand for people’s rights today, as they are at the forefront of the struggle for OUR rights, globally. They are the salt of the earth. We should thank them for what they are doing for us all.
Marieme Helie Lucas
SIAWI
Secularism Is A Women’s Issue
siawi.org