Houzan Mahmoud’s speech in Birmingham-UK in a seminar with Tariq Ali on the current political situation in Iraq and women’s rights.

Dear friends, and comrades

I would like to welcome you, and to thank you for attending this seminar. I would also like to thank the South Asian Alliance for inviting me to this seminar to give me an opportunity to get our message across, the message of secular, progressive, and socialist people of Iraq.  The biased Western media do not give us coverage. Also I would like to congratulate Tariq Ali for launching his book ‘Bush in Babylon’, and I wish him all the best and success.

Today I will be speaking about what the war against “terrorism” has brought to people in Iraq and in particular for women.  I will also be telling you about atrocities against women committed by Islamic groups and the imposed Ruling Council, and about how people are dealing with the situation.

Dear comrades:

The recent attack on Iraq, and now the occupation of Iraq is in the middle of every political discussion wherever you go. It has become obvious that America is trying to establish its New World order and to impose it self as a sole super power. Whatever false statements are made, they cannot cover up their atrocities against the people of Iraq nor can they hide the fact that they have terrorized all civilized humanity by imposing themselves on us.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Ba’ath regime a political vacuum was created.  There has been a lack of security, safety, and of every basic need, and human rights have disappeared, there is unemployment and poverty to add to the misery. This has been in addition to the suffering of Iraqi people who experienced two wars, and 12 years of sanctions.

Islamic groups, who are well funded and ideologically feed by Iran and Saudi Arabia, are trying very hard to take advantage of the political vacuum, and they are imposing themselves by force of arms and terror from their first appearance on the political stage in Iraq.

They have terrorised people and in particular women.  They started by issuing fatwa’s from their mosques, announcing that women should be veiled, and threatening to death  women who were driven to prostitution as a result of poverty, which came from sanctions imposed on Iraqi people.

They have been preventing girls and women from going to work or university unless they are veiled. They said from the speakers of their mosques that a woman’s place is in her own home, and they have started setting up Islamic courts in Al-Najaf.  Men who are killing their own female relatives under the name of “honour killing” are receiving encouragement, and support from these courts.

They are banning women from becoming Judges as they believe that women are half- minded and are not capable of managing such a profession, this is just for men. Clearly they want to establish an Iranian or Taliban-style Islamic government, which treats women as second or third class citizens, and they are applying gender apartheid everywhere against women. These are the kind of Islamic rules that are a major obstacles for women’s freedom, liberation and even their existence as a human being. In a country where there is no justice system or protection, women raped by Iraqis or American soldiers are paying the price by being killed in the name of honour by their own families to clear the “shame” been brought to them.

Rape has become a norm. Women cannot report rape to the authorities, if there is one, because they fear the consequences of possibly being killed by male members of their own family for bringing 'shame to the family'. Women are been raped, abducted and killed on a daily basis and no-one is held responsible for it.

We also started to hear that the women in the so-called Governing Council are not receiving equal status and treatment from their male colleagues.  Their colleagues belong to the most reactionary Islamic groups, nationalist parties or are heads of tribes.

Women members have complained that members of the council are not treating them equally and will not shake their hands as they do with men they meet. They do not even make eye contact with women; it is as if they are not there.  One of the women had to wear hijab after she was appointed as a member of the council.

The puppet ruling council itself is been put together by America to serve its interest in Iraq, and to dictate to people for many decades to come.

This imposed group of religious leaders, tribal leaders, and nationalists have no interest in improving people’s lives, freedom, equality or the welfare of people. They could only go to power by being imposed by America, because few people would have voted for them if there were elections to give the people choice. So these are the American democratic values for Iraqi people. They divide the Iraqi people on the basis of religious sects and tribes, as if we are living in the dark ages. They undermine the dignity of Iraqi people, forgetting perhaps our long history as a country with an educated population.  We have secular and progressive forces too.

The last but not least thing that the Governing Council is doing under the supervision of America is changing the date of the celebration of International Women's Day from 8^th March to 18^th August.  This is the date of birth of Prophet Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima Zahra, who has nothing to do with women’s rights.  They do this to oppress women in Iraq, and bring down their expectations.  This is what the war and occupation has brought to us, not Democracy, not freedom, but we have been stripped of any tiny freedoms we had before.

These were just a few examples of the barbaric atrocities that are daily being committed against half of Iraqi society. The USA administration has brought Islamic groups into power again; the scenario of the Taliban is being repeated. They gave Islamic groups seats in their so-called Governing Council.

This Council now represents the most right-wing forces in society: the nationalist parties and heads of tribes who in no way speak on or defend women’s rights, and they do not make a single reference to women’s rights in their agenda. Those women members in that council are just for decoration.

We hold the USA occupying authorities responsible for the insecurity and lack of policing which has cost many women their lives.

So this was the dark side of the scenario in Iraq, but the communists, the working class, secular and progressive forces have their stand too.  They have organised themselves by establishing the Union of Unemployed in Iraq, the largest ever organisation, for the workers who lost their jobs due to the war.  We also have the Organisation of Women’s Freedom that was founded to defend women’s rights and to fight for unconditional equal rights for women through its first newspaper in Arabic called ‘Equality’. The Union of Oil Workers Company in Kirkuk, also the establishment of people’s councils in Kirkuk, and recently the Committee of Defence of Secularism in Iraq were founded to promote and defend secularism in our society.

But which one of the communist parties is behind all these movements? Certainly not the Communist Party of Iraq, which is walking around the illegitimate ruling council to get a seat.  They say nothing about all these atrocities against people, in particular against women in Iraq, and they do not take part in organising the masses of the Iraqi working class.

But my party, the Worker-communist Party of Iraq is behind all this amazing and effective work organising different sections of society into organisations, so that they can challenge the American forces, their ruling council, and the Islamic groups. This is of course the white, bright side of the scenario in Iraq.

So my call to you will be to strengthen and promote socialism in Iraq by supporting the work of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq towards establishing an egalitarian socialist state in Iraq so that we can defeat Americas new world order, and end it there.  We want also to stand up to, and defeat political Islam too.

As you are aware, the whole Western media is giving coverage to the most reactionary forces in Iraq, and America and Britain are giving their full support to the puppet political parties in the ruling council.  Our party and movements have none of these, the only forces we count on are the radical and progressive forces across the world who are opposed to America’s hegemony, and its atrocities against all of us …. so please support our movement for equality, freedom and socialist republic in Iraq.

Many thanks for listening.