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leditorial
Never
mentioned on woman's day:
Divorce and Abortion
The annual celebration of Women's Day – yesterday – has
turned out to be a much ado about nothing affair.
Let us not be misinterpreted. The women who champion Women's Day
in Malta are hardworking and brave to say the least.
But the agenda that is repeatedly presented year in year out is
reminiscent of a 1930's coffee morning get together.
The real global concerns for women whether we agree with them are
side-lined and side-issued locally and not raised because everyone
here seems to be scared to raise them.
The repetitive reminder about gender discrimination is known to
everyone but the other issues such as divorce and abortion are conveniently
forgotten because they are simply too hot to handle.
There is not one group, apart from the remotely bizarre Men Rights'
association, that voices an opinion on these issues.
From a concrete perspective the divorce issue is the most urgent,
since it addresses the plight of failed marriages and offers a solution
to those women who remain stigmatised because they are no longer
with a legally recognised partner. More so, they find the chance
of starting a new life difficult and legally impossible.
So they enter into a partnership and also give birth to illegitimate
children.
If this is the Malta we want to promulgate in the year 2001, then
so be it, but this is wrong and out of tune.
The other issue is abortion, and here again though one may raise
many valid religious and ethical arguments, the matter has only
been debated by talk show zealots on their specially reserved space
on the box.
Abortion underlines one basic tenet, it allows the woman to decide
her fate and hence that of the unborn.
That issue raises many hotly debated points of view. But it is a
pillar of thought that women's groups the world over feel very strongly
about – apart from those countries where the woman is entrenched
in a religious frame of mind. Though it may appear to be an insurmountable
scenario, it has to be said that the discussion has to start one
fine day. Perhaps within the framework that the state has a commitment
to society and not to a religious denomination – however big,
overbearing and influential it has turned
out to be.
Who invented the Taliban?
Which takes us to the issue of the Taliban and although Afghanistan
is a faraway place it does emphasise our own hypocrisy.
The Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, an Islamic fundamentalist
with a streak of 7th century beliefs, has imposed a rigid unassuming
feudal dictatorship where the woman is seen as an appendage and
nothing else.
The latest news has focused on the edict to destroy all pagan statues
from the face of Afghanistan.
The young Taliban men have been busily planning the destruction
of the ancient giant Buddha statues across the Afghani countryside.
The Western world has expressed dismay and anger, conveniently forgetting
that it brought Mullah Mohammed Omar from the dark ages into this
century simply because of his gut hatred for the Russian invaders
in 1979.
Omar was then a nothing, a young religious fundamentalist with a
love for the Koran and the Kalashnikov, he discovered to his surprise
that he could fight the Russians with the funds from the CIA and
arms from the US.
Such is life, it happened with Sadaam Hussein, it took place with
the Saudi Bin Laden, it happened with Pinochet, and so with other
cronies – from the Greek generals to the Latin American revolutionaries.
So, as we label the Taliban as that thing from hell, let us all
please recall that at least under the corrupt Marxist Leninist puppet
Afghani Soviet regime, women could breathe, smile and educate themselves
and at least the Buddha statues at Bamiyan were untouched and researched
at Kabul's university.
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