October 08, 2011

After 10 years of war: Malalai Joya on Women in Afghanistan

In a two minute video the Afghan activist speaks about the reality for women in her country.

"History shows that no nation can bring liberation to another nation."

Video and following text:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_Bff6Zhj8

We just edited this video using archive material I shot with Malalai in September 2007, when she visited Berlin on invitation of the LEFT party parliamentary group in Germany. Bush has been replaced by Obama, but nothing has really changed, and Malalai is saying the same things today: www.malalaijoya.com/movies/mj_message_oct7_2011.mp4 It is up to us to make the change!

See also "The 'war on terror' is a mockery!" an Interview by Elsa Rassbach for on September 22, 2007 in Berlin published in Znet www.malalaijoya.com/germany_interview.htm and republished in 2010 in "The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan" Edited by Nick Turse, a Verso book

Malalai Joya was born on April 25, 1978, in the Farah Province, in western Afghanistan. Her father was a former medical student who lost a leg while fighting in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. In 1982, when she was 4 years old, her family fled Afghanistan to live as refugees in neighboring Iran: "I started working as an activist when I was very young, grade 8. When I started working amongst our people, especially women, it was so enjoyable for me. I learned a lot from them, even though they were not educated. Before I started, I want to tell you, I didn't know anything about politics. I learned from people who were non-educated, non-political people who belonged to a political situation. I worked with different committees in the refugee camps. I remember that in every house that I went everyone had different stories of suffering. I remember one family we met. Their baby was just skin and bones. They could not afford to take the baby to a doctor, so they had to just wait for their baby to die. I believe that no moviemaker, no writer is able to write about these tragedies that we have suffered. Not only in Afghanistan, but also Palestine, Iraq..." www.malalaijoya.com/rabble2.htm

Joya served as a Parliamentarian in the National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2005 until early 2007, after being dismissed for publicly denouncing the presence of what she considered to be warlords and war criminals in the Afghan parliament. Joya has survived four assassination attempts, and travels in Afghanistan under a burqa and with armed guards.

In 2010, Time magazine placed Joya on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world and Foreign Policy Magazine listed Joya in its annual list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. When Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Noam Chomsky wrote in an article syndicated by the New York Times: "The Nobel Peace Prize committee might well have made truly worthy choices, prominent among them the remarkable Afghan activist Malalai Joya."

Her autobiographical book is "A Woman Among Warlords" www.amazon.de/Woman-Among-Warlords-Extraordinary-Afghan/dp/143910946X (also published under the title "Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dares to Speak Out.")