After the State Minister of Woman Affairs, Mrs. Nawal Al-Samara’i declared at the beginning of 2009 that there are thousands of women detainees and prisoner exposed to the worst kinds of violations, that they are living in inhuman conditions, that their numbers are unknown, and that she personally worked on releasing seven of them; after this relatively too bold a statement, coming from a woman working within an occupying government, her voice was lost in dead silence.

 

It appeared later, from sources very close to the Minister, that on the background of her statement, her husband participated in imposing house arrest on her, all her means of communications were taken away, and her husband threatened to separate her from her children if she went on declaring what would offend the “government” which gave her the ministry chair of woman affairs, as the Islamic Party share in the government.

 

Friends say that Mrs Nawal Al-Samara’I accepted the job of a minster of woman affairs because of personal motivation: to do justice to the Iraqi women as far as she could. They explained that while she was still living in Amman (Jordan) before she left to Iraq to get the job.

 

At the beginning of this year after all the silence regarding Mrs. Nawal Al-Samara’i story, Mr. Harith Al-Udeidi (MP) also talked about the issue of the women detainees and prisoners in Iraq. At the beginning he declared that there are 4000 of them in Iraq, that he met some of them and they talked to him about how they were abused, this time, by the Iraqi prison guards. Then on Al-Sharqiya Satellite, he took back what he declared about the number and said that they were 400 odd. ..However he did talk about human rights and women rights violations, as he was an MP working in the parliament human rights committee, of the forth Iraqi occupation government, representing the Islamic Party share too. Soon after, Al-Ubeidi was assassinated after Friday prayer in Al-Shawaf mosque (in Baghdad).

 

We can conclude that these two cases were not coincidence, that the common denominator in both of them was the women prisoners’ abuse in the Iraqi prisons, that there are people (among those who claimed to bring democracy, human rights and freedom of expression to Iraq)  who do not want these abuses to be uncovered.

 

What is obvious, however, is the absence of any precise number of these women prisoners, and that this absence and confusion are deliberate. Needless to say that covering up information on human rights and women abuses per se is considered an abuse. In this sense the abuse exists in all its contexts, forms and means against women, as it exists against all human beings in Iraq, regardless of gender.

 

Those who are secluded in the Green Zone whatever their nationalities are do not want to release the information about the women situation in the prisons and detention places, because they realize how sensitive the issue is in our culture and values, which would jeopardize the reputation of those (executioners), competing on the chairs in a democracy game based on sectarianism. This covering up about the numbers and the conditions of women prisoners is an evidence of the complex abuse on the Iraqi women. That is why none of their officials did articulate any number, only in a very obscure imprecise manner. Here we have some indicators of the discrepancy between what the officials and the women and human rights activists say.

 

In our most recent attempts to find something about these women, we asked a woman lawyer who works on women rights issues, and also follows cases of people are accused of (terrorism) and who cannot afford a lawyer, she said:

 

1-       All that I know is there are 6 security prisoners in Radhwaniya prison. I have no information about their conditions, names, identities, or what they are accused of.  (“security prisoner” is an official phrase refers to people involved in the resistance)

 

2-      I could not get any information about the total number of women prisoners in Iraq neither about how many in each prison (she promised to do her best to get them)

On the other hand, if the late Harith Al-Ubeidi had taken back his declaration that there are 4000 women prisoners, saying that they are only 400 odd, other information say that they are 22.000, but we could not find a way to confirm this number or to deny it. On the other hand Mr. Muhammad Idham, General Secretary of the Iraqi Union of Prisoners and POW confirmed that rape cases like the case of Abeer Al-Janabi and Sabreen Al-Shemmari and others do not actually represent more than 1% of similar crimes which other Iraqi women prisoners are exposed to.

 

He also confirmed that there are huge numbers of women prisoners who are kept in prison for nothing just to rape them, even if there is a judicial order to release them. He added that the Iraqi police who are controlled by the militias do not obey the judicial orders.

 

He had confirmed earlier that more than 10.000 Iraqi women detainees are arrested in places that are not good enough to be even animal pen, as the prison of Kadhimiya, the secret prison of children and women in al-Muthanna airport in Bagdad, Shikhan prison camp for women in Mosul, in addition to the big numbers of them in the prisons of the north and the south of Iraq.

 

The Human Rights Minister of the forth occupation government in Iraq admitted that there are 15.000 women detainees, she spoke of miserable conditions. But she mixed the reasons of detention deliberately to blur the picture so that it looks as if government’s prisons take only criminals. She did not deny that there are women arrested as hostages or because they are accused of belonging to the resistance.

 

In a previous report on torture means, some detainees explained, after they were released, the hideous ways of torture and dirty abuses…but the most horrible were those which humiliate men’s dignity using their women, threaten to rape them if the detainee does not admit some false charges against him. One of the detainees said that when he saw his wife brought to the detention center he offered to sign with all his ten fingers on whatever charges they want him to sign, only that they leave his wife alone.

 

The abuse philosophy, the hideous ways of torture, the aggression on human dignity are common characteristics of the occupation authorities and the local ones during the recent years, indicating that there is no difference between the aggressors and their followers. It is the philosophy of the occupation and hegemony. In Iraq many styles of abuse are similar to those of the Zionists during decades.

 

The “state of law” claims are no more than a vulnerable media cover, trying to consider the people stupid and to ignore their rights.

 

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Maliki's government to kill 9 Iraqis in the day of Eid al-Adha
(24 November 2009)

The Arab Organization for Human Rights (Branch of Jordan) revealed that the Iraqi authorities recently issued death sentences of 126 Iraqi prisoners, to be implemented on nine of them on Eid Al-Adha on Friday.

The organization condemned that in a statement here on Monday and said: "It is issued through mock trials, short of international standards of justice and human rights.

The organization pointed out that all these women sentenced to death had a higher university degree, and held office in the government under Saddam Hussein before the U.S. occupation.

The organization called the United Nations, the Security Council, all human rights organizations and the peoples of the world, to do their duty to halt executions in question, and the release of detainees who are described as prisoners of conscience.

Serious violations in women's prisons:

The Iraqi Minister of State for Woman's Affairs Nawal Al-Samara'i had confirmed earlier that Iraqi women in prisons under the authority of the government are subjected to serious abuses.

She said: There are 70 women detained in Iraqi jails, while 17 others are languishing in the American prisons, and demanded the Iraqi parliament the enactment of laws protecting detainee from torture. The statement came after Iraqi satellite channels had revealed the existence of rapes and beatings of detention in the prison Kadhimiya by prison officers, while The Ministry of Justice said that it had opened an investigation into these violations.

Al-Samarra'i said: There are major violations against Iraqi women in Iraqi prisons.

She added: The reports that reached us by visiting parliamentarians and government officials to the Iraqi prisons confirm the existence of violations of human rights against prisoners.

The Iraqi minister pointed out that the American prisons are holding them for two years without trial, arguing that "it is a great violation of human rights."

http://www.islammemo.cc/akhbar/arab/2009/11/24/90877.html#ixzz0XqINNH0h

(translation from Arabic of the most relevant parts)

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Appeal

 

No statute of limitations for our Rights

No excuse for anyone

To all the good forces supporting the just cause of women in Iraq
To all the organizations of international human and women's rights
To the conscience of the world, peoples and nations

Demand with us the formation of a fact-finding committee about the status of women in detention centers in Iraq as soon as possible; this committee should also look into the concealing of information practiced by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities and the violation of  the right to release these informations, and the blackout about what our women are suffering in prisons and detention centers, and the abuses they are exposed to, without any moral and legal deterrent;

- Let’s work together for the release of detainees in Iraqi official and secret prisons

- No to the execution of women

- No to the death penalty

- No to violence against women, particularly the violence of the Occupation Forces and the violence of the despotic power of the Iraqi government

- No statute of limitations for our rights.... no excuse for anyone

 

Women's Will organization, 26 November 2009

 

(translation from Arabic)

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