International Women's Day protests, along with the March 5 international
student strike, are shaping up to be the next globally coordinated actions
against war on Iraq. The strike and IWD events are scheduled for the first
week of March — according to many military commentators, this is the week
the US administration intends to activate the thousands of troops massing
in the Gulf.
In Melbourne, it is becoming clear that the IWD march and rally on March
8 has the potential to mobilise thousands of people.
The Melbourne IWD collective consists mainly of Muslim and Middle Eastern
women, Women for Peace, Global Sisterhood, the Socialist Alliance and Resistance.
It is also garnering strong support from the broader peace movement.
Trade unions, student organisations and progressive groups have all
contributed resources to building the event. Leading members of the Greens,
the Democrats, the ALP and the office of the minister for women’s affairs
have all made contact with the collective.
Muslim and Middle Eastern solidarity organisations are, also very keen
to be involved. A Steiner school teacher called the collective, explaining
that the school is organising two buses full of students to come. The Victorian
Peace Network and Victorian Trades Hall Council are also helping with publicity
and logistics.
The collective has called on the Coalition government to spend the $116
billion earmarked for the Iraq war on maternity leave, childcare, public
health services, schools and development aid instead.
Prime Minister John Howard’s comments about the “fat on the bones” of
the federal budget that he says means we can “absorb” the cost of war on
Iraq “without it doing damage to our economy” will come as a shock to many
women in the community.
There is no money for childcare, aged care, maternity leave, social
security, schools or public hospitals, but there is $116 billion to mount
a military attack on some of the most desperately poor people in the world?
It is sickening that the US and its allies are seeking to justify the
war by arguing that it will liberate Iraqi women from the oppression they
continue to suffer under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
US President George Bush, British PM Tony Blair and Howard care nothing
for the rights or welfare of Iraqi women, they are simply making cynical
use of their suffering to bolster their push for war. Hussein, like so
many bloody dictators, was helped to power by the US. If they really wanted
to help Iraqi women it would have been easy — stop the oil grab and aid
development!
Women, men and children attending the action are being asked to wear
something pink, in solidarity with the IWD Code Pink actions in the US,
and to bring fresh flowers to build a peace symbol in the Melbourne CBD.
Many of the speakers at the event will be refugees and immigrants from
the Middle East. There are women aged from 11 to 81 who have asked to speak
about their experiences of the war zone that is the Middle East.
March 8 will be a day to consider how women themselves see their liberation.
There might be a range of opinions about that, but one thing is for sure:
none of us want to be bombed!
BY KAREN FLETCHER
[The author is a member of the Melbourne International Women’s Day Collective,
the Socialist Alliance and the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.
