WLUML Statement on Afghan women's exclusion from participation at Bonn

In wake of the exclusion of Afghan women from the ‘peace process’ at the Bonn Conference taking place on the 5^th of December 2011,

WLUML vigorously denounces:

• the ethical incoherence of States that engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan under the fallacious pretext to protect ‘poor oppressed Muslim women living under the burqa’, and now prevent them from participating as full-fledged citizens in the peace process in their country, all while engaging with their oppressors
• the moral responsibility of these States, which are delivering Afghan women, bound and gagged, to the very same Taliban and warlords they pretended to save them from, just a few years ago.
• the political short-sightedness of alliances, such as with Taliban and war lords, which fearfully remind us of other past historical compromises that cost so many lives
• the fallacy of the  so-called ‘democratic’ process taking place in Germany, but without the ‘untermensch’ of the day: Afghan women

WLUML urges women and progressive forces everywhere:

• to take immediate public stands using all possible media avenues, in support of Afghan women’s claim to full participation in the negotiation
• to send delegations to all concerned representatives of these states in their own countries, protesting the above, and urging concerned States to come to their senses

NOT IN OUR NAME

NOT WITH OUR COMPLICIT SILENCE

NO ‘MUNICH- LIKE’ BONN COMPROMISE

THE SHAMEFUL BETRAYAL OF AFGHAN WOMEN WILL NOT OCCUR IN SILENCE

IF THOSE COUNTRIES ARE DEMOCRACIES, THEY MUST HEAR OUR VOICES AND ACT ON OUR DEMANDS IMMEDIATELY