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INT’L WOMEN’S DAY: Think of These Three Women

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar 8 2005 (IPS) - International Women’s Day asks you to think of half the world, but two writers groups asked Tuesday for attention particularly to three women “under attack for using new information technology to challenge their governments.”

The London-based freedom of expression group International PEN picked on International Women’s Day March 8 to launch a new campaign in support of the three women from Tunisia, Iran and China.

The women matter as individuals, but they matter also for what they stand for, and write for.

In Tunisia, the editor of an online magazine Sihem Bensedrine has suffered years of harassment and attack, PEN says. Two Iranian women, Mahboudeh Abbasgholizadeh and Fershteh Ghazi, were caught up in a crackdown against Internet users in Iran, suffering torture and abuse. In China, it says, Ma Yalian has been in prison for over a year for articles posted on the Internet.

“Members from 140 centres we have in 99 countries were asked to take up these cases with governments and to publicise concerns about freedom on the Internet,” Sara Whyatt from the Writers in Prison Committee associated with PEN told IPS.

Members took up a mass letter writing campaign to concerned authorities and took up the issue in local media, Whyatt said. “We raised our concerns about these three women as an example,” she said.

The PEN campaign in support of “cyber-dissidence” began in December last year Whyatt said. The first phase of the campaign was launched in China, Vietnam and the Maldives followed by a campaign over Iran.

The campaign over women cyber-dissidents was taken up to mark women’s day, Whyatt said. “We are also taking up the campaign in time for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) due in November this year,” Whyatt said. “Many governments that will be around at that table are very repressive and we want to use our access to that to raise our concerns.”

The three women picked for the new campaign have all paid a price for their struggle to find freedom through the Internet.

“Despite severe repression of freedom of expression over the decades, with writers and journalists who challenge the authorities regularly facing many forms of persecution, including imprisonment and torture, a few individuals are willing to take enormous risks to protect the right to speak out,” PEN said in a statement. “One of the most remarkable is Sihem Bensedrine, editor of the on-line magazine Kalima.”

Bensedrine, who is also head of the National Council for Freedom in Tunisia (CNLT), has suffered constant persecution by the Tunisian authorities over many years for pursuing her right to freedom of expression, PEN said. “In addition to having been subjected to constant harassment and police surveillance, the journalist and human rights activist has suffered severe beatings at the hands of the police.”

In a statement released through PEN, Bensedrine said: “It should be known that the Internet is the main window for Tunisians in this context of total lack of press freedom and communication. It is by the Web that Tunisians get information on what occurs in their country, it is there that they discover international solidarity or the fight of a handful of dissidents who dare to defy dictatorship.”

In Iran the Writers in Prison Committee says it is particularly concerned about the cases of seven on-line journalists who were arrested between September and November 2004. Among them were two women, Mahboudeh Abbasgholizadeh, editor-in-chief of the women’s magazine Ferzaneh, and Fershteh Ghazi, correspondent for the daily Etemad.

Mahboudeh Abbasgholizadeh was arrested Nov. 1 last year on her return from the European Social Forum in London. She was reportedly charged with “acts against national security and spreading propaganda”, but was later released on bail.

Fershteh Ghazi is a correspondent for the daily Etemad, and was detained as part of the general crackdown on online publications, PEN said. She was arrested on Oct. 28 by the Edarah Amaken, the morality police, and is said to have been accused of “immoral behaviour”. PEN says it has on its records 28 other writers and journalists who are in prison or on trial in Iran.

Ma Yalian from China was sentenced to 18 months’ ‘Re-education Through Labour’ (RTL) in March 2004 for an article criticising the Chinese petitioning system, PEN says.

In her article, Ma provided an eyewitness account of the physical abuse meted out to petitioners by the police and officials outside Beijing’s petitions offices, PEN said in its statement. “As well as detailing her own physical abuse at the hands of the authorities, Ma’s article also included the personal experiences of other individuals who had been abused while attempting to file a petition. The article also included accounts about individuals who had committed suicide outside the said offices.”

In many countries around the world dissident communities have “seized on the Internet with enthusiasm as a method of expressing their views about their governments and launching campaigns for political reform,” PEN said. “Very often, traditional print-forms of communication, such as journals, have been banned. The Internet can then promise unfettered exchanges of opinions.”

Women who use the Internet to disseminate their ideas have found themselves caught up in some governments’ often harsh attempts to control information exchange on the world wide web, PEN said. It said it was commemorating “the courage of these women, and all other women writers and journalists who are detained and under attack today for practising their right to freedom of expression.”