NYC: Eve Ensler interviews Yanar Mohammed
from Iraq

V-DAY INVITATION - CELEBRATING VAGINA WARRIORS
Eve Ensler interviews Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq

Hibaaq Osman, Special Representative to V-Day, invites you an evening with
- Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq,
- V-Day Founder/Playwright Eve Ensler, and - Academy award winning actress/activist Jane Fonda

Date: Monday, November 17
Time: 7:00PM, doors open at 6:30PM
Location: Culture Project@45 Bleecker Street, corner of Lafayette
Admission is FREE
RSVP highly recommended as seating is limited. rsvp@vday.org or 212-645-8329 (VDAY)

Ms. Mohammed is the Director of The Organization of Women's Freedom, a group that works to defend the rights of Iraqi women. In addition, she serves as the Editor in Chief of the Equality newspaper (Al-Mousawat). She uses this publication as an arena to voice her strong and controversial opinions; she has received a court summons for publicizing her critical views on the practice of compulsory veils for women in Baghdad.

V-Day will sponsor Ms. Mohammed's U.S. visit the purpose of which is threefold:
- To raise awareness of the plight of women in Iraq today.
- To gather political support for her movement, the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq and for Defense of Iraqi Women's Rights, an organization working to improve the status of women through active involvement in the political debate over Iraq's future.
- To secure resources to assist Iraqi women in their struggle against violence and oppression, both politically and literally.

About V-Day: V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop worldwide violence against women and girls including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sexual slavery.

V-Day stages large-scale benefits and promotes innovative gatherings, films, and programs ("Until The Violence Stops," The Afghan Women's Summit, The Stop Rape Contest, Indian Country Project, and more) to change social attitudes towards violence against women. "Until The Violence Stops," the first documentary about the V-Day movement, illustrates the work of V-Day activists in nine countries. The film will have its broadcast premiere on Lifetime Television in February 2004.

Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of "The Vagina Monologues" to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. In 2003, over 1,000 V-Day benefit events were presented by volunteer activists around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.

The V-Day movement is growing at a rapid pace throughout the world. V-Day, a non-profit corporation, distributes funds to grassroots, national, and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls. In its first year of incorporation (2001), V-Day was named one of Worth Magazine's "100 Best Charities." In its first six years, the V-Day movement has raised over $20 million.

The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.

Background: Women in Iraq

For many years, women in Iraq have benefited from one of the most modern and permissive societies in the Middle East. Upper class women began to enter the country's job market in the 1920s and 1930s. Progressive political movements took hold during the 1950s and 1960s, and women demanded civil rights in 1958 after demonstrations. In 1963, the Ba'ath regime came to power, leading the way to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. However, among the Ba'ath party goals was liberation of women. In 1970, the Iraqi constitution declared all women and men equal before the law. Compulsory education through age 16 enabled women in Iraq to become the most educated and professional in the region; working outside the home became the norm. Iraqi mothers received generous maternity leave and in 1980 women could vote and run for election. In the early 80s, women made up 40 percent of the nation's public sector work force. The Unified Labor Code called for equal pay, benefits and promotions for men and women. In 1989, 27 women were elected to Iraq's 250-seat National Assembly, according to the Washington Report.

After the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War, women's progress halted. U.N. sanctions were painful to Iraqi women and children in particular. 1.5 million died, including 500,000 babies - as a direct result of economic sanctions.

Mere survival became increasingly difficult for women who once enjoyed relative economic stability. Simultaneously, in an effort to gain support of other Arab countries, Saddam Hussein allowed a shift toward observance of Islamic Sharia, and he gave tribal leaders freedom to act upon traditional tribal codes. The results were lethal to women. In 1990, Saddam Hussein amended a law allowing honor killings without penalty; men who killed female relatives for arguing with their husbands, for adultery, or for having been raped, were exempt from punishment. By 2002, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women reported that over 4,000 Iraqi women had been killed for hurting their family's reputation.

In addition, female literacy dropped sharply (some estimate 50 percent) in those Post-Gulf war years, more than 35 percent of girls abandoned formal education before completing primary school. Childcare, education and transportation became prohibitively expensive. Saddam Hussein prohibited women from finishing post-graduate studies abroad, scholarships were disallowed and women were not allowed to travel without a man. Misogyny became ritualized and politically systematic, as the line between politics and religion blurred. The regime systematically used rape as torture, albeit behind closed doors.

Perhaps the most public and heinous instance of violence against women occurred October of 2000, dozens of women (as many as 200) accused of prostitution were beheaded publicly without any judicial process. Witnesses say that some victims were accused for political reasons, according to Amnesty International.

Since the United States began its bombing campaign of "shock and awe", Iraqi women are as fearful as ever before. Criminal gangs allegedly roam the streets, and women have not only lost basic liberties, they have lost fundamental security. According to Yanar Mohammed, more than 400 women have been abducted since the war began. Iraqi women fear for their lives, and those of their children.

Mohammed and others working with Organization of Women's freedom in Iraq are working not only toward physical security - they are working on opening another women's shelter - they are planning to help women develop job skills, and to offer legal services.

Biography - Yanar Mohammed
Born in 1960 in Baghdad, Yanar Mohammed came of age in turbulent political times. Both of her parents worked, her father was an engineer, and her mother was first a teacher and later an artist. Yanar graduated from Baghdad University in 1984, in Architecture and obtained a Master's degree in Architecture in 1993. Yanar, her husband and infant son left Iraq in 1993 and settled in Canada in 1995.

In Canada, Yanar Mohammed worked with other Iraqi women to establish the Defense of Iraqi Women's Rights (DIWR) 1998. She was the director/coordinator in 1998, 1999, and 2002. The group is affiliated now to The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq that was partly founded by Yanar in June after the war, and is located within Iraq.

Yanar has been a key speaker on behalf of Iraqi women in Canada and has written for a number of opposition newspapers. She has helped organize International Women's Day in Toronto.

Although Yanar has recently devoted her working life to the cause of women in Iraq, she is an accomplished artist and architect. One of her ceramic murals graces the entrance of the Canadian Arab Federation building in Toronto.

Yanar also works as Editor in Chief of a newspaper called Equality (Al-Mousawat); the stories of this publication are so controversial that, after only three issues, Yanar has already received a court summons. Her alleged crime was to write a story rejecting compulsory veils for women in Baghdad, Yanar says.

She announced many times in interviews prior to the war that "the war that the United States is waging against Iraq is illegitimate, unjustified and unnecessaryS It affects all Iraqi women. It will be catastrophic."

Right now Yanar says that the situation facing women in Iraq is dire. In the late nineties, the shelter of Independent Women's Organisation, headed by Yanar, helped save 250 women from honor killings, sometimes by smuggling them out of the country. Kajal Khudur was a pregnant woman beaten almost to death by her husband's male relatives because they thought she was having a relationship with someone else. The men decided to wait until Kajal's baby was born before killing her, Yanar says. They cut off her nose instead. Yanar and others helped Kajal escape Iraq through Europe to Canada. She has had plastic surgery and her baby Lisa is now five-years-old.

Sadly, success stories are the exception. This past June, a woman named Anaheed living in New Baghdad was shot and cut into pieces by her family. Her father, a lawyer, fired the first shot. Anaheed wanted to marry a neighbor and left home for a couple of days to retrieve a sheik to marry the couple. Because of her late return, she brought dishonor to her family and was sentenced to death.

Women are constantly knocking on the shelter door, desperate for help. Recently a single woman contacted Yanar. She was six months pregnant and still single, living with her parents. No one yet knew her condition. The woman will surely die when her pregnancy becomes known.

"We must have money to protect these women," Yanar says.