A seat at the table

A Palestinian and an Israeli stood side by side on a stage in front of 1,200 people. The message they brought was that there could be peace. They would repeat the message in other cities. The fact that they appeared together - and toured together - was as astonishing as it was courageous.

They were warmly received. No one asked why they were doing this. Everyone knew only too well. They were also two in a line of speakers touring cities over the past two years to tell of their suffering homelands and to try to explain how critical was the need for world peace, how deep was the hurt that conflict and fighting wrought, and that everyone should do everything they could to bring about peace. That included the audience.

Ironically, the Palestinian speaker felt free to spell out passionately how it was for the daily lives of people in Gaza, an occupied land; while the Israeli, coming from a democracy, seemed to have a need to be more circumspect. They were different and had undergone different experiences, she said. But their message was the same.

Earlier two other speakers had toured Australia and other western countries to talk about the problems their homelands experienced and of their profound wish for a tranquil way of life and for fairness. One, a lawyer, formerly a judge and now working pro bono, was from Iran. Well known for defending people and their human rights, this lawyer had caught the attention of those in authority. While searching government papers to assist a defendant, there came a big surprise. The name at the top of a government death list was familiar - it was the lawyer’s own.

A young Afghan parliamentarian also toured to speak out about the dreadful situation of Afghans, and especially of Afghan women, explaining the country was in desperate need of help to overcome corruption, within and without the government, and how war lords and those in the drug trade held sway. Despite four assassination attempts and the need in Afghanistan to always travel with body guards, the parliamentarian continued to speak out because, “They will kill me but they will never kill my voice”.

Not in the touring queue are two other names - those of a democratically elected national leader and a top Russian journalist. The national elected leader has sat at home under house arrest or in detention for about 15 years, after winning a democratic election against a junta of generals. International pleas, distinguished world awards and UN negotiations have not budged the junta. The leader remains at home, cut off from the world, the party, friends, family, with only one (employed) person in the house; a maid or a watcher? Who is to know?

The Russian journalist does not need a maid. Acclaimed for reporting the atrocities against civilians in war-scarred Chechnya, the investigative reporter was murdered in Moscow when arriving home in October 2006. There had been several death threats and the journalist had foretold publicly a likely death attack some time before it happened.

What did these protestors have in common?

• A readiness to stand up and be counted;
• a determination to defend human rights;
• close and personal experience of how malignant authorities work;
• their own lives put at risk (and perhaps their family in peril);
• they all attracted world attention; and
• they were all women.

The Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, 48, had received one death threat after another, and had been detained and beaten by Russian troops whom she reported threw her into a pit, threatened to rape her and performed a mock execution.

“Anna Politkovskaya imagined her own death long before it arrived,” the Washington Post reported (Ocotber 15, 2006). “For years, she was Russia's most fearless journalist, reporting for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta from the killing fields of Chechnya and exposing the brutality of the Kremlin's war under President Vladimir Putin.”

She was quoted as saying, “All the top officials talk to me, at my request, when I am writing articles or conducting investigations - but only in secret, where they can't be observed, in the open air, in squares, in secret houses that we approach by different routes, like spies. You don't get used to this, but you learn to live with it.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, the general secretary of the National League for Democracy and Opposition leader, of Myanmar (Burma), has been under house arrest for over four years, and has spent more than 11 years in detention since her party, the NLD and its allies, won the 1990 election with over 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats. The junta generals chose to ignore the election results.

In 1991 San Suu Kyi was made a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Following the Myanmar Government’s crackdown on peaceful protesters recently, a UN special adviser has made three trips to talk to the generals and to visit her. Under pressure, the generals promised a referendum would be held on a new constitution in May before multi-party elections in 2010. But the word is San Suu Kyi would not be allowed to stand.

Dr Shirin Ebadi, in her 60s, remains a pro bono lawyer in Tehran where she lives with her engineer husband and two daughters. She came to Australia for a 2006 Brisbane environment conference organised by Mikhail Gorbachev. She spoke about her work as a pro bono human rights lawyer in Iran and the environment in which women, children and dissidents lived under a theocratic Islamic government. Her speech was moving and disconcerting. She enjoyed a standing ovation.

In 2003, after they heard she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights work, thousands of Iranians, including several government ministers, crowded the airport and surrounding streets to welcome her home. She was the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize. Yet, when she returned from the Australian conference, the authorities were making threatening noises again. In retaliation, she was able to point out their complaint was not valid, much to the relief of fellow human rights workers, who believe if the government ever attacks her successfully, it will go after all human rights activists.

Malalai Joya, the Afghan parliamentarian, is given support by RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, an independent political and social organisation of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan. Malalai Joya has recently been talking to the Canadians.

The RAWA founders were a number of Afghan woman intellectuals under the leadership of Meena who in 1987 was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan. RAWA says its objective is to involve an increasing number of Afghan women in social and political activities to achieve women’s human rights and contribute to the struggle for a government based on democratic and secular values. They have a long way to go.

Wafa Abel Rahman is executive director of Filastiniyat, an organisation committed to ensuring the equitable participation of Palestinian women and youth in public discourse, and Romy Shapira is a peace and human rights activist, former Israeli co-ordinator of the IWC, a group facilitator and a board member of Bat Shalom of the Jerusalem Link. They were speaking in Australia to celebrate International Women’s Day, designated by the United Nations and marked by women around the world.

These were the two women, a Palestinian and an Israeli, who stood side-by-side to address a UNIFEM International Women’s Day event as representatives of the International Commission of Women. The commission was set up in 2005 by Palestinian, Israeli and international Women, under the auspices of UNIFEM.

The members work for a genuine negotiation towards a just and sustainable peace based on a two-state solution. Members include 20 Palestinians, 20 Israelis and 20 international women leaders and activists. The commission aims to ensure the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (October, 2000) that calls upon all state parties to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels.

Romy Shapiro told the meeting that women’s perceptions were able to contribute to negotiations for “women talk together, work together “and women never give up”. She said commission members continued to tell leaders that women wanted a seat at the negotiating table.

At her side, Wafa Abel Rahman urged Australians not to be passive, to proclaim a position on human rights, to be active and not just leave the current situation to the Americans. Palestinians, she said, were both victims of the occupation and victims of a silent international community.