Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today offered a message of friendship to all those who celebrate Nowruz
Secretary of State Washington, DC March 20, 2010 On behalf of the American people, I offer best wishes to all those around the world celebrating Nowruz. For Iranians, Afghans, Kurds, Azeris, and people across Central Asia, Nowruz marks the beginning of a new year full of promise and possibility. Families and friends will gather to rekindle old ties and make plans for the future. And in the United States, hundreds of thousands of Americans will honor their heritage and history.
The spring equinox is a time of reflection and renewal across cultures and continents – signifying the hope of rebirth, health, and prosperity. This is an opportunity to remember how much we have in common -- the aspirations we all share for a peaceful and prosperous future – and to reaffirm the human rights and fundamental freedoms that are our universal birthright. As the Iranian poet Simin Behbahani writes, “we are all parts of the same body, similar in essence.” On this Nowruz, we honor those common bonds.
As we look to the year ahead, let us redouble our efforts to promote mutual understanding and respect. Working together, we can meet the common challenges and seize the shared opportunities of this new year and this still new century. Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak
I awoke far before the sun rays could creep in with their playful hands through the thick colorless curtains of my father’s house and bring the message of dawn to our perhaps dreamless sleeps and silently whisper that she has arrived. I awoke and wore a dress of the bluebell’s and violet’s grace and set out to the fields of my mother’s land. I walked among the grass that grew knee high and the crimson flowers who had not yet unveiled from their gentle moonlight rest. With such childlike innocence I flouted like a butterfly that has come to greet the blooming spring. Only days before Nowruj and already I felt revived, already I could smell through the passing breeze the New Year, taste in the melted snow of the racing rivers a new beginning, could touch the purity of my land as I plugged a flower from the fields. I stood far from the city and looked down from a hill, admiring every scent, every breeze, every sight, every inch of what stood before me, of the metamorphosis that I was given the privilege to witness. As the sun was rising and the glorious dawn was withstanding its triumph upon the winter night, an unnatural wind began to blow behind me and my long dark hair and colorful dress moved about violently. My heart began to pound upon my fragile chest as the birth of day was stopped by a monster shaped helicopter, flying right above me towards the city I had first opened my eyes to see. Fear began to entangle itself around me, squeezing my body, making it hard to catch the ever escaping air. The flying monsters continued to follow and without a sound or trace left as sudden as they had come only to return again and again to pierce the fear through me. I could not move and stood where I had first set eyes upon them and as I could no longer see or hear their terrifying sight, I began to run towards my home, hoping to find comfort in my mother’s embrace. I ran as fast as my small feet permitted and as I began to get closer to my city, I could smell the sweet scent of apples and pears but could no longer take long deep breaths and see clearly. My feet began to tremble beneath me and shook as I was walking through the streets of my city. I put my hands on my face covering my mouth and nose and absent minded walked towards my home. There, in the corner of the street, a boy I had often played with, lied motionless, his eyes still open yet hollow, the only movement upon his face was a stream of blood running down his nose…My eyes were burning and tears began to run down my cold cheeks, and as I continued to walk, I was faced with the most terrifying scenes of a morbid city. Another boy carrying a cart was standing, his feet in the same position they had been when he had made his last stop. A man lied faced down, on the concrete of his front yard, a woman, frozen, was sitting in the corner of her door and her spilled milk was still running, a young mother, carrying her child upon her back was half way up the stairs of her house but she remained unmoved, her child was fast asleep. I passed neighbors, classmates, friends, family, no one spoke, no one raised their heads, no one waved or said “hello”, they all lied like statues upon the rocky roads of the streets and the only movement upon the city was the torment of the wind that carried the agonizing sound of shouts, weeping mothers and terrified children who had remained awake. As I was getting closer to my father’s house, I had become somehow empty as a drum and I knew that I would not find comfort in my mother’s embrace, for although my vision was blurry, I could still see enough of the darkness that had come with sunrise. I ran the last few steps inside to find a lethal silence that tore me apart. I fell on my knees and screamed as my mother lied by my father on the breakfast spread, the tea cold, the glass still between my father’s fingers. I continued to scream and cry for I could do nothing else, the room was illuminated by the sky’s light but it created a mocking irony upon the depth of misery that had come upon my world. I shook my father’s cold body, asking him to awaken, telling him that it is too late to still be asleep, yet he remained where he had been. I threw objects around thinking that maybe somehow my mother would awaken and scold me for misbehaving, but no one said a word, no one was there to silence me…
The only survivor of my family, I was left to carry them all to their graves, left to pick up the crumbled pieces of life. I was left, like so many others, in a city that was shaken, broken, left to horror and merciless pain, to mourn for those innocent souls whose only crime was being born. I wonder if I would have been set free if I had been buried by their side today. There was no Nowruj that year or the years that followed. The only ceremonies that we attended were one funeral after another and the only emotion that filled my emptiness was the penetration of pain. So often did I sit before my window and longed to see those crimson flowers once again, but they had all died, on that day when the sun never rose…
This is not just a young girl’s personal story; it is the story of the Kurdish people of Halabcha, of the survivors who were left to carry their loved ones on their bruised knees to mass graves, of the massacre that left the innocent people to clean the bloodshed of the blood thirsty tyrants. It is the story of the Kurdish holocaust and Hiroshima. That Friday morning, on March 16th of 1988, in the city of Halabcha, the city of the strong and brave, the sun did not rise, nor did the winter leave or the spring arrive. That Friday morning in the city of Halabcha was only the beginning of what continued to be a day of genocide upon humanity and it left thousands of Kurds dead and a never ending chain of people sick, and almost two decades later, still no flowers or sincere joy grow . Here we stand, remembering the day the sun never rose and attempt to show our sympathy, strength, our pride, our dignity, which has withstood the test of misery. Here we stand, and although we can not mend the wounds of the Kurdish children of Halabcha, we take a moment of silence to remember them, to remind ourselves that no matter what they do to us, we will never bow down and kneel. How can we ever forgive or forget? We stand here today to raise the voice of the silenced orphans left behind by the corpses of their mothers and fathers. We stand to let them know that they will never be forgotten…
1869 British MP John Stuart Mill was the first person in Parliament to call for women's right to vote. On 19 September 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote. Women in other countries did not enjoy this equality and campaigned for justice for many years.
In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party
in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women's Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women's Day - to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women's Day was the result.
The very first International Women's Day was launched the following year by Clara Zetkin on 19 March (not 8 March). The date was chosen because on 19 March in the year of the 1848 revolution, the Prussian king recognized for the first time the strength of the armed people and gave way before the threat of a proletarian uprising. Among the many promise he made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for women.
Plans for the first International Women's Day demonstration were spread by word of mouth and in the press. During the week before International Women's Day two journals appeared: The Vote for Women in Germany and Women's Day in Austria. Various articles were devoted to International Women's Day: 'Women and Parliament', 'The Working Women and Municipal Affairs', 'What Has the Housewife got to do with Politics?', etc. The articles thoroughly analyzed the question of the equality of women in the government and in society. All articles emphasized the same point that it was absolutely necessary to make parliament more democratic by extending the franchise to women.
Success of the first International Women's Day in 1911 exceeded all expectation.
Meetings were organized everywhere in small towns and even the villages halls were packed so full that male workers were asked to give up their places for women.
Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings.
During the largest street demonstration of 30,000 women, the police decided to remove the demonstrators' banners so the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help of the socialist deputies in Parliament.
In 1913 International Women's Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Wommen's Day ever since.
During International Women's Year in 1975, IWD was given official recognition by the United Nations and was taken up by many governments. International Women's Day is marked by a national holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
15-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly (2000)
In March 2010, the Commission on the Status of Women will undertake a fifteen-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly. Emphasis will be placed on the sharing of experiences and good practices, with a view to overcoming remaining obstacles and new challenges, including those related to the Millennium Development Goals. Member States, representatives of non-governmental organizations and of UN entities will participate in the session. A series of parallel events will provide additional opportunities for information exchange and networking.
Ongoing national and regional review processes are feeding into the global review process.
The General Assembly is expected to mark the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in a commemorative meeting during CSW.
General Assembly Recognizes 21 March as International Day of Nowruz,
February23, 2010
Department of Public Information News and Media Division, •• New York
Sixty-fourth General Assembly
Plenary 71st Meeting (PM)
The General Assembly this afternoon recognized the International Day of Nowruz, a spring festival of Persian origin, and moved back the dates of the next high-level dialogue on Financing for Development, as it continued its sixty-fourth session.
According to the preamble of the resolution on the International Day (document A/64/L.30/Rev.2), Nowruz, which means new day, is celebrated on 21 March, the day of the vernal equinox, by more than 300 million people worldwide as the beginning of the new year. It has been celebrated for over 3,000 years in the Balkans, the Black Sea Basin, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and other regions.
The Assembly called on Member States that celebrate the festival to study its history and traditions with a view to disseminating that knowledge among the international community and organizing annual commemoration events.
Welcoming the inclusion of Nowruz into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on 30 September 2009, the text notes the festival’s “affirmation of life in harmony with nature, the awareness of the inseparable link between constructive labour and natural cycles of renewal and the solicitous and respectful attitude towards natural sources of life”.
The text was introduced by Azerbaijan’s representative, who said that, as a holiday celebrated in many parts of the world with themes important to all humanity, Nowruz encouraged intercultural dialogue and understanding. Speaking after the Assembly took action on the draft, the representative of Iran marked its adoption by quoting lines of the Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi that expressed the holiday’s theme of rebirth “on our planet and in our souls”.
Register for the Women’s Center 11th Annual Domestic Violence Conference: Global Perspectives on Violence Against Women. The conference is scheduled for March 6, 2010, 9 am to 4 pm in the Titan Student Union.Click here for more information about this free event.
Partial List of Featured Speaker
Soraya Fallah
Soraya Fallah is a lifelong Women and Human Rights activist, scholar, and a researcher of Kurdish origin, currently residing in the United States. She works extensively with local and International NGOs to promote human rights in the USA and throughout the world, specifically protecting the rights of ethnic minorities in the Middle East. She is the President and co-founder of World’s Women For Life, which is a world-wide movement to promote culture of life and preemptive peace.
Soraya is also a board member and co-founder of Society for Human Rights in Iran, Southern California and member of Amnesty international. She was legal adviser of Amnesty in Denmark on Iranian/Kudish and middle Eastern cases. She is an active member of “Campaign for One Million Signature, Change for Equality”, which is a women’s movement in Iran. She delegated Campaign’s message for first time to the UN Commission on Status of Women. She is the chair and adviser of several other non-for-profit organizations, such as International Pen Kurdish sector, Northern America, UNAUSA, SanFernando, and chair of Kurdish women Rights Committee, KNC, all working for the advancement of human rights and democracy especially for women and minority rights.
She chaired several International Conference in Iraq and US. She delegated violence against Kurdish women in their oppressed states to UN for first time in Kurdish women history in 2007.
Soraya has her M.A in International Relations and Law, and wrote her thesis on “The Role of the United Nations in the Progress of Women’s Rights”. Her recent research and work has been focused on women and violence in the Middle East from a legal perspective.
Rucha Tadwalkar
Rucha Tadwalkar has been involved in the movement to end violence against women for the past ten years. Rucha has worked with numerous women’s rights collectives, grass-roots organizations, and non-profit agencies to create social change. She has spoken on panels, organized workshops, written and published articles, and led community dialogues. Her passion has led her to participate in the Association for Women’s Rights in Development conference in South Africa and be featured on radio and television. Rucha holds a Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies. Currently, she works with a Los Angeles based domestic violence and sexual assault agency to educate the community about gender violence. In this capacity, Rucha has been able to raise awareness about the challenges that monolingual and immigrant survivors face in receiving help, as well as provide culturally sensitive services to the marginalized.
Rucha will be speaking on the topics of gender selection, sex work, and dowry related deaths in the context of India. In many parts of India and the U.S., technology is being misused to determine the sex of a child. Sex workers in India have grown in substantial number, yet no proper laws are in place to protect their rights. Although the custom of dowry has been legally outlawed in India, the practice continues, placing a heavy price on women’s lives. Rucha’s talk will focus on the inequities women experience due to entrenched cultural & patriarchal norms, while also looking at the work being done by activists & NGO’s at the local and global levels to educate and prevent further violence against women.
Jolly
Jolly has been involved with Invisible Children since the beginning. Her guidance enabled the filmmakers to see and understand the plight of children in northern Uganda, and her leadership and direction helped create IC’s initiatives on the ground. Among her many qualifications, Jolly holds a degree in Business Administration and is experienced in program development and coordination, logistics, and management. She says that developing IC’s operations in Uganda has given her the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream of educating children in the North, especially girls. In addition to her leadership at IC, Jolly also runs HEALS, a program that provides play therapy for war-affected children. Her goal is to continue to change Acholiland from suffering to joy, and to improve the living conditions of youth by providing them with education.
And here is a few other facts about her and Invisible Children that may be relevant to your conference:
Invisible Children is the largest supporter of secondary scholarships in northern Uganda.
We currently are funding 180 students in our university scholarship program and 144 of these recipients are females.
Jolly was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize.
She was also featured in the film War Dance which was an Oscar-nominated movie.
Invisible Children has a micro-economic initiative known as MEND. This is a program which hires women who were kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army as children and forced to become mothers. Following their escape from captivity with their families, these women were taught tailoring skills by another area non-profit. However, their skills were of little use due to an excess of trained tailors already in northern Uganda. We have hired these women to create handbags which Invisible Children then sells in the USA. In addition to now having a regular source of income for their families, these women are also given Savings and Investing Training so that they can learn to save and manage their money for years to come.
Invisible Children is currently rebuilding 11 secondary schools in northern Uganda including Sacred Heart Secondary School. This is an all-girls secondary school that used to be among the top 100 schools in the nation. However due to the war, it is no longer considered an elite school by national standards. Students at Sacred Heart are benefiting from new buildings, more qualified teachers, scholarships, increased water and sanitation, and technology advances on the campus that will better prepare the students for national testing.
Jolly was the cover piece recently in African Women magazine which is one of the most popular magazines across the continent.
Jolly has played an integral role in the peace talks with the LRA and frequently relays messages to both the LRA and the government of Uganda about the wishes and well-being of the Acholi people.
Bryn Freedman
Bryn Freedman is frequent speaker for Free the Slaves. She is on the executive council of Free The Slaves, a co-chair of the annual Freedom Awards and hosted the first ever information connectors gathering at the organizations inception in 2002. She is an award-winning journalist, producer, showrunner, creator, reporter, anchor and author. She is best known for having launched and created the series format for A&E’s INTERVENTION, the two-time Prism Award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary series which profiles people trying to overcome dependence on drugs or alcohol or other compulsive behavior. Bryn served as the show's Executive Producer, overseeing production on 57 episodes over four seasons. "Intervention" was honored with "The President's Award," given by the Entertainment Industries Council, Inc., to a production that "not only raises awareness about drugs and alcohol but leaves behind a legacy."
Prior to Intervention, she produced such television series as TLC’s SECOND CHANCE, Style Network’s SECOND LOOK and Discovery Channel’s ON THE INSIDE. Throughout her career, Bryn has served in a variety of positions in all aspects of broadcast news. She was deputy bureau chief for ABC News in Los Angeles, and she also worked closely with Barry Diller, then Chairman and CEO of USA Broadcasting, to develop a variety of projects, including The Times USA, a daily news program targeting 18-34-year olds. She is a founding member of International World Television's "The Real News," a non-profit international news network created by print, broadcast and online journalists to produce independent news and documentary programs across broadcast and online platforms.
Bryn came to Los Angeles as an on-camera investigative reporter for Fox Entertainment News and Twentieth Television's nationally syndicated series EDJ (Entertainment Daily Journal). She also served as an on-air correspondent for Fox News, covering national politics, science and the courts for the Los Angeles bureau of Fox News Channel. Prior to that, she worked for WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, where she was named Best News Reporter by Philadelphia Magazine.
Bryn is also an accomplished author, having co-written “In Eddie's Name,” a critically acclaimed nonfiction account of a 1994 murder case in Philadelphia, which exposed critical failings of the city's 911 emergency response system. Since 2002, she has taught seminars in radio and television writing, reporting and production as an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at USC's Annenberg School of Communication.
Ladies and Gentlemen, On behalf of United Nation Association of USA, SanFernando chapter, would like to welcome every one of you for attending our program tonight. I am delighted to introduce Mrs.jane Roberts that being a reason to hold this event. We want to welcome Jane Roberts here tonight. For those of you who belong to the United Nations Association, Jane wants you to know she belongs to 3 different chapters right now. Jane is going to tell you what she has been doing for the last seven and one half years and how she hopes 34 Million Friends will go worldwide. She has received an award from the American Public Health Association, was among the Women of the Year for Mez. Magazine, one of one 21 Leaders of the 21st Century for Women's eNews(Covering Women's Issues – Changing Women's Lives . She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 as part of the 1000 Women Peace Project(she believed that peace cannot be achieved by one individual).. She was recently named a Global Citizen by the Southern California Division of UNA. She has written a book called 34 Million Friends of the Women of the World. She thinks she has traveled to 36 states and spoken at more than 50 colleges and universities. So please welcome Jane who is going to talk to us about Women, Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals. I congratulate you and Jane International women’s Day and her achievements. Thank you and hope you have a good night with Jane.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 7:00 pm Program will be as follow: -David Tukman opening and introducing UNAUSA 2-Soraya Fallah Introducing Jane Roberts and welcome her 3-Jane Robert speech and her book 4-David Tukman honor Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts author of 34 Million Friends of the Women of the World She will speak on: Women, Gender Equality, and .The United Nations, Millennium Developmental Goals
Jane Roberts will inspire us to get involved in a worldwide grassroots movement for the women and girls of the world through the United Nations Population Fund called 34 Million Friends (www.34millionfriends.org). Hillary Clinton laments that globally women and girls are the "majority of the world's unhealthy, unschooled, unfed and unpaid". Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations states that "In women, the world has the most significant but UNTAPPED potential for development and peace." Jane Roberts will tie this all together and show that empowering women and girls with education, health, equality, and human rights is the basis of any hope for people, the planet, and peace.
. THE EVENT IS FREE AND WILL BE HELD AT:
Cal State, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge CA 91330
Sierra Hall, in Whitsett Room #451,4th Floor
For parking from Nordhoff St., enter Darby Ave. to Prairie St. There will be pay/info. booth #2. Parking is $6. The attendant will point out the parking in structure B3. The event is at Sierra Hall, Whitsett Room #451, 4th Floor, near University Drive. http://www.una-socal.org/calendar_events.html For Questions please call Elaine Trogman (818) 780-8345
An Interview with Dr. Ralph D Fertig regarding his upcoming Supreme Court Case, and his activism for the Kurdish People By Soraya Fallah Exclusive vokradio
Dear Soraya, I want to thank you and as counsel to Dr. Ralph Fertig. Indeed, I read in the Journal Amaricain concerns of Dr. Ralph for the liberation movement in Kurdistan and I thank him. If I resume the situation. Ralph Fertig, president of the Humanitarian Law Project, wants to encourage a similar change within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a violent separatist group in Turkey also known as the PKK (its Kurdish initials). But he worries that doing so will expose him to prosecution for providing “material support” to a terrorist organization, a crime Congress has defined so broadly that it includes a great deal of speech protected by the First Amendment. When it hears Fertig’s case next week, the Supreme Court will have a chance to correct that error.
Fertig, a civil rights lawyer and former administrative law judge, seeks, as the district court described it, to “provide training in the use of humanitarian and international law for the peaceful resolution of disputes, engage in political advocacy on behalf of the Kurds living in Turkey and teach the PKK how to petition for relief before representative bodies like the United Nations.” Fertig says he also wants to “advocate on behalf of the rights of the Kurdish people and the PKK before the United Nations and the United States Congress.”
Another plaintiff in the case, an American physician named Nagalingam Jeyalingam, wants to do similar work with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a violent separatist group in Sri Lanka that, like the PKK, appears on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. In the words of the district court, Jeyalingam seeks to “provide training in the presentation of claims to mediators and international bodies for tsunami-related aid, offer legal expertise in negotiating peace agreements between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, and engage in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils living in Sri Lanka.”
Whether you think Fertig and Jeyalingam are humanitarian heroes, naive dreamers or inadvertent flacks for terrorists, the projects they have in mind clearly amount to “pure speech promoting lawful, nonviolent activities,” as their attorneys say. Yet the federal law they are challenging seems to make such speech a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Under the law, it is a crime to provide an organization on the State Department’s list with “training,” defined as “instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge”; “expert advice or assistance,” defined as “advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge”; “personnel,” which means any person, including oneself, who works under the organization’s “direction or control”; or “service,” which is not defined at all.
These terms (especially that last one) could easily be construed to cover the activities proposed by Fertig and Jeyalingam, even though they would be trying to discourage terrorism and promote peaceful alternatives.
During oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled that several aspects of the “material support” ban are unconstitutional, the government’s lawyer said you could go to prison for filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a listed group, for pressing its case at the U.N. or even for asking Congress to take the group off the list. “Congress wants these organizations to be radioactive,” he explained.
initially I sent you the letter I sent to U.S. President, Mr Bucsh in a second time my article on the decision ed the European Court of Human Rights which annulled the Decisions of the Council Europe has put the PKK on the list of terrorist organizations. The action before the European Court of Rights was made by my friend Prof. Ismet Sheriff Vanly, Professor Emeritus of International Law at the University of Geneva. I contacted the head of the organization on this subject. I want to see her Friday, February 26th at the Conference at French Parliament on the situation of Kurdish people in Turkey. We are available to Dr. Fertig Raplh for all evidence. Best regards. Dr Ali Kilic
