The situation in Iraq is shocking and brutal. Our sisters are being murdered, raped, sold and held hostage. They have asked for our help.
By donating to the Rising Fund you will immediately benefit women on the ground. 100% of donations will go directly to these efforts via the Organization of Women’s Freedom Iraq (OWFI). Please consider donating whatever you can – everything and anything will help.
Long time V-Day sister Yanar Mohammed from OWFI wrote last night:
Dear Friends in V-Day,
Here in Iraq, we are shocked every other day with a new massacre. After ISIS invaded the city of Mosul, one city fell after the other, and the political and military establishment in Iraq turned out to be a joke, but a bad one, for which millions of Iraqis had to pay the price.
In the following weeks of June, “Sunni” ISIS attacked the Turkomen Shia of the city of Telafar and caused the mass immigration of hundreds of thousands. After killing hundreds of the men, and kidnapping their wives and sisters and detaining them in what is similar to concentration camps; in schools, a movie theater building and in the airport. Hundreds of women were destined to becoming sexual slaves and human shields in this city.
In July, many cities of Western Iraq were invaded also, Tikrit and Baiji where the oil fields were taken, and tens of thousands of residents turned into refugees.
Our OWFI branch in the city of Hawija was flooded by refugee women and their children, who were sheltered in our offices, and then distributed to the houses of our supporters. And Hawija also fell under ISIS control, but with less atrocities, because many of the locals joined ISIS ranks, due to the previous oppression of the Iraqi government to them. Still, an ISIS leader came to our office and questioned our representative ms. Khadija Husein angrily, asking where her financing was from. The locals defended her, saying that her services were very important and that they need it. Therefore, OWFI has a branch which is open and functioning under the Islamic State now.
Eve Ensler’s Emotional Creature opens today, 6 August in Cape Town! Directed by Jo Bonney, with music & music direction by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder.
Emotional Creature will run at the Baxter Theatre Center from 6 – 16 August.
Celebrate your emotional creature and join the all South African cast as they dance, sing and share the heartbreak and thrills of being young and alive in the world today!
Venue: Baxter Theatre Flipside, Main Rd, Rondebosch, Cape Town Time: Mon – Fri @ 11am & 6.30pm, Sat @ 2pm & 6.30 pm Buy tickets here >
For discounted block bookings, charities, corporate bookings and fundraisers please contact Sharon Ward on 021 680 3962, e-mail sharon.ward@uct.ac.za or Carmen Kearns on 021 680 3993, e-mail carmen.kearns@uct.ac.za.
We – ONE BILLION RISING – a world movement of women and men working to end violence against women and girls, and all the intersectional injustices that sustain the impunity that keep it in place – call for an immediate ceasefire. We call for an end to the occupation of Palestine and all forms of oppression that lead to more violence.
Already countless civilians have died – many of whom are women and children.
We cry with and rise for the mothers who have lost their children and families and who live in daily terror in this ongoing war.
We cry with those that have been occupied and diminished and who are seeking recourse.
We know that our sisters on both sides long for connection, justice and peace.
And we stand in solidarity with the women and men of Palestine and peace loving people of Israel who demand an end to the bombings and air strikes now.
We are calling on your urgent help and support for our sisters in Iraq. As we know, in times of conflict, women and girls are rendered the most vulnerable to sexual violence.
“The Iraqi society is suffering unprecedented crisis that threatens the future of peaceful co-existence of citizens, and augments genocides and civil conflicts based on the sectarian identities that were established on the Iraqi population, and were strengthened throughout more than a decade of the American occupation to Iraq. This coming week will be one of the deadliest in Iraq – with the politics of division pushing us into such a dark corner, that the other half of the Iraqis might be heading to battles with the other half. The ISIS have a fatwa in Mosul that all residents should be willing to give their unmarried daughters to “Jihad Al Nikah” or rather, sexual Jihad. You can just imagine, the women who are brought to OFWI are from very disciplined and conservative backgrounds, and then, all of a sudden, they are taken for the pleasure of a war lord, but in the name of somebody’s Jihad – it just blows my mind. Four women have already committed suicide after these violations. There are rumours that some fathers were thinking of killing their daughters so as not to be subject to the shame. In Baghdad, most of the families have a son who volunteered to fight ISIS, and were sent to the frontlines without any military training…anticipation and fear from the greater evil is in everybody’s hearts. It took us a week to absorb and believe that our lives have gone down the drain, once again. And then again, we cannot surrender to fate.”
One Billion Rising has set up a Rising Fund to benefit women on the ground immediately. 100% of donations will go directly to these efforts via the Organization of Women’s Freedom Iraq. Please consider donating whatever you can – everything and anything will help. All funds will go to the current efforts of OWFI for the following:
Setting up a new house in the city of Karbala where a huge displaced population is, where the women who lost their families are vulnerable to the worst of situations.
In Samarra which gets sieged every other day by ISIS, they are supporting widows families with food provisions, and OWFI continues provide shelter and support to the vulnerable.
For Mosul, which is the worst zone, (presumed the capital of the ISIS), OWFI are seeking to contact their supporters to reach out to the women vulnerable to “Jihad Al Nikah.” They are finding ways to provide safe shelter and to explain to the women that forced rape should not be the end of their life.
Please read the statement below from YANAR MOHAMMED to know more about the context of the current situation in Iraq:
On the Occupation of Mosul and the Cities of Western Iraq
The Iraqi society is suffering unprecedented crisis that threatens the future of peaceful co-existence of citizens, and augments genocides and civil conflicts based on the sectarian identities that were established on the Iraqi population, and were strengthened throughout more than a decade of the American occupation to Iraq.
Mosul City has fallen along with Tikrit, and previously Fallujah, under the control of considerably small troops of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The war continues in other cities like Tel Afar, Samaraa, and the cities of the western region. If the occupiers’ mission succeeds, a large part of the Iraqi society would be ruled by a brutal Islamic state that does not fit in our modern world whatsoever; a state which sees an enemy in every human being who needs to be “disciplined” through humiliation, beating, and killing until he/she becomes good enough to fit within the extreme religious “set of morals.” This is a state that easily kills “apostates” and commits genocides against the religious and political opponents, a state that regards women merely as packages of flesh ready for the entertainment of the Mujahideen. Many Fatwas come out to ensure women’s humiliation under being “gifted” for the new Caliphate-age rapists, under the legislation of the so-called “Jihad Al Nikah.” In spite of all these atrocities, a number of the residents of the fallen cities joined them as a reaction to eight years of systemic sectarian subjugation under prime minister Nouri Al Maliki’s rule.
V-Day would like to send a special shout out to all of the amazing V-Fathers throughout the world! Thank you for your dedication, love, and support!
Send Your Father A Specially Designed V-Card for Father’s Day and Support V-Day! We have two specially designed 2014 Father’s Day V-Cards available to choose from.
Your V-Gift will be put to work to end violence against women and girls, addressing the most critical issues facing women around the world.
V-Day distributes funds to grassroots, national and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls. Violence against women affects one in three women in the U.S. and the world, your tax deductible donation of $25, $50, $100, $500, or more will help V-Day end violence against women!
To send a V-Card on the donate page, check the box next to “Donate on behalf of a loved one?” labeled “Yes, I would like to send a V-Day e-card,” choose the design you would like to send, and fill in the rest of the information to finish designing your gift.
#CampusRising: 2014-2015 could be the most important year yet for making campus safety a reality, and we don’t have a minute to lose! We are reaching out to all of our campus activists to launch a new FALL event using art & activism – #CampusRising – that will escalate the ongoing efforts to make all campuses safer.
This event is your demand for a safe, respectful, and equal learning environment for all, so go BIG! What it looks like is up to you, but here are some ideas:
Readings of My Short Skirt We’re thrilled to offer “My Short Skirt”! Through this monologue, V-Day activists have been defining consent for over a decade, and it’s time to bring its message back to your campuses.
In the midst of outrageous and heartbreaking news stories about Sudan, Sudanese V-Activists, lead by One Billion Rising global coordinator Fahima Hashim, Director for Salmmah Women’s Resource Centre, released this incredible video of their nation-wide One Billion Rising campaign for JUSTICE! The powerful footage reminds us that incredible work is being done every day on the ground by activists in their communities. Women, men, youth and children come together to address justice in Sudan and share their voices, their art, and their dance with the ongoing global movement to end violence against women and girls. This is what justice looks like!
V-Day is so proud to announce that V-Board Member Jane Fonda was awarded the 42nd AFI Life Achievement Award last Thursday, 5 June, in Los Angeles. The award is the highest honor for a career in film and was presented to Fonda at a gala tribute which will air on TNT later this month.
“The Vagina Monologues,” Eve Ensler’s classic paean to women and their genitalia, is always a bit of a feminist rally: part humor, part outrage. That spirit of celebration and defiance runs through “Los Monólogos de la Vagina,” the Spanish-language version of the show at the Westside Theater, where the ebullient Daphne Rubin-Vega is bringing an extraordinary warmth and vivacity to the proceedings.
Staged by Jaime Matarredona, director of the Mexico City production that has been running since 2000, “Los Monólogos” has a look that’s familiar from other iterations of the show. Barefoot and dressed in black, the cast of three sits on tall chairs, performing with scripts in hand. But for Ms. Rubin-Vega, the chair seems almost a red herring: She sits, yes, but she is hardly at rest.
The actress Miriam Colón with Jaime Matarredona, the director of “Los Monologos de La Vagina.” The play is a Spanish-language version of the hit by Eve Ensler.‘Los Monólogos de la Vagina,’ a Spin on Eve Ensler’s PlayMAY 2, 2014
Her smoky voice is a tonal wonder, conveying meaning that doesn’t need translation. She uses her physique the same way. Delivering a monologue about pubic hair, Ms. Rubin-Vega is full-body energy in motion, the chair hardly able to contain her tiny frame. As a woman searching for her clitoris in a vagina workshop, she shifts from shyness to passion to wonder to worry, her free arm flying, not even her toes still. It’s comic and sexy, joyous and sweet.
“Los Monólogos” uses revolving casts, and Ms. Rubin-Vega headlines the current one, scheduled to run through June 22. Her co-stars are María Cellario, who has a funny, fierce triumph with a monologue called “Mi Vagina Furiosa,” and Flor De Liz Perez, who performs a series of culturally specific sexual moans — Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Dominican — that were a huge hit with the audience this week.
The Westside Theater is where Ms. Ensler performed “The Vagina Monologues” in 1999, when the show was new to Off Broadway. Some details — those moans, for example — have been tweaked in “Los Monólogos,” which is translated and adapted by Susana Moscatel and Erick Merino. Much is the same, including the discussion of sexual violence in a number of the pieces.
The production offers headsets for English translations, a laudable effort but a frustrating way to experience the show. Some words, after all, are the same in both languages. Vagina is one of them; clitoris is another.
In a monologue early in the show, Ms. Rubin-Vega laments the ugliness of the word “vagina.” But in Spanish, with that soft, aspirated “g,” it’s really not so bad. For “clitoris,” regrettably, there’s nothing to be done.
“Los Monólogos de la Vagina” continues at the Westside Theater, 407 West 43rd Street, Clinton; 212-239-6200, monologosvagina.com.
In May, GRITtv with Laura Flanders spoke with V-Day Congo Director/Director of City of Joy Christine Schuler Deschryver about the City of Joy and V-World Farm, and how both works to create women leaders in the DRC who are doing everything from starting their own projects to running for office.
The situation in Iraq is shocking and brutal. Our sisters are being murdered, raped, sold and held hostage. They have asked for our help.
SUPPORT WOMEN IN IRAQ, DONATE NOW
We – ONE BILLION RISING – a world movement of women and men working to end violence against women and girls, and all the intersectional injustices that sustain the impunity that keep it in place – call for an immediate ceasefire. We call for an end to the occupation of Palestine and all forms of oppression that lead to more violence.
