I missed this yesterday from Maryam Namazie:
Tomorrow, FEMEN is organising another related event, which is demanding that the International Olympics Committee condemn violence against women via Islamist states. Femen demands that those states that apply Sharia law be shut out of the Olympic games, because of the inhumanity of Sharia laws, which are in total contradiction with Olympic principles.
With the support of the IOC, these Islamist governments are using their participation of women in the Olympic games to hide thousands of victims and dead.
FEMEN’s action will take place tomorrow at 11am. The meeting point for the media is 10.45am in front of the London House, near Tower Bridge.
Join FEMEN if you can tomorrow. We have to do all we can whilst attention is on the Olympics to show our opposition to Islamism and our support of women’s rights and equality.
I apologise if you would have liked to have attended or taken part.
As you can imagine the protest was successful. A great deal of press coverage was generated at the cost of a relatively few arrests. Some of it is linked to on the FEMEN Facebook page. The Guardian, who have yet to declare the event Islamophobic, have posted a video.
Here is Sundas Hoorain’s speech at the earlier 25 July event that amie attended, calling for equality and neutrality in the Olympics.
Sundas is an activist of One Law for All:
I am from Pakistan, and have faced systemic discrimination against women, whether codified in law or tradition or in the guise of tradition. I know how difficult it is for us women to break free. We as humankind have made immense strides in issues like slavery, appartheid, trafficking, racism, so much so that no one today can openly say ‘I think slavery is justified’ or that ‘I think one race is superior’. Why is the same not true for women?
Pluralism, tolerance, multiculturalism, these are all concepts I personally stand for. However, I find it deeply disturbing the way these terms are hijacked today to legitimise oppression, especially against women. During the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, no one raised cultural relativism, pluralism or tolerance. No one said this treatment is a part of the South African culture and we must be tolerant. Why can countries still say that we think women are inferior or that the only respectful position for a woman is inside the four walls of her home? Why does the rest of the world respond with understandings of cultural relativism? Here we find an institutionalised silence in the world.
I find it disturbing that while the IOC feels comfortable banning for decades South Africa for apartheid, it takes a much softer stance when it comes to misogyny.
The IOC can declare with a straight face that their dialogue has come to fruition over Saudi’s agreement to send two women that have been raised abroad, while it systematically and institutionally denies Saudi women even access to gyms and other physical activities domestically.
So I ask is that really fruition? Or is that face saving? And hardly that even.
I ask the IOC, is the woman of colour not deserving of equal rights and equal protections? Does the IOC not consider them as meriting its equal concern? How can mere tokens bring fruition to the goals of the IOC when its charter makes fundamental a stance against discrimination? That in itself exposes the underlying problem.
I ask the IOC where are the concrete benchmarks from Saudi officials: allowing sports for girls in schools, creating women’s sections in the Saudi Olympic Committee and related sports federations and allowing women who live in the country to compete in international events. How can the IOC tolerate institutionalised discrimination of this gravity?
The I.O.C. has a real responsibility to get genuine reform. Disallowing sport for women inside the country is still a violation of the Olympic charter, which bans gender discrimination. So I ask again IOC how have the talks with Saudi Arabia come to fruition? This exposes yet again systemic oppression against women domestically, as well as at the level of the IOC.
The Saudi Arabia has required that the two female participants’ clothing comply with sharia,which means hijab, that they be accompanied by a male guardian at all times and not mix with men” while in London for the 2012 Games. So their personal conduct and attire are not their own choice.
Some say that Saudi has done the “bare minimum” to avoid international contempt and a possible ban. We have gathered here today to say this farce is not good enough, that we take women seriously as equal human beings and that until some concrete steps are taken that actually grant access to the women growing up in Saudi Arabia, the bare minimum is NOT met.
Disallowing sport for women inside the country is still a violation of the Olympic charter, and its about time IOC enforces its mandate. We demand that the IOC promote One Law for All.
UPDATE:
Maryam adds:
Police were brutal towards the FEMEN activists protesting Sharia law and Islamist states in the Olympics. I got a text today saying that four activists had been arrested at their action today. This report says five.
Shame on the British police. They have arrested the wrong people.
There are plenty of representatives of Islamic states that should be arrested instead of women defending rights and opposing violence against women. But then we already know which side the ruling elite is on.
