Crime puts Iraqi women under house arrest
[This is despicable - the men quoted are particularly despicable. The American military clearly has no control over the country in a law and order sense… I was reading the other day, on an Saudi website, about how towns in the northern part of Iraq are constantly without power, because theives pull down copper power lines as soon as they’re put up, then melt the copper down and ship it out of the country. -Thomas]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1060813,00.html
Crime puts Iraqi women under house arrest
Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad finds the city’s female population crushed by
the lawlessness under US occupation
Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
Saturday October 11, 2003
The Guardian
Amina is putting her beauty salon up for sale. She has recovered from the
episode last June when armed men burst in and robbed her clients of cash
and jewellery, and she has learned to live with the gunfights that erupt
with regularity at the coffee shop next door.
But within the space of a month, she says her teenage apprentice narrowly
escaped abduction, a customer was held at gunpoint in another kidnapping
attempt, and one of her regulars was dragged away by the hair and gang
raped.
Such is the pace of events in post-war Baghdad, where the US occupation
has ushered in an explosive rise in crime which has wreaked havoc on once
genteel areas, and driven women indoors.
[…]
The authorities are reluctant to acknowledge a problem. The police force,
widely viewed as incompetent and corrupt, is overwhelmed, and other
officials show little inclination to sympathy.
At the forensic institute itself, where women are examined if they file a
complaint, Abdul Razak al-Obeidi, the deputy director, says: “This is a
classical story.”
“All women speak this story. They do not tell the truth.”
At his desk, Yasser al-Yassery, who is in studying to be a forensic
anthropologist, says: “Maybe it is self-inflicted. A woman causes herself
trauma and says, ‘Someone raped me.’ In our work we don’t believe any
story, because some women lie.”
Mr Obeidi corrects him: “Most women are liars.”
[…]
