Violence in Iraq increasingly targeting women

[sabra]

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061122-105650-7783r

Violence in Iraq increasingly targeting women
AFP

VIENNA -- Women are increasingly the victims of violence in Iraq, as direct targets of assassinations and as widows left without support after the deaths of their husbands, an Iraqi women's activist said Wednesday.

"Many women activists have been murdered, many women university professors. Many women physicians have been killed, women in the police forces, reporters, and journalists," Rajaa Al Khuzai, president of the Iraqi National Council of Women, told a news conference in Vienna.

...

Before Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi women enjoyed more rights than most of their counterparts in the region and even during the 1980s, "men were involved in the (Iran-Iraq) war and women took over," Khuzai said. "We played the role of the mother and father in the home."

But now "women are very easy targets," especially high-profile women such as herself, she added. "We never wander in the streets unless we have many bodyguards. I started with six, then I increased to 12, and then to 20 and then 30," she said.

"We almost imprison ourselves, communicating by e-mail."

[Bobbieo]

1. Looks like more and more Iraqis are saying

"We were better off under the Hussein regime!"

[Eugene]

2. Related: Doctors Are Reportedly Fleeing Iraq - AP

Doctors Are Reportedly Fleeing Iraq
Iraqi doctors are under threat and fleeing the country,
lawmaker says

VIENNA, Austria, Nov. 22, 2006
By VERONIKA OLEKSYN Associated Press Writer

(AP) Iraq's top doctors are under threat and are fleeing the country,
leaving hospitals in the hands of medical students or junior physicians,
an Iraqi lawmaker said Wednesday.

Doctors have been kidnapped and killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
that toppled ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said Dr. Rajaa al-Khuzai,
an obstetrician who is an elected member of the Iraqi National Council.

"They have been targeted since the fall of the regime," she told The
Associated Press during a visit to Austria. "Some of them have been
kidnapped and found dead in the streets, some have been released after
paying a ransom."

-snip-

"We were promised, or we believed, that we would have many new hospitals
being built, and many health centers ... but none of this has been done,"
she said. "No hospitals have been built so far; only some of the hospitals
have been serviced."

-snip-

Full article: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/22/ap/health/mainD8LI7KNO0.shtml

[johnfunk]

3. They're making such good progress!

Now, excuse me, I think I'm gonna barf...

:puke: