Women's WG

Learning True Love: How I Learned and Practiced Social Change in Vietnam by Chan Khong, 258 pages, 1993, US $16 paperback. Parallax Press, P.O. Box 7355, Berkeley, CA 94707, USA.

reviewed by Shelley Anderson

Mary is a statistic. She is a Karen, one of the largest minority groups in Burma. She is also a refugee, forced to flee her home near the rebel capital of Manerplaw when it fell in late January. The 46-year old civil war in Burma has created at least 100,000 refugees along the Thai-Burma border; the recent fighting has increased that number by 10,000 people. Mary belongs in this latter number.

Last November 1,000 women from every province in Cambodia came together for a display of traditional skills. The display also kicked off the "Women Weaving the World Together" project, with Khmer women connecting pieces toegther they had woven, to form a ribbon one kilometer long. Organizers hope to collect 20 kilometers of cloth (from pieces one meter wide, of any length, and from any fiber) from individuals and groups around the world. The ribbon will be sent to the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. Organizers hope to raise US$ 50,000 for a women's project fund as well.

Show Your Solidarity

Messages of solidarity and concern are always appreciated. You can write, fax or email many of the women's groups in former Yugoslavia that you have read about in past issues of this newsletter. The booklet "Adressen von Friedens-Frauen-und Menschenrechtorganisationen im ehemaligen Jugoslawien" ("Addresses of Peace, Women's and Human Rights Organizations in Former Yugoslavia", in English and German) is an good source of information about contacts with women's groups in the area.

In the small Dutch city where I live, several hundred people took part in yesterday's annual silent walk to commemorate the victims of World War II. There were far more people than usual taking part, as this year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. As I watched the silent line of people filing past, laying flowers in front of the war memorial, a litany of names sounded in my head: Bosnia, Rwanda, Burma, East Timor....The "victory" of World War II did not stop the biggest killer of all, that of war itself.

The Clothesline Project

The idea is simple. The result is chilling. The Clothesline Project is collecting 250,000 shirts, designed by women survivors of violence, their families and friends. The shirts--T-shirts, sweatshirts, children's blouses--are sometimes decorated with poems or drawings by abused children, and sometimes with photographs of women who died from being battered. The shirts will be displayed during the Actions to Stop Violence Against Women in Washington DC, April 8-9, as an attempt to educate the public about violence against women.

by Susan Giesen

Why are you so afraid?

It's all this war talk.
My sons will all be draft age
very soon. I can't bear the
thought of them--

Of them what? Are you afraid
of them being shot?

No.

Are you afraid of them being
disabled, losing an arm, a leg,
being blinded?

It's not that. I could live with
that and so could they.

It must be death that you fear
so much. The thought of losing
them.

No, it's much worse than that.

What could be worse than that?

I've seen soldiers come home.
It's the look in their eyes. My
sons have never had that look,

(New WRI Council member MiX sent this poem, which is based on a dream she had of a woman floating upright, eight inches from the ground. "I've talked with other women about our dreams," MiX writes, "and wondered whether we all have ´historical dreams', that is, dreams generated by the times we live in. I interpreted this dream as one of those historical dreams, feeling completely linked to those banned ones living in an insane world.")

Taking the worn-out bend of the mansion of the slaves, the wild woman moves forward
opening her way through the air with her arms.

"We demonstrate with our bare hands as we are fighting for the truth. If we have truth on our side, we don't need any weapon." One of the Gari 14

On March 12, 1994 the International Year of Tibetan Women was inaugurated in Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government in exile. The Year will last until March 12, 1995, and is dedicated to finding nonviolent solutions to the problems women inside Tibet and in exile face.

by Julie Mertus

On Wednesday, 16 November 1994, Arkadia's lesbian activist Lepa Mladjenovic, appeared on the local television show called "Nus pojave" ("Incidentals"). That was the first time in Serbian history that an official representative of a lesbian and gay group took part in a public TV show. Another guest of the show was Wendy Eastwood, British lesbian feminist, presently living in Novi Sad (Vojvodina-Serbia).

by Maggie Helwig

"Our daily lives must be visible," says Staša. "They must become international policy. It is my international policy that Haya comes to my house. That is my government."

Staša, from Belgrade, and Haya, from Jerusalem, were both part of the theme group on women's work against violence at the War Resisters International's Triennial in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil, held in December 1994. Although the group's conclusions cannot be summed up in any brief form, Staša's words do express a fundamental principle underlying much of what was said.

Greetings! This newsletter, the first for 1995, contains a report from the women's theme group at WRI's Triennial, held last December in Brazil. We're happy to report that women were very visible during the Triennial, and that seven out of the 12 available Council seats went to women. We have a poem from one of WRI's new Council members, MiX (from the State of Spain), whom many readers will know from the days she worked in the WRI office in London. We look forward to other contributions from women Council members, so readers will get to know them better.