Culture & music
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PRESS
RELEASE A
programme of events to celebrate our local heritage Come and join us at the opening of Hackney Museum’s first ever exhibition about Kurdish Cultural Heritage. This exciting display was created by participants of the Kurdish Cultural Heritage Project; a partnership between Halkevi Kurdish-Turkish Community Centre and Hackney Museum. Featuring interviews, a fashion show and songs by Dengbej storytellers, discover the story of Kawa the Blacksmith and the origins of Newroz (Kurdish New Year). Take part in our fun events programme and get a taste of Kurdish culture. The
project recognises and celebrates Kurdish heritage through stories,
photos and videos. The material collected will help to establish a
community archive. Participants
from Halkevi and the Kurdish community in London are working
to bring together material for two interactive exhibitions at
Hackney Museum, and to add to the National Archives’ Moving Here
website. For each display, participants are carrying out interviews,
writing the text, sourcing photographs and creating video and sound
footage.
Two displays at Hackney
Museum:
15
April – 2 July: Traditional Kurdish Culture & History 5
July – 17 September: Kurdish Cultural Identity and celebration of
Kurdish culture in the UK Throughout the displays there will be a series of events and workshops including traditional Kurdish dancing, Saz (Kurdish string instrument) playing and Kilim (carpet) weaving For For further information
or images please contact Helena Wetterberg at Hackney Museum on 020
8356 2551, or at helena.wetterberg@hackney.gov.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Women
Want Peace and Justice – For an Ecological-Democratic World The
2nd Zilan Women’s Festival will be held
on 18th June 2005. We invite women from all over the world to
participate. As women, we will articulate our demands and wishes by
our dances, music, art, culture and speeches. We say “Stop!” to
the continuing and increasing violence against women. We invite all
women, writers, artists, musicians, dancers to take part in our
festival with their own languages and cultural expressions. The
5000 years old history of patriarchy, basing on violence,
exploitation and humiliation, made the world unbearable in a lot of
different aspects. We realize this in all parts of life, in all
countries... Even in the rich countries of Europe and the USA
unemployment and social cuts let to increasing poverty, social
crises, loneliness and depressions. For the marginalized regions of
Latin America, Africa and Asia it means once again war, forced
migration, hunger and death. And what about the investigations that
smooth the way for the extreme robbery of profits and destroy the
balance of nature? What about the fatal developments as a
consequence of the global warming? Do the powerful states bear their
responsibility for the occurrence of these problems? What about the
USA refusing to sign the United Nation’s Kyoto agreement on
climate protection? These
pictures may differ in their details. But there is one important
common feature: Women are those who suffer from these conditions the
most. Rules, traditions and laws that had been forced upon us from
outside caused estrangement and separations. In a subtle way, our
thoughts and feelings should be familiarized with violence
relations. Our different cultures, languages, religions and
identities were presented as insurmountable borders. Furthermore we
were estranged more and more from nature. While women once had built
up live in balance with nature, henceforth walls between human and
nature, among people were established. These walls constrain our
freedom and surround us. They take away the breath and the light of
our ideas of a free life. It seems as if we’ll choke on this
insensitiveness and silence between these walls.
During
this year’s festival preparations, we asked many women for their
wishes and proposals for the motto of the festival. The wish to live
in a democratic society, in a natural and peaceful world, was the
most frequent answer. How should such a society and world look like?
How can we develop a peaceful and non-violent society, based on the
values of justice and love? How can we create a social structures
that are based on women’s rights and values? For
a natural development of society, it is necessary that all relations
are based upon mutual responsibility. This applies also for
inter-human relations as well as for those between human and nature.
Because the meaning of these relations is to encourage and
complement one another. Overcoming the walls and trenches of
separation and estrangement means to break-off the fragmentation and
destruction of life. A
democratic and ecological way of living means to understand us and
our environment as a unity. Life is only possible within this unity.
We believe that the development of democratic-ecological ideas and
perspectives of life are the premise for achieving our social goals
from a women’s perspective. Especially as women, we need to
approximate global problems according to the motto “think
global - act local !”. We cannot have an unconcerned attitude
towards the world we live in. Therefore women’s unity, solidarity
and organisation is so important and meaningful. Women’s desire to
live in a democratic society and ecological world is a basic human
right. Hereby, we are basically searching a democratic-ecological
society model, which overcomes hierarchic structures as an answer to
our needs. As
women, peoples, humans; we can only live with respect, mutual
concern, interaction and harmony with nature. We want mutual
solidarity instead of competition, harmony instead of control of
nature. Instead of appropriation, property and egoism, sharing
should be our basic principle of
life. We
know that we have to work and struggle hard for realising these
aims. We can begin here and today. By standing up, using the power
of our daily lives, we will be able to build up a liveable future
for us, with and for other women, children, the society and nature.
Through discussions dealing with these issues, we are searching for
common foundations. Together,
we say “Stop!” to all those who poison our water and our air for
their lordships, their force and money. We say “Stop!” to all
those, who regard women, children and the environment as their
properties and kill women in the name of honour, jealousy and
politics and to all those who commit massacres on nature. We
have to enshrine our world’s vital beauty. Through
a free and democratic society, we can enrich our lives. Through
harmony and friendship with the nature, we can create our future. In
this sense we want to come together at the 2nd Zilan
Women’s Festival by joining together our voices, ideas,
feelings, projects and energies! Let’s
begin with realising our dreams at the
2nd Zilan Women’s Festival 18
June 2005; 10 – 18 hours at
the Amphit-Theatre Gelsenkirchen; Grothusstrasse 201
(Nordsternpark); Germany Organisation & Contact: Cenî
– Kurdisches Frauenbüro für Frieden · Grupellostrasse 27 · D -
40210 Düsseldorf Tel:
0049 211 1711080 · Fax: 0049 211 1711078 · E-mail: ceni_frauen@gmx.de -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afghan women: Fighting for the right to sing Although the rule of the Taleban in Afghanistan ended 18 months ago, women in the country are still faced with a huge number of restrictions in their everyday life. Included among them is a ban on singing in public, on the radio or on television. "I'm deeply affected by what's going on," singer Najiba Samin told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme. "I don't understand why we can't record our songs and hear them on radio and on television." Although Ms Samin is allowed to sing in the Kabul music school, a gunman has to sit at the doorway just in case extremists decide to deliver judgment. "I think what's happened is that the people who were responsible for the atrocities of the past are in control of this, and they're doing it all over again," she said. "But I tell myself the fight has to continue, even though there are people determined to stop us." 'Prisoners in own homes' Ms Samin's situation is indicative of the problems facing women in the new Afghanistan. Although TV screens around the world were filled with images of women taking off the burqa as the Taleban fell, women's rights agencies are still trying to realise the idea of emancipation in Afghanistan. They concede there had not been much change. "You can see that there's an obvious increase of women going to school, or having access to higher education, and there are some professional women who have been able to go back to being lawyers or teachers - but I think that is a very, very small step," said Rachel Wareham, who works for the German agency Medica Mondial. "The majority of women are still more or less prisoners in their own homes. The legal system is not functioning in any area or any way that protects them or advances them." Trading in women And further out of Kabul and beyond the reach of government, restrictions deteriorate into outright abuse of women's rights. The province of Shinwari, near the Pakistan boarder, is notorious for opium smuggling - and also for the sale of women. "I was sold 10 years ago - at the time I'd had three children from my first husband - but when he took a second wife, he sold me," one woman said. "He and I grew up together, but after I was sold he prevented me from seeing the children. My son died. I think his heart broke after I was forced to leave. I'm not allowed to see my daughter. When I left my breast used to leak milk. They tore my baby from me." In Shinwari women are sold for around $3,000 each - either as punishment or purely to earn money for their families or first husbands. "We are innocent in this - we are just like chickens kept and tied," another told Everywoman. "Wherever you send us, we go." Punishments Activist Pawina Heila has tried to
raise the issue with local authorities, but said they have done
nothing. "There is no
difference between now and when the Taleban were in control,"
she told Everywoman. One woman
she knew of fled the home she had been sold to and returned to her
brother's house. But there she
was punished. She was first scalded with hot water, then tied behind
a car with a cable, dragged into the desert, and shot. "These
are the lessons women are taught so they go quietly when they're
sold," she said. "Not only women, but we
have to educate the men too," she stressed. "The
men should know about the rights of women, about human rights, about
everything. After that, maybe they can give women the opportunity to
take part in society." |