We will not Budge!

About Mona Sahlin and Margareta Winberg's

proposed plan to the Swedish Government

By Mahin Alipour, Parvin Kaboli, Sara Mohammad,

Halaleh Rafeh and Khalil Keyvan

March 11, 2002

Mona Sahlin, the Swedish Minister for Integration, and Margareta Winberg, Minister of Gender Equality, have eventually announced their proposal for the Swedish government’s action plan in defence of vulnerable girls in patriarchal and traditional families. The main themes of this proposal are increasing the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18, declaring that the state will side with girls and young women, that no culture, tradition and religion will have supremacy over the individual rights of women, increased victim support, improvements in determining women's asylum claims, and evaluating further options for integration.

Though the proposed plan ignores many important issues, from our point of view, the recognition of this extent of demands by the said Ministers and their acknowledgement of the destructive nature of culture, religion and tradition (which Swedish politicians have defended under the pretext of respect for cultures and racist cultural relativism) is a great victory for those of us who have fought for these demands for years. We see this as a victory for our campaign and will insist on the realisation of our other essential demands and intensify our efforts to this end. For many years, we have declared our clear, specific and extremely human demands in defence of women, girls, and children of Islamic, patriarchal, and traditional immigrant families, have fought for them, and have warned the government and ruling parties about the abuse of women and children in these families. It is regrettable that extremely important and clear demands such as the prohibition of religious education and schools for children and compulsory veiling for young girls have been ignored in the proposed plan, thereby overtly overlooking the fundamental rights of girls and children in these families.

Ms. Mona Sahlin and Ms. Margareta Winberg only see the tip of the iceberg - that is they only see honour killings. They turn a blind eye to a world of physical and psychological abuses, the daily destruction of the beautiful and natural desires of thousands of children, the brainwashing of children with religious superstitions and backward, misogynous ideas, the veiling of children - a symbol of women’s slavery, the denial and discrimination of girls' access to music, dance and many other games and recreations and innumerable other forms of daily harassment and abuse of girls and children in Islamic and patriarchal families. They do not want to accept that these killings are the outcome and result of the very culture and religion which a handful of reactionary mullahs are currently hammering into the heads of innocent children to kill the human spirit in them and turn them into honour worshipers;. They do not want to accept that children have no religion, intolerance or prejudice, and have not registered in any religious sect, are not the property of their parents and that it is the responsibility of law and society to protect them from the harm of religion and religious sects. They do not want to accept that in the heart of Europe they have succumbed to a religion and a culture that tens of millions of men and women in Iran, Iraq, Algeria and Turkey despise and are trying to get rid of from their lives. The politicians and the ruling parties in Sweden have chosen Mullahs over children.

It would have been better if Ms. Mona Sahlin and Ms. Margareta Winberg had not capitulated to Islam and the Islamists. Society requires a fundamental solution and the Ministers do not doubt that if they chose a principled and radical policy, they would be supported by the majority of society and immigrants in Sweden. They did not want to do so. The Swedish government and politicians are an impediment in the realisation of people's fundamental rights. We, however, are obliged to defend the civil rights of women, children and people and will not budge. As the representatives of society's and immigrants' secular, progressive, modern and pro-equality elements, and given the extensive support our demands have received, we will intensify the struggle for the realisation of these demands. Our demands are so human and clear that is not possible to resist them for long. We are determined to recapture, step by step, all the trenches that the Islamists have imposed in European countries in the context of European states' right wing policies during the Cold War. In the same way that in countries like Iran we are recapturing much larger trenches, our movement is more than ever before progressing; this is clear for all to see.

Once again, we declare our demands and call on all pro-equality, progressive and children's rights organisations to support our demands and impel the Swedish government to respect people's fundamental rights. The time to put an end to medieval laws has arrived.

1. Immediate prohibition of religious schools and education and in the meanwhile the inspection of all religious schools, particularly Islamic schools.

2. Immediate prohibition of veiling of children.

3. Immediate prohibition of children’s circumcision and genital mutilation.

4. An end to all subsidies and government grants and payments to religious organisations and institutions.

5. Equality before the law for all; the prohibition of reduced sentences for those who kill or abuse children and women, and the imposition of a maximum sentence for religious, ethnic and patriarchal crimes.

6. An end to ghetto-isation and the adoption of an active and immediate policy for the integration of immigrants.

Mahin Alipour, Spokeswoman for the Campaign in Defence of Women’s Right in Iran, Stockholm

Parvin Kaboli, Spokeswoman for the Campaign in Defence of Women’s Right in Iran, Sweden

Sarah Mohammad, Director of 'Never forget Pela'

Halaleh Rafeh, Spokeswoman for the Campaign in Defence of Women’s Right in Iraq, Sweden

Khalil Keyvan, Secretary of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, Organisation Abroad, Sweden