Why Are We Locking Up These Women? Jane, Octob. Issue (part 4)

"Our problems in Iraq started getting worse after Sept. 11," Samira tells me. "Not only was there the threat of the U.S. bombing Iraq, but there was this war between the Christians and the Muslims, and they counted us as against them."

"Things got worse for women," Rafah says. "On Iraqi TV, they showed pictures of people who tried to leave being executed at the border. Then a young activist lawyer was raped by the police, and they announced it on TV. I had sensed the rapes on the street, but when we heard it on TV... then we got the feeling it would happen to us. I also decided not to have children because the law changed and I'd have to give them Muslim names."

"The problem wasn't just to have children," says Samira, a computer programmer with an extremely neat ponytail. "It was about survival."

"I was always afraid of getting attacked sexually on the street," Farah says. Her unblinking gaze makes me sadder than Rafah's tears. "The way it happened was three or four guys would attack a single woman. Or sometimes government officials or sons of officials would come into the church or a meeting and get any girl without an excuse. They'd sexually abuse her and throw her away. It happened to a friend of mine."

"In Iraq, my day started like this, Rafah says. "Before I'd go to school, my father would say 'Don't get touched. Don't talk to anyone on the phone. Don't go to any clubs. Don't wear that'--anything sleeveless or open was off-limits."

"Women didn't go out much there--not even two blocks from my house to go to church," Farah explains. "There were a lot of young boys with guns hanging out in the streets, touching us, saying bad things about Christians."

"If you did go outside," Samira says, "the risk you took wasn't just for yourself, but for your entire family."

"Chaldeans are an easy target," Saad explains. "One day, my uncle's car was stolen, and he went to the police and reported that his neighbors had stolen it. The neighbors' tribe threatened him, so he offered to drop the charges. But the tribe wasn't satisfied. They said he had to pay them or give them one of his daughters. The government is allowing these tribal things to happen. Christain girls get forced to marry one of the sons--usually the worst in the family--if her father can't pay. So, on top of getting the car stolen, our whole family got together to pay money to save the girl. It was 5, 6 million Iraqi dinar [about $5,000; a government employee there makes $5 a month]."

"At that time, most of the young men were in trouble with the police," Samira says. She says her husband, who is also locked up here, has scars from being tortured in Iraq. "You don't know how many young men are in prison. They were trying to put them in military training to use Christians as a shield to fight the U.S."

"We saw a lot of things," she adds. "We knew a family whose house was bombed. And the people in prison--they're just lost."

"The problem is they don't give back the bodies," Rafah says. "So, you never know."

"Believe me," Samira says. "We are not making this stuff up."

(to be continued...)

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