Clintons forgets LGBT, Womens Rights and the champions of Arab Democracy

Will the Women of the Arab Spring be forgotten?
17 December, 2011 – Helena Williams – Huffington Post

A year ago Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi torched himself out of economic despair. Little did he know that his act would spark the uprisings that tore through the Middle East and North Africa in 2011.

The revolutions represented many things to many people – although each country involved has a different story to tell, one common factor is the fight for human rights, and more specifically, the struggle for recognition and equality led by women who took to the streets.

But on the anniversary of Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Bahraini human rights activist Maryam Alkhawaja warns that a spreading anti-western feeling could cause the efforts of the female activists, bloggers and academics to extinguish.

“There is a fast-growing anti-western sentiment in the Middle East. To try to import the idea of feminism into the Middle East is not going to work – it needs to be addressed in a different way,” she said at last night’s ‘Women of the Revolution’ event hosted by The Frontline Club and BBC Arabic.

“We have to be able to create a movement in our own societies that say women have to be seen as equal within law and society. It will be more difficult if it is seen as a western notion that is being brought to the Middle East and imposed on them.”

The debate in London – chaired by Channel 4 News’s International Editor Lindsey Hilsum – brought together three female panellists; one from Bahrain, one from Libya, and one from Iran, who recalled their experiences of uprisings and described what they thought lies in store for the women of the Arab Spring.

“What we know from revolutions in the past is that women are there in the forefront, and then, ‘thank you very much sisters, we’ll be worrying about your rights and demands later, when we do more important things first'”, Hilsum warned.

But the three panellists were adamant that they did not want a repeat of what happened in Iran in 1979, when women who had supported the revolution against the Shah had their rights curbed. The threat of that happening now is very real, with few women in positions of power in the new emerging governments.

But Alkhawaja was adamant that women “must not go home.”

“This is setting a very important step. With this revolution, women have found a new voice for themselves”, she says.

“Pearl Square is the Tahrir Square of Bahrain. There, women read poetry, gave political speeches, and set up their own tents to talk about women rights and movements. One of the important things about the revolution in Bahrain was breaking the stereotype that exists in the western world.”

A self-professed Twitter activist and head of the foreign relations office for the Bahraini Centre for Human Rights, she is the daughter of prominent Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Alkhawaja and has been working around the clock to make sure that every single protest and human rights abuse in Bahrain is documented.

She says that women have been at the forefront of the revolutions in her country.

“One of the most amazing scenes happened on 14 February. Everyone had gathered for the first set of protests – I was translating for foreign journalists. People were being attacked, and the men started running, but the women didn’t run. Instead, they picked up their flags and stood face to face with the riot police. …more