Monday, March 07, 2005

Marching for Women's Rights and Equal Rights (Except in…)

Thousands of women took to the streets of Paris Sunday to march for freedom and equal rights ahead of international women's day, focusing especially on the plight of a woman journalist held hostage in Iraq
writes the AFP.
Organisers said as many as 10,000 rallied for "all women deprived of liberty" two days ahead of International Women's Day on Tuesday, March 8. Police put the figure at only 2,600.

The marchers unveiled two huge portraits of Florence Aubenas, a correspondent for the leftist daily newspaper Liberation and her Iraqi guide Hussein Hanun al-Saadi, who went missing in Baghdad two months ago.

The demonstration was "dedicated to Florence and Hussein, while remembering all women who are deprived of freedom," said Fadela Amara, president of one of two women's groups organising the march.

Hope has been rekindled for Aubenas after an Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, was freed Friday in Iraq. Last week Aubenas was shown in a videotape by her abductors looking frail and ill and pleading to be rescued.

Sunday's rally was called by a group of young women of mainly immigrant origin calling itself "Neither whores nor submissive" (NPNS), headed by Amara, and by the French Family Planning organisation. …

Here are some women the protestors did not march for on Sunday, and whose absence of freedom they did not seem to make a huge effort to commemorate, either on Sunday or… in the past…

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