Pervez, Lubna, Kartika and bayram

Pervez Kambakş is released from prison in silence but in return for her freedom she had to leave her country.

She spent the bayram as a free person but she could not even see her family during it and she had to leave her country never to return.

President Karzai reluctantly pardoned this young Afghan journalist who was first sentenced to death and then 20 years in prison for downloading texts on women’s rights to her computer and distributing them among her friends.

On one hand, it was election time and he was weary of the reactions of Talibanist leaders who perceive women as the devil and women’s rights as devil worship. However, on the other hand, he was facing great pressure from the international community.

In the end, Pervez was released from prison under great secrecy.

Although she had celebrated bayram as a free person that does not mean the Afghan women she is standing up for share the same freedom.

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Lubna Hussein spent the bayram as a free person, too. She was sentenced to flogging by the shariah court in Sudan for acting against Islam by wearing pants.

International reactions have transformed this sentenced to a fine. She has refused to pay and preferred to go to prison. While it was becoming more dangerous for her to be with 800 other women in prison than on the outside; the Journalists’ Society intervened and paid the $200 fine.

Lubna is free for now. She has spent the bayram free too, but she said, “I am not happy because this does not solve the problem of other women who were sentenced for wearing pants.”

The female journalists of Sudan say that every time the government runs into trouble, it holds onto pan-Islamism. The easiest and most effective way for them to prove that is to discipline women.

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Kartika is a young Malaysian woman. The full name of this 32 years old woman is Kartika Sari Devi Sukharno and she was sentenced to whipping with a bamboo stick for drinking beer at a hotel alongside her husband. This caused so much international reaction, even those who sentenced her were forced to make statements such as: “The goal is not to hurt but to train. The bamboo stick is the least hurting stick anyway.”

Then came Ramadan. The punishment was delayed by this excuse.

She spent the bayram free, too.

Since the Malaysian government finds salvation from the risk of the economic crisis turning into a political one in bribing the fanatical fundamentalist circles, the shariah courts in Malaysia are becoming more effective.  

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The bayram mornings are a time for me to bless freedom most joyfully. I have remembered the stories of Kartika, Lubna and Pervez in bitterness.

They were slammed into the iron bars of those who create a power domain for themselves under the cover of religion.

Also, there are those who talk about freedom but are imprisoned behind the bars in their heads.

On the top of it, they brag about being so modern.

They try to create power domains for themselves by stepping on women to butter up the domination of their own sex.

They try to get on the good side of someone but they do not realize how low they fall.

And when they realize it, bayrams are long gone for them. Freedom is as far as that, too.

For future bayrams, I wish the understanding of equality would become established, nobody would have a high or low opinion of anybody else’s sex, origin, belief or preference.