Three Women (In Belated Celebration of International Women's Day)

Did you know that International Women's Day was last Sunday, and that the United States does not officially recognize this holiday? Me neither. A more in-depth blog post on International Women's Day can be seen here on Intent by Tonic. In celebration of my first year knowing the existence of International Women's Day, this blog post is dedicated to three courageous women I’ve had the honor to see with my own eyes in real life. Iris Chang Several years ago, I saw Iris Chang very briefly at the UCLA Festival of Books as a panelist speaking on a forum about Asia-Pacific international relations. I was just passing through the back of the lecture hall, and Iris Chang was speaking at the front of the podium. I didn't stop long enough to listen, and now I wish I did. I remember having a fleeting impression of Iris Chang that she was this super-intelligent, articulate woman who believed strongly in the things she was saying. And of course she would be. For those of you who don’t know, this was the woman who was only 27 when she wrote a book that brought international recognition to the forgotten atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army against Chinese civilians during the Sino-Japanese War. Called The Rape of Nanking, this book was published in 1997 on the sixtieth anniversary of the Nanking Massacre and gave voice to the 300,000 victims who were murdered, tortured, raped, executed and mutilated on a mass scale by the Japanese military. Less than a year after seeing her, I found out that Iris Chang had committed suicide. According to news reports, she parked her car on the side of a rural road in Santa Clara County and shot herself through the mouth with a rifle. She was in the midst of researching on her fourth book—on the Bataan Death March in the Philippines. Malalai Joya Back in 2007, UCLA’s student-run Mighty Mic hosted a human rights awareness concert to raise public visibility on the oppression of women in Afhganistan. One of the speakers who came to the event was Malalai Joya. To this day, I have no idea how the student organizers were able to bring Afghanistan’s first female parliament member to speak briefly to a packed auditorium of sweaty, college-age kids. Reading from a piece of paper, Malalai Joya spoke so passionately about freedom and democracy that at one point she had to stop her speech to hold back tears. Once called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” by the BBC, this title is not so hard to believe. Ever since 2003, when she made a three-minute speech in the Afghan parliament denouncing the domination of warlords in the government, she has survived four assassination attempts and always travels undercover with armed guards. In an interview with the BBC News, she has once said of her political enemies, “They will kill me but they will not kill my voice, because it will be the voice of all Afghan women. You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring." After Malalai Joya finished speaking to us, she raised her hand in a triumphant V while we cheered her on. I don’t remember any of the musical acts I saw that night, but I will always remember Malalai Joya. Anneke Van Woudenberg One ongoing humanitarian crisis in the warring Congo is the use of sexual violence against women and girls as a weapon of war. It is not uncommon for soldiers of different factions to systematically attack a village and gang-rape all the females in a public space in front of their husbands and families. Once the sexual violence is done, the women and girls are severely ostracized by their own community members, and are oftentimes forced to fend for themselves alone. Last night, I had the opportunity to listen to Anneke Van Woudenberg speak about this humanitarian crisis at a public lecture event hosted by Human Rights Watch and Feminist Majority Foundation. As a researcher for Human Rights Watch, Anneke has reported and investigated extensively on the civilian abuses within the Democratic Republic of Congo for over a decade. Not surprisingly, Anneke had many things to tell her audience. She spoke eloquently about the complex issues that plague this country, from the exploitation of natural resources to the military factions who enlist child soldiers in warfare. She has seen notorious warlords strolling freely in cities and sitting in fancy restaurants, completely untouched by a corrupted judiciary system. In one powerful anecdote, she described how she witnessed a woman’s child die from cholera. The child was only four years old. The woman—also a rape victim--grabbed Anneke’s hand and begged to her, “Why doesn’t the world care about us?” Anneke said she looked at the woman straight in the eye. “I care,” she told her. She paused from her story to look at all of us. “We all care,” she said. “That’s why we’re all here tonight.” Watch Anneke's interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes