Soviet Woman, 30 September 1963: 'A German Peace Treaty' dan laporan Kongres Wanita Sedunia

=== [PDF page 1] === LOTTE ULBRICHT By F U K I KUSHIDA A l r e a d y twice in this century humanity has been plunged into a world Leader of Japanese delegation war. Both times it originated on German soil. Because of their evil ambition to conquer the world, the German militarists and monopolists have twice subjected the peoples of Europe and, in the long run, the German people, The World Congress of Women opened at a time when Moscow was too, to extreme suffering. exulting in the successful space flights of Valeri Bykovsky and Valentina That is why we, the women of the German Democratic Republic, have Tereshkova. sworn: "Nevermore shall German soil give birth to war. Nevermore shall Not only Moscow was applauding the first woman cosmonaut. The other peoples suffer because of the Germans. Nevermore shall Germans hearts of the delegates, gathered from all over our planet to attend the World Congress of Women, were overflowing with gratitude and delight bring tears to the eyes of Soviet, Czech and Polish mothers, to the mothers at this truly invaluable gift to the forum of peace and the emancipation' in other countries, which suffered under the yoke of German fascism.” of women. W e shall abide by this oath! I state this with the conviction of a woman When Valentina appeared before us in person we were astounded to who has fought for over forty years in the ranks of the German workers' think that this slender, pretty, modest girl could have accomplished such revolutionary movement. I am happy to have lived to see the building of a heroic feat. socialism in my homeland and be able to pass on my experience to the The congress, attended by an unprecedented number of delegates, younger generation. completed its work successfully and its influence is already felt Our land is ruled by the workers and peasants. W e have punished the everywhere! war criminals and Hitler's generals. W e are carrying out every article of The reports made by Mme. Eugenie Cotton and others gave us a round the Potsdam Agreement signed in 1945 by the Soviet Union, Great Britain ed picture of the splendid results the international women’s movement has achieved in the space of five years, and defined a programme of action and the U.S.A. Ours is the first state in the whole history of the German for the future. The speeches of the delegates clearly showed the great di people that strives towards friendship with all peoples and is a staunch sup versity of forms the women’s struggle has taken in various countries, and porter of the policy of peaceful coexistence. the immense importance of women’s solidarity. In West Germany, on the other hand, the Potsdam Agreement has been To know what is being done in other countries, what the women there violated. The forces of peace have to wage a difficult struggle against the are thinking and how they are acting is important for mutual understand revenge-seeking politicians who occupy all the key positions in the state ing and for the success of the cause of peace. and are again preparing a march on the East. The old wreckers of For nearly all the members of the Japanese delegation this was their Germany—the militarists and monopolists— crave a new world war. They first trip abroad. Most of them are active in the movement for banning clamour for revenge and scream that the Second World War is not nuclear weapons, liquidating American bases and achieving a better life. The congress has inspired us and renewed our energy for the struggle. All of us appreciate the value of the World Congress and are confident T O C O N C L U D E that it will help to unite still more closely the women of all continents. We sense the warm solicitude of the Soviet women always and in every thing. The welcome we were given in Moscow and other Soviet cities is possible only in conditions of socialism. May socialism flourish and triumph! May the unity of the international women’s movement grow and strengthen! After the World Congress of Women, nearly 1,500 of the delegates travelled to various parts of the Soviet Union to get to know the life of the Soviet people. In Kiev, the members of the Japanese delegation took pictures with Olga Ivashchenko, secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and Alexei Fyodorov, former partisan, twice Hero of the Soviet Union and at present Social Security Minister of the Ukrainian S.S.R. The fourth from the left is Fuki Kushida, the author of this article and chairman of the Federation of Women's Organizations of Japan, which is affiliated to the W.I.D.F. Fuki Kushida became active in the democratic women's movement immediately after the Second World War and was a founder of the Club of Democratic Women of Ja pan, one of the first Japanese women's organizations to come out for women's rights and peace. At the World Congress of Women, Fuki Kushida made a report on “The Women’s Activities for Peace, Disarmament and Friendship Among Nations.” Photograph by L. D A N IL O V === [PDF page 2] === yet done with. They have formed the aggressive Bonn-Paris-Madrid axis. W e women have been greatly upset by the fact that the West-German Wehrmachi has been able to carry out military exercises in Great Britain and other NATO countries and to set up strongholds there. But the former nazi generals are not content with that, they hasten to gain control of atomic weapons. No woman, wherever she may live and whatever her world outlook, can remain indifferent to this. All the women of the world must know that the criminals who perpetrated their bloody deeds under Hitler are prepared, without hesitation, to plunge the world into atomic war. Unlike West Germany, the German Democratic Republic forbids all war propaganda by law. W e do not tolerate racial discrimination. W e want to be friends with all peoples. Our children are taught that all peoples contrib ute towards human progress. Anyone who visits the German Democratic Republic can testify to this. W e believe that the German question can and must be settled by peace ful means. That is why for many years now the government of the German Democratic Republic has made one proposal after another to the govern ment of Western Germany for the normalization of relations between the two German states. So far these proposals have either been rejected or remained unanswered. Still we will not give up. The vestiges of ihe Second World War must be eliminated, and for that we demand that a peace treaty be concluded and West Berlin be turned into a neutral free city. Germany does not need arms, especially atomic weapons. Our gifted and industrious people are building a new socialist society. Peace is as necessary to us as the very air we breathe. Like all the other mothers of the world, we want to raise our children in peace. E AtC Outstanding figure in the international women’s movement, Lotte Ulbricht, W e feel deeply responsible for the future of humanity and will do our A G E R M A N fPo giving her autograph during the World Congress of Women in Moscow best for the triumph of peace Ihroughout the world. Photograph by L. K A L IN IN A in E TREATY GONDO KIKUE intense struggle that we prepared for night they went out into the busy Nagasaki Day Workers Union the World Congress of Women in streets with them. In Nagasaki prefec Moscow. ture alone eight banners were embroi Perhaps not all of you know that We gave much thought to the ques dered in this way. there are 220,000 day workers in tion of how to bring the aims and The Japanese women have presented Japan today. They are, in effect, only tasks of the coming forum to the broad their banners to the congress. Even partially employed. And half of them masses of women, and we decided to before we left for the congress we are women. Day workers, or in other embroider on banners the words decided to present one of them to the words, those who cannot find steady “ Unity,” “ Peace” and ''Disarmament”. women of Iraq in token of solidarity, employment, receive a miserly hand We drew these words and then asked and this we have done. out from the state. But even that women to make one stitch each. We may soon be taken from them. With estimated that a banner would contain the support of other trade unions and approximately one thousand stitches. wide sections of the people, our trade For more than a month trade union union is energetically resisting this activists carried these banners to the move. It was in this atmosphere of places of work of day workers. At STITCHES FOR PEACE === [PDF page 3] === ByS. BOLSHAKOVA This woman did not go to the hairdresser or choose becoming clothes of their city when suddenly there came the whistle of whips, shofs, and blood before leaving for the congress. She came to the meeting with her sisters on the pavements... from all over the world dressed in black. A black kerchief, light as a cloud, "W e are not only expelling you from school,” the director told her. "W e covered her prematurely grey hair; her dress, her shoes and her stockings are expelling you without the right to continue your education in this were black. And when her name was announced: "Mrs. Thamina Salam country." Adel" all the delegates rose. So she was faced with the choice of either following the path of thou For this was the widow of the recently murdered secretary of the Central sands upon thousands of women who were born and grew old on this land Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party, mother of his three children. Now and suffering in silence without rights, or of fighting for a better life. She she made her way to the rostrum to tell the women gathered here at the chose to fight! congress the truth about her long-suffering country. She would continue Salam was her dearest friend and on the day he was arrested she told the struggle for the happiness of her people. him she was willing to become his wife. She had thought it over, weighed "Represenfafives of the women of the world who are fighting to defend everything. He warned her honestly that life with him meant much trouble innocent children and domestic happiness, I wish to tell you about the and hardship. sufferings of our Iraq, about the brutal reprisals which we thought had been "I have nothing to give you but my deepest love and a promise to keep buried with the fascism that gave birth to them... your life clean of the dirt in which the class enemy wallows," he told her. "From the first days of the coup d'etat, the so-called National Guard in But she had no desire for wealth. She sought nothing better than to take stituted a reign of terror, causing the death of thousands of our finest people her part in the struggle, to march side by side with the man she loved so and noblest patriots. Incredible as it may seem, dead bodies lie rotting in dearly. the streets, for the mothers and wives of murdered patriots dare not take Salam was in prison for four years. And she waited for him. them away for proper burial. Through the windows terrified children watch They called their first daughter Iman, which means "Faith." The choice was dogs gnaw the bodies of their beloved fathers. Such are the fads about 1he not a chance one. Faith! It was the whole meaning of their lives, faith in a hideous regime that has seized power in Iraq. France Presse has reported better future for their people. that tanks rode over the bodies of women, children and old people. That Iman was followed by a second daughter, Shoza, and then by a son, was on the sixteenth of February. Eight days after the reactionary coup Alii. Life was still full of anxiety and difficulties. Now danger threatened the 'Greens'— National Guard Militia with green armbands— sowed death in not only her husband, not only herself, but their three children. one house after another. Thamina Salam's voice trembled. A terrible calamity has struck our people. My husband was seized and "I have no peace day or night. My daughters don't know that their father tortured by the fascist murderers. His eyes were gouged out. For many is dead. I could not bring myself to tell them... days before the end he was not allowed to sleep. I have lost the person "A few days ago 1 received a letter from my country. I have brought it dearest in the world to me..." here to the congress to read to you, my friends. Here it is: As Thamina Salam Adel spoke the black kerchief fell down over her " 'The women of Iraq thank the Women's International Democratic Fed shoulders, leaving her head bare. She lifted up two thin white arms. Her eration and other international women's organizations for their efforts to strong low-pitched voice rang through the hall like a tocsin. This brave save the lives of Safira Jamil Hafiz, Zakia Shakir and Leila Al Roumy, three woman is a soldier in that great army to which her husband belonged. patriotic Iraqi women subjected to inhuman torture after the coup d'etat. She was a little girl when she first heard of the counfry in which there More than two thousand women were thrown into prison. Torture has are no poor and no wealthy, in which all are equal and live in friendship. made a nervous wreck of Dalai Mohareb. Nargis Al Saffar was paralyzed Once a relative brought a portrait home. and cannot move. Leila Al Roumy, nearly bled to death. Safira Jamil Hafiz Look, he said, "this is a great man. This is Lenin, th r man who helped lost consciousness time and again. Many pregnant women had premature the people of Russia to win happiness." births. She gazed at it. for a long time. "'M en have been tortured in the presence of their wives. Safira Jamil "I want it to be the same in Bagdad— no poor people.” Hafiz's husband Mohammed Hussein abou El Eis was tortured in her pres "Ah, but you have to fight for that and the fight is a difficult and dan ence. His dead body was thrown into her cell and not removed for three gerous one," the grown-up said to her seriously. days. Two of their children— Fadil, aged fifteen, and Nami, aged thirteen— She was only a little girl then and did not yet know what her life would were also tortured before the eyes of their mother. Fadil was tortured to It was Salam Adel who faught her the meaning of life, who taught her Thamina Salam Adel is speaking. The woman in black. the meaning of human dignity. It began with his teaching her mathematics, From the congress rostrum she appeals to women all over the world to but more and more frequently they would talk of other things, touching on join their efforts to stay the hand of the hangmen, and prevent the murder many aspects of life. She asked questions and he, her senior in years, an of Iraqi women patriots; she appeals for support for the just struggle swered them. He well knew what it meant to be poor; he had grown up in of the Kurds. Drawing her black kerchief over her head she raises her a working-class family. He also knew what struggle meant; he was taking arms. an active part in it. Unite to save your children! Struggle for peace!" At secondary school she joined up with a group of freedom-loving stu As Thamina Adel ended her passionate speech, dozens of women sur dents who openly called for democratic liberties. Came her first meeting, her rounded her and embraced her warmly. White, yellow and black hands first strike and then a mass demonstration in Bagdad. She was in the ranks. linked around her. She carried a placard high above her head, a placard branding the sup porters of the Bagdad Pact. They were marching peacefully along the streets Thamina Salam Adel Photograph by Y. BRILIANT === [PDF page 4] === [Photograph: a woman in dark clothing with hands clasped above her head, against a dark background; partly visible watermark]