Meena and Somaly Mam

Two heroines of our time in Asian region:

Malini GOVINNAGE

Recently, I had a chance to lay hands on two books on two heroic women from Asia. The original works were in English. I read the Sinhala translations.

The story of Meena by Melody Emerchild Chavez has been rendered in Sinhala by Prabha Manuratne, an English Lecturer at Kelaniya University.

'The Road of Lost Innocence' the autobiography of Somalay Mam from Cambodia has been made available to the Sinhala reader by Anura .K. Edirisuriya - a professional journalist.

Penning on these two works and on the two women depicted in them was a gratifying task in this International Women's Week as these two women project the most salient characteristic in any human being; even in most deplorable conditions they have an invincible courage and willpower to strive for freedom, social justice and democracy.

"If you are freedom loving and anti-fundamentalist, you are with RAWA," greets a visitor to the website of the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan.RAWA founded in 1977, is the brainchild of Meena who was secretly killed by the Afghan section of KGB,the Russian Secret Service. It is 15 years after the disappearance of Meena the American writer who read about her in RAWA website was determined to write Meena's story. Meena's heroic mission, her fearlessness born of the dedication to the cause of winning human rights for Afghan women and the sparkle in Meena's eyes which spoke much about her qualities inspired her to set off on a journey to the battleground that is Afghanistan, says Chavez writing the afterword to the book. She also recounts the harsh experiences she underwent, living hidden under a burka - the dress worn by some Muslim women covering the whole body including the head and face - when moving about in Afghan villages to gather information on Meena.

Meena was born on February 27, 1956 as the eldest girl in a family of ten children in Kabul, Afghanistan. Meena was a fragile child; she suffered prolonged fits, an aftereffect of a fever she had contacted when she was a baby. She spent most of her invalid childhood lying on a mattress and reading when the other children were playing and frolicking about. Her father had given the name Meena meaning 'light' in Parsi language because of her sparkling eyes.

During her school days, students in Kabul and other Afghan cities were deeply engaged in social activism and rising mass movements.

She left the university to devote herself as a social activist to organising and educating women. In pursuit of her cause for gaining the right of freedom of expression and conducting political activities, Meena laid the foundation of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan) in 1977. This organisation which meant to restore democracy, bring equality for men and women, social justice and separation of religion from the affairs of the state wanted to give voice to the deprived and silenced women of Afghanistan. She started a campaign against the Russian forces and their puppet regime in 1979 and organised numerous processions and meetings in schools, colleges and Kabul University to mobilise public opinion.

Another great service rendered by her for the Afghan women is the launching of a bilingual magazine, Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message) in 1981. Through this magazine RAWA has been projecting the cause of Afghan women boldly and effectively. Payam-e-Zan has constantly exposed the criminal nature of fundamentalist groups. Meena also established schools for refugee children, a hospital and handicraft centres for refugee women in Pakistan to support Afghan women financially. Those refugees were mainly Afghan women and children who were pouring over the border to Pakistan after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. She firmly believed that if women were able to read and write that if they could communicate and learn about the world, they would discover their own strength and could make a difference in their own society. At the end of 1981, by invitation of the French Government Meena represented the Afghan resistance movement at the French Socialist Party Congress. The Soviet delegation at the Congress shamefacedly left the hall as participants cheered when Meena started waving a victory sign. Besides France, she also visited several other European countries and met their prominent personalities. Her active social work and effective advocacy against the views of the fundamentalists and the puppet regime provoked the wrath of the Russians and the fundamentalist forces alike and she was assassinated by agents of the Afghanistan branch of KGB and their fundamentalist accomplices in Quetta, Pakistan, on February 4, 1987.

Meena gave 12 years of her short but brilliant life to her homeland and her people.

Today, the association founded with her leadership remains an independent political/social organisation of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan.

RAWA was first confined to agitation of women's rights and democracy, but after the coup and particularly after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979, RAWA became directly involved in the war of resistance. Demonstrations against the Soviet invaders and later on against the fundamentalists and unrelenting exposure of their treason and heinous crimes have been a hallmark of RAWA's political activities. Although the US "War on terrorism" removed the Taliban regime in October 2001, it has not removed religious fundamentalism which is the main cause of all the miseries in the country.

RAWA perhaps the only political organisation founded by a group of women in a country, believes that freedom and democracy can't be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to a country to fight and achieve these values.

The Road of Lost Innocence, an autobiographical tale of a Cambodian woman who has become a crusader against the sex slavery, - women and young females being sold into prostitution in South East Asia This may be the real life story of thousands of little girls in south and south east Asia today.

Born in to a nearly primitive tribal community in the jungles of Cambodia, Somaly never knew her parents. Left by her grandmother in the tribal village her early years were spent outdoors, roaming among the huts in the village looking for food. At the age of six she left her familiar carefree surroundings in northern Cambodia, with a man who claimed to know her parents. The man - her 'grandfather' would beat her, molest her, hire her for domestic and farm labour and would sell her body to pay his debts when she was just 11 years.

Somaly Mam' is the foundation Somaly found herself for the sake of hundreds and thousands of her likes - for young females who are being sold trafficked and shuttled into prostitution.

Somaly brutally exposes the truth of modern sexual trafficking in south-east Asia through her own story and that of those she has rescued from slavery. She outlines the beginnings of her non-profit organizations that rescue girls and women from brothels, sketching out plans for their reintegration into society. She tells her story not to evoke sympathy for herself, though her pain is apparent. She writes, offering herself up to the public eye to draw attention to the plight of the girls and women who are still captive; taken against their will and viciously used. Somaly truly wants nothing for herself other than the opportunity to continue working with the victims of sexual trafficking and to draw awareness to their plight.

Somaly is still pursuing her dream of freeing the young children from sexual slavery in spite of constant threat to her life from the gangs operating the sex industry in her country.

The translators should be commended for their good work of presenting these books, of which the originals are still not available in the local book market.

At a time there reigns a complacency or a feel-good factor about the status of women in the country, the needed legislations are in-place to help woman get her due place, but there is hardly a role-model for the young generation to look up to, leaving out those who sell their bodies and souls in a consumerism-ridden society. These two books will help open the reader's eye to see certain developments which are rapidly transforming the moral landscape of our society; adulation of the 'celluloid heroine'-beauty sans brain and heart and a 'religious' society which are incapable of tolerating,let alone respecting a faith of any others, to mention only two.