brave women

To make a woman seem to all,
A shadow and not very tall,
In fact to make her very small
And push her right against the wall
All it takes is lots of press,

To make her life seem but a mess
And everything that she achieves
Is tucked away so none believes.
Word gets around that she has failed,
But no-one knows quite what was hailed
To be her undeniable transgress
Seems no-one’s sure but “‘twas in the press”!

Much fun was made of our PM’s dress,
As with Joan Kirner by whom we were blest,
We recall the dots but were they true?
Now it’s stripes. Why can’t they see through?
These women on our TV screens,
Are normal or so it seems to me,
But made out to be by mainstream tools,
Clumsy, absent minded fools.
Despite all this we see and hear,
(They cannot hide it ‘tho much they fear,)
The woman’s real authentic class,
And if that shines through, she’s sure to pass.

The Association of Relinquishing Mothers (Vic) represents hundreds of women who have lost their children to adoption. Today we are protesting on the steps of Parliament House against the cruel and inhumane amendments to the Adoption Legislation that the Victorian Government is putting through the Upper House this afternoon. If these amendments go through, we can be stopped from making contact with the (now adult) sons and daughters who were taken from us as babies, and if we try to do so, there can be criminal sanctions put in place.

Vigil – Tuesday 7th May ‘Noon’ Parliament

In the Victorian Government Apology for Past Forced Adoption Practices delivered by the Premier in October last year, we were promised that the Adoption Legislation of 1984 would be amended and that we would at long last have the same rights as others and be able to make contact with our lost sons and daughters. However, this has proved to be a hollow promise, with the Government introducing, without consultation with ARMS, ‘contact statements’ (ie vetoes) and criminal sanctions into the amendment. It was made abundantly clear to Minister Wooldridge prior to the Apology that no groups involved in the adoption community were in favour of vetoes.

When the Victorian Adoption Act 1984 was introduced it provided access to identifying information about birth parents for adopted people aged over 18, but not the other way around. Victoria was the only State in Australia in which mothers did not have the same basic human rights as others. The State apology for past adoption practices was a special occasion and the Government's pledge to legislate to right some of these wrongs was met with great hope. However the adoption bill currently in Parliament undermines this goodwill and completely undermines the spirit of the Apology. It was meant to be healing but instead has re-traumatised many women.

ARMs Secretary Jo Fraser said that all adoption community organizations representing hundreds of mothers who were pressured, like herself, into giving up their children are strongly opposed to Contact Statements and Contact Vetoes. Some states such as WA have stopped using them.

“Adopted people from the closed adoption system up to the mid1980s are now aged almost 30 through to over 60 years. We say that as adults they should be able to deal with contact in a mature and sensible way. Why should the Government feel it has to legislate to control a reunion between a mother and her son or daughter? These proposed amendments come between mother and child, insult her love and compassion for her child and deny her most basic human right of being able to know her own child.”

Mother and ARMs Committee member Faye Nyssen said the proposed bill is a double insult.

“To stop mothers and fathers contacting their children, even by writing a simple letter, is bad enough. But not to be consulted is doubly insulting. Who else has a more profound stake in this? I have met my child but I am heartbroken that contact statements may mean that others won’t ever have that joy.”

"The last line of the Victorian Apology said: 'We undertake to never forget what happened and to never repeat these practices', yet here we are a mere 6 months later having our rights, our hopes and our hearts trampled on again!"

ARMS (Vic) is seeking meetings with Premier Napthine and Minister Mary Wooldridge and calls upon the Upper House to show compassion, do what is right and vote for the rights of mothers and their adopted sons and daughters to meet without interfering contact orders and subsequent criminal sanctions.
For further comment please contact:

Jo Fraser
Secretary ARMS (Vic)
0409 442 701

Attention Avaaz, Amnesty International, NATO, Hilary...
"Let the Syrian people alone. Let the Syrian people alone! Leave us alone! You are not bringing anything else but death, fear, chaos, instability, with your big declarations and with your big assemblies, and, also, with your big powers."
This is the transcription of the brave protest against foreign intervention in Syria by a Syrian-based Catholic nun, (video included) speaking for a number of Syrian leaders, whom she describes as including Muslims, pacifists, family and tribal leaders. Mother Mariam shows leadership in a new internet tradition where women are beginning to speak out against warmongers where their men cannot or will not. Mother Agnes Mariam and Syrian Girl Partisan are two great ladies speaking up for peace, truth and justice. We would like to encourage other women to magnify these women's voices and help them to forge a local, non-violent movement as well as to defend what is good in Syria.Attention Avaaz, Amnesty International, NATO, Hilary...

"Let the Syrian people alone. Let the Syrian people alone! Leave us alone! You are not bringing anything else but death, fear, chaos, instability, with your big declarations and with your big assemblies, and, also, with your big powers."
This is the transcription of the brave protest against foreign intervention in Syria by a Syrian-based Catholic nun, (video included) speaking for a number of Syrian leaders, whom she describes as including Muslims, pacifists, family and tribal leaders. Mother Mariam shows leadership in a new internet tradition where women are beginning to speak out against warmongers where their men cannot or will not. Mother Agnes Mariam and Syrian Girl Partisan are two great ladies speaking up for peace, truth and justice. We would like to encourage other women to magnify these women's voices and help them to forge a local, non-violent movement as well as to defend what is good in Syria.

The interview took place in Ireland on 12 August 2012 and was filmed and published on the Irish Times by Patsy McGarry.

Mother Agnes Mariam to Outside Powers

It's a life of fear, of insecurity and of lack of future. We are divided like a kind of tumour. In every part we have armed people coming and forcing people - civilians - to live following their orders.

And what they want is to paralyse civilian life so there is no more shops. If you need something ou can't find a worker. And, of course, you don't have nutrition, you don't have alimentation. Lack of food, lack of fuel, lack of electricity.

And this fear, because you don't know when it will be your turn to be considered as a collaborator. And we think that something is going wrong mroe and more in the general way of orienting this strive ... what's so-called for freedom an democracy.

On the totalitarian regime in Syria and its violent replacement

I am not Syrian, but I have been living in Syria for today almost 20 years. Syria was under a kind of totalitarian regime but not in only a way a repressive way but it was that all the decision would be taken by few persons. But there was security, there was food, education and people were living - of course not in ... kind that they would say their thinking in a loud voice.

Now, this totalitarianism is not good, and it's obsolete, but if the armed insurrection is implementing another totalitarianism which is maybe worse because there is blood, they can behead you, they can cut your - in last week in our village they cut the fingers of a so-called 'collaborator', who is not ev[en] from the village. Then they behead him, they cut him in piece and they left him in the street, where even children would see it.

So this kinds of acts of atrocities cannot help people to really believe that what is happening is a strive for freedom.

The majority of the Syrian population, I say, is taken as hostage, and sometimes as a tool, as [?enemy] by these armed, insurrection armed...armed insurrection people. They come and they take place in the civilian areas.

Why isn't the fighting in the desert instead of amongst civilian residences?

Why?

Why you don't make your combat - We have a lot of desert. It is against international laws.

Western world seems to be encouraging sectarian violence to topple Assad

But what really scandalises us and leaves us in distress is that the Western world seemed to be encouraging this rise of sectarian violence just to topple the regime.

We are, we are against violence and we are against justifying violence.

You can't say that this man is killing another man and he is justified to kill him. Moreover when, through his movements, he is putting in real danger and having terrible collateral damage, to a whole civilian population, which was not - That's what is happening in Aleppo.

You know, we are responsible and we are - if we are not responsible today, we are responsible tomorrow, to history.

To not speak out is to allow terrible atrocities to continue

Once all those atrocity will be revealed, when you will see a family whose girl has been abused, or, I have heard about collective abusing - whose son has been beheaded, whose father has been abducted.

You know that there are thousands of people we don't know where they are because they have been abducted.

Sometimes they are bandits. They say, "We are in the revolution," but they are bandits. Mafias who come to ask ransome.

Some others they have like sectarian hatred, so they take this one because he is [?Arab or Alep]; they take this one because he is a moderate Muslim.

So we don't know. It's a confusion, it's a chaos.

"What are they doing in Aleppo? Why are they doing? Why are they funded and helped and fueled with weapons and why are they introducing themselves in between the civilian population?"

International Community hypocritical, untrustworthy, funding violence

And what really grieve us is that the international community holds a paradox.

On one side they want, they say, with hypocrisy, "We want peace, we want to protect the civilian population." They even want to intervene in a military way like in other countries. But on the other hand, they are funding, sending intelligence helps and sending weapons to rebels - really you don't know from where they come.

Syrians are trying to forge non-violence movement

We are working with our religious leaders, with Muslim religious leaders, with pacifist, with also a leader - family leaders, tribal leaders - to say that there is a third way. And the third way is a way of non-violence, but real non-violence. When there is no attacks and aggression, there is not - there is no motivation for any repression.

Syrians asking International Community to respect their Human Rights and Geneva Convention

Second, the civilian society in Syria is upset and we are asking for human rights. Not only human rights for rebels, but human rights for the normal citizens, who are caught in between.

And we are asking also why should the combats be held in civilian areas, for example, in Aleppo, those people they came from outside. I have been talking with prelates, I have been talking with families. They don't know whom they are. They are foreigners. Either they come from Northern villages -from Idlib or from North Aleppo countryside, or they come from foreign countries. What are they doing in Aleppo? Why are they doing? Why are they funded and helped and fueled with weapons and why are they introducing themselves in between the civilian population? And then they say that the army is bombing civilian areas.

Please! Don't enter in civilian population. Don't enter in residence area. Go to the desert if you want to make your war. It is against human rights and it is against the Charter of Geneva.

Ghandi, Mandela - non-violent path the best, and finding common ground

So, I want to say to all who are looking at me, "I am a Christian, and I believe in God. I believe in Jesus Christ. Non-violence is the best way to get what we want. The non-violence. And in all good revolutions - you look at Ghandi, you look at Nelson Mandela - even, you look here, in Ireland, when you can stop violence and you can enter in a real path of dialogue, accepting the other. Sometimes you have to forget your interest. You cannot take everything. You forget it. We can arrive to a common ground. We can make a new social pact. You know.

Asks foreign powers: Please leave the Syrian people alone and don't encourage martyrs

And I want to also to ask: Let the Syrian people alone. Let the Syrian people alone! Leave us alone! You are not bringing anything else but death, fear, chaos, instability, with your big declarations and with your big assemblies, and, also, with your big powers. Leave the Syrian people alone. Enough, it's enough! Leave those people and stop funding weapons for 'rebels' you bring from I don't know what. We are crying also because those people they have a mother, they have a father, they are human beings and, sometimes, they don't know where they are. And they think that fighting in Syria or fighting where they are fighting, will open for them heaven and paradise, and this is alienating.