Earlier this week we relayed the tragic story of Rand Abdel-Qader, the Basra teenager beaten to death by her father for nursing a crush on a British soldier, an act of "honor killing" for which he not only went unpunished by the police but went on to track down someone to murder his wife as well, for the sins of bestowing on his daughter the lustful genes responsible for her crush and attempting to flee the same fate with the help of a fledgling women's rights organization. Now, usually when we tell you one of these stories, you get all "OH! Stabby! And there's nothing we can do!!" But in this case, there was something you could do, because the women's rights organization, tiny and unbanked though it may be, needs help getting the fuck out of Basra. So we put in a few emails and chatted up an enormously sweet (and hot) Baghdad-based journalist named Afif Sarhan and figured out a way to get them some money. Thanks to the magic of PayPal, we just sent over an initial installment $1,700! I've named the donors and offered some praise for good dudes after the jump.
So anyway, a lot of these donors appear to be dudes, so I'd like to give a shout out to dudes, since women's rights are human rights and it was a dude who broke this story and even if it's just you guys using your boyfriends' PayPal accounts that's still more comingling of funds than dudes in this town are generally apt to abide:
John Wignall, Andrew McNamara, Francis Mitchell, Polka Dots and Motherboards, david wilson, Robert Wynne, Gabriel Mikhael, A W Johnston, Amy Muhlberg, Eric Young, Sheep to Shawl, TS Robinson, Melissa Martin, Matthew Fredrickson, Amanda Jonsson, Jen Myers Design, Agust Elfar Johannsson, Jennifer Brunet, David Nevel, John Wignall, Fred Bremmer, Mattison Narramore, Steven Theiss, Susan Vdovichenko, Anna-Marie Carey, C Micah Pilkington, morgan gillespie, Maria Raviele, Alison Holton, alexandra dumont, Nanna Freeman, Joshua Warner, Steven Theiss, Skepchicks, Intl., Maria Walters, Staci Sontag, Susan Vdovichenko, Teri Hebert, Kelly Bray, Greg Rowan, nolto216, Diana Wadke, Amy Forbes, Sara E Royster, C Micah Pilkington, Alexandra Golaski, Tina Lawrence, Minerva Alvarez, Kristina Meshelski, Aja Hicks, Stacy Baertson, Maria Raviele, James Wylie, Brienne Callahan, Jane Hansen, Sarah Walsh, Alison Holton.
We'll keep you updated as the women (hopefully) manage to start migrating.
Love Has To Be Calculated In Iraq Today: They Think Women Are Machines
Welcome To Basra, Where Beating Your Daughter To Death Gets You High-Fived By Cops
Mom Who Fled Her Honor Killing Husband In Basra Shot Down On The Street; How You Can Help
For The Woman Of Iraq, The War Is Just Beginning [Independent]