منظمة البديل الشيوعي في العراق تنظيم شيوعي عمالي منهجه الفكري والسياسي ماركسي مستنبط من “البيان الشيوعي”
On Sunday 4/8/2024, the Iraqi parliament completed it’s first reading of the draft amendment to Personal Status Law No. 188 issued in 1959. Despite the many loopholes contained in this law and its representation of the approach and ideology of the ruling bourgeois powers and their military regime, it guarantees a minimum level of rights for women; as the custody of children is the right of mothers until the child reaches the age of fifteen, at which point he/ she chooses who to go with. It also restricts the marriage of girls under the age of 18. It punishes marriage outside the court, and limits the interference of clerics and their institutions in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and other issues that regulate legal and social relations. The proposed draft law exposes with conclusive evidence the hostility of the ruling regime and its legislative, executive and judicial institutions towards women, children and social progress. At the same time, it demonstrates the efforts of this regime and its ruling poles to consolidate and adhere to sectarianism, tribalism and the religious establishment as tools to prolong the life of the regime, which is experiencing continuous and complex crises. Therefore, it deliberately raises issues and legislates laws from time to time, such as the current draft law, and before it the legislation of the Eid al-Ghadir holiday law, and draft laws on digital content and the right to demonstrate, among others. In doing so, it extends its complete dominance over society and suppresses, through these laws, any opposing voices or movements.
At a time when the masses in Iraq are suffering from a chronic and devastating social and economic crisis, with unemployment spreading among millions of young people and large sectors of the masses suffering from poverty and high cost of living, and amidst the growing discontent and anger of these masses against the corrupt militia regime that plunders the wealth of society, and its suppression of the most basic civil and individual freedoms, the forces united in the Coordination Framework (Al-Itar Altansiqi) through a group of its parliamentarians, are taking advantage of these conditions in order to abort this popular anger, by launching the largest reactionary attack on women’s rights, freedoms and historical gains.
This, and the forces of political Islam are proposing this project at a time when Iraq is increasingly turning into an arena for passing the geopolitical, security and geo-economic interests of the regimes of Iran, America and Turkey, and amidst the escalating risks of the Israeli genocide war expanding in the Gaza Strip and turning into a regional war.
Despite the multiple forms of oppression practiced against women, the ruling reactionary forces have not been able to amend the laws related to women’s rights and all of those attempts have failed since 2003, but since the arrival of the parliament and government of the Coordination Framework (Al-Itar Altansiqi) in partnership with the Sunni sectarian forces and the Kurdish nationalist forces, a series of reactionary laws began to be enacted that tighten their grip and establish a fascist Islamic regime similar to the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The reckless pursuit of amending the Personal Status Law is a clear expression of the inferior view of women, and the escalation of their oppression and their right to life. The draft of this law strips civil courts of any decision in favor of women, and works to transfer their affairs and personal decisions entirely to the hands of the clergy through the Sunni and Shiite endowments and religious references. This matter reminds us of the church’s control over the personal and social lives of citizens in Europe in the Middle Ages. Standing up against the legislation of this reactionary law with all its strength is a struggle for all liberation, feminist, socialist and secular forces. The task of defending the rights of women and children is one of the pillars of standing up to the reactionary forces of Islamists, tribalists and nationalists. Every gain for the feminist liberation movement is a victory over the projects of the ruling bourgeois forces. Likewise, every decline in the gains achieved for women over decades of struggle constitutes a setback not only at the level of women’s rights but also at the level of the entire political liberation struggle.
The Organization of the Communist Alternative in Iraq OCAI is against the legislation of this repressive and abhorrent law, and calls on all those who object to its legislation and seek to achieve complete equality between men and women to form a broad and capable struggle line for the purpose of thwarting it.
In this context, the organization calls on the protesting masses and the campaign against the law to expose the provisions of this law, and explain and interpret its disastrous consequences on women, children and society as a whole, through protests, demonstrations and various activities. OCAI also calls on all Emancipatories around the world to stand against this law by pressuring the regime in Iraq to prevent its legislation, as well as supporting the forces opposing its legislation.
The Organization of the Communist Alternative in Iraq.
6/8/2024
