Seven: Europarlementariërs op toneel - Main contents
Woensdag en donderdag heb ik samen met zes collega-Europarlementariërs het toneelstuk Seven gespeeld. (Video van de repetitie op EuroparlTV) Het was indrukwekkend om de verhalen van zeven heel bijzondere vrouwen te mogen vertellen. Ik vertelde het verhaal van de Nigeriaanse Hafsat Abiola, zij was samen met Mu Sochua uit Cambodja zelf bij de uitvoering aanwezig. Om een indruk te geven van deze moedige vrouwen kan ik ze het beste zelf aan het woord laten:
Hafsat
“We don’t really know what happened. Maybe we’ll never know. And to be honest with you, it’s not so important to me how they died. The most important thing is how they lived! And I am taking up their legacy. I’ve named my organization after my mum, Kudirat. In Arabic it means power. I am working to show young women that they can have power and teach them how to reclaim it.”
Sochua
“It is hard for me to keep quiet—I want to free these refugees! I now have a raging struggle to continue working in Cambodia, helping its people recover! I know from this moment on my life is going to change!
Marina
“So I start calling social services, I call different agencies and I ask: Who can help a woman in a situation like this. And everywhere the answer is: “No one. It’s a private matter.” Well I am not ready to accept that. So I get an office and a phone and set up the domestic violence hotline.”
Farida
“All the time in the refugee camp, I dream to go to school to learn to be a doctor like my father. But we couldn’t go outside the tent or they might kidnap us or sell us to the warlords. We saw the windows of the school shot out and shut down.”
Inez
“Northern Ireland was a profoundly unjust place to live. It still is. It’s a very cold house for the poor. In the North if you challenge injustice and you’re not on the side of the status quo, you have to be on the other side!”
Mukhtar
“I set up the school in a field and go from house to house, pleading with the parents to send their daughters to school. Every day more little girls arrive with notebooks and pencils. They learn math, social studies, the English alphabet, Urdu and the Quran. But we also teach them that women are equal with men, that all of us are human beings and must be treated with respect in society.”
Anabella
“When I was a child, I make a promise to myself: I am going to pull out my mother, my brother and me from the poverty and leave this little dark room; and then I am going to pull out the women of Guatemala, the silent women and the men who have no worth in their work. I say they must not stay in silence.”