Articles by Dr. Saadawi

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15 November 1999

Statement For the Jubilee Summit 2000 in South Africa*

By Nawal El Saadawi

Dear Delegates,

I join my voice to your voices to fight against this Global Capitalist military system that creates the debt crisis and other problems which the majority of the world`s population face every day .

We need to put the debt crisis in the context of the political and economic domination of neo- colonial powers in the North. At the Cologne G7 Summit , campaigns from the South united around the call " Don`t owe, Won`t pay " . Now we need more new ideas and efforts to create a strong united movement working continuously ( not only in Summit meetings ) to stop the machine of exploitation nationally and internationally . It is a greedy , aggressive machine used by the very few in the North and their agencies in the South to rob the majority of people of their wealth and health .

We need to unveil the new techniques of exploitation and deception , to demystify the post - modern language and innocent words like democracy , development , globalisation , stability , security , spirituality , love and peace . More and more of our people are killed under the name of god and peace . More and more of our people die of starvation under the name of development .

Neocolanialism and religious revival are two faces of the same coin . You cannot veil the minds of people without some kind of divine power , hidden behind the clouds .

We need to oblige local governments in the South to stop serving the multinational economic powers ( including the World Bank ) and not only to stop servicing the debt .

We need preventive treatment of the debt and not only curative treatment . We have to eradicate the original causes of the debt and not only ask the North to cancel it or forgive it . Who forgives who ? The debt owed by the South to the North is a deception . It ignores who has profited from this World Economic Order and who has been robbed . It asks the exploited to bear the burden and pay the price of injustice and not the exploiters . It punishes the victim and this is the core of the slave system which govern our world until today .

The North not the South need forgiveness , for this continuous pillage of our resources under inexhaustible deceiving benevolence . Let us break this vicious circle of the neo-colonial era and not the post-colonial , as they say .

Nawal El Saadawi
Egypt
President of the Arab Women`s Solidarity Association

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