I F N

INTERNATIONAL FEMINIST NETWORK

Dear Sisters of the IFN,

After a long time of silence and waiting for more returning questionnaires and reevaluation a new IFN letter is coming to you.

For your information: many women (former IFN contacts) have not answered and never sent any feedback or copies of their protests so that we had to reduce our maiUng hst. But all of you who answered and specially you who sent personal messages or copies of your written protests are really encouraging and I want to thank you for your fidelity and your solidarity!

The times are becoming again more hostile against women (growing pornography and sex-tourism are the most obvious examples) and we must stay together very closely and help each other.

I will start with the newest cases just in at ISIS:

From the Women's Alliance for True Change (WATCH) Mindanao we got the following request: Hilda Narciso (38) and Anna Mae Morallos (24) were arrested March 24, 1983 in a raid conducted by the members of the military intelligence team R2 Recom XI. Hilda's detailed statement about her treatment, sexual abuse and rape is horrifying. We all together should condemn the inhuman and violent indignities done to Hilda, Anna Mae and therefore to all Filipino women. We denounce the violation of their basic human rights and rights to due process!

We demand that the military officers and members of the R2 military intelligence team be charged publicly before a civil court and that the maximum penalty be imposed on
erring military personnel.

demand the release of these two women whose rights have been grossly violated!

Please join us in our protest to: President Ferdinand E. Marcos Malacanang Palace Manila - Philippines

Another case comes from the Philippines: 1100 mostly female workers of Redson Textile Manufacturing Cooperation (Pasig, Metro-Manila) have been without jobs after the
owner and management unjustly and inhumanly shut down company operations last December 29. 1982.

In the light of the human rights violations and acts of unfair labor practices by Redson's management and the consequent adverse economic situation of the workers, they call on you to support their just and urgent demands

(a) stop lock-out and reinstate all the laid-off workers

(b) prepare for the a Collective Bargaining Agreement

(c) pay the workers their due benefits

Write to: Mr. Donald Dee, President and General Manager Continental Manufacturing Cooperation Pioneer St. Manufacturing Metro-Mla  Philippines

The Feminist Party together with the most progressive wings of Spanish society are in the ongoing fight for the legaUsation of Free Abortion after the Socialist Spanish Party has only agreed to depenalize abortion in three  extreme cases: (a) Danger to thepregnant woman's life (b) Rape (c) Risk of fetus malformation.

This poor project does not help the majority of women who seek abortion. And again the CathoUc Church and the Spanish Right organised a big campaign
"right to life" with a great array of economic, poUtical and human means. The Spanish women need your help and solidarity!

Please write to: Ministerio de Justicia Sr. Fernando Ledesma. Madrid — Spain.

In the morning of 11.3.83, 12 pacifist women from Italy, England, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Ireland, blockaded the entrance to the missile base in Comiso, Sicily. They sat in the road and stopped the vehicles of the workers. By this non-violent action, the women wanted to disrupt/hinder: ultimately stop the work at the base,
where at the end of the year 112 Cruise missiles are to be installed.

The women were arrested and taken to prison with the accusation of obstmction, blocking the road. After 6 days they were released provisionally and the same day they were deported out of the country under a law enacted in 1940 by Mussolini. The trial was postponed for an indefinite time. But the women are threatened by a prison sentence of from 2 to 12 years.

The action of the 12 pacifist women expresses the protest of millions of people in Sicily, Italy, Europe and in the whole world.

Women are petitioning the minister of the Interior to revoke the expulsion of the 11 women out of Sicily and to drop the accusation against the 12 women. These women acted out of responsibility for the survival of life on earth.

Please send letters to the Italian Minister of the Interior, Ministry of the Interior, Palazzo Viminale, Rome, Italy.

I would like to add a small remark to the case of Nirmala in Sri Lanka, published in the last ISIS' Bulletin. She is still detained and has hardly any possibility of seeing her family. I heard this from a friend who knows her and whom I met in the Netherlands during a workshop on "Female Sexual Slavery and Forced Prostitution It seems that the situation in Sri Lanka is aggravating so your protest is still very useful!