TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) -- First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking in the Tunisian capital, lashed out Friday at the Islamic fundamentalists ripping apart this tiny nation's neighbor, Algeria.
"We must speak up for the women and people of Algeria who are victims of a war that is civil in name only," Hillary Clinton exhorted to Tunisian women convening just a three-hour drive from the Algerian border.Tens of thousands of Algerians have been killed over seven years of war waged by Islamic radicals, the first lady said. "We hear stories of girls whose legs were burned with acid because someone deemed their skirts too short. We hear stories of women who were raped and pressed into slavery, women whose throats were slit and bodies thrown into a well."
Many in her Arab audience nodded as Hillary Clinton continued: "Those who perpetuate these hateful deeds pervert the great religion in whose name they claim to act."
The first lady, saying she was in Tunisia on behalf of President Clinton, also spoke out against Afghanistan, where women "are being brutalized by the Taliban once again in the name -- the misused name -- of religion," she said.
In the middle of a 12-day tour of North Africa, Hillary Clinton said she mostly wanted to celebrate Tunisia's investment in women's equality, education and health.
Tunisian first lady Leila Ben Ali said she especially wanted her American counterpart, a trained lawyer, to know that 22 percent of Tunisia's lawyers and judges are women.
But as Hillary Clinton prepared for Friday's address before about 1,000 professional women, she got a lesson on this authoritarian nation's clamps on free expression.
She sat down Thursday with a dozen of Tunisia's prominent female activists, including a film director, a human rights advocate and an opposition party member.