Posted on 03/17/2006 5:26:29 AM PST by Dark Skies
Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the Iranian regime has increased its oppressive tactics at home. The government is indeed tightening its fascist fist around the Iranian people, particularly women. It plans to segregate Iran’s pedestrian walkways on a gender basis, according to a deputy in Iran’s Parliament.
Early this March, security forces removed several hundred women spectators from an indoor stadium by force as they were watching athletes performing in the 2006 Gymnastics World Cup tournament being held in Tehran, eye-witnesses have reported. A few days earlier, State Security Forces attacked female soccer fans in Tehran after they held a defiant protest against the government decision to ban them from soccer stadiums.
And in another example of mullahs’ “justice,” an Iranian court has sentenced a female teenage rape victim named Nazanin, 18 to death by hanging after since she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her 16-year-old niece.
Iran’s theocratic government has devised a system that is unequivocally stacked against Iranian women, yet they still manage to organize and confront their oppressors. Stories of Iranian women resisting their ruling theocracy to achieve equality, justice and social rights are very compelling. This year’s commemoration of international women’s day was no different.
On the evening of the March 8th, hundreds of Iranian women took a stand in Tehran’s Laleh Park. Risking their lives, they held their defiant rally and asked that the West not pursue a policy of appeasement with the Iranian government – and instead help the Iranian people to determine their own destiny. They said that their government was spending incredible resources to develop a nuclear program while basic social imperatives go unmet. Admonishing the advocates of appeasement abroad, they said that conduct of such a tyrannical system can not be changed unless the entire ruling regime in Iran is brought down.
The government’s uniformed and secret police forces savagely attacked the coalescing crowds as seen in this video footage of the protest. Many of those participating were arrested and injured in the melee that followed. The spokesperson of the Women’s Rights Association of Iran which had organized the rally mentioned during a telephone interview* that the fate of those arrested at the gatherings could be the same as that of Zahra Kazemi.
Kazemi is the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who was murdered in 2003, after she was arrested for taking pictures outside the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. According to an eyewitness reached by phone, if authorized, thousands would have turned up in the banned rally. Among the arrested were supporters of the Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, PMOI (also known as the Mojahedin e-Khalq – MEK) who were distributing pamphlets and posters, according to a second eye-witness account.
As a former Iranian political prisoner I can say that the call of the women of Laleh Park is not dissimilar from that which I went to prison for. In the face of a clear and present threat to liberty, those who are willing to stand up will do so regardless of the risks. In Laleh Park, Iranian women risked all just to read out their resolution and to carry banners proclaiming their demands for freedom and democracy.
After 27 years, the rights of Iranian women have been virtually eliminated. Consider Iran’s constitution! Article 114 articulates the different punishments for men and women, for the same crime. Based on Article 114 a male should be placed in a pit and buried up to his waist if condemned to stoning, but women should be placed in a pit and buried up to their neck. In a case where a female manages to escape from the pit, she would subsequently be executed by firing squad, while if the male victim escapes the stoning, he is free to go.
Article 18 states that married women require their husband’s permission to apply for a passport. Article 105 indicates that a woman cannot leave home without her husband’s permission, even to attend her father’s funeral. Article 209 states that a women’s life is valued only half as much as man’s life.
The cycle of brutality takes the lives Iranians by way of public hangings several times a week. Although verifiable evidence of death sentences and government sanctioned torture exists in the pages of Iran’s state-run newspapers, much of the abuse that occurs goes unreported.
Despite the danger women face in Iran today, they will continue to confront the Iranian regime until freedom and democracy is realized in Iran. As Iran’s leading opposition figure, Maryam Rajavi, once said
“Iranian women must free themselves. Freedom does not come free and no one will ever deliver it to us on a silver platter.”
Rajavi has been elected by the major opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, to serve as Iran’s interim president for six months following the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime by her movement.
To be sure, a secular Iranian democracy has the potential to satiate the century-long aspiration of Iranians for liberty and democratic rights. The demonstrators in Laleh Park are part of a larger movement for peace, freedom and democracy in Iran, one which welcomes regime change.
*The telephone interview was conducted by the Global Coalition Against Fundamentalism with the Women Rights Association of Iran on March 8, 2006 in National Press Club, Washington DC.
Roya Johnson is vice president of the US Alliance for Democratic Iran.
Ya know, when I first started reading this article, I thought, this has the ring of MEK to it.
And sure enough, there's NCRI and Rajavi mentioned at the bottom. And the author is vice president of US Alliance for Democratic Iran, which is an MEK mouthpiece organization.
While the article reports truths regarding women's rights in Iran, it is the main talking point of the MEK, and the tool they use to try to legitimize themselves.
Beware the Rajavis
They are too cowardly to confront another man without wearing a mask.
But they display the cult's directive of oppressing women.
Shame on the so-called women's movement for staying silent.....
but in a way American feminists are on the side of the Iranian regime.....by promoting the murder of countless innocents.
Women and protests.
In Chile under the repressive Pinochet regime, women held the march of the pots and pans. Thousands of women marched, beating pots and pans together making lots of noise. Iranian women could do this too. Hope they are reading this thread. If anyone knows a good Iranian blog site, could you send this idea to them?
Women ejected by force from Iran stadium
Mon. 06 Mar 2006
Tehran, Iran, Mar. 06 – Iranian security officers forcefully removed several hundred women spectators from an indoor stadium as they were watching athletes performing in the 2006 Gymnastics World Cup tournament being held in Tehran, eye-witnesses reported.
The action took place on the opening day of the tournaments as fans gathered in Tehran’s 12,000-seater Azadi indoor stadium to watch the international gymnasts compete.
Little more than 10 minutes after the start of the games, intelligence officials from the government’s sports institution entered the stalls of the arena and demanded that all women exit the facility.
Among those asked to leave were several female translators for the international teams that were competing on the day.
As the roughly 250 women were being led out, a number began to protest loudly and chanted slogans against gender inequality in the Islamic Republic.
Some international athletes took photos of the women being forced out.
On Wednesday, Iran’s State Security Forces attacked female football fans in Tehran after they held a defiant protest against the government decision to ban women from football stadiums.
Dozens of young women, who had bought tickets and hoped to cheer on their national team, were all banned from entering Tehran’s 100,000-seater open-air Azadi Stadium.
After being refused entry into the stands, the women organised a demonstration outside the stadium and quickly brought to the scene banners which read, “Azadi Stadium: 100,000 men-only arena” and “We also want to cheer on our national team”.
The ban on women watching male athletes performing in stadiums has been in force for years, but a few dozen women have challenged it in recent months. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line government recently decided to enforce the ban more stringently.
Iranian regime erases progress on women's rights
Wed. 08 Mar 2006
The Washington Times
By Xin Li
Despite Interna tional Women's Day celebrations today, women in Iran still struggle for basic rights. The country's conservative authorities forbid women from simple activities such as watching the World Cup qualifying soccer game live in a stadium.
More prominent are restrictions on their legal and civil rights.
Women in Iran can inherit only half as much of their parents' wealth as their brothers.
Their husbands can marry more than one woman, and automatically get custody of children after a divorce. Women can be jailed or hanged for defying the dress code, and they can be stoned to death for adultery.
Since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah, the fundamentalist governments dominated by clerics have stressed the traditional role of women and restricted their civil rights and participation in political activities.
"The changes of women's conditions are very minor, only about surface things. But the limitations on basic rights and the legislation infrastructure haven't been changed at all," said Mahnaz Afkhami, president of Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development and Peace, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington.
Iranian women are better-educated and more politically sophisticated than many of their Muslim neighbors. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization reports that the literacy rate of Iranian women is 70 percent, compared with an average 46.2 percent in the Middle East.
A large number of Iranian women hold professional jobs in journalism, medicine or law, or become human-rights activists. Up to 70 percent of university students in Iran are female, said Swanee Hunt, director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Squelched opportunities
Women's active engagement in society, however, has been met with increasing oppression from the regime.
In June, Iran's Guardian Council, a conservative constitutional watchdog, barred all 81 female presidential candidates on the basis of their sex. Women are beaten or jailed for wearing clothes or makeup regarded as insufficiently modest, the State Department said in a 2004 human-rights report.
Islamic countries have various interpretations of religious law, resulting in different levels of sex disparities, but the authority of Islamic law cannot be changed easily. Eleven countries have Islam as a source of legislation, and 21 others have religious clauses in their laws, said Mohamed Mattar, a law professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Much has changed within the Islamic framework, Mr. Mattar said. "There might be some gender inequalities by international-rights standard, but it's up to interpretation. You can interpret it in a way to protect women's rights."
The marriageable age for Iranian women can be a barometer of progress toward equal rights.
The pro-Western Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, instituted the Family Protection Law in 1967 that raised the marriageable age of women to 18.
Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, ending more than 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. He canceled the law, announced that women no longer could be judges, and segregated beaches and sports by sex. The marriageable age was reduced to 9.
In 1997, massive support from women made Mohammed Khatami, a moderate clergyman and reformist, president, said Azar Nafisi, a writer and literary scholar at Johns Hopkins University.
Reforms that were carried out included raising the marriageable age of girls to 13 and referring divorces to the court system. But Mr. Khatami was unable to challenge the religious power, and his reforms fell short of the expectations of many Iranians and encountered a setback with the presidential election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year.
"And in another example of mullahs’ “justice,” an Iranian court has sentenced a female teenage rape victim named Nazanin, 18 to death by hanging after since she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her 16-year-old niece."
How could this be like that? God Justice? It is a joke!!! The man should hang instead of woman! This is sick joke of Justice I haven't heard of this. Down the stupid and ugly law! Why nobody stop and defend the innocent!!!
I'll pass it on
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.