Source: To take action please visit Human Rights First website.
Help Free Iranian Women's Rights Leaders: Campaigning for Equality is not a Crime
On Sunday, March 4, Iranian police arrested and jailed 33 women gathered in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The women were peacefully supporting five women scheduled to be tried for organizing a demonstration last year. Eight of the women detained outside the court were released on Tuesday, March 6, but 25 women remain in Tehran's Evin Prison.
We are concerned that more arrests could take place on March 8, International Women's Day.
Authorities violently broke up a peaceful gathering in support of women's equality before Iranian law in June 2006, arresting dozens. Five of those arrested are being prosecuted for exercising their basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
With your help, we can add to mounting international pressure on the Iranian government to release the 25 activists immediately and to stop arresting peaceful human rights defenders.
Please take action to show your support for women's human rights advocates in Iran.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
8 women have been released
8 of arrested women have been released under personal surety. They are:Parastoo Dokoohaki, Sara Laghayi, Saghi Laghayi, Niloofar Golkar, Parastoo Sarmadi, Nahid Entesari, Farideh Entesari and Sara Imanian.
They also confirmed the news about the hunger strike of other women who are still in prison.
They also said, Shahla Entesari is kept in solitary confinement.
Persian source:zanestan
They also confirmed the news about the hunger strike of other women who are still in prison.
They also said, Shahla Entesari is kept in solitary confinement.
Persian source:zanestan
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Source: Amnesty International
AI Index: MDE 13/022/2007 (Public)News Service No: 044 5 March 2007
AI Index: MDE 13/022/2007 (Public)News Service No: 044 5 March 2007
Iran: Arrests of women may be an attempt to prevent International Women's Day calls for equality
Amnesty International today called for the immediate and unconditional release of over 30 women activists who were arrested on Sunday, 4 March while staging a peaceful demonstration in Tehran. The organization believes the arrests may be intended to deter activists from organizing events to mark International Women's Day on 8 March.
The women were arrested outside Tehran's Revolutionary Court, where they had gathered to protest at the trial of five women charged in connection with a demonstration held on 12 June 2006 to demand that women be given equal rights with men under the law in Iran. The June demonstration was violently dispersed by security forces, who arrested at least 70 people.
"Rather than arresting peaceful demonstrators, the Iranian authorities should be taking seriously women's demands for equality before the law and addressing discrimination against women wherever it exists in the Iranian legal system," said Irene Khan, Amnesty International's Secretary General. "We worry that the women detained yesterday may be kept in detention until after 8 March, a day on which they were planning to campaign for their internationally recognized right to equality."
Those arrested on Sunday, who included at least four of the five on trial, were taken to the Vozara Department for Social Corruption, a detention centre usually used for people accused of minor crimes, such as violations of the dress code. Family members of those detained are said to have gone to the Vozara Building in an attempt to gain access and secure the release of their relatives, without success. According to reports, all the women were later transferred to Section 209 of Evin Prison, which is run by the Ministry of Intelligence and is outside the control of Iran's prison service.
Background
Those arrested in the 12 June 2006 demonstration include Fariba Davoodi Mohajer, Shahla Entesari, Noushin Ahmadi Khorassani, Parvin Ardalan and Sussan Tahmasebi. All had been summoned to appear before Branch 6 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran on charges of "propaganda against the system", "acting against national security" and "participating in an illegal demonstration".
Others have also been charged in connection with the 12 June demonstration, but have not yet been summoned to court. Another, Zhila Bani Ya'qoub, a journalist who was among those arrested on 4 March, was tried and acquitted in January 2007 on a charge of participating in an illegal demonstration relating to the 12 June demonstration.
In August 2006, Iranian women's rights activists launched a "Campaign for Equality", aimed at collecting a million signatures from Iranians in support of changes to the law to end legalised discrimination against women. The campaign's website has been filtered by the Iranian authorities on several occasions in recent weeks, making it difficult for people in Iran to access information about the campaign. Amnesty International is supporting this campaign and will issue a joint statement calling for equal rights for women in Iran on International Women's Day with Iranian lawyer and prominent human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Arrested women started their hunger strike
All 33 arrested women started their hunger strike. Nooshin Ahmadi Khorasani said to her husband Javad Moosavi Khoozestani in a short phone conversation that this was a group decision that they made at the lunch time. The hunger strike is started because the officials promised women to release the younger people among the group today but they didn’t so.
Persian source: Zanestan
Persian source: Zanestan
Monday, March 5, 2007
Nobel Women's Initiative took an action
Source: Nobel Women's Initiative
Another Attack on the Rights of Iranian Women Activists
(5 March 2007) More than 32 women were arrested on Sunday, March 4th, and charged with endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering. The women were protesting outside a courthouse in Tehran to demand a fair trial for five prominent women’s rights activists arrested last June during a peaceful protest in support of women’s rights. The June protest turned violent as police used force to disburse the crowd and arrested over 70 people. Mirroring the former protests, those in attendance on Sunday have given appalling reports of police brutality as well.
The women on trial - Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani; Parvin Ardalan; Sussan Tahmasebi; Shahla Entesari; and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer – left the courtroom in support of the demonstrations taking place and were promptly arrested along with their lawyer.
These latest arrests signal yet another crackdown on rights activists in Iran. Last month three journalists and women’s rights activists were detained without charge while on their way to India to participate in a journalism workshop.
Radio Free Europe- Radio Liberty
Source: Radio Free Europe- Radio Liberty
Iran: Activists Arrested Ahead Of International Women's Day
By Golnaz Esfandiari
March 5, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested in Tehran for protesting against government pressure being put on women's rights activists.
The women had gathered outside a court in Tehran on March 4 to show their support for four women's rights activists who went on trial that day for organizing a protest last summer against discriminatory laws. Reports say many of the protesters and the activists are now in jail. The arrests are the culmination of a year of increasing pressure on women's rights activists, who have been arrested, summoned to court, threatened, and harassed. Their protests have also been disrupted -- in some cases violently -- and their websites have been blocked.
MORE: Coverage in Farsi from Radio Farda.
Trying To Silence Activists
Some observers believe the arrests are aimed at intimidating activists who were planning to hold a gathering on March 8 to mark International Women's Day and to protest injustice against women. The move is also seen as an attempt to silence activists who have been fighting for equal rights. Many of those who had called for holding a protest in front of the parliament on March 8 are now in jail. Iranian rights groups report that between 30 and 34 women who were arrested are being held in Tehran's Evin Prison. Among them are four top women's movement leaders: Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmassebi, and Shahla Entesari.
Right To Freely Assemble
They went on trial on March 4 in connection with a June gathering against laws that they consider discriminatory against women. Charges against them include acting against Iran's national interests and participating in an illegal gathering. The four leaders were arrested after they left the court and joined other women who had gathered outside Tehran's revolutionary court. They were reportedly holding banners that said: "Holding peaceful gatherings is our absolute right." Shahla Entesari (kosoof.com)Activists say the Iranian Constitution ensures the right to holding a peaceful gathering. Yet police forces disrupted the activists on March 4 and drove the women away in minibuses. Peyman Aref, a student activist in Tehran, told Radio Farda that police used force against demonstrators. "They were threatened and they were also beaten up," Aref said. "The crowd -- [which] included more than 50 people -- tried to resist by sitting on the ground and not reacting to the beatings. Finally, around 10:00, female police came and the activists were arrested."
Reaction To Activists' Campaigns?
During the June demonstration, which was also violently dispersed by police, some 70 people were arrested. All of them have since been released. An Iranian rights group, the Student Committee of the Human Rights Reporters, said today that the families of some of those arrested on March 4 gathered in front of Evin Prison and called for their release. Authorities have said they are investigating the case. Azadeh Kian, a lecturer in political science and an Iran researcher at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), believes women's rights advocates are being targeted in connection with two campaigns they have launched in recent months. One campaign aims to end the practice of stoning to death convicted adulterers. Authorities, however, deny that stoning sentences are being carried out. Another campaign aims to gather the signatures of one million Iranians who are in favor of changing discriminatory laws and to present these signatures to the parliament. Islamic laws as applied in Iran deny women equal rights in divorce, child custody, inheritance, and other areas. Kian tells RFE/RL that the campaigns have been well received, leading to concern among Iranian leaders.
'Intolerance For Human Rights'
Parvin Ardalan (undated kosoof.com file photo)"The goal of women's rights activists is to gain the support of women from different classes who are in favor of changing the laws but have so far not joined the women's movement," Kian said. "This leads to concern among some of those in power in Iran about the implications of these actions. I see the arrests of activists [on March 4] in this relation; it shows that more and more women want changes in laws and also that women's issues are in fact becoming more and more political." Human rights groups have expressed concern over the pressure and persecution of women's rights advocates, including those who are calling for reform legislation. Kian says that by arresting peaceful activists, Iranian leaders are demonstrating their intolerance and lack of respect for human rights. "It shows once more that under the Islamic establishment, especially under the current government, there is no respect for human rights principles," Kian said. "These women were arrested even though they had not committed any violent or armed action against the establishment. None of the demands of these women are against Islam. This shows that the current government is not ready to accept even the slightest opposition." The Center of Human Rights Defenders, cofounded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, today described the March 4 arrests as "illegal" and called on authorities to release all of those arrested.
Amnesty International U.S.A issued an urgent action
Source : Amnesty International U.S.A
AMNESTY INTERNATIONALPRESS RELEASEAI Index: MDE 13/022/2007 (Public)News Service No: 044 5 March 2007
Iran: Arrests of women may be an attempt to prevent International Women's Day calls for equality
An article by Golbarg Bashi
Source: Payvand
3/5/07
Shedding Crocodile Tears
By Golbarg Bashi
On Sunday March 4th 2007, more than thirty two women's rights activists were arrested after they had peacefully gathered in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran to protest the trial of five of their fellow activists. The five were being tried for "organizing a protest last June against [unequal gender] laws…[and for] endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering."[1] According to various news agencies, this "gathering was to protest the recent state pressures on women's rights defenders".[2]
According to Iran-e Emrooz and other sources, "the organizers of the two major current campaigns, "Stop Stoning Forever," and "One Million Signatures to Change the Discriminatory Law," have been among the women rights defenders [arrested] by the National Security Police." The New York-based Human Rights Watch has highlighted these arrests and demanded that the Islamic Republic "end its prosecution of…women's rights advocates for exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly"[3]. Furthermore, Iranian bloggers have been active in their quick and extensive coverage of events inside Iran[4]—thus, generating tremendous international attention to these violations.
As it is known to most observes and citizens of Iran, the Islamic Republic is a horrendous gender apartheid state, one where within family law in particular women are treated as second rate beings, are discriminated against culturally, and in the repressive political atmosphere, both feminists as well as civil rights activists are continuously censored, arrested, harassed and even murdered. The Islamic Republic is responsible for the torture and killing of tens of thousands of dissidents since it came to power in 1979 through the militant repression of all other political movements that have an equal claim on the Iranian polity (nationalists, socialists and feminists). This particular persecution, harassment, and incarceration of women's rights activists is yet another indication of the violent criminalisation of dissent within the state apparatus of the Islamic Republic. But at the same time it is a clear indication that what we are witnessing in Iran is a grass-roots movement of unprecedented dimensions.
Women's rights activists have since the presidency of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2005 come under increasing attack, while their activism has flourished even further, and taken on ever-more bolder manifestations. In recent years, coalitions of individual women activists, associations and NGOs have effectively mobilised themselves in public and online, demanding their constitutional civil rights and an end to legal discrimination in the Islamic Republic. As such the Iranian women's movement has entered a "new, more daring and organically rooted, phase"[5].
As witnessed by activists as well as scholars in and outside Iran, the Iranian women's movement has never been as socially multifaceted, ideologically diverse and politically bold as it is today. While during the Pahlavi era, women's rights activists were ushered either under the state-controlled imperial women's organisations (and their achievements claimed by Ashraf Pahlavi's WHO or else appropriated in Mahnaz Afkhami's monarchist historiography),[6] or else evident in the guerrilla-based and male dominated oppositional groups, today's women activists and ordinary citizens have united under some basic but clear demands vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic. They have called for an immediate "end to discriminatory laws against women", have set up highly active networks and web sites with hundreds of new essays on various topics dealing with feminist concerns, children's rights and democracy, have gathered peacefully in public, staged acts of civil disobedience, and thus gained much global attention[7]. Iranian women are also at the forefront of literacy, educational, artistic, journalistic, and legal advancements unmatched in the entire Western Asia.
This however is not to paint an overly rosy picture of women's activism in Iran. Inside Iran, women's activism is also caught in all kinds of non-constructive dead-ends—reformists vs. conservatives, seculars vs. religious, etc. Moreover, Iranian women activists are mainly concentrated in the capital and are middle class and Persian-speaking. As such, they are not part of the global feminist debate, which could be very helpful to the growth of an Iranian anti-racist, anti-war transnational feminism[8]. Be that as it may, over the last few years, we are beginning to see major improvements in coalition building and mobilisation against the atrocities of the Islamic Republic.
As even more courageous women's rights activists are, again, arbitrarily arrested in the Islamic Republic, and new and more hopeful signs of coalition building become evident, one may rightly wonder what precisely is the role of women's rights activists outside Iran in these historic moments. Here, apart from the work of a handful of feminist scholars who are doing some groundbreaking work in the quiet corners of their scholarship and a few globally-minded activists, alas, the scene is one of astounding hypocrisy and opportunism. A band of self-appointed secular (as they dub themselves) fundamentalist "lumpen-activists" has now developed the habit of shedding crocodile tears every time women activists inside Iran are arrested. These secular fundamentalist "activists" who are ordinarily busy vilifying and raging against "Islam" and "Muslims" shoulder to shoulder with such racist frauds as Hirsi Ali[9] are again in full gear, stealing the noble cause of women's rights activism inside Iran. As perhaps best represented in the work and speeches of a certain Chahla Chafiq (a principal collaborator with a fraudulent and racist opportunist like Hirsi Ali, chiefly responsible for creating a wide-range of hatred in Europe against Muslims), this barefaced hypocrisy usually moves into full gear as soon as the international spotlight is on the legitimate and acute situation of activists who have been hard at work for decades inside the Iranian theocracy. From the safe distance of their bastion in Frankfurt, Toronto, Paris, Stockholm, London, or Los Angeles, and lucratively provided for by the widespread anti-Muslim and racist sentiments in Western Europe and North America, these lumpen-activists have not for once shown any remorse nor even contemplated their ignoble, parasitical and inorganic role in the humiliation of millions of Muslims, noble women activists inside Iran, and for mudding a multifaceted and emancipatory discourse into "you're either with us, or against us".
This gang of lumpen-hecklers is known and feared for their constant harassments at meetings and conferences, their sabotaging of democratic events, their scandalising and bullying of veiled women, and their intimidation of Iranian women scholars and activists who have attended European and North American conferences. This is all when they are not busy siding with racist policies towards Muslims in Western Europe (to ban veiling in public spaces, for example, or denigrating Muslim communities into subhuman entities and calling "Islam" the "greatest threat to humanity"), or else publicly insulting women's rights activists like Shirin Ebadi or Mehrangiz Kar, distinguished scholars such as the late Parvin Paidar and scores of women's rights activists inside Iran.
These very same Iranian women who are now arrested in Iran, and over whose arrest these lumpen secular fundamentalists are now shedding crocodile tears, would be the subject of terrorising ridicule and shameless insult if they dared to come to Western Europe or North America to present a paper or report of their activities. The lumpen fundamentalists, the functional equivalents of the Hezbollahis inside Iran, pretend to admire these Iranian activists inside Iran only when they get arrested, incarcerated, and silenced. But the second they dare to come out and participate in an international conference (and thus expose the utter uselessness of the secular fundamentalists) they become the targets of the vilest and most vicious attacks for the singular sin of living and working inside the Islamic Republic. I have been personally a witness to repeated insults in IWSF (Iranian Women's Studies Foundation's) annual gatherings against as prominent Iranian women as Mehrangiz Kar and as dedicated and courageous women as Shadi Sadr who are working against all odds inside Iran and occasionally come out to conferences to present a paper or report of their activities. Rarely in history of women's rights activism has an expatriate community been so utterly useless and in fact terrorising and counterproductive in the fate of a people they pretend to represent.
Judging from the names and backgrounds of those courageous Iranian women arrested in Iran (those whose lives are now in danger in the dungeons of a criminal theocracy) they come from a broad range of ideological persuasions and classes—and yet they are all united in their call on the Islamic Republic to end legal discrimination against women. While inside Iran, a vicious theocracy is squeezing progressive intellectuals and activists, outside Iran a whitewashed Iranian "feminism" has degenerated into a racist, reactionary and utterly useless fixation with anti-Muslim fanaticism. In Europe and North America, lumpen-activists keep celebrating an unexamined "secularism" as if once we obtain "secularism" all will automatically be well, as if all women of all classes and colours in the U.S. or France have achieved equality, peace and equanimity. This insular, useless, parochial, illiterate, and ghettoised "feminism" has plenty in common with the neo-conservative ideology now wreaking havoc around the globe. They use the same racist imagery that only the most rightwing and bigoted newspapers in Europe would display to prove the "backwardness" of Muslims. Then when you'd think this "activism" couldn't get any viler, they shed crocodile tears over the fate of arrested veiled women in Iran. They take advantage of being older, more artificially experienced, louder in their vulgar disposition, and even of the simple fact that they have a more streetwise command of Persian to intimidate, frighten, and denigrate the younger generation of feminists and activists, whom they condescendingly dismiss as "nasl-e dovvomi-ha." In IWSF gatherings, I have been personally witness to outrageous intimidation tactics of this squad of secular fundamentalists ganging up against any single voice of dissent that disagrees with them. A band of half-literate, barely educated, and intellectually ghettoized ideologues, more often than not with a pitiful command over the language and culture of their host countries, repeatedly and systematically humiliate and denigrate a younger generation that attends these conferences for intellectual engagement and feminist solidarity. And then this banality has the audacity to issue one nauseating fatwa after another about the fate of women's rights movement inside Iran or Muslim women's predicaments world-wide, about which they know next to nothing and against its leadership they harbour nothing but hatred, jealousy and anger.[10]
On the adjacent side of this barefaced hypocrisy of lumpen-activists we have the overtly right-wing Iranian women memoirists[11] in the U.S. who as an Iranian web site unwittingly announces, "are hot these days!" In the post-9/11 era and in the U.S. in particular, "Iranian women" who classify as "modern, secular, unapologetic, extremely intelligent, media savvy…[are] getting much deserved media attention". To be qualified for the honorary degree of "extremely intelligent" and thus secure "media attention" one must be "secular" and look exactly like the white women who thus bestows these epithets on Iranian expatriate bourgeoisie. Thus millions of working class, rural or religious women in Iran can automatically go to hell—they'd be too backward for the U.S. or even Western European media to be allowed to represent themselves.
Inside Iran, a grass roots and heroic activism is now in grave danger. In addition to their own groundbreaking efforts, the women's rights activists in Iran need our moral support and critical affinity with their glorious uprising against theocracy and systemic prejudice written into the very letter of Islamic law. The opposite side of that Islamic law is not a bland notion of "modernity" and "Eurocentrism". A blind celebration of an unexamined "modernity" is to me the "sealing their approval of global injustice and racism towards 1.5 billion people"[12] and the poor, the hungry, the working-class and the racialised, marginalised, and disenfranchised people living right in the heart of the Western metropolis. Empty rhetorical slogans or tear-jerking stories about the terrible and misogynist Islamic culture, or alternatively the wondrous freedoms of the "Western world", does not amount to joining the struggle of Iranian women for their civil and human rights. The choice isn't between a self-promoting racist like Hirsi Ali and a petite-tyrant like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The future is much brighter than these two identical twin bats can see.
3/5/07
Shedding Crocodile Tears
By Golbarg Bashi
On Sunday March 4th 2007, more than thirty two women's rights activists were arrested after they had peacefully gathered in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran to protest the trial of five of their fellow activists. The five were being tried for "organizing a protest last June against [unequal gender] laws…[and for] endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering."[1] According to various news agencies, this "gathering was to protest the recent state pressures on women's rights defenders".[2]
According to Iran-e Emrooz and other sources, "the organizers of the two major current campaigns, "Stop Stoning Forever," and "One Million Signatures to Change the Discriminatory Law," have been among the women rights defenders [arrested] by the National Security Police." The New York-based Human Rights Watch has highlighted these arrests and demanded that the Islamic Republic "end its prosecution of…women's rights advocates for exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly"[3]. Furthermore, Iranian bloggers have been active in their quick and extensive coverage of events inside Iran[4]—thus, generating tremendous international attention to these violations.
As it is known to most observes and citizens of Iran, the Islamic Republic is a horrendous gender apartheid state, one where within family law in particular women are treated as second rate beings, are discriminated against culturally, and in the repressive political atmosphere, both feminists as well as civil rights activists are continuously censored, arrested, harassed and even murdered. The Islamic Republic is responsible for the torture and killing of tens of thousands of dissidents since it came to power in 1979 through the militant repression of all other political movements that have an equal claim on the Iranian polity (nationalists, socialists and feminists). This particular persecution, harassment, and incarceration of women's rights activists is yet another indication of the violent criminalisation of dissent within the state apparatus of the Islamic Republic. But at the same time it is a clear indication that what we are witnessing in Iran is a grass-roots movement of unprecedented dimensions.
Women's rights activists have since the presidency of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2005 come under increasing attack, while their activism has flourished even further, and taken on ever-more bolder manifestations. In recent years, coalitions of individual women activists, associations and NGOs have effectively mobilised themselves in public and online, demanding their constitutional civil rights and an end to legal discrimination in the Islamic Republic. As such the Iranian women's movement has entered a "new, more daring and organically rooted, phase"[5].
As witnessed by activists as well as scholars in and outside Iran, the Iranian women's movement has never been as socially multifaceted, ideologically diverse and politically bold as it is today. While during the Pahlavi era, women's rights activists were ushered either under the state-controlled imperial women's organisations (and their achievements claimed by Ashraf Pahlavi's WHO or else appropriated in Mahnaz Afkhami's monarchist historiography),[6] or else evident in the guerrilla-based and male dominated oppositional groups, today's women activists and ordinary citizens have united under some basic but clear demands vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic. They have called for an immediate "end to discriminatory laws against women", have set up highly active networks and web sites with hundreds of new essays on various topics dealing with feminist concerns, children's rights and democracy, have gathered peacefully in public, staged acts of civil disobedience, and thus gained much global attention[7]. Iranian women are also at the forefront of literacy, educational, artistic, journalistic, and legal advancements unmatched in the entire Western Asia.
This however is not to paint an overly rosy picture of women's activism in Iran. Inside Iran, women's activism is also caught in all kinds of non-constructive dead-ends—reformists vs. conservatives, seculars vs. religious, etc. Moreover, Iranian women activists are mainly concentrated in the capital and are middle class and Persian-speaking. As such, they are not part of the global feminist debate, which could be very helpful to the growth of an Iranian anti-racist, anti-war transnational feminism[8]. Be that as it may, over the last few years, we are beginning to see major improvements in coalition building and mobilisation against the atrocities of the Islamic Republic.
As even more courageous women's rights activists are, again, arbitrarily arrested in the Islamic Republic, and new and more hopeful signs of coalition building become evident, one may rightly wonder what precisely is the role of women's rights activists outside Iran in these historic moments. Here, apart from the work of a handful of feminist scholars who are doing some groundbreaking work in the quiet corners of their scholarship and a few globally-minded activists, alas, the scene is one of astounding hypocrisy and opportunism. A band of self-appointed secular (as they dub themselves) fundamentalist "lumpen-activists" has now developed the habit of shedding crocodile tears every time women activists inside Iran are arrested. These secular fundamentalist "activists" who are ordinarily busy vilifying and raging against "Islam" and "Muslims" shoulder to shoulder with such racist frauds as Hirsi Ali[9] are again in full gear, stealing the noble cause of women's rights activism inside Iran. As perhaps best represented in the work and speeches of a certain Chahla Chafiq (a principal collaborator with a fraudulent and racist opportunist like Hirsi Ali, chiefly responsible for creating a wide-range of hatred in Europe against Muslims), this barefaced hypocrisy usually moves into full gear as soon as the international spotlight is on the legitimate and acute situation of activists who have been hard at work for decades inside the Iranian theocracy. From the safe distance of their bastion in Frankfurt, Toronto, Paris, Stockholm, London, or Los Angeles, and lucratively provided for by the widespread anti-Muslim and racist sentiments in Western Europe and North America, these lumpen-activists have not for once shown any remorse nor even contemplated their ignoble, parasitical and inorganic role in the humiliation of millions of Muslims, noble women activists inside Iran, and for mudding a multifaceted and emancipatory discourse into "you're either with us, or against us".
This gang of lumpen-hecklers is known and feared for their constant harassments at meetings and conferences, their sabotaging of democratic events, their scandalising and bullying of veiled women, and their intimidation of Iranian women scholars and activists who have attended European and North American conferences. This is all when they are not busy siding with racist policies towards Muslims in Western Europe (to ban veiling in public spaces, for example, or denigrating Muslim communities into subhuman entities and calling "Islam" the "greatest threat to humanity"), or else publicly insulting women's rights activists like Shirin Ebadi or Mehrangiz Kar, distinguished scholars such as the late Parvin Paidar and scores of women's rights activists inside Iran.
These very same Iranian women who are now arrested in Iran, and over whose arrest these lumpen secular fundamentalists are now shedding crocodile tears, would be the subject of terrorising ridicule and shameless insult if they dared to come to Western Europe or North America to present a paper or report of their activities. The lumpen fundamentalists, the functional equivalents of the Hezbollahis inside Iran, pretend to admire these Iranian activists inside Iran only when they get arrested, incarcerated, and silenced. But the second they dare to come out and participate in an international conference (and thus expose the utter uselessness of the secular fundamentalists) they become the targets of the vilest and most vicious attacks for the singular sin of living and working inside the Islamic Republic. I have been personally a witness to repeated insults in IWSF (Iranian Women's Studies Foundation's) annual gatherings against as prominent Iranian women as Mehrangiz Kar and as dedicated and courageous women as Shadi Sadr who are working against all odds inside Iran and occasionally come out to conferences to present a paper or report of their activities. Rarely in history of women's rights activism has an expatriate community been so utterly useless and in fact terrorising and counterproductive in the fate of a people they pretend to represent.
Judging from the names and backgrounds of those courageous Iranian women arrested in Iran (those whose lives are now in danger in the dungeons of a criminal theocracy) they come from a broad range of ideological persuasions and classes—and yet they are all united in their call on the Islamic Republic to end legal discrimination against women. While inside Iran, a vicious theocracy is squeezing progressive intellectuals and activists, outside Iran a whitewashed Iranian "feminism" has degenerated into a racist, reactionary and utterly useless fixation with anti-Muslim fanaticism. In Europe and North America, lumpen-activists keep celebrating an unexamined "secularism" as if once we obtain "secularism" all will automatically be well, as if all women of all classes and colours in the U.S. or France have achieved equality, peace and equanimity. This insular, useless, parochial, illiterate, and ghettoised "feminism" has plenty in common with the neo-conservative ideology now wreaking havoc around the globe. They use the same racist imagery that only the most rightwing and bigoted newspapers in Europe would display to prove the "backwardness" of Muslims. Then when you'd think this "activism" couldn't get any viler, they shed crocodile tears over the fate of arrested veiled women in Iran. They take advantage of being older, more artificially experienced, louder in their vulgar disposition, and even of the simple fact that they have a more streetwise command of Persian to intimidate, frighten, and denigrate the younger generation of feminists and activists, whom they condescendingly dismiss as "nasl-e dovvomi-ha." In IWSF gatherings, I have been personally witness to outrageous intimidation tactics of this squad of secular fundamentalists ganging up against any single voice of dissent that disagrees with them. A band of half-literate, barely educated, and intellectually ghettoized ideologues, more often than not with a pitiful command over the language and culture of their host countries, repeatedly and systematically humiliate and denigrate a younger generation that attends these conferences for intellectual engagement and feminist solidarity. And then this banality has the audacity to issue one nauseating fatwa after another about the fate of women's rights movement inside Iran or Muslim women's predicaments world-wide, about which they know next to nothing and against its leadership they harbour nothing but hatred, jealousy and anger.[10]
On the adjacent side of this barefaced hypocrisy of lumpen-activists we have the overtly right-wing Iranian women memoirists[11] in the U.S. who as an Iranian web site unwittingly announces, "are hot these days!" In the post-9/11 era and in the U.S. in particular, "Iranian women" who classify as "modern, secular, unapologetic, extremely intelligent, media savvy…[are] getting much deserved media attention". To be qualified for the honorary degree of "extremely intelligent" and thus secure "media attention" one must be "secular" and look exactly like the white women who thus bestows these epithets on Iranian expatriate bourgeoisie. Thus millions of working class, rural or religious women in Iran can automatically go to hell—they'd be too backward for the U.S. or even Western European media to be allowed to represent themselves.
Inside Iran, a grass roots and heroic activism is now in grave danger. In addition to their own groundbreaking efforts, the women's rights activists in Iran need our moral support and critical affinity with their glorious uprising against theocracy and systemic prejudice written into the very letter of Islamic law. The opposite side of that Islamic law is not a bland notion of "modernity" and "Eurocentrism". A blind celebration of an unexamined "modernity" is to me the "sealing their approval of global injustice and racism towards 1.5 billion people"[12] and the poor, the hungry, the working-class and the racialised, marginalised, and disenfranchised people living right in the heart of the Western metropolis. Empty rhetorical slogans or tear-jerking stories about the terrible and misogynist Islamic culture, or alternatively the wondrous freedoms of the "Western world", does not amount to joining the struggle of Iranian women for their civil and human rights. The choice isn't between a self-promoting racist like Hirsi Ali and a petite-tyrant like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The future is much brighter than these two identical twin bats can see.
United Republicans of Iran calls for an immediate and unconditional release of women activist arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Source : United Republicans of Iran
For a Democratic and Secular Republic
703-850-7311
www.iranrepublic.org
international@jomhouri.com
Imprisoned Women
Must be Released Immediately
March 4, 2007
United Republicans of Iran calls for an immediate and unconditional release of women activist arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
These women were attacked and arrested while holding a peaceful vigil in front of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, protesting a recent crackdown on their activities and summoning their leaders before the courts.
Discriminatory laws of the Islamic Republic have made the brave women of Iran a second class citizen.
Since the revolution of 1979 in Iran the women have been at the forefront of the civil and democratic movement. They had waged a campaign to collect one million signatures to force the Iranian Government to change the laws.
URI calls upon all freedom-loving people of the world to contact the Iranian Embassies in their country condemning this barbaric attack and demand for an immediate release of the women.
For a Democratic and Secular Republic
703-850-7311
www.iranrepublic.org
international@jomhouri.com
Imprisoned Women
Must be Released Immediately
March 4, 2007
United Republicans of Iran calls for an immediate and unconditional release of women activist arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
These women were attacked and arrested while holding a peaceful vigil in front of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, protesting a recent crackdown on their activities and summoning their leaders before the courts.
Discriminatory laws of the Islamic Republic have made the brave women of Iran a second class citizen.
Since the revolution of 1979 in Iran the women have been at the forefront of the civil and democratic movement. They had waged a campaign to collect one million signatures to force the Iranian Government to change the laws.
URI calls upon all freedom-loving people of the world to contact the Iranian Embassies in their country condemning this barbaric attack and demand for an immediate release of the women.
An article from Iranian.com by Dr. Ramin Ahmadi
Source: Iranian.com
Until all are freeThe life of Iranian women's rights activists is in danger
By: Dr. Ramin Ahmadi
March 5, 2007 iranian.com
On Sunday more than fifty women's rights activists were violently beaten and arrested for exercising their rights to freedom of expression. These courageous activists had gathered in front of one of Tehran's courthouses to protest the unfair trial of five other women who were leading their struggle against inequality and legal discrimination.
The illegal mass arrest could prove to be an important turning point for their difficult fight for equal rights. They had recently initiated a "One Million Signatures: demanding changes to discriminatory laws" campaign, aimed at fighting legal discrimination against women in Iran. The first law that had become a target of this campaign was the punishment of stoning for women found guilty of adultery.
According to the initiators the campaign aimed to collect one million signatures by June 2007 and was widely successful in the planned activities include door-to-door petitioning as well as conferences and rallies. The campaign operated a website (we-change.org) on which Iranian men and women over 18, inside and outside Iran could sign the campaign petition. The all powerful Islamic Republic state soon had to block access to their website in the interest of "national security".
This was not the first time that the Islamic State panicked about their disciplined and organized movement. The campaign was to be officially launched on August 27, 2006, with a seminar titled "The Impact of Laws on Women's Lives," but the Iranian security forces prevented the event from taking place. The first public protest of the campaign took place on June 12, 2006. The Iranian Police and Judiciary responded immediately with violence and arrests.
Human Rights Watch reported: "The Judiciary filed charges against the women's rights activists following a public demonstration to protest Iran's discriminatory laws against women in Tehran on June 12, 2006. The security forces prevented peaceful demonstrators from gathering and advocating for women's rights. Police agents beat the demonstrators with batons, sprayed them with pepper gas, marked them with color spray, and took 70 people into custody."
The detainees were released later but Iran's judiciary announced holding a trial for some of the detainees. Again Human Rights Watch reported: "On March 4, the Judiciary will hold a trial for five women charged with "acting against national security by participating in an illegal gathering." The women on trial are: Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani; Parvin Ardalan; Sussan Tahmasebi; Shahla Entesari; and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer. In addition, the Judiciary has charged at least four other activists, Alieh Eghdamdoost, Bahareh Hedayat, Delaram Ali and Azadeh Forghani, with the same offense but has not set their court date."
The campaign was further intensified when three women's rights activists and journalists were arrested at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport en route to a journalism workshop in India, last February. Two of the three, Talat Taghinia and Mansoureh Shojai write for online journal Zanestan ("Land of Women"), an Iranian web-based journal that advocates for women's rights. The third woman, Farnaz Seify, runs a popular feminist blog. The women were escorted from the airport to their homes, where their computers, notes, and books were seized, and were then put in prison. They were released the next day, without their belongings or passports, to face a hearing in two months.
The campaign decided to respond to all this violence and harassments with a public protest on March 4, 2007, showing their solidarity with the five outspoken women on trial that day. The leaders published a public statement titled: We Look to the Future, and asked all activists to show up in front of the courthouse and protest the unfair and unconstitutional trial of the women's rights leaders. The Iranian regime again responded with violence and mass arrest.
It is time for all the international organizations and NGOs to protest the unlawful and unconstitutional actions of the Iranian regime. The world must demand an immediate and unconditional release of all women rights activists. The Judiciary must immediately end its prosecution of women's rights advocates for exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly.
Governments and corporations that continue to do business with Iran must start facing to their responsibilities and suspend all relations and contracts until every one of these women are free. Arrest and torture of peaceful human rights advocate should not be tolerated even for one day. Only a worldwide protest and immediate political action can bring about the release of the brave and selfless advocates of women's rights in Iran. Comment
Ramin Ahmadi is the Cofounder and Board Member of Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, associate clinical professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, and the founder of Griffin Center for Health and Human Rights.
Until all are freeThe life of Iranian women's rights activists is in danger
By: Dr. Ramin Ahmadi
March 5, 2007 iranian.com
On Sunday more than fifty women's rights activists were violently beaten and arrested for exercising their rights to freedom of expression. These courageous activists had gathered in front of one of Tehran's courthouses to protest the unfair trial of five other women who were leading their struggle against inequality and legal discrimination.
The illegal mass arrest could prove to be an important turning point for their difficult fight for equal rights. They had recently initiated a "One Million Signatures: demanding changes to discriminatory laws" campaign, aimed at fighting legal discrimination against women in Iran. The first law that had become a target of this campaign was the punishment of stoning for women found guilty of adultery.
According to the initiators the campaign aimed to collect one million signatures by June 2007 and was widely successful in the planned activities include door-to-door petitioning as well as conferences and rallies. The campaign operated a website (we-change.org) on which Iranian men and women over 18, inside and outside Iran could sign the campaign petition. The all powerful Islamic Republic state soon had to block access to their website in the interest of "national security".
This was not the first time that the Islamic State panicked about their disciplined and organized movement. The campaign was to be officially launched on August 27, 2006, with a seminar titled "The Impact of Laws on Women's Lives," but the Iranian security forces prevented the event from taking place. The first public protest of the campaign took place on June 12, 2006. The Iranian Police and Judiciary responded immediately with violence and arrests.
Human Rights Watch reported: "The Judiciary filed charges against the women's rights activists following a public demonstration to protest Iran's discriminatory laws against women in Tehran on June 12, 2006. The security forces prevented peaceful demonstrators from gathering and advocating for women's rights. Police agents beat the demonstrators with batons, sprayed them with pepper gas, marked them with color spray, and took 70 people into custody."
The detainees were released later but Iran's judiciary announced holding a trial for some of the detainees. Again Human Rights Watch reported: "On March 4, the Judiciary will hold a trial for five women charged with "acting against national security by participating in an illegal gathering." The women on trial are: Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani; Parvin Ardalan; Sussan Tahmasebi; Shahla Entesari; and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer. In addition, the Judiciary has charged at least four other activists, Alieh Eghdamdoost, Bahareh Hedayat, Delaram Ali and Azadeh Forghani, with the same offense but has not set their court date."
The campaign was further intensified when three women's rights activists and journalists were arrested at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport en route to a journalism workshop in India, last February. Two of the three, Talat Taghinia and Mansoureh Shojai write for online journal Zanestan ("Land of Women"), an Iranian web-based journal that advocates for women's rights. The third woman, Farnaz Seify, runs a popular feminist blog. The women were escorted from the airport to their homes, where their computers, notes, and books were seized, and were then put in prison. They were released the next day, without their belongings or passports, to face a hearing in two months.
The campaign decided to respond to all this violence and harassments with a public protest on March 4, 2007, showing their solidarity with the five outspoken women on trial that day. The leaders published a public statement titled: We Look to the Future, and asked all activists to show up in front of the courthouse and protest the unfair and unconstitutional trial of the women's rights leaders. The Iranian regime again responded with violence and mass arrest.
It is time for all the international organizations and NGOs to protest the unlawful and unconstitutional actions of the Iranian regime. The world must demand an immediate and unconditional release of all women rights activists. The Judiciary must immediately end its prosecution of women's rights advocates for exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly.
Governments and corporations that continue to do business with Iran must start facing to their responsibilities and suspend all relations and contracts until every one of these women are free. Arrest and torture of peaceful human rights advocate should not be tolerated even for one day. Only a worldwide protest and immediate political action can bring about the release of the brave and selfless advocates of women's rights in Iran. Comment
Ramin Ahmadi is the Cofounder and Board Member of Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, associate clinical professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, and the founder of Griffin Center for Health and Human Rights.
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