Women Fuel Fires of Protest in Iran
September 8, 2009
The demonstrations following Iran’s June 12th presidential election have uncorked decades of anger and impatience that have been bottled up in Iran’s women’s movement. Street protests have been a catharsis of sorts, and have provided an outlet for Iranian women to lay bare their plight to the outside world. According to Goldbarg Bashi of Rutgers University and contributing writer to Tehran Bureau1: “What we are witnessing in Iran is a natural consequence of years of feminist presence and active participation of powerful women in the public sphere which has taught little girls that being a woman does not mean just being a mother or a wife and that women must be present and fighting in order to achieve their rights and demands.”
Neda Agha Sultan, a 27-year-old university student, was one of the young women raised in Iran during this time of change. She attended the protest rally on June 20th in Tehran and, and as she stood watching, she was hit by a single bullet from a Basij sniper rifle. She fell to the street where she died while onlookers recorded with cell phone video. Clips of this murder have been seen around the world on YouTube. In a June 23rd press conference, Barack Obama stated, “We have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets.” Neda has become a symbol of the continuing fight for justice and against a corrupt Iranian regime.
The recent events in Iran are not just about the outcome of one election. Rather, they are the product of years of simmering frustration and anger towards a theocratic government firmly grounded in the most restrictive interpretations of Islamic Law, and led by one supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s rule is absolute; he is the leader of the military, appoints all judges, directs the president, and is in charge of Iran’s national radio and television. No law is passed without his approval, and he has absolute veto power. Khamenei has led a brutal regime in Iran for the past twenty years, an era that has been particularly challenging for the women of Iran.
In spite of the government’s iron rule, the women’s rights movement in Iran has relentlessly pushed for space in this oppressive, male-dominated society. Iranian women make up more than 60% of graduates in university classes and have the opportunity to pursue professional lives, a right that many women in a number of neighboring countries do not enjoy. All of this has come at a price; women have consistently been victims of torture, slayings, and abductions. Again, according to the Goldbarg Bashi, “Unknown to perhaps many outside Iran, the Iranian’s women’s movement has been relentlessly working and expanding its demands for an end to gender discrimination in a country where in the realm of family and penal law, women are treated as second-class citizens.”
The June 12th elections have fostered a renewed sense of pride and outrage in the Iranian electorate. In her article “An Overlooked Force in Iran” (6/23/2009), Anne Applebaum, a Washington Post reporter, wrote: “In the long term, …the links, structures, organizations and groups set up by Iranian women, not to mention the photographs of the past week, will continue to gnaw away at the Iranian regime's legitimacy -- and we should take note.” This summer, we have seen both women and men crossing lines that have been drawn by the conservative Islamist government. For example, women typically say their daily prayers in an area behind the men. This photo shows a woman praying alongside men at a recent protest rally in Tehran, a sight that would have been unthinkable in pre-election Iran. In 
another report, at a prayer service on 7/19/09, the audience was prompted by the clergy to say “Down with America.” Instead, the audience began chanting “Down with Russia,” a response to Russia’s acknowledgement of Ahmadinejad’s victory four days after his re-election.
Unprovoked arrests and abductions continued in Iran through July. Estimates of the number of detainees in Iran’s prisons have varied from hundreds to thousands, depending on the source. Detainees have not been permitted to seek legal counsel or to talk to their families. On August 1st, the Iranian government began holding mass trials in which dozens of prisoners were indicted. In the indictment read by the prosecutors3, the prisoners were accused of conspiracy to plan an uprising, a “velvet revolution,”4 by carefully plotting to overthrow the government after the June 12th elections. The government maintained that the plot was orchestrated over many months (even years) preceding the election, and that the planners were aided by groups outside of Iran, among them the Soros Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and various Western governments including, of course, the United States.
The indictments also identify the women’s rights and human rights movements in Iran as a major contributor to the coup plot. They identify Shadi Sadr, an attorney, activist, and editor at the Farsi site womeniniran.com, as the leader of the women’s movement. Sadr was forcefully abducted and detained in July and subsequently released. They also identify 2003 Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi as the leader of the country’s human rights efforts (see photo, below right). To date, she has not been arrested, although her law offices have been the
target of countless acts of vandalism. In December 2008, Ebadi’s offices were raided and her confidential files and computers were confiscated. She was accused of tax evasion even though she has not charged fees to her clients for more than 15 years. Ebadi is also the Chair of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, an organization that advocates for political activists, women and children in Iran. This organization was raided and shut down in December 2008 and its doors remain closed today.
In an article published in the Washington Post on the eve of the June 12th Iranian elections, Ebadi discussed the plight of women in Iran5: “Women are frequently targets for … harassment. More often than not, their only ‘crime’ seems to be that they are tirelessly working to bring about a more democratic system in Iran. A great deal of government pressure is also imposed on the young women who launched the One Million Signatures Campaign, a grass-roots movement to reform the legal system and educate the public about discrimination against women6. This work is a powerful example of how a vibrant civil society is acting as a catalyst for change in Iran.” According to sign4change.info, a website associated with the One Million Signatures Campaign, more than 60 members have been arrested for false causes both before and after the June 12th elections in Iran. These women include Parastoo Allahyaari, Raheleh Asgarizadeh, Nafiseh Azad, Bigard Ebrahimi, Nasim Khosravi, Maryam Malek, Khadijeh Moghadam, and Zhila Bani Ya’quob.
Another member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, Esha Momeni, a graduate student at Cal State Northridge, was arrested in Iran while visiting family and working on a film about women’s rights. She was arrested and held in solitary confinement for 25 days in October of 2008. After her release, Momeni was not permitted to return to the United States until August 9th, 2009. The revocation of travel documents is a tactic that the Iranian government has used to restrict the flow of information out of Iran, both before and after the June 12th elections. Celebrated women’s rights activist Nargess Mohammadi was not permitted to leave Iran to take part in a ceremony honoring her receipt of the 2009 Alexander Langer Award. Nargess serves as the Deputy Chair of the Defenders of Human Rights Center with Shirin Ebadi.
To date, three mass trials of those arrested during the post-election protests have been held in Tehran. One by one, defendants took turns addressing the court and apologizing for their roles in inciting riots and planning to overthrow the government. The worn, beaten faces of the accused substantiate the widely held assumption that these confessions were coerced with torture. The former vice president of Iran, Sayyed Abtabi, had been held for more than six weeks in an Iranian prison. According to his wife, her husband lost 40 pounds during that time. There are reports of the repeated rape of women and young male detainees. In a society where rape is not openly discussed, Mehdi Karoubi, an opposition figure who placed fourth in the recent election, has collected and documented proof of specific incidences of rape. Several prison deaths have also been reported and, according to Human Rights Watch, an investigation by Iranian authorities concluded that many of the deaths were the result of an unspecified “viral illness.”7
Clothilde Reiss, a 24-year-old French citizen and French language teacher in Iran, was arrested on conspiracy charges on July 1st. According to an L.A. Times report8, Reiss sent one email to a colleague, also residing in Iran, that included photos she had taken of protests in her city. She appeared at a mass trial broadcast by Iranian State television. On the stand, she admitted to charges of espionage and stated, ”I apologize to the Iranian nation and hope they will pardon me”. Reiss was released from prison following the trial, but must remain in Iran until the trials conclude. In a statement made on August 17th, a French official confirmed that France paid 200,000 Euros (about $280,000) to secure Reiss’ release.9
The forced confessions at the trials in Tehran are part of a continued effort on the part of the Iranian government to validate the June 12th election result and to show the world that Iran operates under a democratic system. This strategy does not seem to have convinced onlookers that the government is acting in good faith. According to Borzou Daragahi of the L.A. Times, “The televised proceedings fail to silence the opposition or quell protests and appear to be damaging the international credibility of the Iranian judiciary and political systems.”10
Despite widespread rumors of prison rape and torture, protests continue in Iran. Opposition groups have become better organized and have devised ways to avoid clashes with the police and the Basij militia. According to a 7/27/09 article in Time Magazine by Robin Wright, “Six weeks after millions took to the streets to protest Iran’s presidential election, their uprising has morphed into a feistier, more imaginative, and potentially enduring campaign.”11 Taking a page from the flashmob phenom taking place in many Western countries, Iranian protesters have organized “flash” street demonstrations that have dispersed before police can respond. They have organized boycotts of products that are advertised on State television, and have orchestrated mass electrical surges by urging thousands of Tehran residents turn on all of their home appliances and lights at exactly the same time.
While the post-election violence in Iran has been riddled with human rights violations, it has also seen the coalescence of dozens of women’s rights groups into one unified group, the Coalition of Iranian Women. Together, they have pushed beyond the electoral protests and put forth a list of demands to the government, including compliance with the U.N. Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and modification of Iran’s Constitution to remove laws that discriminate against women.
The government of Iran continues to try, unsuccessfully, to stifle the voices of thousands of protesters, and their chorus of voices is being heard over and over in the outside world. Anne Applebaum offers this optimistic perspective: “...regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable. Sooner or later, there has to be a backlash. In Iran, we're watching one unfold.” There are, in fact, signs of infighting within the government regime, and high-level clerics have spoken out publicly against the election results and the torture taking place in prisons. On July 20th, Mousavi, the unofficial leader of Iran’s opposition movement, issued this warning to the reigning regime, “You are facing something now: an awakened nation, a nation that has been born again and is here to defend its achievements.”12
If you are in the Denver/Boulder area on October 10th, please join us for a Naropa University and Cordoba Initiative symposium entitled Women’s Leadership and Activism in the Muslim World. UAF’s Executive Director will be moderating the opening panel featuring Shirin Ebadi, Sanam Anderlini, Laleh Bakhtiar, and Daisy Khan.
Footnotes:
1. Goldbarg Bashi, “Feminist Waves in Green Tsunami?”, Tehran Bureau, an independent source of news on Iran and the Iranian diaspora: http://tehranbureau.com/feminist-waves-iranian-green-tsunami/.
2. See footage, for example, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmrB2FOLqiE. Video contains graphic violence.
3. You can read the English translation of the one of the indictments released by the Fars New Agency at http://enduringamerica.com/2009/08/12/translated-text-the-indictment-in-the-tehran-trials/.
4. A term originally used to describe the 1989 nonviolent uprising in Czechoslovakia that resulted in an overthrow of the country’s communist regime.
5. Shirin Ebadi, “Iran’s Human Rights Test”, Washington Post, 6/11/09.
6. The text of the One Million Signatures Campaign petition can be found at www.we-change.org.
7. Human Rights Watch website, 8/14/09 article: “Iran: Investigate Security Chiefs in Post-Election Abuse”.
8. Report by Borzou Daragahi 8/8/09 entitled, “Iran portrays election protesters as pawn of the West”.
9. 8/17/09 report from the Chinese news website news.xinhuanet.com.
10. Report by Borzou Daragahi 8/9/09 entitled, “Trial of protesters seems only to hurt Iran, analysts say”.
11. Robin Wright for Time Magazine, “Iran’s Protesters: Phase 2 of Their Feisty Campaign” 7/27/09.
12. Ibid.
