The Imprisonment of Women’s Rights Activists in Iran

by DESIREE MATLOOB, special guest writer

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On June 18, 2008, 21-year-old and women’s rights activist Hana Abdi was sentenced to a five-year prison term in the West Azarbaijan Province after having been in detention since her arrest in November 2007. The Sanandaj Revolutionary Court issued Abdi the sentence on charges of “gathering and collusion to threaten national security.”
What had Abdi been doing that posed such a threat to national security? She had been collecting signatures on behalf of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality, a grassroots effort to collect one million signatures in support of changes to discriminatory laws against women. Because of this she was given the maximum prison sentence possible.

The women that are currently being imprisoned and tortured in Iran have not perpetrated crimes against humanity, or committed violent actions. They are women's rights campaigners who have been engaging in peaceful demonstrations and protests. The Iranian government has been criticized globally for its outright discrimination against women, especially women’s rights campaigners.

In its January 2008 report, “You Can Detain Anyone for Anything: Iran’s Broadening Clampdown on Independent Activism,” Human Rights Watch reported that despite the constitutional right to peaceful assembly, the Iranian government has refused to issue permits to women’s rights activists, threatened organizers of events, disrupted demonstrations and arrested attendees.

In February 2005, Yakin Erturk, the United Nations Special Rapportuer on Violence Against Women, chastised Iran over what she said was discrimination built into Iran’s laws. Erturk said she was seriously concerned over arbitrary arrests, prolonged confinement and the “widespread practice of arrests for political views.” She also expressed her concern over the psychological and physical violence women in Iran face.

Despite condemnation from several international human rights organizations including the UN Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International, the Ahmadinejad administration has continued to crack down on women’s rights. As recently as June 12, 2008, nine women taking part in a peaceful seminar to commemorate the day of solidarity of Iranian women were arrested in Tehran. Security forces prevented the seminar from taking place by shutting down the gallery and took the women to a detention center where they would be released later that evening. The previous year’s commemoration had led to 70 arrests—all because these women were recognizing a day that stood for their demand for equal rights in such areas as marriage and divorce, child custody, inheritance and political participation.

Universal Human Rights vs. Cultural Relativism

The Iranian government has legitimized the constant stream of arrests against peaceful protesters and campaign members by using national security laws to imprison women’s rights activists. On April 18, 2007, the Iranian minister of information, Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei, claimed that “the enemies of the government” are pursuing their plans through the women’s rights movement, according to a Human Rights Watch press release. In keeping with this belief, the Iranian government has officially charged women’s rights activist participating in peaceful protests with “actions against the state” and threatening “national security” under article 610 of the penal code.

Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, “all are equal before the law and entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law,” and “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” The declaration also states that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference,” in addition to “the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” Iran is currently violating all of the above issued rights.

However, Iran has claimed that the UDHR fails to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. In Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism, Reza Afshari notes that Iran has used the excuse of “cultural relativism,” or the idea that fundamental values such as human rights are culturally specific, in order to justify its human rights abuses. These cultural relativists argue that the country’s traditions, including the religion of Islam, are better guiding principles than the UDHR.

According to Afshari, the current post-Islamic Revolution political context was a result of Ayatollah Khomeini’s belief that Western-style freedom was corrupting Iranian youth and that the regime’s ideologues would need to offer their own version of human rights to keep them Iranians from going astray. The Iranian government has thus been able to justify its torture and arrest of women’s rights activists who are exercising basic rights because it claims that the Islamic Republic of Iran has its own set of laws that accommodate its specific population and culture.

Current Iranian Women’s Rights Campaigns

Currently, the most powerful and unified effort to protest against discriminatory laws is the One Million Signatures for Equality Campaign in Iran, a follow-up to the peaceful protest that occurred in Haft-e Tir Square in Iran in June of 2006 and led to the arrest of 70 participating women. The campaign, which officially started on August of 2007, aims to collect one million signatures in support of changes to laws that discriminate against women, and to promote public awareness and collaboration between groups in support of the campaign’s goal. Volunteers collect these signatures through dialogue and door-to-door contact, through places and events where women gather and discussions can be carried out, through seminars and conferences, and through the Internet. Over 400 volunteers are currently actively communicating and collecting signatures in cities, villages, and provinces across Iran, including Tehran, Hamedan, Shiraz, and Isfahan.

Despite volunteer participation in the face of arrest, the One Million Signatures campaign has not had the success it anticipated; by its one-year anniversary it had only reached 100,000 signatures. This could be attributed to the Iranian government’s continued arrest of women’s rights activists—specifically arrests associated with the One Million Signatures campaign, which have now totaled about 50—and the subsequent fear that has resulted from these arrests. It has become harder to collect signatures as women have begun shying away from public political activity that could be interpreted as overtly against the regime.

Other campaign impediments, such as the blocking of the campaign’s Web Site by the repressive regime, have made it harder for the One Million Signatures campaign to reach its audience and raise support. The campaign’s Web Site was blocked once again on June 20, 2008—the eleventh time since the campaign’s inception two years ago.

While the One Million Signatures campaign is the most prominent and recent effort among Iranian women to assemble against discriminatory laws and practices, other activist groups are involved in the women’s movement in Iran. “Zanan Solh” (Women of Peace) has organized anti-violence workshops and anti-war activities, while the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran informs citizens of human rights abuses in Iran and puts forth its own recommendations.

Yet, just as with the One Million Signatures campaign, there is a limit to how much these organizations are allowed to accomplish under a government that sees women’s rights defenders as enemies of national security.

In January 29, 2008, the Iranian government shut down the premier Iranian feminist magazine, Zanan, ending its 16-year run on the premise that it was threatening to the “psychological security of the society.” The magazine had been dedicated to theoretical debates, feminist critique of law, and articles on social problems and issues relating to women. According to a New York Times editorial written about the closure of Zanan, “the only psychological threat Zanan posed was to the regime’s authoritarian and anti-feminist pathology.”

Through the use of force, coupled with distorted notions of human rights and freedom of speech legitimized by the concept of “cultural relativism,” the Iranian government has appointed women an inferior status while giving them no means to fight back. What is truly an outrage is that this attitude has guided such Iranian political doctrines as the Iranian civil code, which currently assumes women are subordinate to men. Article 920 of the civil code grants male heirs twice the share the females receive, while Article 1117 allows the husband to prevent his wife from taking up an occupation that he sees as “incompatible with the family interests or the dignity of himself or his wife.” And now, just as women are gaining the momentum to protest these ridiculous laws, they are being silenced and imprisoned, one by one.

The Iranian government has been successful in making discrimination and human rights violations against women not only a reality, but sadly, justifiable. With the strength of current women’s rights activists and the international backing of the United Nations and human rights NGOs, let’s hope that one day these women—daughters, mothers, students, workers—can have the rights that they yearn for, that they deserve.