Jail No Deterrent for Iranian Women’s Rights Activists

Nahid Keshavarz says spending two weeks in an Iranian jail did not deter her from helping try to collect one million signatures for a petition urging more women’s rights.

 

If anything, she says, prison showed the cause was worth fighting for.

 

Ms Keshavarz is one of dozens of women who have been detained since 2006 when the “Million Signatures Campaign” was launched. Most were released within a few days or weeks.

 

Ms Keshavarz, 34, was held on security-related charges after collecting signatures in Tehran. “No one wants to go to prison. But if we have to pay a price then we will, like women have all over the world,” she said. Ms Keshavarz’s pink headscarf conforms to laws in the Islamic Republic requiring women to cover their heads in public. She collects names on buses, while out shopping and at parties.

 

“It has become a daily part of my life,” she said. She was arrested in April as she gathered signatures in the capital’s Laleh Park. Of 25 women in her section of the prison, some were accused of killing their husbands, she said in Farsi with a friend interpreting. “They married too early, lived in dire conditions, they had violent relationships, none of them had prior criminal records,” she said.

 

Ms Keshavarz was speaking at a sale of paintings by other women which was sponsored by activists to raise funds to help women jailed on various charges. One of the pictures showed a woman with her throat slit. A bloody dagger was the focus of another and a third showed handcuffed arms raised, with fists clenched.

 

Crackdown on dissent

 

Western diplomats and rights groups see the detention of women activists as part of a wider crackdown on dissent, which they say may be in response to Western pressure over Iran’s nuclear work.

 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said this month that the West used negative propaganda about women’s rights in Iran as a tool to put political pressure on the country. The US suspects Iran’s nuclear program aims to develop bombs, but Iran says it is intended only to generate electricity.

 

Iranian authorities have also clamped down on “immoral behaviour”, including women flouting the strict Islamic dress code, since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005 with his pledge to revive revolutionary values. The women’s rights activists say their campaign is not focused on what they wear, even if outsiders see conservative dress codes as a symbolic and visible barrier to equality.

 

The women, backed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, are concerned about what they regard as institutionalized discrimination that makes them “second-class citizens” when it comes to divorce, inheritance, child custody and other fields. Iranian officials reject these allegations, saying the country follows Islamic sharia law. Clerics argue that women are better protected in Iran than in the West, where they are often treated as sex objects. “Women in Western countries are … used as products,” says Ayatollah Mahdi Hadavi, a senior cleric based in the Iranian seminary city of Qom.
“Socially, they are not treated well.”

 

Freedom of speech

 

Ayatollah Hadavi says women in Iran are free to express their opinions, even if he and others do not agree with some of their views. But the activists question that freedom. Another member of the “Million Signatures Campaign”, who does not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, says about 40 people have been temporarily detained in connection with the drive. “We are under increased pressure,” she said.
“You have a lot of resistance to women’s rights.”

 

One of those held was Jelveh Javaheri, who was in Tehran’s Evin jail for a month accused of spreading propaganda against the Islamic system, before being released on bail in early January, with fellow rights campaigner Maryam Hosseinkhah. Javaheri’s husband, Kaveh Mozafari, is proud of her. “I’m glad she believes [in her cause] so much that she goes to jail for it,” he said. US-based rights group Human Rights Watch said in December that the charges against the two women were politically motivated.

 

“There seems to be no end in sight to the Iranian Government’s persecution of women’s rights activists,” Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said.

 

Out in the open

 

Although women are legally entitled to hold most jobs, Iran remains dominated by men. In recent years women have started to work in the police and fire departments and there are female members of Parliament, but they cannot run for president or become judges.
The activists say it is difficult for women to get a divorce. They criticise inheritance laws as unjust, and the fact that a woman’s court testimony is worth half that of a man.

 

Campaigners point to some positive changes in society, saying most university students these days are women. However, they also say a proposal now before Parliament would make it easier for a man to take a second wife. “Women’s status has changed considerably for the better,” activist Sara Loghmani said. “The law is the problem.”

 

She and others have declined to say how many signatures they have collected so far - but they insist the message is being spread despite minimal coverage in the domestic media. “The campaign has brought the issue out in the open,” campaigner Sussan Tahmasebi said. “You have grandmothers, mothers and daughters working on this side by side.” But many people are still not aware of the petition.

 

“I’ve never heard about it. What is it?” 23-year-old university student Yasaman said, who only gave her first name. Ms Keshavarz is undeterred: “For me, prison demonstrated the righteousness of our cause,” she said.
“No, it hasn’t stopped me, it hasn’t frightened me.”

 

Reuters