Women and Iran's Political Terrain

by A. Millar
August 7, 2009 at 6:30 am

http://www.hudson-ny.org/725/women-and-irans-political-terrain

The women’s rights movement has a long history in Iran, despite a history of crackdowns against it. Feminist websites along with pornographic and political reformist ones have been among the most targeted by the authorities in recent years, and, since the elections women’s rights lawyers and activists have been rounded up and arrested. In July, the prominent journalist, lawyer and women’s rights activist Shadi Sadr was attacked and arrested as she walked with other activists along Tehran's Keshavarz Boulevard. The assault was so violent that her clothes were torn apart. (Sadr had been the director of Raahi, which before it was forcibly closed down, advised women on their legal rights, and she was still involved in Women’s Field, a women’s rights group that launched a “Stop Stoning Forever” campaign.)

Arrests are only the beginning of demeaning and brutal treatment at the hands of the police and the regime’s frontline thugs, the Basiji. Amnesty International has said that since the elections there have been numerous “[…] reports of unlawful killings, deaths in custody as a result of torture or lack of adequate medical treatment, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests.” One of these, a trainee beautician known as Taraneh M, was reportedly arrested at a demonstration, and disappeared. According to one report, her family was told that the Basiji were holding her. Later they heard that Taraneh had suffered “damage to her anus and womb,” and that she had been taken to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Karaj. Staff there allegedly confirmed that an unconscious woman matching Taraneh’s description had been admitted, and removed after a couple of hours, by the Basiji.

The plight of women arrested - or, rather, abducted - by Basiji was revealed a couple of weeks ago by a member of the militia, who told the Jerusalem Post that female prisoners were forcibly raped before being put to death. Iranian law does not allow girls or women who are virgins to be executed; to get around this technicality, Basijis drug, forcibly marry and rape the female prisoners the night before they are due to be executed.

Although they are denied their rights, dignity and liberty, women serve a peculiar symbolic function in Iran, as in most Muslim-majority nations. As Charles Tripp, in his Islam and the Moral Economy, remarks in regard to the early Islamist writers, women have been “treated […] as the terrain for the symbolic expression of a certain kind of Islamic identity [and] as key players in the defence against the intrusion of other belief systems” (p. 168.) This is most evidently manifested, on a daily basis, in the enforcement [video] of a drab and depressing “Islamic dress code” that renders women mere signs of a neo-medieval Islamic identity inseparable from the Supreme Ayatolla and his regime.

However, the feminist movement in Iran, unrelenting in its push for greater freedom, has ensured what Asef Bayat has called “that delicate art of presence in harsh circumstances” (Making Islam Democratic, p. 201). It is this long-term “presence,” illustrated by the “public life and activism of Iranian Muslim women,” that Bayat believed would determine the eventual success of the “post Islamist” movement. He was no doubt substantially correct. The presence of women was important - symbolically and actually - even before the first vote had been cast in the recent elections. Zahra Rahnavard, wife of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, appeared with her husband in campaign posters displayed across Tehran. The couple were even shown holding hands - a daring act in Iran, and one that clearly alluded to greater freedom if Mousavi were elected.

From the beginning of the post-election protests, women were also noticeably present [video], with some of the most striking early images being those of women with their hands painted green (Mousavi’s campaign color), or wearing green hijabs or scarves, and optimistically making the “peace” or “victory sign.”

By the end of June, however, a different hand gesture summed up the feelings of the democratic protestors, angered by the violence unleashed against them. A doctored photograph began circulating the internet, appearing to show a young woman blocking president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s motorcade, and - to use the vernacular - giving him “the finger.” Though photoshoped, the image caught the defiance of the younger generations, and the essence of the conflict and change in Iran.

On June 20, music student Neda Agha Soltan was killed in cold blood as she stood watching a protest. Neda’s portrait, and footage and photographs of her dying on the streets of the capitol from a sniper’s bullet became the galvanizing and iconic images of the pro-democracy movement, with Neda herself revered as the “Angel of Freedom.” Middle East scholar Hamid Dabashi even called her “the granddaughter of Rosa Park’s character.”

Neda’s grave at Tehran's Behesht Zahra Cemetery soon became a potent symbol of the oppression of Iran’s democratic dissidents, and a rallying point for further demonstrations. Yet, those gathering there have been bombarded with tear gas, and beaten by Basiji thugs and police.

Yet, the terrain is changing. One protestor told Radio Farda that the demonstrators were beginning to fight back, and that when they saw the police “beating a girl[,] people ran after [the officers and] two of them fell. People started clapping their hands. It's amazing […] It's the first time that I've seen in recent protests that people are attacking the riot force and they're escaping.”

Sickened by its brutality, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Mousavi, and former president Mohammad Khatami, have all now condemned the regime and its crimes against the people of Iran, and they have done so in the most strident terms.

The West must take their lead: condemn the fascist regime, and give full backing to the Iranian people and their aspiration for liberty.

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