WHERE AND
TO WHOM IRANIAN WOMEN AND MEN WILL CONVEY THEIR PROTEST
VOICES?
On June
12th, 70 individuals, 42 of them women, were arrested in the
demonstration held to protest the laws that are against
women in Iran at the Hafte Tir Public Square in Tehran. The
intervention of the security forces in the women’s protest
demonstrations began with the arrests of those who made
protest calls and of the active members of women’s
associations. On the afternoon of June 12th, under the
auspices of male police officers and civil members of the
Revolutionary Guards Corps, female police officers entered
the houses of protester women and arrested lots of women
after beating them.
These
events always recur in the country and have now been the
identifying feature of these kinds of protest demonstrations.
The organizers and the participants of the demonstrations
know what will be the reaction of the state to them. On the
other hand, the government and the security forces have
already perceived that they will the target of criticisms
after these events.
The new
government cannot tolerate any slightest objection and any
protest action in the streets. The origin of the fear of
every organized meeting is the concern that these
demonstrations could gain bigger dimensions and turn into
something that cannot be warded off. Intervening in the
student demonstrations, harsh reaction to protests by the
drivers of city buses, preventing rightful reactions of
South Azerbaijan, and now using sticks and truncheons
against the meeting of a number of women in Tehran…. All
these have one reason; “The fear that little rivers may turn
into flood!”
Women who
gathered at the Haftom Tir Square had met just to talk about
women’s rights. But, the female forces of the police, who
have already put aside their wraps and whose truncheons have
been openly seen, mobbed these women and arrested nearly 100
of them. Some of the detainees, that included famous
correspondent Masih Alinajad and Secretary General of Advare-Tahkim
Mohandes Mousavi, were taken to Evin prison and some of them
were taken to Ashret Abad prison. It took about one hour to
subdue female protesters who were chanting “We are women,
but we have no right” and women who could not defend
themselves were beaten with cudgels and truncheons. Some
female police officers wearing wraps sprayed pepper gas
which they were concealing under their wraps to the eyes of
demonstrators as long as they found the opportunity to do so.
Female police officers had been instructed not to get into
dialogue with protest demonstrator women. However, that
female police officers were occasionally observed to stop
and to talk to protester women and to mutually express their
grieves. Because protesters were objecting to males’ right
to marry more than one woman, to the fact that right to
divorce only belongs to men, that the right to the legal
custody of children is given to fathers in case of a divorce,
to the inequality of women and men before the law in
marriage, to the fact that the age of criminal liability for
girls was decreased to 9 and that provisional job contracts
were being signed with women, and these were common problems
for both sides. The only difference was that some of them
were protesters and they were being beaten and some of them
were police officers and had truncheons in their hands!
The names
of some of the detainees that were not still officially
explained were reported as follows:
Simin
Behbahany; Poet and Author
Ramin
Jehanbeglu; Author
Ali Akbar
Mousavi Khoeini Edvare; Secretary General of the Tahkim (Solidarity)
Organization
Samira
Sadry Edvare; Member of the Council of Tahkim (Solidarity)
Organization
Noushin
Ahmadi Khorasany; Defender of Women’s Rights
Shahla
Antezary; Defender of Women’s Rights
Jila
Banitaghoub; Journalist
Leyla
Farhadpour; Journalist
Bahareh
Hedayet; Head of Women’s Commission of the Bureau of Tahkim
Vahdet
Shohre
Kshavarz and Azam Elhamy; Defender of Women’s Rights
Zahra
Hayatshayby and Masoumeh Loghmany; students at the El Zahra
University
Atefeh
Yousefy; Secretary General of the Islamic Association of
Sharif University
Leyla
Mohseni; student at the Polytechnic University
After the
events, eyes turned to Iran once again. Sarah Whitson, Head
of the Middle East Department of the non-governmental
organization “Human Rights Watch” (HRW) stated that
“authorities should immediately release the detainees of the
demonstration and they should find out who were behind the
acts of violence”. The official of the organization stated
that the Iranian government had once more proved with these
events that it disregarded basic rights such as the freedom
of assembly. Now, everybody is waiting to see what will be
the stance of the Iranian Administration.
