Hundreds of women staged an unauthorized demonstration in Tehran on Sunday, protesting sex discrimination under Iran's Islamic leadership just days before the June 17 presidential elections.
The protest was the first public display of dissent by women since the 1979 revolution, when the new regime enforced obligatory veiling.
"We are women, we are the children of this land, but we have no rights," they chanted.
More than 250 marched outside Tehran University, and about 200 others demonstrated two blocks away after hundreds of riot police officers prevented them from joining the main protest.
There were reports that the police clubbed several women, though there were no hospital reports of injuries. Demonstrators said they saw some women being detained and dragged away by officers. But the situation appeared to stabilize, and after about an hour of demonstrating, the women disbanded without further incident.
"We will continue such protests because it shows that women are aware of their rights," said Roohi Afzal, 52, a translator who was at the protest. "It seems that our presence today really hurts the government, that it has deployed so many forces. Maybe it will react and respond to our demands," she said.
Iranian women have turned out in great numbers in elections over the past two decades, often strongly supporting candidates who have promised more rights. But many advocates now say that they have given up hope that any president could change their status under the current constitution. And women are signaling that they are tired of being courted with promises of improved status that are quickly forgotten once the election is over.
The hard-line Guardian Council, dominated by six unelected clerics and six judges, last month rejected on the basis of their sex 89 women who had registered to run for president. The move was greeted with outrage, leading to at least one call for a boycott, though it was carefully worded.
"As long as half of the population is banned from being elected as president, we declare that the regime must not expect women's high turnout," a group of women close to Iran's reformist movement announced in a statement last week.
Zahra Eshraghi, the granddaughter of the leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said in an interview this week that working on women's issues has been very difficult because women did not feel safe to criticize the laws.
"There are certain things that are considered as crimes although the situation is gradually changing," she said. "For example, it would have been very dangerous to talk about changing the Constitution, or women's right to choose their dress. There can be no progress if women don't feel they are safe to express their demands."
However, the more tolerant conditions that have appeared as the election nears have allowed women to express their criticism more than any time since the revolution. The mood was reflected in a meeting with a reformist candidate, Mostafa Moin, two weeks ago and last week.
At the first meetings, Eshraghi said that candidates who promised to improve women's status must clarify how they could bring any changes as long as the country was ruled by Islamic law, or Shariah.
Iranian law stipulates that the value of a woman's life or her testimony in court is half that of men. Iranian men can marry up to four wives and have the right to divorce any of them at will. A woman inherits half of the share of her brothers' and needs her husband's permission to work outside home or to leave the country.
Women are rarely promoted to high positions, and despite their relatively high levels of education, they make up only 14 percent of government employees.
Mahboobeh Abbasgholizadeh, a feminist who was jailed for a month last fall, apparently for her activities though no formal charges were announced, said, "Women's rights will be fulfilled only when the constitution changes."
A group of women activists forced their way into the Azadi Stadium to watch a soccer game between Iran and Bahrain last Wednesday for the first time since the Islamic revolution banned women from watching games at stadiums. They carried signs that read, "My right is also human rights," and "Freedom, justice and gender equality."
"It wasn't that the security was not letting us into the stadium because of an order," said Parastoo Dokoohaki, one the women who was at the protest. "Every single one of them believed it was inappropriate for women to watch the game from up close."
Authorities were forced to allow the women in for the second half of the game after Abbasgholizadeh's leg was crushed under the gate.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS