Crackdown on Iranian feminists

On March 4, police arrested 33 women and charged them with endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering. The women were demonstrating outside Iran's Tehran Revolutionary Court to demand a fair trial for five prominent women's rights activists arrested in June 2006 during a peaceful protest.

The 2006 protest ended violently when police used force to disperse the crowd and arrested more than 70 people. Some of those who were arrested were released on bail, while others spent months in prison. Most were interrogated by the judiciary and the security forces. The March 4 protesters also reported being victims of police violence.

The women on trial — Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmasebi, Shahla Entesari and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer — left the courtroom in support of the demonstration and, along with their lawyer, were promptly arrested.

On March 6, eight protesters were released from Evin Prison after their families submitted bail. The released women confirmed that the women who were still in the prison's Section 209 had begun a hunger strike protesting their illegal confinement. This section of the prison belongs to the Iranian intelligence service.

Entesari, one of those in custody who also participated in the 2006 protest, was in solitary confinement.

On March 8, all of the women were released, except for Shadi Sadr, Jila Bani-Yaghob and Mahbobeh Abasgholizadeh.

The Iranian women's movement started two campaigns last year, "Stop Stoning Forever" and "Change for Equality: One Million Signatures" (http://www.we-change.org), which are shaping up to be the toughest battles that the movement has had to fight. Although a moratorium was placed on stoning punishments in December 2002, stonings have continued to take place. In May 2006 a woman and a man were stoned to death in Mashhad. "Change for Equality" aims to end the treatment of women as second-class citizens.

Activists in these campaigns have been interrogated over and over again by the authorities regarding their activities. Their houses have been searched and computers and documents confiscated.

The latest arrests signal yet another crackdown on democratic rights, those of feminists in particular. Last month three feminist reporters were detained at Tehran airport without charge while on their way to India to participate in a journalism workshop.

From GLW issue 702