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May 15, 2006 VOLUME 24
E-ZAN VOICE OF WOMEN AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM IN IRAN
To our readers,
On Monday April 24th,
the fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced
that Iranian women can go to stadiums to watch sporting events, a ban imposed
since the 1979 revolution. Ahmadinejad’s move was to appeal to national
sentiment of Iranians and their love for football (soccer) in the upcoming
season. In his misogynous view, Ahmadinejad explained "experience has
proven that when women and families are allowed into stadiums, ethics and
chastity will prevail”. In fundamentalist view women as a “source of sin” and
elements of “corruption”, for this reason, Ahmadinejad described women’s
attendance only with the presence of their “families”, meaning their male
guardian. On April 26th, just two days after Ahmadinejad’s, the
“lifting of the ban” was overturned by Ayatollahs criticism or in some cases
fatwa (decree). One fundamentalist cleric,
“top clergy”, Fazel Lankarani, went on further and issued a fatwa against the
presence of the women in stadiums. Many parliamentarian members complained and
rallied to pressure Ahmadinejad to reverse his decision.The head of Iran
Physical Education, Aliabadi, who had earlier announced women are allowed to
attend the games from the start of next season, seemed to backtrack on
Wednesday when he told the reporters “The ban on single women still exists and
we wont allow single women to attend any games. Only women who come with their
families will be allowed in”. Finally, on May 8th, the supreme
leader Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, ruled that
"the top clergy's opinion should be respected and this issue be
reconsidered," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.
"The president said he would act as the supreme leader said," Elham
added.
Ahmadinejad strategy to
score a point with Iranian people backfired, but, once again, the misogynous
nature of the regime in Tehran revealed itself to its
core. The idea of allowing women to watch sporting events is so threatening
that created such uproar among all ranks of the regime. Women are still not
allowed to attend sporting events, just as they are not allowed to have any social
and political voice so long as this regime is in power. Let us not forget that
the movement for equality, freedom and democracy in Iran is much more grounded
and solid to be manipulated with such shallow calls of reforms. With eight
years of Ahmadinejad predecessor, Khatami who was the master of double-talks
and so-called reforms, Iranian women will not be fooled by such empty gestures
and political moves.
Ahmadinejad’s
anti-Iranian thinking along with this regime’s agenda of terror and violence
against women has far surpassed any “reforms”. There is nothing nationalistic
about this regime or its president. With
the rising pressure on Iran’s nuclear file, there
have been more crackdowns on women and youth. There has
been a number of public executions of youth and death sentences against women.
There is no other option but the total removal of Tehran’s fundamentalist
regime by a women-led democracy movment.
E-Zan Featured Headlines
Agence France Presse – April 18, 2006
"In our campaign, we
will confront women showing their bare legs in short pants," Tehran's police chief, Morteza
Talai, told the semi-official Fars agency. "We are also going to
combat women wearing skimpy headscarves, short and form-fitting coats, and the
ones walking pets in parks and streets," he added. Also in police
crosshairs are "the ones create noise pollution" by playing their car
stereos too loud. Every post-pubescent
female in Iran, regardless of her
nationality or religion, is obliged to observe the Islamic dress code and cover
her shape and hair whenever outside the home. Since the 1979 Islamic
revolution, Iran's ruling clerics have
been at pains to keep women under wraps and away from the risk of
"Westoxication". According to Talai, 50 patrol cars will be cruising Tehran in the coming days to
implement the measures. He also said that shops selling skimpy clothing would
also be targeted.
NCRI Website – April 21, 2006
The discovery of bodies
of three young women in Tehran brought to six the total
number of women who have been murdered in the capital last week, according to
state-run media. The unidentified victims, between the ages of 20 and 30, had
been brutally murdered and their bodies dumped in remote outskirts of Tehran. Mrs. Sarvnaz Chitsaz,
Chair of NCRI’s Women’s Committee, said, “The alarming
increase of such horrific crimes in Tehran and other cities of Iran is, before
anything else, the result of misogynous actions, policies, and laws of the
mullahs’ regime, which have set the stage for serial murders of Iranian women
and girls. The killers believe they can act with impunity." During Kerman
(central Iran) serial murders, in which pro-regime Hezbollah thugs brutally
murdered five young men and women, the mullahs’ regime Supreme Court acquitted
the murderers of all charges on the grounds that, “the defendants were pious
individuals and that their determination that the victims should have been
killed was not wrong.”
Reuters – April 24, 2006
Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday women should be allowed into sports stadiums
for the first time, reversing the Islamic Republic's code preventing them
watching men playing sports in big venues. Women have been barred from
attending matches, such as national soccer games, in big stadiums and have long
complained, particularly when female fans of visiting foreign teams were
allowed in. A state television
announcer reported that Ahmadinejad "ordered the head of the sports
organization to provide facilities in the stadiums to watch national
matches." "The best stands should be allocated to women and families
in the stadiums in which national and important matches are being held. The
presence of women and families in public places promotes chastity," he was
quoted as saying. It follows Ahmadinejad's statement on Sunday saying Iran's strict Islamic dress
codes that require women to cover their heads and bodies should not be imposed
by force.
Iransportspress.com site
– April 26, 2006
Several Iranian MPs have also criticised the decision. “We call on the president
to annul the order to allow women into stadiums. The presence of women in
stadiums is against moral, social and Islamic values. This is a hasty order.
According to Islamic law, it is not right for women to watch men's bare legs"
said the MP from Isfahan, Mohammad-Taghi Rahbar.
"I think police can not even provide security for explosive materials, let
alone security of women," said another MP.
NCR Website – May 3, 2006
State-run daily IRAN reported today that a
woman was hanged in public in western province of Lorestan for alledged murder.
Farzaneh Sadeqi was sentenced to death by local judicial authorities and the
sentence was carried out yesterday at 5:35 am local time, according
to mullahs' police report. The same daily also reported today that death
sentence for a young man, Qarib Rahman, has been approved by mullahs' judiciary
and he is on the verge of execution. He was also charged with murder that he
denies. Etemad state daily also reported that a 17-year-old boy from central
city of Isfahan has been sentenced to
death by the judiciary. The daily identified the boy by his first name only as
Nemat. Etemad also added that a 26 years old man in Tehran identified as Saber has
also been condemned to death by hanging.
Iran Focus – May 5, 2006
Iranian authorities have
launched a crackdown on “mal-veiling” in society and have stepped up arrests of
women caught breaching the Islamic dress code. The new crackdown, which began
in mid-April, coincided with a call by Majlis (Parliament) deputies for the
adoption of a bill to regulate women’s attire during the hot summer months.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women in Iran have been forced to
cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise the shape of
their bodies in public. Penalties for disobeying the dress code are severe.
Women caught flouting the code can receive lashes, jail sentences, and large
fines.
Agence France Presse – May 8, 2006
Iran's supreme leader has
vetoed an order by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to end a 26-year-old ban on
allowing women in stadiums for major sporting events, the government said. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say
on all matters of state, ruled that "the top clergy's opinion should be
respected and this issue be reconsidered," goverment spokesman Gholam
Hossein Elham told reporters.
"The president said he would act as the supreme leader said," Elham
added. Last month Ahmadinejad ordered an
end to a decades-old ban on women entering stadiums for major sporting events,
including football matches. Although this was hailed by women's rights
activists, the directive did not go down well among religious right-wingers
eager to maintain the male-female segregation ushered in by Iran's 1979 Islamic
revolution
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
– May 8, 2006
Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday called for the introduction of an “Iranian dress
code” for men and women alike, the news agency ISNA reported.
ISNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a visit to an Iranian textile
exhibition that relevant experts should work on the Iranian dress code. The
president insisted that the new outfit should have a variety of forms and
colours as well as be economical. “But when we say Iranian dress code we do not
only refer to women but also to men,” ISNA quoted the president as saying. The
Iranian parliament has several times raised the issue of the ”national dress
bill” for replacing current Western-style fashions
Iran
Focus – May 12, 2006
The semi-official daily Jomhouri
Islami quoted on Wednesday the head of the State Security Forces in the province of Gilan, northern Iran, as saying that 15 had been arrested
on charges of “mal-veiling”. The women were all arrested in the provincial
capital, Rasht, it said, adding that a number of other women had also
received warnings that they would also be arrested if they breached the Islamic
dress code.
The crackdown, which began in Tehran in mid-April, coincided with a call
by Majlis (Parliament) deputies for the adoption of a bill to regulate women’s
attire during the hot summer months. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women
in Iran have been forced to cover their hair
and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise the shape of their bodies in
public. Penalties for disobeying the dress code are severe. Women caught
flouting the code can receive lashes, jail sentences, and large fines.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur – May 14, 2006
The Iranian parliament approved on
Sunday the generalities of the 'national dress code' bill which is supposed to
replace current Western-style fashions, state news television IRIB reported.
According to the draft bill, which is yet to be finalized and reconfirmed by
the senate-like Guardian Council, facilities should be prepared for local
designers and tailors to focus on outfits in line with 'Iran's national and
Islamic identification and culture.' The form of the
new outfit is to be specified by a joint committee which includes the
ministries of culture and commerce, the cultural commission of the parliament
and the state television and eventually finalized by local designers and
tailors. While the Commerce Ministry was ordered to put higher charges on
import of foreign cloth, the Iranian banks would be obliged to approve credit
facilities for local designers and tailors. While men in Iran are dressed similar to
their counterparts in the West, women have to respect the Islamic dress code
and wear a long gown or coat and a scarf to hide body contours and hair in
public.
E-Zan
Featured Reports
Police in Tehran Ordered to Arrest Women
in 'Un-Islamic' Dress
The Guardian
Robert Tait
April 20, 2006
Iran's Islamic authorities
are preparing a crackdown on women flouting the stringent dress code in the clearest
sign yet of social and political repression under President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. From today police in Tehran will be under orders to
arrest women failing to conform to the regime's definition of Islamic morals by
wearing loose-fitting hijab, or headscarves, tight jackets and shortened
trousers exposing skin. Offenders could be punished with $30 fines or two
months in jail. Officers will also be authorised to confront men with
outlandish hairstyles and people walking pet dogs, an activity long denounced
as un-Islamic by the religious rulers.
The clampdown coincides with a bill before Iran's
conservative-dominated parliament proposing that fines for people with TV
satellite dishes rise from $60 to more than $3,000. Millions of Iranians have
illegal dishes, enabling them to watch western films and news channels. The
dress purge is led by a Tehran city councillor, Nader
Shariatmaderi, a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad who helped to plot last year's
election victory. Loosely arranged headscarves - exposing glamourous hairstyles
- and shorter, tight-fitting overcoats (manteaus) became a symbol of the social
freedoms that flourished under the reformist presidency of Mohammed Khatami.
During his election campaign, Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed fears that his presidency
might herald a forced reversal, saying Iran had more urgent
problems. However, Mr Shariatmaderi
denounced the trends as "damaging to revolutionary and Islamic
principles". "We are looking for a social utopia to live in but in
the last couple of months, our attention has wavered," he told fellow
councillors. "In the present international situation, people must unite
under known principles." The clampdown recalls the aftermath of the 1979
Islamic revolution, when women wearing lipstick were often confronted by female
vigilantes wiping their faces clean with handkerchiefs, which were said to
often conceal razor blades. The new campaign will hold taxi agencies
accountable for their passengers' attire, police will be able to impound cabs
carrying women dressed "inappropriately". Agencies guilty of repeat
offences will be closed. Police have reportedly been stopping women motorists
recently whose hijab was judged inadequate. Police have also raided fashion
stores and seized brightly coloured manteaus. Tehran's police chief, Morteza
Talai, said the campaign would try to clamp down on people making "the
social environment insecure". Young women shopping in north Tehran's fashionable Tajrish
neighbourhood yesterday, however, were uncowed. Matin, 24, a nurse, was wearing
a gaudily patterned light-blue head scarf pushed back to reveal sunglasses and
bleached blond hair. Her tight, short black manteau with intricate gold
patterns seemed designed to provoke the ire of the authorities. But she was
unrepentant. "I'm a married woman and it should be my husband who tells me
what and what not to wear. He likes the way I dress," she said. Surprisingly, Narges Asgari, 20, a dressmaker
wearing an all-encompassing black chador, was also critical. "I don't
think people will listen because they want to take decisions themselves,"
she said. "Clothes depend on the culture of their families. I wear the
chador because, in my family, it's something we accept."
U.S. can become a hero to millions of
Iranians
By Faye F. Farhang
Special to Seattle Times
April 21, 2006
Twenty-seven years after the 1979
Islamic revolution, the majority sentiment among Iranians today can be summed
up in a single question: When are they leaving? "They" refers to Tehran's extremist mullahs, who have
turned back Iran's clock on cultural and scientific
development for more than a quarter of a century. In a country where 70 percent
of the population is literate and secular and close to 50 percent is female and
educated, women are still permanent second-class citizens. Without the basic
right of choosing their public attire, women going out without the mandatory
Islamic veil will be arrested, beaten and jailed. Astonishingly, these
human-rights violations are a daily regimen of life in Iran. In March, in commemoration of
International Women's Day, scores of Iranian women participating in a peaceful
sit-in demonstration were initially filmed, and then severely beaten off-camera
by the Islamic police and their militant assistants. Yet, in the midst of such
brutality, how does nuclear energy win out as the sujet du jour? The irony of the situation may be
baffling to the outsider, but diverting attention from its human-rights abuses
is exactly what the Islamic regime seeks in order to establish greater internal
and regional dominance. When the clerics took power in 1979, they promised to
deliver the wealth of the nation to the poor. Yet, the fact that the poor
suffer from greater poverty today only illustrates what has been proven
repeatedly about the fundamentalists in power. They cannot be trusted.
Returning to Iran some two decades after leaving it
as a child, I was determined to find out whether the Islamic revolution that
had upturned so many lives, including my family's, had benefited the
less-fortunate. In the summer of 2001, the Iranian workers, be it the cleaning
lady or the gardener, were more honest than I had ever expected. These women
and men, while not literate enough to write, were articulate about their
experiences, explaining that after all these years they were still waiting for
their oil money — as if waiting for the messiah. For them, the oil money is as
unreachable as the democracy the majority of Iranians desperately seek. The
oppressive fear perpetuated by the Islamic regime has seeped into every aspect
of Iranians' lives. They lead a quasi-existence under watchful eyes. In a
totalitarian state, the pro-American majority is not empowered to stand up to
the clerics. Fear dominates. Many Iranians have already lost their lives in the
human-rights struggle and those who continue to dedicate themselves to the
cause of justice know too well that the small strides they have made over two
decades can be reversed by an unpredictable regime. During his presidential
campaign, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to portray himself as some sort of Islamic
Robin Hood. He did practically everything but dress the part. Yet, his short
track record already proves his betrayal of the poor who supported him. Now,
consider his desire for nuclear energy, masked by peaceful intentions today.
Despite certain pundits' assertions, it is unlikely that this disciple of the
ayatollahs' regime would honor an agreement on the purpose of the uranium
enrichment. He seeks to bolster an oppressive position of power for tomorrow.
If allowed, Iran likely would be a reign of terror
over the Middle
East.
According to terrorism experts, the fundamentalist-controlled groups — Iran's
ministry of intelligence, its security operatives, the Revolutionary Guards,
and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — are better trained and equipped
than the al-Qaida network that carried out the Sept.
11, 2001,
attacks. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran's rogue regime are a grave threat
to the security of the Iranian people, the international community and
especially the United States, the well-identified foe of the
Islamic Republic. If Churchill's assertions were right and "the United States invariably does the right thing,
after having exhausted every other alternative," then the U.S. administration must maintain full speed
with the agenda of establishing democracy in Iran. By continuing to drive a wedge
between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime, the U.S. will bolster its chances of
success, without alienating the average Iranian. Using the Iranian masses
effectively to undermine the fundamentalist regime will also create leverage
for the international community to step up and confront militants. A free,
democratic Iran remains in the best interest of the
United States. The "risk"? Becoming the
certified hero of millions of Iranians by bringing the freedom they have long
desired.
Iran’s
“Nuclear Nationalism”
By Roya
Johnson
The American Thinker
April 21st, 2006
A nation advancing in the fields of
science and technology usually inspires pride among its citizens. Iranians are
no exception. Throughout Iran’s history, the traditional culture
has been particularly focused on scientific and intellectual achievement, and
these pursuits have been rewarded with extremely high social honor.
Unfortunately, the present regime in Iran is turning the honorable and
dignified natural quest for technological achievement into propaganda about
progress for peaceful power generation, in order to ineffectively camouflage
its pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. They seek to delude Iranians into
believing there is something positive in the billions of dollars lavished on a
nuclear program while the economy and lives of ordinary Iranians languish.
Technological advancement in Iran today serves to advance a war
mongering, Armageddon threatening, fundamental Islamist Iranian government. The
Iranian mullahs’ regime takes perverse pride in the early years of its
revolution when it conducted a heinous and bloody “cultural revolution.” Tens
of thousands of progressive and anti-fundamentalist students and professors
were purged and hundreds were killed and wounded by state-dispatched goons. The
regime, which has executed thousands of student political activists and has
crushed every student uprising, can hardly claim a genuine affinity for
scientific and academic endeavors. By
consistently consolidating authority under thuggish elites, the clerical regime
can serves itself. Like every other Iranian asset, technological achievement
has been commandeered by the state and is being used to threaten and
destabilize the region. Even if one were to take the Iranian government at its
word, the timing of weapons testing, military exercises and belligerent
rhetoric from the highest Iranian officials indicates that these technological
advancements are nothing more than political instruments in a tool box that
services a two-and-a-half-decade-long terror policy. For all the deafening claims of Iran’s thug-par-excellence president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the clerical regime’s success in enriching uranium last
week was primarily the result of nuclear science and technology imported from
abroad, primarily from the infamous nuclear proliferator,
A.Q. Khan of Pakistan. Iran insists their nuclear program is
for civilian purposes and claims it embodies the “national aspiration” of
Iranians. If that were the case and the program would ultimately benefit the
Iranian people, then why would the Iranian regime find it necessary to hide its
existence from its own people? A massive uranium enrichment project was
clandestine until the exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of
Resistance of Iran, exposed the existence of the uranium
enrichment facility at Natanz and the heavy water
plant at Arak in August of 2002. Recent
revelations demonstrate Iranian scientists linked to the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC) have made attempts to fashion highly enriched uranium (HEU)
spheres into a nuclear warheads to put on top of advanced missile designs.
While the HEU sphere schematics have their origins with Pakistan and A. Q. Khan, Iran’s long range missiles technology
appears to have its origins with North Korean missile designs. The Americans as well as the Europeans now
know beyond a reasonable doubt that the Iranian regime has been working in
secret since the 1980’s on their nuclear weapons program. In October of 1988,
when former President Rafsanjani was addressing the IRGC he said: …we should
fully equip ourselves both in offensive and defensive use of chemical,
biological, nuclear weapons. From now on you should make use of the opportunity
and performs this task.
His deputy at the time of Rafsanjani
presidency, Mohajerani, said:…since the enemy has
atomic capabilities, Islamic countries must be armed with the same capacity.
To remark about the consistency of
bad government in Iran is not to suggest the regime has
not evolved! The so called “pragmatic” Rafsanjani and the so called “reformer”
Khatami have yielded to an even more virulent strain of Iranian official. Since
the presidency of so called “populist” Ahmadinejad, the Iranian regime has
emphasized nationalism to rally support for the fascist government. According
to Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
“Ahmadinejad has been very clever as a politician in realizing that the way to
rekindle fervor among ordinary Iranians is by appealing to their proud nationalist
sentiments.”
There is no question that Iranian
people are proud of themselves and their national identity. The wild
permutations of fascist government in Iran stand in contrast to its
traditional proud national identity. Indeed, the Iranian regime, including
Ahmadinejad, is a national embarrassment to many Iranian nationalists. A
secret official poll that was leaked * revealed that last winter that
about 69 percent of Iranians dismiss the nuclear program as a national project
and 81 percent believe it was not worth taking Iran to the verge
of war.* Iran’s Ministry of Information has privately issued
directives to state-controlled dailies not to report on negative aspects of the
nuclear issue. A common joke these days in Tehran is: we do not have meat and
potatoes, but “nuclear energy is our certain right.” The mullahs’ nationalistic justification for
the nuclear weapons rings hollow considering that their profoundly anti-Iranian
rule has brought nothing but death and destruction for Iranians. They have
plundered Iran’s national wealth and resources to
finance terror and a military machine. They have turned Iran’s cultural, economic, and social
fabric into a big mess. While Ahmadinejad was at his “yellow cake celebration”
last week, residents of quake-stricken cities of Bam, Doroud
and Boroujerd were still crying out in their misery.
The dichotomy between national identity and the current Iranian leadership
fuels general angst as well as a justified resistance against the totalitarian
regime there. More than one hundred thousand Iranians have lost their lives in
an attempt to correct what they saw as an ultimate political infraction. In
their effort, they showed that this regime does not represent their values and
culture.
Although seldom reported, true
Iranian nationalism exists, and is geared to support a free Iran. These sentiments can be found in
every demonstration organized in Iran by oridnary
Iranians, including teachers, women, workers, students and minorities. In a
fascist state like Iran, patriotic Iranians are not those
who parrot the government, they are those who seek freedom and democracy, and
continue to expose Tehran’s anti-Iranian nuclear program at
great cost to themselves and their families.
*The original report is in Farsi but
has been translated into English by the US Alliance for Democratic Iran.
According to news form Tehran, an official polling center has
sent a report to senior officials stating that 69% of Iranians do not view the
nuclear case as a nationalist and only 11% said that they believed Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad could solve their daily problems.
Stamped as “Classified”, this report
has been put together by the polling department of one of the official news
agencies of the country based on the polling it did in the months January and
February. The report also states that 86% of people have said the nuclear
energy is not worth a war.
Moreover, according to the polling
results, Iran’s ethnic minorities do not consider
the nuclear issue as their number one priority. 94% of Arabs of Khuzestan Province and 91% of Kurds have said the
nuclear issue is not their main priority. 98% of Iranian people believe the
nuclear case will eventually result in a military confrontation between Iran and the United States. About the same number of people
responded positive when asked if Iran would have the same fate as Iraq if militarily attacked by the United States. The polling result also
indicates that only 28% of Iranians are worried and fearful about an American
attack…
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