Inciting Genocide - Absolutely---- but What about Crimes Against Humanity?
By Jila Kazerounian
American Chronicle
June 25, 2007
On Wednesday June 20th, 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding from the United Nations to charge the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide, as he has called for destruction of Israel. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as the acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. And article 3 calls the following acts punishable:
* Genocide;
* Conspiracy to commit genocide;
* Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
* Attempt to commit genocide;
* Complicity in genocide.
Ahmadinejad has called for destruction of Israel in a number of occasions. His famous declaration was: "As the Imam (Ayatollah Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map." It is nauseating that the Ohio Congressman Kucinich and some appeasers of the Iranian regime try to explain how "wipe off the map" does not really mean "wipe off the map" in Farsi and Ahmadinejad only means regime change in Israel. Let's look at two direct quotes from Iran's official sites from Khomeini himself: "We must all rise, destroy Israel" and "Israel must be eradicated from the page of history." As someone who is fluent in both Farsi and English, I testify that "wipe off" (the word in Farsi) really translates to "wipe off" meaning "eradicated" and nothing was lost in translation. The leadership of the Islamic Republic as a whole, from the so-called "pragmatist" former President Rafsanjani to the "reformist" smiley face former President Khatami all believe in this ideological pillar of Islamic fundamentalism.
Coincidentally, the House resolution was passed on June 20th. This Day bears great significance for Iranian people. On June 20th, 1981 Khomeini's regime brutally attacked peaceful demonstration of more than 500,000 Iranian people in Tehran. Thousands were arrested. Young girls and boys were executed within few weeks. Their pictures appeared in the State-run newspapers calling on their parents to claim the body of their loved ones from morgues.
In July 1981, Time magazine ran an article entitled: "Terror in the Name of God". Its focus was on twelve girls who were brutally executed by the government of Iran because they took part in a demonstration for democracy on June 20th, 1981. The following is a paragraph out of this article:
... The Islamic judge who sentenced them--Ayatullah Mohammadi Gilani--did not even know who they were. The twelve girls, the oldest 18, the others under 16, refused to identify themselves in court. When Gilani asked their names, each in turn replied, "Mojahed" (member of MEK/PMOI). To the question "Child of?" each replied, "The people of Iran." Gilani solved the problem of identifying the girls by having them photographed. Then he consigned them to the firing squad. Islamic guards led the dozen girls to the courtyard of Evin Prison in Tehran...As the guards began to blindfold them, the girls started chanting, "Death to fascism! Death to Khomeini!"...Three days later, the clergy-controlled newspaper Ettela'at printed the girls' pictures with a terse message asking the parents to call for the bodies...
On June 20th 1981, the clerical regime in Iran began an unprecedented massacre against its own citizens. 120,000 political prisoners have been viciously murdered since then; tens of thousands of them women who courageously stood up to tyranny. Slightest voice of dissent was - and continues to be - crushed. Crime against humanity, as defined in International law consists of: acts of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, as being the criminal offence above all others. By any international standards, atrocities committed in large scale by the leadership of Iranian regime against Iranian citizens are crimes against humanity. How can Mr. Kucinich and the rest of mullah's apologists wash this one away and find an alternative definition for "massacre"?
Ahmadinejad and the rest of the clerical leadership in Iran must be condemned by the United Nations Security Council and should be charged and taken to the international tribunals for inciting genocide as well as crimes against humanity.
 

'Islamic bicycle' can't slow Iranian women
By Farzaneh Milani
USA Today

June 29, 2007

The Islamic Republic of Iran has devised an "Islamic bicycle." This new vehicle comes fully equipped with a cabin to conceal parts of a female cyclist's body.
The new technology is less about the bike and more about suppressing women. Iran, unlike Saudi Arabia, allows women to drive cars. In fact, Iran's top race car driver, Laleh Seddigh, is a woman. Women also ride motorcycles, although they must be accompanied by a man (and must sit behind him).
But Iran forbids women from riding bicycles (thus, the newly designed bike). The belief is that sexuality is easily stimulated in both sexes. The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced in 1999 that "women must avoid anything that attracts strangers, so riding bicycles or motorcycles by women in public places causes corruption and is thus forbidden."
Vigilantes, ever ready to terrorize women who dare transgress, attack female bicyclists. When Fae'zeh Rafsanjani, who was elected to Iran's fifth Parliament, insisted there was nothing un-Islamic about bicycle riding, militants physically assaulted her. Never mind that she was the daughter of a former Iranian president.
Surely the desire to keep women in their "proper place" is not the monopoly of Iran. Mobile, independent women are feared in other parts of the world. Vehicles also are seen as upsetting domesticity by giving women the means to travel to forbidden territories.
These fears surfaced in 19th-century America. The newly invented bicycle, which was also used by women, was seen as a threat to the social order and a provocation to promiscuity. It was also seen as a catalyst for change. Suffragists and early women's rights advocates called it a "freedom machine." Susan B. Anthony said, "The bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world."
Iranian women know gender apartheid and understand the value of freedom of movement. In a 2000 movie, The Day I Became a Woman, one protagonist, Ahoo, is a fully covered woman participating in an all-women cycling tournament. She is speeding ahead when her husband threatens to divorce her. "Get off the bike," he orders. Ahoo prefers divorce. She leans over the handlebar and pedals faster. Then her father, brothers and village elders gallop beside her on horseback and command her to get off. Ahoo defies them, picking up speed and focusing on the road ahead.
Iranian women, like Ahoo, have broken out of the bounds of established spaces and cultural limits. The bicycle ban, like the Islamic bicycle, is a desperate but ultimately futile attempt to control them.
 

Dark Days for Women
By Omid Memarian
Inter Press Service

July 09, 2007
Judicial authorities in Iran have sentenced two women activists who participated in a peaceful protest against discriminatory laws in June 2006 to more than 30 months in jail and ten lashes. The harsh sentences come amid the recent arrests of more than a dozen student activists, the government closure of the popular Hammihan newspaper, and pressure on Iran's Labour News Agency to stop its activities, in another sweeping crackdown on the Islamic Republic's civil society. Delaram Ali, who is a member of the "One Million Signatures for Equality Campaign", was sentenced to 34 months in prison plus ten lashes on Jul. 1. A day later, Alieh Eghdamdoust, another women activist, received a sentence of 40 months and 20 lashes.
Their advocacy campaign was launched to change the discriminatory laws against women in Iran's constitution.
"There is no precedent for such ruthless sentences against women. The punishments do not fit the alleged crimes," Nasrin Sotoodeh, Delaram's lawyer, told IPS by telephone from Tehran.
"These ladies are facing these sentences because of participation in a peaceful gathering, which is basically permitted by Iran's constitution. Article 27 states that people have the right to peacefully gather unless they carry guns or violate Islamic laws. The government must provide proof that these women have violated the law."
Some of the main grievances of the campaign are equal inheritance rights (women currently receive half of what men do), the elimination of polygamy and fair custody rights. "In all the women's protests to date, they peacefully convened to change such laws," added Sotoodeh, who represents many women rights activists in Iran.
The pressure on women activists increased dramatically when government security agents and police violently put an end to a peaceful protest in Tehran in June 2006. Dozens of participants were arrested and released afterwards on bail.
The second round of confrontation occurred when security agents arrested more than 30 women who had gathered in front of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Court to support five women on trial inside the courthouse on Mar. 4, 2007 for participating in the protest rally.
Four of the women in that trial ended up being sentenced to one to three years in prison. They have filed an appeal.
"Delaram Ali's arm was hurt and had to be put in a cast for two months, when she was attacked by female police officers. We filed a lawsuit against the police. It has been a year now, and although we understand the case investigator has asked the police to attend a briefing session to provide information about the incident, they have not honoured this request," Sotoodeh said.
"The last update is that the case investigator has declared that if a [police] representative does not appear before the court, the court will be forced to issue a verdict in their absence. While these women's complaints about their beatings [by the police] have not been processed, one by one they have received heavy sentences, and are exposed to further violence," she said.
The campaign against discriminatory laws in Iran has caught Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's attention, indicating that the women's voices are reaching high-ranking ayatollahs.
"In our country... some activist women, and some men, have been trying to play around with Islamic rule in order to match international conventions relating to women," Khamenei said during a speech last Thursday to commemorate National Women's Day according to his official website and the state-run television. "This is wrong."
However, he emphasised that "some of the women issues which exist in religious jurisprudence are not the final word and it is possible to make new interpretations through research by a skillful jurist." The supreme leader has absolute power over all state matters.
Despite all their achievements since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women still endure tight restrictions under the constitution, such as requiring a male guardian's permission to work or travel abroad. Women are not allowed to become judges or run for president, and a man's court testimony is considered twice as valid as a woman's.
Fariba Davoodi Mohajer, another activist in the women's movement, who was sentenced to five years in prison last May but is currently free on bail pending appeal, believes that women's quest for equality raises critical questions about the validity of a constitution based on Sharia, or Islamic Law.
"The hardliners want to control the women's movement at the domestic and international levels. In many of these cases, harsh sentences, repeated summons or interrogations, and legal and illegal threats are designed to stop the women's movement," Davoodi told IPS. "These sentences by the hardliners are intended to intimidate civil society and prevent the growth of independent social movements."
"In recent years, the women's movement has acted as a catalyst to refuel student and labour movements which had been silenced. The latest crackdown against women is an effort to pacify the civil society and intimidate other activists such as students, labour leaders, journalists and activists."
In an interview with IPS, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, editor of Farzaneh, a quarterly publication dedicated to women's issues, and director of the NGO Training Centre in Tehran, said that "increased police brutality over the past few months, paired with harsh sentences, clearly convey the message that public gatherings and protests will no longer be tolerated."
Abbasogholizadeh, who was one of the 33 women imprisoned last March, believes that the hardliners' confrontations with activists reflect their fear that such demands for change are a strategy to overthrow the Islamic regime.
"A faction of the hardliners identifies our peaceful activities as tactics for a so-called 'soft overthrow' of the regime. This paranoia has inflicted additional pressure on civil society. They do not realise that women's demand are basic necessities and impossible to ignore," she said. "Compared to two years ago, all public resources have been removed from civil society activists, especially women, and have been handed to religious propaganda and charity organisations."
"The hardliners have a plan for extensive suppression, beginning with pressuring independent papers. Therefore, it is safe to say that the prison sentences for those women must be viewed within the larger picture: authorities who believe in suppression of civil society have gained momentum over the more moderate factions who do think that the Islamic government should control or halt these types of activities."
 

Iranian Women. "Fighting back against fundamentalism"

By Sarvnaz Chitsaz

Arabicareport Magazine

July 15, 2007

Women's struggle for equality cannot take place without us spearheading the fight against fundamentalism and its global threats. As an Iranian woman, I have been witness to oppression of my people and the women of my homeland by the ruling
fundamentalists for over two decades. But, the world has failed to reflect on what has been experienced by Iranian women. Furthermore, the potential threat of growing fundamentalism is not clear to most.
Not much attention is driven to the issue in the media, and governments are following their own  policies of appeasement and commercial interests. Economic interests have even silenced all human rights concerns. Experience has shown that this phenomenon will not stop in Iran or even in the Middle East. Bearing witness to such growth of extremism and fundamentalism towards other women, we cannot be indifferent. The last Human Rights Special Rapporteur to Iran, Professor Capithorn, wrote many years ago that Iran resembles a huge prison for women. Women in Iran are under continuous control and scrutiny by over
20 oppressive government agencies investigating and controlling how women dress and behave with men.
And to all these, we have to add hazardous outcomes of the effect of extreme poverty and misogynist laws:

- According to surveys, over 73 percent of women in Iran have become victimized by violence at least once, but contrary to other countries, the law in Iran gives an open hand to men to exert violence.

- In June 2006, 5200 cases have been filed regarding sexual assault against young girls in family environments.

- Increase in practices such as polygamy and temporary marriage, has actually made way to prostitution.

- 35% of women university graduates are unemployed. Iranian girls have managed to fill over 60% of capacity in the universities. But the mullahs are planning to impose sexual discriminations for university attendance in
their so called Parliament. The goal is to limit women from entering universities. These are certainly a small fraction of what the mullahs have done against women in Iran.
Now, one should ask, what is the duty of women's movement regarding such discrimination and tyranny? Campaigns to force the regime to bring about reform in its structure of government and laws regarding women have no place in a religious dictatorship based on the concept of Velayat Faghih (Supreme Leadership.) Twenty-eight years of experience has shown that the religious fascism ruling Iran is a backward system incapable of any reform. If it retreats from its oppressive and misogynist laws even one step, the regime's whole foundation will come apart. From 1996 to 2004, during Khatami's presidency, he claimed to reform mullahs' government from within. He had the majority of the Parliament in his favor and his international allies also extended full support for him. But nothing changed. Not only misogynist practices did not diminish, but it even escalated.
Khatami's reform project was a big demonstration of the fact that even the reform claims of this regime are only to be used to increase oppression and accelerate the development of nuclear weapons.

What is the solution?
In March 2004, in a women's gathering in Paris, when Mrs. Rajavi called for the formation of an international women's front against fundamentalism, Elizabeth and I along with some other friends took it upon ourselves to answer this call. The first step to stand against this phenomenon is to inform and expose. It is for this reason that every year we consider it our duty to address the subject on International Women's Day. We call for help and participation from women who themselves can feel this threat, apart from any national and regional orientations, from any ideological, religious or racial preferences. There is a common root and a common pain. We are all women and can understand each other's pain. We can feel the pain and suffering caused by the expansion of fundamentalism growing stronger than three years ago. Therefore we must emphasize the importance of exposing this phenomenon. We should ask our governments to incline all economic and diplomatic relations with this regime to improvements in human rights.
More delays will threaten the women's movement in Iran and across the globe. This of course should evolve our active participation in an overall struggle against fundamentalism to expose its global threat as a religious fascism that is trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Our struggle for equality cannot take place without us spearheading the fight against fundamentalism and its global threats.