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February 15, 2009 VOLUME 57

E-Zan Featured Reports

New executions demonstrate need for unequivocal legal ban of stoning

15 January 2009
Amnesty International Statement
Amnesty International deplores the execution by stoning of two men -- Houshang Khodadadeh and another unidentified man - in Mashhad, north-east Iran, probably on 26 December 2008 and urges the authorities to declare an immediate and effective moratorium on executions by stoning, including in the cases of the ten people currently known to be at risk of stoning to death. The stonings were confirmed on 13 January 2009 by Judiciary Spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi.
These new cases of stoning yet again demonstrate that statements -- such as one made by Ali Reza Jamshidi in August 2008 in which he declared that stonings in Iran had been halted - or even directives by the Head of Iran's Judiciary are not enough to halt this horrific practice. The speedy enactment of legislation that unequivocally brings an end to this grotesque punishment is necessary and long overdue.
A third man, an Afghan national identified only as "Mahmoud Gh." managed to free himself from the pit he was to be stoned in, and is currently believed to be in custody. None of the three men were previously known to be at risk of stoning by anti-stoning campaigners in Iran. Amnesty International and campaigners in Iran are aware of ten other people at risk of stoning to death, but fear there may be others.
According to the "Stop Stoning Forever" Campaign, which is working for an end to this punishment, at least eight women and two men are at risk of stoning to death in Iran. The women are Kobra N., held in Reja'i Shahr prison, Karaj; Iran A, held in Sepidar Prison, Ahvaz; Khayrieh V., also held in Sepidar Prison, Ahvaz; Ashraf Kalhori, held in Evin Prison, Tehran; Gilan Mohammadi, held in the Central Prison in Esfahan; Afsaneh R, held in Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz;, M.J, held Vakil Abad Prison in Mashhad; and H, also held in Vakil Abad Prison in Mashhad. The men are Abdollah Farivar, held in Sari Prison in Mazandaran province and Gholamali Eskandari, held in the Central Prison, Esfahan.
Two other women -- sisters Zohreh and Azar Kabiri-niat -- are currently being retried before Branch 77 of Tehran's General Court. Their previous conviction and sentence to stoning was overturned in 2008 by the Head of the Judiciary. If convicted again after the retrial, they risk being sentenced once again to death by stoning.
In Iran, stoning to death is a penalty prescribed specifically for "adultery while being married". The offence should be proved either by confession four times in front of the judge, the testimony of four male eyewitnesses or of three men and two women; or by the "knowledge" of the judge, which can include video footage or forensic evidence.
Amnesty International urges the Iranian authorities to enact a law unequivocally banning stoning as a legal punishment. Pending the adoption of such a law, an immediate and effective moratorium on executions by stoning should be implemented. As some judges, especially outside Tehran continue to sentence individuals to stoning, it should be made clear to officials of the law enforcement, custodial and other relevant ministries and agencies, that this moratorium must not be breached and that any officials who defy that instruction will themselves be held accountable.
The Iranian authorities should also ensure that any legislation enacted, including the new Penal Code, conforms to their international obligations under human rights law, and that consensual sexual relations are unambiguously decriminalized.

Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Rights

February 13, 2009
By Nazila Fathi

The New York Times
TEHRAN — In a year of marriage, Razieh Qassemi, 19, says she was beaten repeatedly by her husband and his father. Her husband, she says, is addicted to methamphetamine and has threatened to marry another woman to “torture” her.
Rather than endure the abuse, Ms. Qassemi took a step that might never have occurred to an earlier generation of Iranian women: she filed for divorce.
Women’s rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code. One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data, a fourfold increase in the past 15 years.
And it is not just women from the wealthy, Westernized elites. The family court building in Vanak Square here is filled with women, like Ms. Qassemi, who are not privileged. Women from lower classes and even the religious are among those marching up and down the stairs to fight for divorces and custody of their children.
Increasing educational levels and the information revolution have contributed to creating a generation of women determined to gain more control over their lives, rights advocates say.
Confronted with new cultural and legal restrictions after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some young women turned to higher education as a way to get away from home, postpone marriage and earn social respect, advocates say. Religious women, who had refused to sit in classes with men, returned to universities after they were resegregated.
Today, more than 60 percent of university students are women, compared with just over 30 percent in 1982, even though classes are no longer segregated.
Even for those women for whom college is not an option, the Internet and satellite television have opened windows into the lives of women in the West. “Satellite has shown an alternative way of being,” said Syma Sayah, a feminist involved in social work in Tehran. “Women see that it is possible to be treated equally with men.”
Another sign of changing attitudes is the increasing popularity of books, movies and documentaries that explore sex discrimination, rights advocates say.
“Women do not have a proper status in society,” said Mahnaz Mohammadi, a filmmaker. “Films are supposed to be a mirror of reality, and we make films to change the status quo.”
In a recent movie, “All Women Are Angels,” a comedy that was at the top of the box office for weeks, a judge rejects the divorce plea of a woman who walked out on her husband when she found him with another woman.
Even men are taking up women’s issues and are critical of traditional marriage arrangements. Mehrdad Oskouei, another filmmaker, has won more than a dozen international awards for “The Other Side of Burka,” a documentary about women on the impoverished and traditional southern island of Qeshm who are committing suicide in increasing numbers because they have no other way out of their marriages.
“How can divorce help a woman in southern parts of the country when she has to return after divorce to her father’s home who will make her even more miserable than her husband?” said Fatimeh Sadeghi, a former political science professor fired for her writing on women’s rights.
Janet Afary, a professor of Middle East and women’s studies at Purdue University and the author of “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran,” says the country is moving inexorably toward a “sexual revolution.”
“The laws have denied women many basic rights in marriage and divorce,” she wrote in the book. “But they have also contributed to numerous state initiatives promoting literacy, health and infrastructural improvements that benefited the urban and rural poor.”
To separate the sexes, the state built schools and universities expressly for women, and improved basic transportation, enabling poor women to travel more easily to big cities, where they were exposed to more modern ideas.
Ms. Afary says that mandatory premarital programs to teach about sex and birth control, instituted in 1993 to control population growth, helped women delay pregnancy and changed their views toward marriage. By the late 1990s, she says, young people were looking for psychological and social compatibility and mutual intimacy in marriage.
Despite the gains they have made, women still face extraordinary obstacles. Girls can legally be forced into marriage at the age of 13. Men have the right to divorce their wives whenever they wish, and are granted custody of any children over the age of 7. Men can ban their wives from working outside the home, and can engage in polygamy.
By law, women may inherit from their parents only half the shares of their brothers. Their court testimony is worth half that of a man. Although the state has taken steps to discourage stoning, it remains in the penal code as the punishment for women who commit adultery. A woman who refuses to cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes.
Women also face fierce resistance when they organize to change the law. The Campaign for One Million Signatures was founded in 2005, inspired by a movement in Morocco that led to a loosening of misogynist laws. The idea was to collect one million signatures for a petition calling on authorities to give women more equal footing in the laws on marriage, divorce, adultery and polygamy.
But Iran’s government has come down hard on the group, charging many of its founders with trying to overthrow it; 47 members have been jailed so far, including 3 who were arrested late last month. Many still face charges, and six members are forbidden to leave the country. One member, Alieh Eghdamdoust, began a three-year jail sentence last month for participating in a women’s demonstration in 2006. The group’s Web site, www.we-change.org, has been blocked by the authorities 18 times.
“We feel we achieved a great deal even though we are faced with security charges,” said Sussan Tahmasebi, one of the founding members of the campaign, who is now forbidden to leave Iran. “No one is accusing us of talking against Islam. No one is afraid to talk about more rights for women anymore. This is a big achievement.”
Women’s advocates say that the differences between religious and secular women have narrowed and that both now chafe at the legal discrimination against women. Zahra Eshraghi, for example, the granddaughter of the revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, signed the One Million Signatures petition.
“Many of these religious women changed throughout the years,” said Ms. Sayah, the feminist in Tehran. “They became educated, they traveled abroad and attended conferences on women’s rights, and they learned.”
Because of the government’s campaign of suppression, the process of collecting signatures has slowed recently, and many women do not want to be seen in the presence of a campaigner, let alone sign a petition. Most feminist groups limit their canvassing now to the Internet.
But while the million signatures campaign may have stalled, women have scored some notable successes. A group that calls itself Meydaan has earned international recognition for pressing the government to stop stonings.
The group’s reporting on executions by stoning in 2002 on its Web site, www.meydaan.net — including a video of the execution of a prostitute — embarrassed the government and led the head of the judiciary to issue a motion urging judges to refrain from ordering stonings. (The stonings have continued anyway, but at a lower rate, because only Parliament has the power to ban them.)

Iran, winds of change
Italian magazine Limes
Interview with Maryam Rajavi
By Fausta Speranza

February 14, 2009
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) is no longer a terrorist organization
The situation of the internal Iranian opposition
Interview with Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
The winds of change in Iran are blowing. With this phrase, Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), expressed her joy over the EU Council of Ministers decision to take the PMOI, an opposition movement against the mullahs in Iran, off the terrorist list.
This label was finally removed at the end of January. In 2002, based on British demands and following the September 11th attacks, in the midst of an extraordinary atmosphere against terrorism, the PMOI was placed on the terrorist list.
The PMOI was formed in 1965 believing in a democratic Islam and aiming to overthrow the Shah’s regime. Today, it is fighting against what Rajavi describes as the mullahs’ religious fascism in Tehran. A number of verdicts by European courts, the last of which was handed down on December, 4, 2008, found that there is no credible or serious legal evidence indicating that the PMOI is involved in terrorist activity. As such, the European case is closed, but in the US, the organization is still maintained on the blacklist. Maryam Rajavi, who leads the opposition network in exile, speaks of an unjust listing and calls on the new US President Obama to remove the PMOI from the blacklist.
Rajavi proclaims that the regime in Tehran used every possible political and diplomatic leverage to keep the PMOI on the list, and also speaks of the crimes and grave human rights violations committed by the current Iranian rulers. When talking about the appeasement policy, Rajavi refers to short-term economic interests pursued by many European countries and says that it was for this reason that they delayed the decision on the PMOI. She especially refers to the inconsistencies with regards to implementing the sanctions imposed due to the Iranian nuclear issue.
In this regard, on the same day that the EU announced its decision vis-à-vis the PMOI, the German government, according to media sources, issued an order to the effect that guarantees for companies exporting to Iran will be stopped. This occurs at a time when despite sanctions, there are signs of a significant amount of exports from Germany to Iran in 2008. The US and Israel are among the biggest critics of the increase of German exports to Iran. They say that by the end of November 2008 German exports to Iran had increased by 10.5%, amounting to 3.58 billion Euros for the year.
As relations between Tehran and the world’s biggest powers, the P5+1 (US, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany), turn more heated when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, parties expect to wait and see how the new Obama administration deals with the situation. Brussels says that the doors to dialogue with Tehran have always remained open, while reminding that UN sanctions resolutions are still in effect. Maryam Rajavi charges that the international community has failed to remove itself from the cycle of EU carrots and US sticks.
The NCRI was established in 1981 and is based in Paris. Its founder is Massoud Rajavi, whose location, due to obvious security reasons, is unknown. Maryam Rajavi is the President-elect of the NCRI and appears in public with considerable security protection. Every year in Paris, approximately 70,000 Iranian refugees gather to hear Rajavi reiterate that the solution to the Iranian crisis is neither a foreign military intervention nor the Western, and especially the EU, policy of appeasement vis-à-vis the mullahs, which has been pursued during the past two years. According to the NCRI, the third option is democratic change in Iran by supporting the Iranian people and their resistance movement. We shall wait and see whether Obama will take this path or whether he has another third option in mind.
 

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