From Veiled to Jailed

Just in case the efforts by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against homosexuals, Jews, Kurds, Baha’i, Israelis, academics, Americans, and weapons inspectors have not been adequately appalling, his regime’s latest public enemy number one—women—should shake us to the core. While media coverage of Ahmadenejad’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly last week was primarily focused on the dangers posed to America and to the world by a nuclear Iran, it behooves us to remove ourselves from this America-centric perspective and consider the actual suffering of those already under his fanatic and menacing rule.

By spending so much time playing hide and seek with weapons inspectors and raving about the destruction of the “Zionist regime” and “American empire,” Ahmadinejad does himself the benefit of deflecting attention away from his increasingly horrifying treatment of his own people. In a report by Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran released last week in order to coincide with his visit, the groups remind us that “reaching a resolution of the nuclear standoff should not come at the expense of attention to the human rights crisis in Iran.” They then provide a shocking chronicle of the extent to which Ahmadinejad—who began his pre-UN interview with Larry King by invoking the name of “God the compassionate, the merciful”—has terrorized his own people.

Since 2005, 81 percent of the world’s execution of juveniles took place in Iran. Ahmadinejad’s penchant for allowing the murder of Iranian juveniles, which is in direct violation of various UN treaties, does not merely extend to youngsters. Iran takes silver to China’s gold in the contest for overall leading global executioner, and Ahmadinejad has led his country to a 300 percent increase in executions since taking office in 2005. In his spare time, Ahmadinejad also imprisons academics, detains students, and jails journalists and human rights defenders.

Recently, the Iranian regime has turned the full force of its tyrannical gaze upon the Iranian women’s movement. Ahmadinejad has insisted that women have it better in Iran than anywhere else in the world, but ever the reformer, he tried to make it even better in recent months by attempting to revoke the veto granted to women whose husbands seek to take another wife, allow men to divorce their wives without notification, and absolve divorced men from paying alimony, the alternative to which is a heavily-taxed severance that leaves the divorced wife with only a small fraction of the original sum. These clauses the government added to the Family Support Bill were met with tremendous contestation by the Iranian women’s rights movement, whose counter-attacks included the “One Million Signatures Campaign” against the act and against similar laws allowing men uncontested rights to child custody, polygamy, and divorce.

In recent years, Iranian authorities have prosecuted over a hundred female activists for peaceful endeavors such as convening meetings, writing articles in support of female freedom, and collecting signatures. These women have been indicted, often without charge, and many of the convicted are placed in solitary confinement or given prison terms in exile. Some of the most well known include Ronak Safazadeh, who disseminated information and collected signatures and was thus charged with the capital crime of armed activity against the state. Parvin Ardalan, co-founder of the “One Million Signatures Campaign” who was awarded Sweden’s illustrious Olaf Palme human rights award in March, was jailed last month along with three others for the crime of threatening national security. While the women’s movement had a slight victory in recent weeks, with the Iranian Parliament deleting Ahmadinejad’s abhorrent clauses to the bill, it is likely not the end of Ahmadinejad’s attempts to “re-Islamize” Iranian women.

While the world is focused, and rightfully so, on the terrifying prospect of how a nuclear Ahmadinejad regime might attempt to “Islamize” the rest of us and wipe certain unfavorable countries “off the map,” we must not let his booming threats drown out the pleas of the Iranian people, and Iranian women especially. In a recent column, Iranian journalist Amir Taheri quotes feminist Haydeh Karimi who implores, “Free people everywhere should speak out in support of Iranian women.” Indeed, thousands showed up for a protest organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a coalition of other Jewish groups to protest Ahmadinejad’s speech to the General Assembly, and another protest was led by Women International and the Jewish Action Alliance against a dinner featuring him.

We must continue to take up this cause, so that the next time Larry King asks about these issues, Ahmadinejad will not look puzzled and reply,“What do you mean by human rights problems?”

Dana A. Stern ’09, a former president of Harvard Students for Israel, is a government concentrator in Adams House.