Iran protests: 'Women, life freedom'
Demonstrations show that cruelty against women oppresses everyone
The American South, an elderly Alabama native once told me, could never have prospered without ending segregation because no state can discriminate against a large portion of its population without impoverishing itself.
That comes to me again and again as I watch the fury of Iranian women against the vicious bigotry they have endured since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Protests have spread to 105 cities and all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency, with demonstrators chanting, “Women, life, freedom.” Since mid-September there have been street riots, strikes and public burning of veils worn as part of the mandatory dress code that forces women to cover their heads and wear robes that hide the outline of their bodies. The unrest began when the notorious Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s morality police, arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Tehran for the “crime” of wearing her headscarf loosely. Less than two hours later, she was in a coma. Three days later she was dead. Authorities said she had a heart attack. But a courageous journalist, Nilufer Hamidi, reporting for the Tehran-based reformist newspaper Daily Sharq, was the first to document her head injuries, coma and death. Her stories had an impact. Hamidi was arrested, but the city erupted. And what happens in Iran has an impact in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Our first lesson in hijab came at 25,000 feet. The pilot announced that all women aboard the aircraft were compelled to don veils as the plane entered Iranian airspace.
Hard to believe now, but in the 1990s the United States and moderate elements in the government of Iran were quietly looking for a way to ease relations between our two countries. One back-channel way to start was to initiate journalist exchanges. With funding from a foundation serving as a go-between, I traveled to Iran, the trip arranged by the relentlessly organized Cynthia Dickstein, a gifted writer and a specialist in organizing exchanges.
Our first lesson in hijab came before we landed. As we approached Iran on the Lufthansa flight, the pilot announced that all women aboard the aircraft were compelled to don veils as the plane entered Iranian airspace. Even at 25,000 feet, Iran’s rigid dress code for women was enforced. And in the following days, as Cynthia and I wore manteaus (ankle-length, very light coats) over our clothes and veils during 90-degree days while men strolled the streets in short-sleeved shirts, hijab was an omnipresent symbol of discrimination.
In between meetings inviting Iranian journalists to be part of an exchange, we interviewed women such as human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who five years later won the Nobel Peace Prize. In those calmer days, most Iranian women assured us that hijab was not the problem that Americans like us made it out to be. The real problems, they said, were those that curbed women every day of their lives: the fact that under Iranian law, women were considered as half of a man, their word given less weight and lives valued that much less. Men were considered entitled to sole custody of children in divorce. A married woman could not leave the country without her husband’s permission. The legal problems were endless, Ebadi emphasized, while pouring us coffee at her home. And even then, she told us of protests over violations of human rights in Iran.
Hijab, Iranian women assured me, was not the worst problem they faced. But it has now become a tool for a corrupt leadership to grind down its people in acts of wanton cruelty.
Yet the hundreds, even thousands, of protests in Iran over the years have rarely brought about change. The mullahs have always managed to stifle citizens and the press. Even then, Cynthia and I could see the cracks spreading. One of the newspapers we were going to invite to be part of the exchange was in an uproar when we entered the newsroom. Reporters and editors just gotten word that a court ordered the publication to close.
Iran guarantees press freedom through its constitution, but adds an exception you could drive a tank through: “Publications and the press have freedom of expression except when there is an infringement of the basic tenants of Islam or the rights of the public.” We saw more press harassment later as we invited Iranian journalists to come to America. Over the years, several were arrested or newspapers closed. In 2008, after 16 years of publication, Iran’s courts closed Zanan, (Women) Iran’s Ms. Magazine, pictured above. Its founder and editor, Shahla Sherkat, had stayed in my home during our exchange and was clearly revered by other Iranian journalists. (I was on The New York Times editorial board at the time, and one of my colleagues wrote about it, here). Sherkat tried to open a new magazine in 2014, only to be dragged into court again.
Unsurprisingly, our attempts to continue a true exchange of journalists between our countries went nowhere past the first meetings in America. Now, as Iran protests spread, so does Iran’s war against the media. No fewer than 40 Iranian reporters and editors have been imprisoned for covering the protests, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. But this isn’t just a revolt of women, or even the young, as all generations have encouraged the protestors. And journalists keep doing their jobs, at great risk.
In one sense, the Iranians Cynthia and I talked to all those years ago were right. Hijab isn’t their biggest problem. But hijab has become a handy tool for a corrupt leadership to grind down its people in acts of wanton cruelty. It is the outward manifestation of religious bondage aimed at women, but which now imprisons all of society. And thousands of courageous Iranians in dozens of cities are fighting back. Google and other tech companies are giving protesters tools to communicate on private networks to evade detection. Reporters keep reporting, against all odds.
Nobody can yet know what the outcome will be. But the rage of women is finally making dictators tremble echoed in a simple chant: “Women, life, freedom.”
Great line: “Hijab isn’t their biggest problem. But hijab has become a handy tool for a corrupt leadership to grind down its people in acts of wanton cruelty.”
Well done, Maura.