By
Fatima Bhutto (First published by Pakistan's The News International)When I was in Tehran this past January I met and wrote about an academic
who was actively involved in lobbying against gender discrimination and violence
towards women. After an exchange of pleasantries and some unsweetened black tea
the professor took out a file of papers. She was working on two campaigns
directed at amending some of the repressive laws against women in her country --
the first was a campaign calling for the eradication of stoning (which can be
signed online)
and the second was a much larger and more dangerous initiative. It is the 'One
Million Signatures' petition and it demands, among other points, the prevention
of forced child marriages, the abolition of honour killings and sanctioned
violence towards women, and provisions to create safe houses for victims of
domestic and sexual violence. The campaign seeks to protect a woman's right to
live freely and without the fear of gender discrimination and bring about
amendments in the Iranian legal code. The professor did not seem scared about
her work in the two women's movements. She saw her work was vital.
Exactly a week ago thirty-three women were arrested for staging a
peaceful demonstration outside Tehran's Revolutionary Court. The women
activists, who had gathered to protest the trial of prominent Human Rights
workers Sousan Tahmasbi, Parvin Ardalan, Nooshin Ahmadi Khorasani, Fariba
Davoodi Mohajer and Shahla Entesari arrested in 2006 for furthering the 'One
Million Signatures' movement, were fully within their legal right to come
together to show solidarity with the five women activists. According to Article
27 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran citizens are guaranteed
the right to assemble peacefully. Don't forget, this is a country whose modern
history has been founded on a legacy of radical social gatherings and public
engagement. It was the police who were violating the law as they forcibly
arrested thirty-three women and carted them off to ward 209, reserved for
political detainees, in Evin prison.
As of March 8, International
Women's Day, all but three women had been released. How? Because every single
day is a battlefield for women and because we've learnt that resistance and
political empowerment can be globalised. I like to think of it as the
globalisation of struggle. Globalised activism. Is there any other meaningful
kind of globalisation? One that is positively confronted and that fosters agency
instead of promoting shopping and the joys of capitalist consumerism? Forget the
globalisation of Coca Cola and McDonald's -- this is the globalisation we ought
to be concerned with, the globalisation of ideas and political action.
On Tuesday I received an email from a former professor of mine regarding
the arrest of the Iranian women activists. "Urgent: Get the word out" it said.
The movement to save a movement had begun. Once confined inside the prison walls
the arrested activists had embarked on a hunger strike and were said to be
singing songs. Singing truth to power, as it were. They were singing 'Song of
Freedom', often heard sung by prisoners in detention centres. Their families
gathered outside the notorious Evin Prison on Monday, the day after their
arrest, and called for their immediate release. By Thursday a petition
circulating demanding the release of all the women (which can be
signed here) had collected almost 4,000 signatures from around the
globe. The Nobel Women's Initiative, founded by Shireen Ebadi, Wangari Mathai,
and Jody Williams along with six other women Nobel laureates, one from each
continent, focused their attention to the case and has begun updating the world
on the condition of the prisoners. Al Jazeera International had covered the
story as had GEO and the BBC. Emails were sent across cyberspace and somewhere,
something happened.
People clicked on to the immense power of resistance
at our fingertips and the possibility for change materialised. All but three of
the women were released early Thursday morning. Upon her release one of the
hunger strikers Nasrin Afzali, who was rumoured to have been beaten while in
Evin, was asked by the press what the general ward of the prison was like.
"Awesome" she replied, "It was a very good experience for us". Afzali then told
the reporter that the women were regrouping the following day, Friday, to
discuss their next move. There was a next move. The movement had not been
quashed.
The remaining three prisoners, Shadi Sadr, Mahbubeh
Abbasgholizadeh, and Jila Baniyaghoub, are believed to have been kept in Evin
because they took responsibility for drafting the statement that called for the
March 4 protest. Shadi Sadr founded Zanan-e-Iran, the first website created to
monitor the work of Iranian women activists and is also a journalist and lawyer
who has successfully defended a number of persecuted women facing the death
penalty. Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh is the editor of Zanan journal and a key
member of the anti-stoning campaign. This isn't the first time she's been
arrested. Jila Baniyaghoub is a journalist who has reported from Iraq and
Afghanistan. These are the women at the centre of the storm this International
Women's Day. This is what a day dedicated to women should be about.
The
women's movement is essentially about struggle. A day dedicated internationally
to women must ultimately be about that struggle -- the struggle for women to
express themselves freely, to live as they choose, and to have control over
their bodies and minds. This is not just about Iran, a country that for all its
richness in culture and spirit can still be beleaguered by an inequality in
gender politics. What about us? Why have we not put a vigorous fight to end the
misogynist legal code that oppresses women and sanctions violence committed
against us? Pakistani women must also realise that when it comes to the defiance
of cruel and illegitimate laws concerning the rights of womankind, whether at
home or abroad, jail is an option, indifference is not.
When will
Pakistani women come together to make their own 'One Million Signature' campaign
against the Hudood Ordinance? I promise I will be the first (though I'd rather
be the millionth) person to sign it.
About the author: Fatima Bhutto is a 24 year old
Pakistani woman. She graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern and
Asian Cultures and Languages from Columbia University and received a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS) in South Asian Government and Politics. Fatima comes from a
political background, her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto - an elected member of
Pakistan's parliament - was
assassinated by state police in 1996. His sister, Benazir Bhutto, was Prime
Minister at the time of his killing. Fatima is the author of two books, a volume
of poetry published when she was 15 years old in her father's memory a year
after his death called 'Whispers of the Desert' and a collection of first
hand survivor's accounts from the October 8, 2005 earthquake in Pakistan
entitled 8:50 am.
Both were published by Oxford University Press. The proceeds from '8:50 am' will
be given back to child survivors of the quake. Fatima currently writes a
weekly column for Pakistan's largest Urdu
daily newspaper, Daily Jang, and its English sister paper, The News
International. Her diary from Tehran is the
second the papers printed; Fatima also wrote a weekly diary from
Lebanon this past summer during the
Israeli invasion.
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