Iran, Women, and Children.
Frankie Fajardo looks at the impact of Iran’s laws on women and the long-term consequence.
IMAGE CREDIT FRANKIE FAJARDO
The killing of Mahsa Amini, by Iran’s Morality Police for showing what is universally termed “a little bit of hair” has brought the oppression of the Iranian people to the forefront. Long overlooked, The Islamic Republic of Iran’s abuse of women is being protested the world over, with chants of “women, life, freedom”
Atefeh Sheiki Nasab, 33, fled Iran in 2017, in a desperate attempt to escape the trickle-down misogyny and violence. She has been active in demonstrations and like many Iranian women, shaved her head in protest of the regime.
She spoke about the restraints imposed on the lives of women and the violence they face.
“In Iran, women can’t do anything, they can’t cycle. It’s illegal. When I came here, I found my own life. London taught me politics, who I am.”
Women are banned from much of public life, even something as mundane as cycling, showcases the restrictions Iranian women face.
While there is no “anti-cycling” law, per se, the morality codes placed on women make it impossible for them, for any of us should we be in Iran, to exercise the same autonomy and freedom afforded to men.
“I ran away and came here. I have a daughter in Iran, I don’t know if she’s fighting for her rights.”
Atefeh was unable to bring her daughter with her, Iran’s judicial system privileges men, specifically in custody battles. Her husband lied to the judge and declared her a prostitute. The judge ruled in his favour. To date, she has no rights over her daughter. Atefeh’s experiences of life as a woman in Iran are as common as they are upsetting.
Loss of one’s child through one-sided court proceedings means that for the children of Iranian fathers all over the world Iran is a place of fear.
Not recognizing dual nationality and with fathers’ rights outweighing all else means many British-Iranian children could at a moment’s notice be abducted and presenting an utterly hopeless situation for the mother.
Atefeh, although safe in the UK hasn’t seen her daughter since she was 7 and probably never will unless she leaves Iran in her as an adult. Atefeh certainly can’t go back, those who flee Iran are seen as traitors, and many face death if they return. What brought her to the UK was knowing a single person had somewhere she could stay, that hope was enough to uproot her. She had lost everything and the state, its laws, agencies, and customs were the direct cause of her misery.
She now lives in temporary accommodation and is attempting to rebuild her life. She does not have a partner and her absent child remains ever present in her mind. She, like millions of other women who have been abused will live with the consequences of her abuse for the rest of her life.
Through the state’s blurring of statute with religious doctrine mouthed by clerics, Iranians are forced to endure a complicated web of psychological torture. Law and faith used to justify one another in an ever perpetuating hell.
“You can dance in the street in the UK. In Iran you can’t, you can’t kiss, they’ll arrest you. Its Haram”
Laws such as committing an “indecent act “are dangerous due to their vagueness. These laws give leeway to board interpretation. This creates fear that is then strategically used to suppress a population who until the 1979 Islamic Revolution enjoyed relative freedoms.
In present-day Iran, Islamic Revolutionary Courts trial cases reaching from blasphemy to overthrowing the Islamic regime. This was the regime's justification for the state-sanctioned and de facto kidnapping of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was held on trumped-up charges under the broad banner of attempting to topple the state.
It’s of little wonder that these conditions left Atefeh in a desperate state, she lives with depression and trauma but like so many women who have been through the worst the world can throw at them she carries on.
Under Iran’s legal system, men are empowered to enact brutality upon women because the laws support them in doing so. Under Iranian law a woman must provide her husband with sex on demand, if she doesn’t comply, he can divorce her, and she’ll also forfeit her right to maintenance payments.
With no recourse in law, women are unable to leave abusive marriages, else be faced with blinding poverty with no chance of employment. What this means is that women are immobilized, and dignity and agency are taken and lost. Such was the case for Atefeh’s mother whose abuse formed the backdrop for her own childhood.
Her safety even as a child wasn’t guaranteed. “I didn’t have a childhood, I was abused, I wasn’t even safe in my own home” But this didn’t just happen to Atefeh, this is widespread and mundane because the state relies on women's compliance and achieves it through violence and rape. Girls learn young not to speak, not to anger the men, to always be on red alert. She describes how women in the Islamic Republic are seen as “baby-making machines”
“Most of the girls in Iran, want to be boys. They are just sex machines, to bring babies”
Atefeh’s strength pours through her every word, she’s generous with her answers and pulls no punches. To her, the truth and being heard is more important than the pain of recounting her experiences.
“Iranian women are called prostitutes just for having a voice, if a woman does something bad you must beat her 100,000 times, it's written in the Quran. If Islam tells us to do this to women, then no. We have rights.”
Even in the UK Atefeh has faced scrutiny and threats from Iranians who deny her right to criticize the religion she feels harmed her.
“I learned my value, in Iran girls of my generation must be quiet, any male says, “be quiet” then they beat us.”
In spite of all she has been through she believes in humanity and in the power and strength of women. These disabling restrictions on women have created a sex-based apartheid with women’s lives viewed as the cheapest of the cheap. The barbarity of the Islamic Republic of Iran extends as Atefeh says, “to life itself”.
“They aren’t just killing people, they’re killing dogs, they say it's Haram, and they shoot them in the street.”
Surviving such brutality is what the Iranian people do instinctively each day. For some, the brutality makes them brutal. For others, a resilience they shouldn’t have had to develop but nonetheless retain, emboldens them to speak truth to power and hold tight to their beliefs in the face of anything they’re faced with.
Like most Iranians, Atefeh wants to see her homeland’s freedom but according to many Iranians, this is impossible while an elite class loyal to the regime is allowed to live as citizens of the West.
“We have many Islamic regime families in the UK, they are enjoying life like a king and queen, they are living a high-class life, they are living openly”
The irony of the disconnect between the regime they support and the freedom they enjoy may be lost on them, but it certainly isn’t on Atefeh, and Iranians like her.
“We want their bank accounts frozen. We want the embassy to be shut down. We want them sent back to Iran.”
To date, the British government has imposed sanctions on five leading political and security officials, including the Commander in Chief of the Iranian Police. The five are banned from traveling to the UK and assets held here frozen.
The long-term impact of the current protests remains to be seen, but for women like Atefeh, it is a rare moment where the focus has been on the injustice faced by the women of The Islamic Republic of Iran.