I was in The Hague and it was three days prior to my departure to Tehran on March 4 that
thirty-three Iranian women’s rights activist were arrested when they gathered to protest
against the method of trial of five of their fellow activists. The event took away the
purpose of my visit. Almost all the women I was to meet were in prison. A series of
consultation ensued with individuals with different links and stakes on the issue on
whether I should call off the visit or proceed as planned. Decisions changed as updates
on the situation trickled in by the hour. Nine women were released the second day and
there was a likelihood that the rest would be released soon as well. It was clear that the
arrests was a move toward preventive detention with an aim of demobilizing key women
of the movement from organizing a demonstration on March 8, international women’s
day. It was anticipated therefore that all the women would be released after March 8.

Opinions from various quarters suggested that despite the release of some of the women,
it was not safe to travel, as the situation would continue to remain tense even after the
release. The issue here was not my safety but the safety of the women who were
released. Clearly they would be under heavy surveillance and meeting foreigners, when
the unwritten charge was colluding with foreign forces, would further jeopardize them.

The final decision awaited the return of a long time Iranian friend and women’s rights
academic from a brief visit to Tehran to give her final word. I expected she would
endorse the other views and advice me to go home instead.

As for me, the visit to Iran was something I was looking forward to with tremendous
excitement and a bit of anxiety. Anxiety because I knew it was unlike any other place I
had been so far. My work in the last few years took me to Colombia, East Timor
Democratic Republic of Congo and Northern Uganda among other places where there is
always a possibility of being caught up in random violence or being taken hostage. Iran
was different. The danger here was more in the nature of lurking fear of the unknown.

Reports of arrests, detention, interrogation of activists and raids on their offices had been
appearing regularly. Human rights work and particularly women’s rights work is
threatening to the Iranian authorities. A foreigner doing similar work visiting
counterparts in Iran would not be taken kindly, I was told.

I was keen to go despite the advice and not only because I woke up the day before feeling
it was the right decision. I did not know when next I would come this close to visiting
Iran and wanted to take the opportunity. At worse, I would be in Tehran doing nothing.

For the moment I chose to ignore the ‘at worst’ possibility. The long time Iranian friend
returned fresh from late night meetings in Tehran reviewing the situation with other
women and advised that in fact, I should go. She believed if there was any time a
women’s rights person should visit Iran, it was now. Of course, one had to be cautious
and take all precautions…. and it is likely that I may not meet as many or any woman, but
being there itself would give a feel of the challenges women face doing human rights
work in Iran and documenting such challenges was the purpose of my visit in the first
place. Her advice was endorsed by Judge Navinathem Pillay of the International Criminal
Court at our meeting in her office in The Hague. Judge Pillay made parallels to the
situation during apartheid in South Africa. It was all very well for the world to boycott
South Africa but political activists yearned for solidarity visits that witnessed their
conditions of existence and their struggles. I found myself in Tehran within the next
twenty-four hours.

The visit lasted for ten days and I met with a few women, some who were released from
prison. The precautions during my stay included being tracked regularly by Frontline [1],
keeping documentary evidence of being a ‘tourist’, not reaching out to anybody but
waiting to be contacted, not sharing details of conversation or information received from
one person with another, watching over your shoulders, using internet cautiously and
having a story for why a lone Indian woman was being a tourist to hotel staff and other
casual observers. Others precautions included trying to blend in, not be conspicuous,
giving a thought to the dress, particularly the head scarf and ensure that it did not slip
away (taxi drivers reminded me with tremendous concern when I was oblivious that mine
had slipped away).

These pale compared to what Iranian women activist endure routinely doing women’s
rights work and some of their recent experiences in the prison. Most of the activists are
under surveillance. Their phones are tapped, their homes are watched, their offices
ransacked, some are tracked for who they meet and where they go, some are randomly
asked to present themselves for interrogations without any intimation or explanations. A
woman I met reportedly miscarried following one such interrogation. Women sit through
conversations with their cell phones switched off and batteries taken off (a switched off
cell phone with batteries in it continue to function as microphone I learnt!). These
activists and some journalists I met have developed the habit of addressing a corner of the
room with flattering comments about religion or national politics, in a mocking gesture of
pleasing the snoopers.

The protest women were arrested for was a peaceful gathering that was well within the
legal parameters of the Iranian constitution. Articles 9 and 27 of the Constitution
guarantees ‘right to freedom’ and ‘right to public gathering and marches.’ The action of
the state of Iran in confronting the gathering in an organized and violent manner and the
arrest of women is uncalled for and unjustified both under Iranian law and international
law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a treaty to which Iran is a state party,
guarantees in its Article 20, the ‘right to peaceful assembly and association.’
The violations of international law continued in the treatment of the activists in prison.

The women I met upon their release from the prison described the conditions and treatment they received which are nothing short of torture. The Evin prison where the
women were taken eventually was not equipped to receive and accommodate thirty three
women at once. They were not supplied with basic essentials of toiletries and change of
clothes. They were not allowed to make phone calls or have access to lawyers. All the
women were blindfolded when they arrived in the prison and did not know where they or
their colleagues are being taken within the prison. Five to seven women were placed in
one small cell. The women considered leaders or more vocal were isolated and put in
solitary confinement. A couple of them were in solitary confinement for most of the
period of their detention. They were provided three blankets for seven women and had to
sleep on the cold floor of the cell. One of the women suffered from pneumonia for days
after her release. Two women suffering from severe case of multiple sclerosis were
denied medication.

The interrogation would begin in the evening at 5 p.m. and go on till wee hours. Marjan [2]
was interrogated four times during the week she spent in the prison. Twice the
interrogation went on till 2 a.m. in the morning. She was sent back after interrogation
and just as she would fall asleep, she was woken and taken in again for interrogation.
Not only were their movements inside the prison under a blindfold, at the interrogation
too they continued to remain blindfolded or were asked to face the wall. Munireh [3] had
similar experience. Her friends in adjoining cell were made to believe that she was being
tortured with sounds of screaming and yelling. All the interrogators were men. The
women I met confided that they questioned, confronted and objected to their treatment in
the prison but the worst they feared was the possibility of rape or other forms of sexual
violence.

Such treatment of prisoners is a clear violation of Article 7 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty to which Iran is a state party, which
requires that ‘no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.’ There are authoritative comments of various United Nations
treaty bodies and other jurisprudence that establishes blindfolding, interrogation
processes as above, lack of medical treatment as forms of torture. Also violated is Article
9 of the ICCPR that prohibits arbitrary arrests and establishes procedures to be followed
in the event of such arrests. In addition, most of the principles established in the Body of
Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or
Imprisonment, (1988) have been flouted.

The interrogators demanded detail responses to questions on the women’s family history,
their relationships, their work, their colleagues, their views and beliefs about religion,
about politics and about contentious issues such as stoning to death. Munireh was
particularly asked about her colleagues and relationship with her boss with who she has
had differences. In her response she wrote how she admired and respected him and his
work and that they have a good working relationship. This incensed the interrogators
who were expecting her to incriminate her boss. They had snooped on her earlier
telephone conversations and had repeated back to her, her own words about her boss.

Almost all the women experienced similar line of questioning where the interrogators
would try to get women to implicate each other, and particularly implicate the more
experienced among them.

The women’s movement in Iran, like elsewhere, accommodates wide-ranging views and
perspectives on the goals and strategies for the struggle for women’s rights. They include
demand of rights from a human rights and secular perspective to demand of rights from a
religious perspective and a myriad of positions in between the spectrum. The women
arrested subscribe to various positions and perspectives. It was perhaps an opportunity
that the authorities sought to crack the movement and push women to speak against each
other. It was inspiring to realize from the conversations with women of how they were in
solidarity with each other in the prison and broke into songs of liberation, of women’s
rights and freedom despite their sometimes serious differences on how to go about the
business of defending and reclaiming women’s human rights.

The torture was not limited to the arrested women but extended to their families as well.
When family members and friends of the detainees gathered in front of Evin Prison to
protest against the illegal arrests, they had to wait for hours before the authorities
addressed them with inadequate and incorrect answers. They were told that ward 209,
where the women were detained is not under the authority of the Evin administrative
office. Some families had no news for the entire period of detention. They were not
given appropriate responses as to the charge and the procedures that would be followed
with the arrested women. The medication that families brought for the women did not
reach them. Lawyers were not given access to the detained women nor were they given
information about the proceedings taking place. Such treatment of the next of kin of
detainees has been declared torture under international law. The families had to scurry
and secure funds ranging from US$ 20,000 to 200,000 as bail amounts for the release of
the women. Some of the families had to mortgage the homes they live in.

I met the two daughters of Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, who were active in the
campaign for the release of the detained women. At the same time as they faced the
prospect of their mother being detained for a long term, the fear in their faces of her
meeting the fate of Zahra Kazemi (a Iranian-Canadian photo journalist who died in
Iranian custody) was palpable. They did not have news of their mother throughout her
detention and were worried for her health. They themselves looked weary out of stress
and sleepless nights.

The eventual charge against the two activists, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh and Shadi
Sadr, who were the last to be released was ‘disturbing the public order’ and ‘being threat
to national security.’ The women arrested are Iranian women working towards
empowerment of all Iranian women; working to reforms laws that are archaic even under
Shariah standards, to have just and fair access to resources and opportunities for
education, employment and participation in public and private lives. Some of these
women participated in the revolution and lived through the different changes in the
governments. These are women who persisted with their goals of women’s
empowerment and worked with or protested against the states in achieving these goals.

The groups they were associated with rejected the message of solidarity extended by the
wife of the former Shah of Iran to their arrest in an open letter distancing themselves and
their struggles from being associated as vestiges of the Shah regime. How these women
constitute a threat to national security remains a national mystery.
Iran does face threats to its national security but the sources of these threats are not
women’s rights activists. Rather it is the extremist war mongering sections within the
political setup both, in Iran and in the United States. Reports of an imminent US attack on
Iran are gaining momentum. Like the invasion of Iraq, the only reason for a US attack on
Iran is because the US leadership, in total disregard to the view of its people, has decided
to attack. Once the decision has been made, all that remains to do is find reasons to
justify the attack. Within Iran, the hardliners among the leadership are providing just the
required reason and justifications. They are doing everything to provoke and instigate a
confrontation that could lead up to a war, again ignoring the majority voices that are
against a confrontational posture. President Ahmadinejad having lost all legitimacy due
to his extremist positions, would welcome an American attack that would take the
scrutinizing eyes of the people away from him. The President’s main supporter among
the clergy, Ali Khamene’i has made speeches to bring the war on, in a move to secure his
own position as the supreme leader.

To safeguard its national security, Iran would do well to leave the women’s rights activist
alone and turn their attention and resources instead, to protect its beautiful cities from
destruction, to maintain its well-developed infrastructure, to sustain the economic wellbeing
of its people and to develop a political regime that prioritizes the interests and
needs of its people. The rest of the world has to double the efforts addressed at the
United States to prevent yet another disaster after Iraq.

I was quite taken in by Tehran and felt at home as it had a feel of parts of my city,
Mumbai. Tehran has infrastructural facilities at par with any major city. At the same
time, there are remnants of the old world Iranian charm and culture that pervades it. It
was the time of the year when the city is surrounded with snow-capped mountains and
fresh water river gushing through some of its nook and corners. I was pleasantly
surprised to watch the streets of Tehran full of young girls and women, all head-scarfed,
veiled and chadored, enthusiastically going about their education or participating in the
economy selling wares, working in offices, being taxi drivers, guards etc. It is more than
one can say about or see in other Muslim city in the region. And yet, these are the limits
of the options available to women. Women are free only as long as they do not challenge
the status quo.

The courage therefore of women who do challenge the status quo is admirable. It is
impressive how the women’s rights activists manage to raise and work on issues that are
highly contentious within an extremely restrictive and limited political space. The scope
and the limits of lawyers working, for example, to assist victims of domestic violence or
woman sentenced to stoning would exasperate anybody doing similar work outside. The
women lawyers I met persist in their work with the hope that someday the laws would
change providing women with better rights and access to justice.

I met Munireh the morning of my last day in Tehran. We agreed to meet again and
perhaps have dinner that evening. Three hours later she called to express regrets and to
inform that her office was raided, her boss taken in for interrogation and that the
authorities were going after their personal assets. Two other organizations were shut
down in the next couple of days. It was time to leave the city and I was apprehensive.
Would I be held at the airport and questioned about the women I met? I was followed
twice during my stay. There was no way to know if these were men being men or if it
had any political purpose. ‘Guests’ in the hotel that I did not meet more than once also
enquired about my stay and about the women who met me.

My visit did not just happen. It was made possible by a small network of individuals
working in the background within and outside Iran communicating over phone wherever
possible and through email, some of which I am not aware. The task of being in touch
with me was left to younger activists not yet in the radar screens of the authorities. That
these young women choose to be activist despites the stakes is indicative of the bright
future of the Iranian women’s movement. At the end of it all, I feel privileged to have had
a rare opportunity to be amidst, what will go down as one of the defining moments in the
history of the women’s movement in Iran. The privilege is all the more greater at the
knowledge of having borne witness - to the alarming disparity in the notion of women’s
rights, to the difficulties and challenges women face and to the conditions of their
struggle for advancing human rights for women.

Notes

[1] A human rights defenders organization based in Dublin, Ireland.

[2] Names of Iranian activists changed.

[3] Names of Iranian activists changed.