Iranian Activist Wins International Human Rights Award for Hijab Campaign

[niyad]

Iranian Activist Wins International Human Rights Award for Hijab Campaign

Journalist Masih Alinejad was awarded the Women's Rights Award at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy last week for her activism supporting Iranian women who choose not to cover their heads in a hijab.


Alinejad's Facebook page, "My Stealthy Freedom," has gained international attention and more than 700,000 followers by posting pictures of Iranian women without the hijab. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the government made it mandatory for women to cover their heads when in public or in a governmental building. In the years since then, women have been protesting what one woman on the Facebook page called "our most basic right, our right to choose what to wear."

Compulsory head covering has been protested by Iranian women in varying degrees since the law passed over thirty years ago. Perhaps one of the most severe and dramatic actions against the law came from Homa Darabi, a pediatrician in Iran who killed herself in 1994 through self-immolation in the middle of a busy square, where she tore off her headscarf and yelled messages such like "Death to oppression! Long live liberty!" Darabi had been fired after refusing to wear the hijab, as she claimed it interfered with her ability to care for her patients and be a good doctor. Media coverage for Darabi's protest and death was poor, and sources within Iran painted Darabi as mentally ill.

The human rights award was presented to Alinejad for giving voice to "voiceless" women like Darabi, and for Alinejad's part in "stirring the consciousness of humanity to support the struggle of Iranian women for basic human rights, freedom and equality."

"From seven-year-old schoolgirls to 70-year-old grandmothers, women in Iran are all forced to wear the hijab," said Alinejad in a statement for the Geneva Summit. "Hopefully this award will create an opportunity for the voices of Iranian women who say no to the forced hijab to echo throughout the halls of the United Nations."

http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=15467

[MADem]

1. "Oh, but they LIKE it...they really, REALLY LIKE IT!!!"

I hope you take my sharp there.

Hijab used to be the exception, not the rule, in Teheran before the revolution. Even down in the south of the city, in the bazaar, an area that was poor and traditional, women who wore chador would often leave the head uncovered on hot days and no one would think twice.

Now, if a woman does not step out with hijab and manteau (the modern day chador--a scarf and car coat, in essence) she risks getting a beating on the streets in some neighborhoods.

[niyad]

2. it is frightening how backwards so many places seem to be going, especially when it comes

to treatment of women.

[MADem]

3. In the seventies, you could go to swimming pools and see men and women in bathing suits,

sitting around, swimming, having --gasp-- DRINKS at the BAR!!!!!! Yeah, they had BARS in Tehran--pretty good ones, too, and not just the ones in hotels, either. They also had a nascent local wine industry, run by Armenian Iranians--when they were good, they were VERY very good, and when they were bad, eh, you had some vinegar...but they had more hits than misses. That bit the dust pretty quick, as did the ab-e-jo (beer) industry. Ironic, since Iranians claim that the Persians invented beer.

Workers from Saudi Arabia used to go to Tehran for their six months "R and R."

In terms of how much "freedom" a young woman had back then, why, we'd consider it rather Edwardian, but it was "Kick Up Your Heels" time compared to the way it is today.

[niyad]

6. thank you for sharing this

[Rex]

4. Picture of Iran before Ronald Reagan helped fuck it all up for the people living there.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2012/02/comment-iran-then-and-33-years-after-the-revoltion.html

[niyad]

5. thank you for that image, and for the information in that link. ray-gun has a lot to answer for.

[Rex]

8. He does! It offends me when people place that man on a pedestal. He was a horrible POTUS.

One of the worst EVER. Yeah the article is a great read! My jaw dropped when I was younger and found out about pre-Shaw Iran and how secular they were!

Iraq was that way too...Saddam was a total bastard, but a secular total bastard. Now watch Iraq go hardline like Iran did in the 80s.

[niyad]

9. every time I hear about "saint ronnie", I become ill. so much blood on his hands.

it is, alas, not surprising how little people in this country know about pre-shah iran and what iraq was like for women under saddam.

[Rex]

10. I wish more people knew, because then they would realize it could be that way again.

I use to think an autocratic government was no better than a religious government...I was way off. I don't think there is anything more offense to a human being then being ruled over by religious men that dispatch religious police to your house, because your neighbor doesn't like you and said you only pray 4 times a day and not 5.

[niyad]

11. robert heinlein described what this country could look like under "the prophets"

"if this goes on":

The story is set in a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of fundamentalist Christian “Prophets.” The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).

[Skidmore]

7. My ex-mother-in-law, who has been deceased for a number of years, told me the story

of when Reza Shah ordered that women no longer wear the chador during his rule. She was a young girl in a village north of Tehran. I asked her about the transition from wearing the chador to going without it. She told me that it was awful for many. A member of a devout family, she said she felt very exposed and naked and did not like to go into public. She did resume the chador when she married and had babies. I never saw her without it in public. She had chintz chadors for wearing when going about doing chores and heavy black crepe ones for going out for business or to the mosque or to more formal social affairs. In the house, she always wore a head scarf and would loosely drape the chador around her head and behind her shoulders and tuck it up in a lose knot at the front of her waist so she could free her hands to do housework.

During Reza Shah's time there was a corresponding movement for men to adopt Western suits as business attire that was firmly cemented during his son's reign. After revolution, the tie was disposed of and disparagingling called (domb-e khaer, or a donkey's tail) and men returned to wearing beards as was common in the old days.

I guess my point is that there has been a history surrounding the wearing of hejab and other conventions of dress that has come full circle. In Turkey, Ataturk took the country straight to modern dress and never looked back. We see similar movements amongst the Turkish fundamentalists to move women to wear hejab as well.

[MADem]

12. The youth of Iran--who are now becoming the elders--LIKED the freedom that went

with dumping hijab, though. They liked disco music, they liked bell bottom trousers, jeans, all the trappings of that era. Tehran, where most of the country lived (and where young people from small villages aspired to live) was a pretty jumping joint. University of Tehran was a happening place.

The older generations who were uneducated, or raised in a traditional environment where women were taught to fear/be subservient and expected to have to share their husband with at least one other wife at some point in their lives (that stuff was common in the hinterlands, still is--and isn't uncommon in the city either), were resistant to change but the youth were not. Women LIKED going to college and having choices.

A lot of older people who weren't comfortable going without chador would run around in the Uniform of the Day (nowadays) -- a scarf and manteau. The manteaus used to be a lot lighter in terms of material back then--now they'd be viewed as too "sexy" or revealing. Women were wearing trousers a lot back then, too, which made the outfit more modest. But the ones who liked their fashion, and their miniskirts--they were rocking the look, as they say on Fashion Police. Now, the fashion police (Basiji) in Tehran would beat the daylights out of them.

Had the state not been so damned oppressive things might have been different. Muhamad Reza Shah was no Attaturk, that's for sure--the latter knew how to apply the precise amount of 'enthusiasm' to get his way, but not go so far as to alienate a tipping point of the population. Shah got cancer and that might have taken his eye off the ball, though he was tone deaf well before then--he had an eye for excess that was ... unseemly, to put it politely. In many ways, he reminded me of a slightly more charismatic Nixon (only slightly, mind you). He had that stern demeanor, that "enemies list" paranoia, and he always seemed like the guy in the suit and dress shoes at the beach. He just didn't know how to relax. At the end of the day he did not trust his people, and they couldn't trust him, either. Now they're stuck in a system that self-perpetuates, is equally oppressive and authoritarian, and there's no damn fun.

[Skidmore]

13. The majority of Iran is made up of young people now.

Those of my generation and the next that weren't taken out as being counter-revolution were killed in great numbers by Saddam Hussein int he war.

I lived in Iran during those days and wore the manteau and scarf, and I wore chador out of respect when certain occasions called for it. Those were interesting times in the most dramatic sense of the word. I came back to the states about 3 years before the end of that war.

I do remember when I first went to Iran, my husband used to tell me about how politically unsafe it was and I was incredulous until I had been there long enough to learn Farsi a bit. That was in the mid 1970s. Once I could understand what was being said around me, I soon learned that the fear was palpable. I think the Shah and his cronies were focused on acquiring and holding onto wealth primarily. And, there is that divine right thing.

[MADem]

14. I know--the population explosion is something to see. Most have no direct knowledge of Shah.

He's like Millard Fillmore to them.

We used to speak in code when we talked about Shah. We had a name for him that sounded very innocuous but we would use it to speak of him if we felt we were being observed or overheard.

If you ever traveled on the public buses or even orange taxis you might have found yourself cheek to cheek with Russians as well--they had more operatives in that country than you could shake a stick at! If the Persians weren't bugging you, the Russians were!

[Skidmore]

15. Ah, those orange taxis.

Cheaper transport there never was, bar none. Used to take them everywhere. Took the bus when I went to Tajrish or down to the bazaar in the city.

[MADem]

16. I lived IN Tajrish, lucky me.

Not my first place--I was off Kourush Kabir originally, but found a nice place (worst house/best area type deal) about a half mile from that Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner! Of course, if you meandered down that road, on the left was that big ass building that everyone knew was SAVAKH HQ...so the neighborhood was safe, but ... monitored!

[Skidmore]

17. I lived off Kourush Kabir on Dowlat Street in a house

at the end of a deadend ally. I used to catch the bus to Tajrish on weekdays and meet the shuttle to Damavand College where I took classes and worked part time. Small world. I know that building of which you write. I used to love the drive out to Damavand because it took us past the gardens behind Gulestan Palace. A beautiful area.

[MADem]

18. Ha--I remember a MEXICAN Restaurant on Kourush Kabir, as well...

The British Embassy guys used to do their HASH HOUSE HARRIERS runs and would sometimes end up there, stinking and dripping, to drink, eat Persian-Mexican food, sing loudly and obnoxiously, and leave a big tip. The waitstaff were terrified of them until we explained that they meant no harm--their "wrangler" knew how to keep them in reasonable check. They sure did make an entrance, though--mad dogs and Englishmen, indeed!!!

[Skidmore]

19. Oh, yeah.

We used to eat there too. THe waiters used to slip extra tidbits to my daughter, who was a toddler. I used to take the kids to the British Embassy to see Father Christmas on the holidays. I had several really good friends from the UK amongs the foreign wives. We had a group that would get together every Monday to help all of our kids practice their English with each other and to just spend time with other women like us. Good memories.

[MADem]

20. This will take you back...they're silent and the guy tossed a soundtrack on them, but

it works well (he's got at least one other on YT, too):

[Skidmore]

21. Oh, thanks for that.

I so miss the shops and the bazaars. Our stores are all showrooms. I miss being able to watch the craftsmen work. My favorite bazaar was the spice bazaars. I used to visit the one in Tajrish quite a bit. Did you ever go to Madun-e-Vali-Asr? Loved that big bazaar there. THe fabric merchants were wonderful. My sister in law was a seamstress and the younger sister and I used to go down there and purchase sewing supplies for her and buy fabric for new outfits.

Miss the labu on carts in the wintertime and godje sabz for snacks. Always tried to catch the azgil in season. Haven't been able to find medlars here since I returned. Iranian kids really have healthy snacks.

[MADem]

22. I used to shop some in Tajrish and down south when I lived in Tehran.

We'd also go out to the desert and stay in a caravanserai that was midway on the Qom road. That midday sun was some fierce! The nights were astounding, though--sky like blue velvet, stars like diamonds.

In Esfahan it was a rather different vibe--I lived in a fairly dense neighborhood within a brisk walk of the main bazaar, the hospital and my favorite kuche store. I was working a lot at the time, I left the country from there (via Qom, you can imagine the drama--and there was a shitload, I'll leave it at that--my best friend's dad was an elder imam at the Golden masjid!).

We were under some serious martial law limitations in Esfahan so any movement after dark would get one shot. One just didn't do it. Even during the day movement was problematic at times. There were a number of bombings, snipers would set up shop on buildings and start picking people off--it got pretty hairy. I was damn near killed more than once, but by dumb luck I survived--I guess it wasn't my time. The streets were paved with tanks and soldiers; our movements were restricted, we were challenged at every turn.

It was a rather profound Fear v. Boredom dichotomy, especially when it got too dangerous to even work. We did "house parties" at the weekend (TGIW--Thank God It's Wednesday) where everyone would bring a sleeping bag and stay at someone else's place; we got real good at it; everyone had a kit with toothbrush, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, pillow, etc.--BYOB and what-have-you, hosts provide snacks and breakfast, no hogging the bathrooms, that kind of thing. It's quite amazing how much socializing we did, in the days before videos, and computers, and so much attention to ... screens! We had music, home grown and records, as well as lots of board games--chess and scrabble were very popular. If you thought Tehran TV was lame, Esfahan TV made Tehran look like HBO--no "I Love Lucy" in Farsi for us!

Every now and again, strong memories come to the fore. Azgil! Is there even a translation for that fruit? Hadn't thought about those since ... 1979~! What a time!

[Skidmore]

23. Esfahan was always one of my favorite cities.

A beautiful place full of history. I didn't travel down there after the unrest started. One of my favorite memories was walking up the grand staircase of Persepolis. The sense of the long arc of time and the idea that you likely were stepping where one of the great kings of early history had walked was awe inspiring.

I think The whole country was pretty much the way you describe during that period. My daughter couldn't attend school for a while. It wasn't safe. One time my sister-in-law and I were standing in the dining area on the interior of our home just past the entry way and a bullet came through the transom of the outside door to lodge in the back wall. There was gun fight on the next alley over. You know how tight the alley ways are packed in some of those areas. Curfews and blackout curtains were a way of life. But then so were all those people taking to the rooftops at night to protest from their homes. Interesting times indeed. I went out one morning to go up to the nunvah for the daily bread and saw a line of tanks coming down Dowlat Street. I immediately headed back down the alley way to my home. We didn't have fresh bread that morning.

THe socializing was pretty intense for a while. People's lives were so disrupted and, with no jobs or schools to go to, you got to spend lots of quality time with family and friends. It was a very difficult time but somehow there was order in the disorder. Does that make sense? Even during the war, there was a sense of some kind of order. During nightly the shellings from Iraq, there was a sense that if you observed certain routines, your chances of being okay were greater. Funny how that works. Sheltering in a basement. Lord, those treks to the basement in the pitch dark. We had moved to an apartment in the Vanak area a couple of years before I returned. One night, a missile struck on a street over to the back of our building. The ground just shook and I remember thinking that we were okay because we were sheltered. The next day I learned that the family killed there had sheltered in the basement too. That shook my sense of any security to the core. Coping became much more difficult after that because there was no safe place.

I think the Iran-Iraq war forced Iran to ratchet down some of the overreach of the revolutionary forces. So much death. So much destruction. Yet I watch the videos of what is happening in Iraq and Palestine and see the utter devastation and realize how fortunate we were. Killing a generation and wiping out people's history. How senseless. The one thing I must hand to the revolutionary forces in Iran is that they did not allow the looting or destruction of the history and did preserve the nation's past, albeit as examples of decadance, but it is there.

We used to go to Qom at least once or twice a year. My husband and his sister owned an orchard there. We used to go to the orchard for the New Year picnic. The air was so different there from the city. Every summer we would go for a week or two to the Caspian coast and stay at a villa there. I loved that time because the air was soft and moist and I could breathe through my nose for a couple of weeks. Hah.

Azghil are medlars. They were my favorite annual treat. I remember my husband telling me that the medlar trees only grew in the mountains.

[MADem]

24. Medlars! Now see, that's a new word for me, too! I think I've come across it

before but it never really "stuck." Ya learn something new every day! Now I know how to explain them!

I always had the driest nose in Persia...my snots (sorry to be gross) would turn into SHARDS! I'd stab myself if I wasn't careful! One of my good friends was very skilled at clearing out the sinuses with a single finger on the side of the nose and a lot of forceful air expelled through the other nostril--sort of like a neti pot without the pot. Amazing velocity and distance! We'd laugh at the silliest things!

I can relate totally to the order/disorder thing. I've always been the type of person to be well prepared, and we had stockpiles of foodstuffs and necessities (I still do this, even here--comes in handy when you're snowed in at wintertime!). My landlord --very nice family--got a good larder of canned and dry goods when I left.

The bread store reminds me of something I'd totally forgotten--we used to go around to the back, where the guys were making the bread, and buy the raw dough before they spread it out to cook it. They were shocked that we didn't mind paying the same cheapass price for the dough as for the finished product (as you no doubt know, the national pastime is negotiation). We'd wrap it in plastic, take it home, flatten it out on a pan, and make pizzas--and sweet Mother of Pearl, they were delicious. The guys making the bread always wondered what in hell we did with the dough, so one day we brought them a completed pizza and told them to warm it up. They loved it!

When I lived in Tajrish, I lived in a basement--it was actually like a "garden apartment" as they call them on Capitol Hill--half dug into the hill, half out, with huge windows looking onto a garden. That was a good building--it was a triplex made not of the usual bricks and camel shit (with Shah's mandated steel reinforcements), but made of poured concrete/structural steel and rebar. It was remarkably cool even in the heat of summer and it warmed up quick in the winter. I wonder if it's still there?