Open Letter to Monthly Review Editors
[Before she signed off this list, Yoshie Furuhashi was speaking
highly of Ahmadinejad’s government. Here’s a response to a piece she
ran on the MRZine site. She’s welcome to come back and respond.]
Via Yassamine Mather- Center for the Study of Socialist Theory and
Movements- Glasgow University, UK. Concerning, http://
mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pourzal180606.html
Open Letter to Monthly Review Editors
Dear friends,
In a recent posting on your web site, Rostam Pourzal uses an
anonymous email by a ‘witness’ in Tehran to deny the extent of the
repression of women demonstrators by vigilante Islamic police on 12
June 2006 (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pourzal180606.html )
Pourzal tries to portray president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a
‘popular’, ‘radical’ figure, and tries to underestimate, justify and
excuse the brutal, repressive nature of the Islamic regime in Iran;
in doing so he makes various assumptions and claims that we will deal
with in a another posting. However as far as the events of 12 June in
Tehran are concerned, contrary to the claims of the anonymous
‘observer’, the extent and intensity of the brutal attack on the
peaceful women’s demonstration was far worse than that portrayed by
the BBC and the international media.
It is sufficient to refer to comments and reports by organisers and
participants, most of whom have no fear of giving their real names,
despite the fact that they were arrested and imprisoned by the
regime’s security forces. In an effort to stop the protest, several
prominent women’s rights activists were issued summonses in the
middle of the night on Saturday and on the days leading up to the
protest. Since then, others have been summoned for interrogation by
phone or in writing. The women summoned include Noushin Ahmadi
Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmasebi, Farnz Seify and Fariba
Davoodi Mohajer. Only Fariba Davoodi Mohajer received her summons in
person. Others were not at home or at their offices when agents
arrived to issue summons. Fariba Davoodi Mohajer was issued a summons
in person at 11:00pm on Saturday, and subsequently spent 10 hours in
interrogation on 12th June. On Monday morning, the day of the
protest, another women’s rights activist who had endorsed it, Shahla
Entesari, was arrested in her place of employment.
Prior to the protest, a massive campaign of harassment against those
who had endorsed the protest was carried out by security forces.
Scores of women were summoned to court and interrogated, including
women’s rights activists, student activists and webloggers, who had
spread word about the protest.
In refuting the superficial content of the anonymous email quoted by
Pourzal, we refer you to the photographs of vigilante/policewomen
attacking the demonstrators on 12 June, and to the testimony of
Parvin Ardalan and Noushin Khorassani, labour activists from Vahed
bus company who participated in the event. They wrote:
The principle demands were as follows:
• Abolition of polygamy
• The right of divorce by women
• Joint custody of children for mothers and fathers
• Equal rights in family law
• Increasing the minimum legal age for girls to 18 (currently it is 15)
• Equal rights for women as witnesses in courts of law
According to official reports including that of the Ministry of
Justice 70 people (42 women and 28 men) were arrested by 13th June
2006, while several women’s rights activists have been summoned to
appear in front of the Revolutionary Court and others have been sent
to Evin Prison in Tehran. In an interview with the daily ‘Shargh’,
the minister for Intelligence, Mohsen Ajheii claims that the women’s
demonstrations for equal rights endangers’national security’. Police
attacks before and during the protest were widely reported in dozens
of blogs, they more or less agree on both the level of attacks and
methods used by women police officers armed with batons:
Zahra, a law student, describes the day in her blog:
“When we got there it was really scary. Several police buses and cars
covering the whole area. Cell phones were obviously monitored because
we were receiving suspicious text messages from an unknown
number…We got to the meeting point in the Hafte-Tir Square and saw
the police forces already being “busy” in three other spots. We sat
down and started chanting slogans..After about 5 minutes of confused
stares from the pedestrians at us we received the first surprise: the
women police force which are scarier than men for two reasons…First
they are “mahram” to women so they can kick and punch women without
violating any religious code and second they are strangely way more
aggressive than men! First they tried to force us by hand to get up
and leave…When we resisted they started using their nightsticks,
after not very long the kicks and punches and the nightstick beatings
got very harsh…Right in front of my eyes one of them beat Mana
right in her head so badly that I don’t think I will ever forget the
sound of it…All of sudden everywhere is red…The second surprise:
they are using a paint spray on us. We didn’t realize first but they
were marking us so that they know later in the crowd who was sitting
and resisting…Smart!
They finally forced us to get up and pushed us to the center of the
square while we were still chanting the anthem for Iran’s women
movement. At least people are seeing us and you can see the objection
and sympathy in their eyes…The other side of the square is so
crowded I can’t really see anything but I hear that they are
arresting people…We are scattered…This is partly bad because we
are so scattered that we can not even say why we are here so that
they won’t call all this “a police encounter with women with bad
Islamic Hijab”.
Azieh Amini’s blog:
“We said that that sitting in the park is not a crime. They said,
“Get up before we proceed to using other methods!” …”They kicked us
out of the park. They beat us and kicked us out. We walked. Calm and
peaceful. We walked around the park. They kicked us out. They beat us
up. Someone yelled and said, “I am your mother. Shame on you!” The
answer was the following: ” I do not have a bitch as my mother!” And
then she pushed the older lady very harshly. We left. They took us.
Around the square we were holding papers on which it was written,
“Change the anti-woman laws!”, “We demand the rights of a complete
human being!” and then we started to whisper collectively, ” We are
women. We are humans. And yet we have no rights…” This time they
started to beat us from all sides. Not only men were beating us.
There were also women with chador (the garment) who were screaming:
“Do not argue with the police!” and as soon as someone would start to
argue, they would start to curse and kick them all over.
“We walked around the square. They took our papers away and torn them
into pieces. They pulled the crowd of young and old women who were
yelling out slogans and took them to their assigned busses. The crowd
resisted their forces. But there were many policemen and policewomen
around. It was odd. All of a sudden it seemed as if everyone around
us was a member of the moral police. We heard them over and over
saying, “No worries. We are not strangers!” I do not really know how
many of us were there. All I know is that it was not a small crowd
and that we will increase in number.”
To summarise: the courage and determination of Iranian women
participating in this protest for equal rights went far beyond what
was suggested by the superficial references in Pourzal’s article.
We find it amazing that, instead of relying on very accurate
reporting of these events by bloggers, named and known individuals,
tens of very clear photographs of the use of batons by policemen and
women, Pourzal chooses to devote so much attention to an email by
someone who doesn’t even dare admit his identity.
Let us assume for a moment that the report in the email received by
Pourzal is correct, and that the demonstrators were not hit by batons
but by flowers. Shouldn’t one consider any effort by the state to
stop a peaceful demonstration by women in a park an act of
aggression? Isn’t this unnecessary violence?
Or let us pretend that nothing happened in Tehran on 12 June. What
does Pourzal have to say about the attacks on protesters in Ahvaz
(April 2006), in Piranshahr, and in Tabriz (June 2006), or the many
attacks by security forces on workers in Tehran, university students
in Tehran, Shiraz and Hamedan over the last few weeks?
Weren’t those attacks orchestrated by the same government and the
same president Ahmadinejad? Has Pourzal received any anonymous
reports about those incidents? Given the length of the article he
contributed about the 12 June events, shouldn’t he have used the
opportunity to dismiss all those incidents too!?
Clearly Pourzal is concerned that the US might use claims about the
regime’s anti-democratic and suppressive policies as an excuse to
attack Iran. We share this anxiety, however one cannot overcome this
anxiety by denying the realities of the regime’s brutal repression of
its own citizens. Can one stop imperialist aggression in Iran by
denying or underestimating the extent of dictatorship and repression
in Iran?
It is regrettable that your web site has recently become so
apologetic about Iran’s Islamic regime. Many of us consider this to
be in total contrast to the radical traditions of Harry Magdoff, Paul
Sweezy, Ellen Woods… who considered anti-imperialist struggle as
inseparable from anti-capitalist struggles and the battle for
democracy. Your site’s support for – indeed, at times, adoration of –
one of the most brutal, militarist factions of the Islamic Republic
regime in Iran, and your inaccurate reporting of the economic stance
of the Iranian president, whose main allies include German neo-Nazis
(an inevitable consequence of his Holocaust denial statements) is an
insult to the Iranian working class and its supporters worldwide.
We, Iranian feminist socialist activists are alarmed that your
political stance is damaging the reputation of your journal amongst
left wing activists inside and outside Iran. Lifelong translators of
left wing books and articles inside Iran have either been killed by
this regime and its death squads, e.g. Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad
Pouyande, or they are in prison for defending families of these dead
left-wing writers, e.g. Nasser Zarafshan – who happens to be a
regular translator of your journal’s articles to farsi. And yet you
show no hesitation in defending their executioners and jailers such
as Ahmadinejad.
We enclose for your attention links to a number of eyewitness
statements about the events of 12 June 2006, as well as some of the
recent statements by Iranian workers regarding this regime’s
continuation of the neo liberal economic policies of the last
decade . We can assure you that left-wing activists inside Iran will
not rest until they have exposed the sham reactionary anti-western
slogans of this president, dished out by your web site as anti-
imperialism.
After all, many of us remember the consequences of earlier shallow
anti- American sloganising, culminating in disasters such as
‘Irangate’ – when the ‘anti Imperialist’ ayatollah Khomeiny ended up
supporting Nicaraguan Contras through payment for Israeli arms, via
none other than Oliver North!!
6th July 2006
Ardeshir Mehrdad -Co-editor Iran Bulletin Middle East Forum
Shahrzad Mojab - Professor and director of the Women and Gender
Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada
Haideh Moghissi - Professor of Sociology – York University, Canada
Cyrus Bina - Professor of Economics and Management – University of
Minnesota, USA
Yassamine Mather- Center for the Study of Socialist Theory and
Movements- Glasgow University, UK
Torab Saleth – Editorial board journal Critique
Saeed Rahnama - Professor of Political Sciences – York University,
Canada
Younes Parsa-Benab - Professor of Political Science at Strayer
University- Washington
Mehdi Kia- Co-editor Iran Bulletin Middle East Forum
Nasser Kakhsaz - Poet, Literary critic
Sulmaz Moradi - Socialist, feminist activist
Borzu Fuladvand - Socialist activist
Fereshteh Shoja - Socialist, feminist activist
Faramarz Dadvar - Center in Defense of Freedom & Democracy in Iran- Chicago
Sadegh Tehrani - Socialist activist
Hassan Hessam - Poet
http://www.kosoof.com/archive/281.php
http://www.flickr.com/photos/parsi/archives/date-posted/2006/06/12/
http://www.labourstart.org/