IRAN - Women’s rights activists in Iran increasingly face jail time amid cultural crackdown

Women’s rights activists in Iran increasingly face jail time amid cultural crackdown

“I don’t think it’s anticipated that drawing cartoons or writing poems would get you 15 to 20 years in prison”

Atena Farghadani told advocates she was beaten, held in solitary confinement, verbally abused and forced to strip naked by prison guards. (AtenaFarghadani/Facebook)

Twenty-eight year-old Atena Farghadani felt a sense of outrage when her government, the conservative legislators of Iran, tried to criminalize voluntary sterilization in 2014. It was the latest move to restrict women’s reproductive choices, and Farghadani, a talented painter and budding activist, decided to speak out.

Farghadani drew a cartoon depicting legislators who supported the bill as monkeys and cows and posted it to Facebook. Shortly after her post, the Revolutionary Guard showed up at Farghadani’s doorstep, searched her home, arrested her, and charged her with insulting the government, disseminating propaganda, and colluding against national security. They alleged that her meetings with the families of political prisoners constituted a crime in itself, and quickly made her a political prisoner, too.

Farghadani has told advocates that she has been beaten, held in solitary confinement, verbally abused, forced to strip naked, and forced to undergo virginity and pregnancy tests by the prison guards, according to advocates and experts with Movements.org, a human rights organization that helps digitally connect activists in closed societies and has been compiling stories of political prisoners like Farghadani.

Farghadani, who appeared in a YouTube video criticizing her arrest in 2014 and was subsequently re-arrested, for “illegitimate sexual relationship short of adultery” and indecency charges after shaking hands with her lawyer, also posted an open letter to Facebook addressed to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2015, criticizing the Revolutionary Guard for her maltreatment.

Iran human rights photo exhibition underway in U.S. Senate

A three-day photo exhibition on human rights abuses in Iran is currently underway at the Rotunda in the United States Senate.

A  photo exhibition on human rights abuses in Iran is currently

The exhibition depicts various aspects of rights abuses by the mullahs' regime in Iran, including political repression, crackdown on minorities, suppression of women, and execution of juveniles and political dissidents.

The mullahs’ regime has over the past 34 years executed more than 120,000 political prisoners, the vast majority members or supporters of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, or Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK).

The photo exhibit has been organized by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities (OIAC) which works to promote human rights and democratic freedoms for the people of Iran.

Iran: UN Third Committee expresses strong concern over human, women's rights in Iran

the UN Third Committee

Created: 20 November 2015

In a strongly worded resolution on Thursday night, November 19, 2015, the UN Third Committee condemned the flagrant violations of human rights in Iran.

It took a strong stand against the death penalty, massive and violent crackdown on religious and ethnic minorities and of course on women, and decided to continue its examination of the situation of human rights in Iran under the item entitled “Promotion and protection of human rights”.

On the part on women's rights, the resolution indicates that the General Assembly "strongly urges" the clerical regime in Iran "to eliminate, in law and in practice, all forms of discrimination and other human rights violations against women and girls, to take measures to ensure protection for women and girls against violence, to address the alarming incidence of child, early and forced marriage, to promote women’s participation in decision-making processes and, while recognizing the high enrolment of women in all levels of education in the Islamic Republic of Iran, to lift restrictions on women’s equal access to all aspects of education and women’s equal participation in the labour market and in all aspects of economic, cultural, social and political life."

This resolution is going to be voted on by the General Assembly.