Subject: [fem-women2000 543] Fw: Iranian Women's Brief #30, Please Read and Pass on
From: lalamaziwa <lalamaziwa@jca.apc.org>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 10:25:31 +0900
Seq: 543



Forwarded by lalamaziwa <lalamaziwa@jca.apc.org>
---------------- Original message follows ----------------
 From: AIWUSA <aiwusa@aiwusa.org>
 To: aiwusa@aiwusa.org
 Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 17:05:55 -0400
 Subject: Iranian Women's Brief #30, Please Read and Pass on
--

AIWUSA-ASSOCIATION OF IRANIAN WOMEN-USA

WEBSITE: WWW.AIWUSA.ORG
E-mail: aiwusa@aiwusa.org
TEL: 703-941-8485
CONTACT PERSON:BEHJAT DEHGHAN

IRANIAN WOMEN BRIEF #30

OCTOBER 2000


-MORE RESISTANCE OF IRANIAN WOMEN
-A GENERATION IN REVOLT
-TEN YEAR OLD BRIDE
-TWO EDITORS IN PRESS COURT


MORE RESISTANCE OF IRANIAN WOMEN

PROTESTER HURLS EGGS AT KHATAMI DURING OPEC SUMMIT,
REUTERS, SEPTEMBER 28

CARACAS - A woman with a grudge against Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami said on Thursday she had thrown three
paint-filled eggs at him after breaching security at this
week's OPEC summit in Caracas.

Laila Jazayeri, 39, an Iranian who lives in London, told
reporters she hit Khatami with three eggs filled with red
paint as he arrived for a dinner hosted by Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez.

Jazayeri, a British citizen, said she blamed Khatami for
the death of her husband. She said the first egg knocked
off Khatami's turban and the other two hit him on the back,
causing him to yell out in surprise.
"I shouted that Khatami is a murderer and a torturer, not a
reformist," she said. "He is a fundamentalist and not a
moderate."

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, evaded questions about
the attack in an interview with local television. He
declined to say who had been the target of the attack.
*********************************************************

A GENERATION IN REVOLT, WOMEN BUL.NO. 6, WOMEN COMMITTEE
OF NCRI, OCT 2000

on the morning of Friday, August 18, an extensive clash  broke out in
the city of Javanroud in Kermanshah province (western Iran) between a
unit of woman Mojahedin fighters, a Revolutionary Guards
Corps' Division and Intelligence Ministry agents.

Dozens of Guards and agents were killed and wounded in the clashes.
Two Mojahedin women, Monireh Akbari and Mojgan Zahedi,
were also slain.

The news of the heroic battle waged by Mojahedin women  rapidly spread
in the entire region, forcing the regime to report the clashes on the
state television the next day.
In announcing the news, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary
Guards' ground forces expressed regret that the Mojahedin used women
as "human shield" for their operations. He was trying to downplay the
role of women in the Resistance movement and minimize its impact on
the public. A glance at the situation of women in Iran explains why.
With eighty percent of the Iranian population living  below the
poverty line, millions of women who need to feed their families are
driven into beggary, prostitution and drug trafficking. With the
legal age of marriage being 9 until just very recently,  many poor
families wed their little girls for small amount of  money to feed
their other children. Other women face numerous
restrictions in education, employment, travel, sports,
etc. There are strict regulations on women's dress and
conduct in society.

Laws deny women their basic rights. No matter how much they are
battered and abused at home, they cannot file for divorce unless in
very exceptional circumstances. When a man kills a woman, the
victim's family has to pay the equivalent of her blood money to the
murderer so that the court can carry out the death verdict, because a
woman's blood money is half that of a man. So much for the mullahs'
Heavenly Justice!!

Such omnipresent discrimination and women's lack of recourse before
the law contribute to the high rate of suicide among women.
Monireh and Mojgan were typical of thousands of young, energetic,
educated and enlightened women of Iran who decided to challenge the
mullahs' medieval oppression.

Monireh Akbari, 29, was a fourth-year physics student from Tehran
when she joined the Resistance. She was born the seventh child to a
low-income family in South Tehran. She did not surrender to family
pressure and social restrictions which acted as impediment for her to
continue beyond primary school. She overcame these difficulties and
made her way to college and studied physics.

Mojgan Zahedi, 28, was born to a middle-class family in the oil-rich
southwestern Iranian city of Ahwaz. Mojgan was only five years old,
when she and her family became homeless and were forced to move out
of their hometown because of the Iran-Iraq war. Mojgan and her family
had an extremely difficult time to earn a descent living. She became
acquainted with the Resistance during her college years when she
studied library sciences in Arak (central Iran).
Having grown up under the misogynist rule of the mullahs, Monireh and
Mojgan felt the depth of the mullahs' discrimination and  injustice
with their flesh and bone. They fought back vigorously to open their
path and finally decided to join the Resistance as the ultimate
solution.

The dramatic rise in the participation of women in the Resistance's
operations has prompted many young women to join the ranks of the
opposition movement. This ticking time bomb has terrified the mullahs
as never before.
*********************************************************

TEN YEAR OLD BRIDE TEHRAN, AFP, SEPT 26,2000

A 10-year-old Iranian girl has filed for divorce from her
15-year-old husband after only eight days of marriage on
grounds of mistreatment, the government-run Iran paper
said Tuesday.

It quoted the boy as saying that the day after the
wedding they had had a fight because she wanted to play
with her dolls.

"On the last day, I beat my wife and my mother-in-law and
ran off to my mother's house," the paper quoted him
saying, while the girl said: "I was married before, but
not any more."

Iran's reformist-dominated parliament last month approved
a motion to allow the judiciary and not parents to decide
whether boys under 17 and girls under 14 years of age can
marry.

Several religious MPs belonging to parliament's
conservative minority expressed their disapproval with
the motion, saying that Islam's sharia law which sets the
marriage age at nine for girls and 14 for boys should
apply.

Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, the age of majority
for both sexes was 16 years.

Iranian officials regularly propagate marriage as a means
to prevent "social corruption" among young people.
*********************************************************

TWO EDITORS IN PRESS COURT TEHRAN, AFP, AUG 21,2000

The editors of two magazines, both of them women,
appeared in press court Monday to face charges ranging
>from defamation to publishing anti-Islamic propaganda.

Taraneh Behzadi, head of the scientfic and cultural
monthly Danestaniha, which is considered close to the
reform movement, has been accused of defamation and
publishing false information.

Fatmeh Farahmandpour, head of the banned publication
Gunagun, is charged with having created the magazine
specifically to replace four other pro-reform newspapers
, which had been closed by the conservative courts.

The press reported earlier this month that she has also
been accused of insulting officials of the regime,
spreading false information and publishing anti-Islamic
propaganda. The trial is continuing.

Gunagun was closed in late July in line with a law passed
by the previous conservative-majority parliament barring
banned publications from re-appearing under a different
name.














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