One indicator of the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime is that there are credible reports that it is enforcing its alleged strict moral code arresting women and girls accused of advocating immodesty, then sexually assault them.
In a scathing report on the rape of protesters by security forces, CNN recounted how a 20-year-old woman was detained for allegedly leading protests and was later taken by police to a Karaj hospital, violently shaken, with shaved head and bleeding rectum.
The woman is now back in prison.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have independently documented multiple cases of sexual assault.
Hadi Ghaemi of the Iran Center for Human Rights, a New York watchdog organization, told me about a 14-year-old girl from a Tehran slum who protested by removing her headscarf at school.
The girl, Masooumeh, was identified by the school cameras and arrested; shortly after, she was taken to the hospital to be treated severe vaginal tears.
The girl died and her mother, after initially saying she wanted to go public, has missing.
Accounts of sexual violence are difficult to verify due to the victims’ feelings of shame and fear, and CNN reported that authorities sometimes film the assaults to blackmail protesters into silence.
What is absolutely clear is that protesters continue to turn up dead.
Consider Nika Shahkarami, a 16-year-old girl who burned her headscarf in public.
The security forces cornered her.
Days later, the authorities announced that he had died.
The autopsy revealed that she had fractures to her skull, pelvis, hip, arms and legs.
So the revolt in Iran is not limited to head coverings.
It’s about overthrowing a incompetent, corrupt, repressive and brutal regime.
“If a government does something wrong, the nation should punch it in the mouth,” declared Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, after the revolution he led established the Islamic Republic.
That is what the Iranians are trying to do now.
I am surprised and disappointed that today’s Iranian people’s revolution has not received more support in the United States and around the world.
I think there are a couple of reasons for this.
First, Iran has forbidden entry to most foreign reporters, so we don’t have TV crews on the streets to film schoolchildren risking their lives to take on the regime’s thugs.
Since we’re not on the ground, I don’t think we journalists have collectively given this story the importance it deserves.
Second, there is some American bitterness toward the Iranians, a misperception that they are fanatics chanting “Death to America.”
In fact, on an interpersonal level, Iran may be the country more pro-american from the Middle East.
On a trip I took my daughter, who was 14 years old at the time.
A family photo of her embraced by several women reflects how delighted ordinary Iranians are to meet Americans.
I once chatted with a young Revolutionary Guard who was protecting an anti-American museum.
Surrounded by huge banners denouncing the United States as the “Great Satan,” he asked my advice on how to immigrate to the United States.
“To hell with the mullahs,” he told me.
Fearless young women are at the forefront of today’s protests.
When a member of the Basij paramilitary force spoke at a school, the girls took off their hijabs and booed him.
At an all-girls school in Karaj, female students threw water bottles at a staff member, sending him out.
The United States and other governments are speaking up, and the Iranians appreciate it.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian human rights lawyer who is now on medical leave after a 10-year prison sentence (reduced from 38.5 years and 148 lashes), told me that she especially appreciated Iran’s expulsion of a commission of United Nations on women’s rights.
But Sotoudeh and others would like to see the Biden administration do more for delegitimize the Iranian government and criticize executions, and calls on Western governments that have embassies in Iran to recall their ambassadors.
“The Biden administration has not done enough,” said Tala Raassi, an Iranian-American fashion designer who knows firsthand the brutality of the regime: At the age of 16, she was detained and received 40 lashes for wearing a T-shirt and miniskirt at a private party.
I would like to see Biden work with other countries to increase the volume of the international outrage at a high level in the face of repression.
Just as Kennedy delivered his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and Reagan his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech, Biden could signal American resolve with an “Ayatollah, open the gates of Evin prison, liberate iran“” suggested Amir Soltani, an Iranian-American writer.
The West may also seek to increase targeted sanctions against officials and their family members who host parties abroad or funnel assets abroad.
Meanwhile, the intelligence community should spy more on Iran’s massive crackdown and to filter informationwhenever possible, to hold the authorities of the country accountable.
Putting pressure on Iran is difficult, because it is already isolated and heavy sanctions have been imposed on it.
But we must try because Iran is now starting its next phase:
has started to execute protesters to try to terrorize the population into surrendering. So far two protesters are known to have been hanged, and at least 35 others have been sentenced to death or are in custody on capital offenses.
In 1978, when the Khomeini revolution was gaining momentum, The New York Times quoted an Iranian lawyer with his clairvoyant misgivings:
“I hope we don’t climb out of a ditch,” he said, “only to fall down a well.”
More than four decades later, Iranians are desperately trying to climb out of that pit, led by schoolgirls who persevere despite the threat of arrest, torture and execution.
They understand that blatant immorality lies not in a girl’s bare hair, but in the government that rapes her for it, and they should receive much more international support.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
1 comment
The Mullah’s regime is cruel, murderous and dishonorable, Why is the civilized world silent?