As for this author, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=%22Ida+Lichter%22). (Lily)
The Australian（https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/iran-braces-for-flood-to-end-gender-apartheid/news-story/169e90cc4e513aba05960affcaec508a）
Iran braces for flood to end gender apartheid
Dr. Ida Lichter
2 July 2018
Iranian women are becoming more energised and confident in their battle for equality.
As soccer fans, they recently threw caution to the wind at the World Cup in Saint Petersburg, posting identifiable photos and videos of themselves unveiled, their hair flying, as they danced and sang in the company of men. Banned from attending men’s sporting events at home, Iranian women were in Russia cheering their national soccer team to victory against Morocco.
In contrast, a recent video that went viral showed three fully veiled female morality police harassing a woman in Iran for improper head covering. In the skirmish, she sends them off, screaming she will wear whatever she pleases.
Smartphones are providing instant access to such attacks, and mobilising women to demand an end to Iran’s compulsory hijab laws.
However, defenders of women’s rights activists can fall foul of the regime. On June 13, Iranian authorities arbitrarily detained human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, recipient of the 2012 Sakharov Prize. After the 2009 Green Movement uprising, she served three years’ jail for defending protesters. Now she is facing another five years in prison.
Sotoudeh is the defence lawyer for Narges Hosseini, detained since January for removing her headscarf and waving it while standing on a platform in Tehran’s Revolution Street.
She was acting in solidarity with women and some men in a civil disobedience movement that came to be known as the “Girls of Revolution Street,” and led to the arrest of more than 30 people. The movement has wide support, and even orthodox women who opt to veil have offered support on the basis of freedom to choose Islamic dress.
Increasing subordination is expressed by thousands of Iranian women on My Stealthy Freedom, the social media campaign devised by exiled journalist Masih Alinejad. Her appeal for Iranian women to post videos of themselves without a hijab stimulated an overwhelming response.
Freedom from Islamic dress codes is part of a longstanding drive against Iran’s severe patriarchal laws and their enforcement by a regime “prepared to crush aggressors and critics.” A woman’s testimony in court, compensation for injury, and inheritance is worth half that of a man’s. She needs her husband’s permission to travel abroad, and many university courses are closed to her.
Following the massive protests earlier this year, Tehran police under “reformist” President Hasan Rowhani said women would no longer be arrested for “bad hijab.” Instead, they would pay a fine and attend compulsory Islamic re-education classes. However, the mandatory hijab law remained in place, and only women who “unknowingly” flouted Islamic dress codes could avoid arrest.
Women are cynical about putting their trust in “reformist” presidents such as Rowhani and predecessor Mohammad Khatami when political power lies with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is still committed to aggressively exporting the 1979 Shia revolution worldwide and dominating the Muslim world.
However, the regime is exposed to fault lines that undermine its stability. Inflation is running at about 130 per cent, and since and this year, the rial has fallen by half on the unregulated market. Rising food prices and other imports are again generating protests. There is pressure for reform by ethnic minorities in the border regions. The Kurds, Balochs, and Arab Ahwazis comprise over a third of Iran’s population.
The economy improved with the lifting of sanctions following the 2015 nuclear deal with the West, and the people were promised benefits. Instead, the new wealth was diverted to the extraterritorial Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, and expanding the Iranian militias that employ jihadi Shia mercenaries from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Pakistan. Iran’s imperialist moves reached Yemen, cut a corridor through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and started a process of ethnic cleansing of Syrian Sunni Arabs to prop up the Alawite minority government of Bashar al-Assad.
Having spent Iran’s new wealth on its colonial project, a slew of harsh sanctions could see a simmering domestic turbulence erupt. To avoid the effect of new American sanctions, Iran may need to forge a separate sanctions-lifting agreement with world powers willing to forgo banking rights and the right to trade with the US. Moreover, the evidence that North Korea and Iran have collaborated in nuclear and ballistic missile programs could weaken Iran’s hand in negotiations because Iran claims its nuclear project is designed solely for peaceful purposes.
Iran outmanoeuvred the West with the nuclear deal, since jettisoned by Donald Trump whose administration seems more likely to negotiate in the style of carpet traders rather than respectful academics. Although the regime might confront these challenges, the women’s reform movement is its Achilles heel.
There are minor signs of reform. In a surprising turnaround, women entered Tehran’s Azadi stadium on June 20 for the first time in 37 years to watch a live broadcast of Iran playing Spain in the World Cup. Well-educated and living a Westernised life underground, their appetite for dissent is growing. Reformer Ziba Mir Hosseini once declared there was “much tension and energy” for reform. “It will be a flood.”
・Dr.Ida Lichter is the author of Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices Against Oppression.
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