اینجا کلیک کنید
انقر هنا لقراءة هذا البيان باللغة العربية
A yr in the past, Mahasa Zina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian lady, was arrested in Tehran on suspicion of sporting an “inappropriate” hijab and died within the custody of the morality police. Her loss of life sparked a wave of nationwide protests, additional difficult the Islamic Republic’s authoritarian rule and exposing the nation’s human rights violations, together with systematic violations of ladies’s rights. Her loss of life gave rise to the highly effective slogan “Women, Life, Freedom!” that originated within the Kurdish girls’s motion and shortly echoed all through Iran and the world. A yr later, girls, dissent and ethnic minorities are nonetheless being focused in Iran.
The “Women, Life, Freedom” rebellion represents the first-ever nationwide protest motion in assist of ladies’s rights. For years, and particularly within the months earlier than Mahsa Zina Amini’s loss of life in police custody, Iranians had been exhausted and resentful of the morality police’s violence and strain on girls. Mahsa’s loss of life ignited pent-up anger amongst Iranians, particularly girls who had been fed up with state violence, discrimination and patriarchal rule. Building on a long time of ladies’s resistance and sustained girls’s actions for equality, Iranian girls performed a central function in these protests. Indeed, these protests must be seen because the end result of greater than 4 a long time of Iranian girls’s wrestle in opposition to obligatory hijab legal guidelines, a wrestle that’s intently intertwined with their each day lives. Women have challenged obligatory hijab legal guidelines by collaborating in civil disobedience actions, organizing on-line and offline networks, and eradicating their headscarves in public. They face violence, harassment, and imprisonment for his or her actions. Women have been an essential power in these protests, main resistance actions in opposition to patriarchal and discriminatory authorities insurance policies and demanding equal rights.
Iranian safety forces and judicial authorities responded to the protests by rounding up and detaining rights defenders, together with a whole lot of ladies human rights defenders. Over a number of months, the federal government arrested a whole lot of ladies’s rights activists, feminists, civil society activists, teachers, attorneys, and journalists, stopping them from collaborating in or main protests. did. Although some had been launched beneath normal amnesty, many stay beneath indictment or in jail, together with Nilufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, the 2 journalists who coated Mahsa Zina Amini’s loss of life and funeral. stays. As the anniversary of Amini’s loss of life approaches, state safety authorities have resumed detaining activists in northern Iran, together with 12 individuals, family of political prisoners, and protesters killed by police. These pressures are having a critical impression on Iran’s civil society, which was already weakened by a long time of closed civic areas and repression. Since these protests started, many activists have obtained heavy jail sentences and a few have been compelled to depart the nation.
This protest motion is notable for its capability to construct a various coalition throughout ethnic, class, and regional divides in opposition to the Islamic Republic. What started as a women-led protest over the loss of life of Mahsa Zina Amini shortly expanded to different calls for, together with financial justice and political freedom and alter. Despite the federal government’s crackdown on protests, the underlying components stay, and the gulf between the state and key sectors of society continues to widen.
Kurds and Baluch Iranians specifically skilled extreme repression in the course of the rebellion. A tragic instance of this was the “Bloody Friday” bloodbath that occurred in Baluchistan province on September 30, 2022. More than 100 individuals had been killed by safety forces that day throughout protests after Friday prayers. Protesters in Baluchestan province had been demanding justice for the reported rape of a younger Baluch lady by a police commander in Chabahar metropolis. High ranges of violence additionally occurred in Kurdish areas in the course of the crackdown on protests. For instance, within the metropolis of Javanrud in Kermanshah province, Kurdish protesters had been brutally attacked by safety forces and a minimum of 89 individuals, together with 26 minors, had been arrested. These two communities paid an exorbitant value for these protests, as almost half of these killed by nationwide safety had been Baluchis and Kurds.
In the face of such repression, college students and on-line activists have proven braveness and creativity and turn out to be one other pillar of the protest motion. Online activists, particularly younger individuals, have used the Internet as a communication, info, and mobilization software. They have shared their tales, opinions, and calls for with the world in inspiring methods. They have additionally labored with worldwide human rights organizations, journalists, and celebrities to defend their trigger and expose human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic.
Meanwhile, college scholar activists held demonstrations at 183 universities throughout the nation in solidarity with the protest motion. In retaliation, the federal government imprisoned many college students for his or her activism and expelled others, together with professors, from academia.
In addition to those closures and disruptions, the Iranian authorities has imposed stricter filters on worldwide platforms reminiscent of WhatsApp and Instagram, and handed laws that may give the federal government the facility to observe, regulate, and determine people primarily based on their on-line actions. It was enacted. These measures are a part of the federal government’s efforts to limit freedom of expression and entry to the web worldwide.
During the course of those riots, greater than 530 protesters, together with 71 kids, took half within the protests. killed by safety forces. At least 22,000 individuals have been arrested in reference to the protests, together with 714 college students, 63 journalists and a minimum of 300 girls’s rights defenders. Many of these arrested have been subjected to torture, ill-treatment, unfair trials, and sexual harassment, together with rape. At least 25 individuals had been sentenced to loss of life and 7 individuals had been executed for his or her involvement within the protests. These numbers display the size and severity of the repression and violence that the Iranian individuals have confronted in demanding their basic rights and freedoms.
We, the undersigned organizations, stand in solidarity with the Iranian individuals on the primary anniversary of Mahsa Zina Amini’s loss of life and the start of the Uprising for Women, Life and Freedom. We name on the worldwide group to face in solidarity with Iranians, particularly Iranian girls.
Recommendations to the worldwide group:
3- Support VPNs and different instruments that permit Iranians to bypass on-line filters and censorship and entry the web freely. These instruments are important, particularly since he mentioned September 2022, when public demand and authorities intervention enhance.
4- Social media platforms should monitor and stop systematic actions concentrating on the accounts and efforts and organizations of Iranian human rights defenders, particularly girls human rights defenders.
5- Provide emergency funds, respite packages, and relocation to Iranian human rights defenders who’re in danger or have fled the nation.
8- Call on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Special Procedures Mission Holder to prioritize and systematically report on violations of human rights, girls’s rights and ethnic minority rights in Iran;
9. Call on the United Nations fact-finding mission to Iran to doc all circumstances of custodial torture and deaths throughout protests.
We will always remember Mahsa Zina Amini and the 1000’s of Iranians who sacrificed their lives and freedom for a greater future. We will proceed to observe the scenario in Iran and amplify the voices of these calling for change.
Signer:
Afghanistan Women’s News Agency Arce Sebom Iran-Azerbaijan People’s Human Rights Association (AHRAZ) AWID Baloch Activist Campaign Bint Al Nil (Egypt, Daughter of the Nile Foundation) Egyptian Women’s Law Support Center (CEWLA) Support Center for Human Rights (CSHR) Rights and Defense Foundation for Freedom (Yemen) Democracy Now for the Arab World (DAWN) Equality Fund Equality Now FEMALE (Lebanon) Femena Harbush International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) International Network of Iranian Women’s Circles Iran Freedom and Welfare Party Iran Women’s Network (IWIN) Ismail Koye Foundation Kayan Feminist Organization (Palestine) Kurdistan Human Rights Association of Geneva (KMMK-G) Kurdistan Human Rights Network Kurdistan News Agency (Kurdopa) Kubinna Tir Kubinna Foundation Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative (IM -Defensoras) Mian Group Minority Rights Group NOOR PEN American Project for Middle East Democracy (POMED) Kalal Media Development Foundation (Yemen) Regional Coalition for WHRD in Southwest Asia and North Africa (often known as WHRDMENA Coalition) Sexual Rights Initiative Siwar・News Siamak Pourzando Foundation (SPF) Syrian Feminist Lobby Takatoat (Jordan) Thatt Sustainable Development Foundation (Sudan) Turkaman Human Rights Activists (TUHRA) Emergency Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights Virtual Activism Women’s Human Rights Women for Women – New Ways (Turkey) Islamic Law (WLUML) Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (Palestine) Women’s Intercultural Network World Organization Against Torture (OMCT)
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Photo: A Baluch lady writes the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” on a wall in Sistan Baluchestan, Iran in 2022, which originated from a Kurdish grassroots motion and was adopted by protesters throughout Iran. . Credit: Anonymous.
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