The Center for the Study of Women in Society has issued the following statement declaring solidarity with demonstrators in Iran who are protesting the tragic death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iranian morality police. Many thanks to Parichehr Kazemi, Zeinab Nobowati, and the CSWS Advisory Board for their contributions to this statement:
On September 13, 2022, news spread of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman hospitalized and comatose hours after being taken into custody by Iranian morality police for “bad hijab.” She was pronounced dead days later, becoming the latest casualty of a government which systematically commits violence against women, girls, ethnic and religious minorities, queer people, and many other social sectors in propping up its own power and legitimacy.
For weeks, Iranian women have been protesting more than four decades of authoritarian control over their bodies. Mahsa Amini’s tragic death has become the catalyst for a national front of solidarity against years of systemic gender-based violence. Regardless of their religious orientations or beliefs, all Iranian women are required to wear the veil in public under Islamic Republic law. They are also forbidden from public dancing, singing, or biking, which restricts the free expression of their bodies and, importantly, their choices to partake in these activities or not.
A woman’s right to make choices in accordance with her own values and beliefs is something we here at the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) strongly affirm, regardless of where these choices are to take place in the world. We understand that the struggles facing Iranian women are interconnected with our own struggles for bodily autonomy in the West and stand against such expressions of violence wherever they exist. We are united against the global assault on women’s rights and stand in solidarity with Iranian women as they continue to fight for self-determination and an end to gender apartheid in the coming days and weeks ahead.
In addition to extending our support to the Iranian women who have bravely stood at the forefront of the last wave of protests, we strongly condemn the Iranian government’s brute use of force in suppressing their demands. According to The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), nearly 200 protestors have been killed by government forces to date. Among them are dozens of women and girls as young as sixteen peacefully protesting the death of Mahsa Amini and the regime’s steadfast enforcement of its gender-discriminatory policies. Nika Shakarami, Sarina Esmailzadeh, Hadis Najafi, Ghazaleh Chelavi, and Hannaneh Kia are just some of the names of the lives lost battling a regime which has in ensuring its tight grip on power.
When government authorities equate the murder of defenseless young women to upholding revolutionary principles, we must question the valor of such authority and condemn it in all its forms and manifestations. In its most binary iteration, a government that not only fails to provide the conditions and opportunities through which women and girls can flourish but also actively prevents them from the possibilities of ever reaching these conditions by ending their lives cannot claim legitimate authority. We rebuke the Iranian government’s attempts to violently silence dissent and urge the government to approach the demands of protestors peacefully and without the use of violence.
We at CSWS continue to stand in awe of the tremendous determination of Iranian women and men i n the face of such suppression of their rights. We are inspired by this movement’s anthem of “Women, Life, Freedom,” uniting a large coalition of Iranian people from all social sectors behind feminist ideals. These protests have garnered the support of a wide range of Iranians inside the country meeting at the intersections of different class, ethnic, religious, racial, and sexual orientations. The protests have also spread outside of Iran’s geographic borders and across the globe as the Iranian diaspora stands with and works to amplify this period of extreme civil unrest. These intersectional and transnational linkages serve as an exemplary beacon of hope for advancing the lives of women and minorities through broad-based unity and strength, giving those outside of this context a strong paradigm to follow as we move forward with our own feminist demands.
In concluding this letter, we quote an anonymous writer whose essay Figuring a Women's Revolution: Bodies Interacting with their Images has gone viral across the web. This movement has formed “a new figure of resistance each time and in every single body… (It) has released women from captivity in the body and its historic subjugation and has made the body flourish in its wake. A body that has only now discovered the possibility, the beauty, of its own resistance: maturing anew.” We stand with the Iranian diaspora as they witness unrest in the country that many were forced to leave behind, and we extend our utmost solidarity to all of those in Iran whose bodies are in direct confrontation with state violence.