Rita Panahi: Senator’s betrayal of Iranian women damns not only her, but the Labor party

Senator Fatima Payman’s betrayal of Iranian women damns not only her, but also the Labor Party which selected an ill-informed 27-year-old for the Australian senate because she wears a hijab and ticks various diversity boxes.

Senator Fatima Payman’s betrayal of the world’s most oppressed women damns not only her, but also the Labor party which selected an ill-informed 27-year-old for the Australian senate because she wears a hijab and ticks various diversity boxes.

One would hope that a woman whose family fled Afghanistan and were granted refuge in Australia would have a little regard for women living under Islamist rule. But Senator Payman who left Labor in July and has started her own party, the dishonestly named Australia’s Voice, chose to glorify the Iranian regime and its treatment of women. “The incredible place that Iran is, allowing for women to participate in the workforce to ensure that they have a voice, that their voices are heard, that their (voices) involved in a democratic process — realities that we’re not privy to living here and listening to the propaganda that we receive from very single-sided organisations with specific agenda,” Payman said.

Senator Fatima Payman has come under fire for her comments about Iranian women. Picture: Martin Ollman

That is a dangerously dishonest description of a country that systematically subjugates women, that implements backward sharia law and inflicts the death penalty for offences including adultery, sorcery and witchcraft. Women in Iran are not even allowed in stadiums to watch men play sport. But somehow Payman didn’t know that Iranian women do not enjoy equal rights under the law.

Speaking at the Benevolent Iranian Women Association, Payman advised those supportive of the regime to become politically active. “I think my key advice to them was, look, if this is your narrative and you want people to hear it, I encourage you to create a space for yourself to lobby and talk to your politicians and representatives,” Payman told The Australian.

Senator Payman has since claimed to be ignorant of the situation in Iran. “I haven’t been to Iran. I don’t know what the situation is like,” she said. Somehow, she missed all the headlines about women marching en masse to protest against the Islamist regime. She somehow didn’t know that many Iranian women have been imprisoned, beaten and even killed fighting against the hijab which has been forced on them since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. That almost beggars belief.

Also shame on NSW Minister for Women Jodie Harrison for her “ill-considered” involvement in the event. She has since apologised profusely but for a minister to be so ignorant of her portfolio is disqualifying.

Originally published as Rita Panahi: Senator’s betrayal of Iranian women damns not only her, but the Labor party