Fatima Payman’s backflip on Iranian women’s rights is a betrayal
I spent 804 days imprisoned in Iran. The senator’s surname means “alliance”, but to those of us who care about human rights in the Islamic Republic, an ally she is not.
I used to have a lot of respect for Fatima Payman. I remember her maiden speech to parliament in 2022 when she paid tribute to her father who had sacrificed everything fleeing the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan, before arriving in Australia where he worked hard to give his family a better life.
That his eldest daughter would in just a few short years rise to the position of an Australian senator was both a moving tribute to Payman’s talent and tenacity as well as a testament to the open-minded and welcoming spirit of broader Australian society.
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Kylie Moore-Gilbert is a political scientist specialising in Islam and the Middle East. She was detained in Iran in 2018 and served more than two years of a 10-year sentence before being freed in November 2020.
