Rita Panahi: Iran marks 40 years of misery in a sobering reminder of regression
Iran’s despots and their followers are marking 40 years since the revolution, but in reality, it is a celebration of the terror theocracy’s cruelty and bigotry, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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It is 40 years since the Islamic Revolution turned a relatively modern and secular country into a totalitarian, terror-funding theocracy. Iran’s descent into religious zealotry and isolationism has been a tragedy not just for Iranians but for the region and the world.
Iranian women fought fiercely against the mullahs and their backward notions of modesty, morality and sharia which would become enshrined in law. About 100,000 women took to the streets in 1979 to march against compulsory hijab and other discriminatory laws.
The women were met with counter protests from Islamist men and several female protesters were stabbed. Ultimately, they lost the battle but they have never stopped fighting.
Forty years later, Iranian women continue to risk their life and liberty by campaigning against the draconian hijab laws and other regulations steeped in misogyny. To this day Iranian women are arrested, beaten and imprisoned for refusing to veil.
Meanwhile, Western feminists, including thousands of Australian women, took part in the Women’s March led by sharia advocate Linda Sarsour. The movement also celebrated the hijab as a symbol of diversity, ignoring the plight of millions of women forced to conform to oppressive modesty laws.
Iran in the 1960s and 1970s looked nothing like what you see now. Looking back at family photo albums and images of pre-revolution Iran can be a depressing exercise: images of smiling unveiled women mixing freely with men in public, clad in bikinis at the beach or just posing on a car bonnet after a game of badminton.
A different world from present-day Iran where women are not even allowed in sporting stadiums to watch men play.
What happened in Iran is a sobering reminder of how women’s rights can regress dramatically. Of course, the Islamic revolution wasn’t just disastrous for women. It saw widespread change from the banning of alcohol to the persecution of religious minorities to the imposition of the death penalty for crimes such as adultery and apostasy.
Public executions, floggings and amputations instil fear in the population. And that’s what they do in public; the regime’s use of torture behind bars adds to their deplorable human rights record. In Iran, homosexuals are forced to undergo sex changes or face lengthy jail terms — or even the death sentence.
“The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years; next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and audience should ask him why his regimen is one of the top executioner of gays in the world,” said Alireza Nader, CEO of research and advocacy group New Iran.
There are unconfirmed reports that more than 6000 homosexuals have been murdered since the Islamic revolution.
In the past 24 hours the usual regimen supporters in Iran, typically bearded men, clerics with a smattering of black chador-clad women and students, have taken to the streets to celebrate the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini toppling the Shah of Iran.
There was much chanting of “death to America” and “death to Israel” and a relatively new addition to the death-wish-singalong, “death to the al-Saud” family of Saudi Arabia — and, of course, the airing of wild conspiracy theories and burning of flags.
However, Iran’s Supreme Leader claimed on the weekend that wishing “death to America” was not aimed at the American people, or indeed the country, but the Trump administration and its “wickedness”.
“‘Death to America’ means death to (Donald) Trump, John Bolton (National Security Adviser) and Pompeo (Secretary of State). It means death to American rulers,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. “It means death to the American politicians currently in power. It means death to the few people running that country; we have nothing against the American nation.”
Of course, that was just another lie from a leadership that is shameless in pushing its putrid propaganda.
The chant has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with a rotten, backward regimen that brutalises its own citizens and sponsors terror abroad.
I was forced to chant “Marg bar Amrika” (death to America) in Tehran more than 30 years ago alongside my schoolmates, all of us clad in compulsory hijabs and being indoctrinated to hate from the first year of school. I’m fairly certain that wasn’t aimed at a playboy New York property developer.
Today, Trump did something he’s never done before on Twitter: he posted in Farsi.
“40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regimen in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure. The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future,” the President tweeted in both English and Farsi.
It’s clear the American people have no appetite for taking part in another war in the Middle East. And, yet despite his “America First” approach Trump has been strong in condemning dictatorial regimes from Iran to Venezuela.
Those positions put the US at odds with Russia which must confuse the Russian conspiracy theorists who are convinced Trump colluded with Putin to win the election.
If he’s a Russian asset, then Trump is wildly inept given he consistently pushes policies that are damaging to Russia.
What’s been truly appalling is the number of anti-Trump pundits and politicians whose hatred of the US President is so extreme and irrational they side with regimes that brutally persecutes its citizens including women’s rights campaigners, homosexuals and political dissidents.
— Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist.
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