Women Activists on Their Way to Prison

Two Iranian women’s rights activists, Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani and Parvin Ardalan were sentenced to three years in prison, with two and a half years of their sentences suspended for five years. The convictions were handed down on charges of “conspiracy and disrupting national security.” These two activists thus face a mandatory prison sentence of six months, a ruling that was “unexpected” according to Nasrin Sotudeh. “It is questionable,” says Sotudeh, “to relate civil issues, which are concerned mostly with family affairs, to security issues.”

In interviews with various news agencies, Sotudeh also confirmed that she will “appeal the decision of the revolutionary court.”

With these two judgments, the number of women who have been sentenced to long prison terms for simply attending a peaceful gathering now stands at five. Previously, the sixth branch of Tehran’s revolutionary court had sentenced Fariba Davoudi Mohajer to one year of prison and three years of suspended imprisonment, on charges of “participating in an illegal gathering” and “conspiring to commit a crime.” Two other women activists, Sousan Tahmaseb and Azadeh Forghani, were also sentenced on similar charges to six months in prison and one and half year suspended jail time, and two years suspended imprisonment, respectively.

One woman activist told Rooz, “Suspended prison terms are kept over our heads like hanging daggers, so that we don’t speak out against the officials.”

She adds, “But the officials do not realize that women’s rights are all-encompassing and even exist in their own homes. What will they do on the day when their own daughters demand their rights?”

A student activist, who also has a two year suspended sentence says, “How can we view nuclear rights as our right, when we cannot exercise our basic rights.”

A school teacher, whose daughter was among the women arrested for participating in the One-Million Signature Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws, said, “From that day on I have stopped my daughter from leaving the house. I don’t want her to fall into their hands. But I understand how my daughter’s passion and drive are slowly turning into anger and hatred. Children like my own are not few. There is nobody to tell them [the officials] that when ‘you don’t allow people to think, then why do you prevent them from doing things that take their minds off thinking?”’