Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09BAKU26
2009-01-14 10:53:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Baku
Cable title:  

YOUNG IRANIAN ACTIVIST SPEAKS OUT

Tags:  PHUM PGOV PINR AJ TU IR 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO6479
RR RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHDIR RUEHKUK
DE RUEHKB #0026/01 0141053
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 141053Z JAN 09
FM AMEMBASSY BAKU
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0608
INFO RUCNIRA/IRAN COLLECTIVE
RHMFISS/CDR USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE
RHMFISS/CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RUEKDIA/DIA WASHDC
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHDC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BAKU 000026 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/12/2019
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PINR AJ TU IR
SUBJECT: YOUNG IRANIAN ACTIVIST SPEAKS OUT

REF: A. (A) 2008 BAKU 1156

B. (B) 2008 ISTANBUL 615

Summary:
---------

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BAKU 000026

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/12/2019
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PINR AJ TU IR
SUBJECT: YOUNG IRANIAN ACTIVIST SPEAKS OUT

REF: A. (A) 2008 BAKU 1156

B. (B) 2008 ISTANBUL 615

Summary:
--------------


1. (C) A young Iranian women's rights activist and writer
studing in Baku discussed women's rights issues in Iran with
Baku Iran watcher. The activist, forced to study in
Azerbaijan due to politically-motivated withdrawal of her
university acceptance in Iran, discussed recent incidents of
Iranian regime harassment of women's rights figures. Despite
(or because of) what she described as aggressive regime
pressure and regressive institutionalized discrimination
against women, the student asserted that Iranian feminism is
both stronger and more broadly supported than feminist
movements in neighboring countries. She also outlined a
seemingly contradictory trend in Iran whereby overall private
and inside-the-family freedoms and attitudes towards women
are rapidly liberalizing at the same time that legal and
regime-imposed social restrictions on women are becoming more
repressive. She also commented on some strengths and
weaknesses of the recent USG-funded regional women's rights
conference in Istanbul, which she helped organize and
attended (reftels). Maryam's comments on Iranian
student/youth attitudes and activities in Baku and Iran are
reported septel. End Summary.

Iranian Student in Baku
--------------


2. (C) Maryam is a 22-year old Iranian from Ardebil
currently studying medicine at a university in Baku.
According to Maryam, she has been a vocal supporter of Shirin
Ebadi and an active campaigner for women's rights since high
school, and was a student organizer of the annual "Babek
Tower" march and rally (a symbol of Azeri identity and
pride),and involved with unofficial Azeri-Iranian cultural
groups (Note: all of these activities are strongly
discouraged by the Teheran regime. End Note.) She is also
an author of "apolitical" children's stories that have been
published in Iranian magazines.


3. (C) According to Maryam, her high school activism
(possibly compounded by regime displeasure with her
journalist father) resulted in a one month detention by the
Iranian authorities without charge. Although released and

allowed to graduate, she claimed that her admission to the
University of Tabriz medical school was abruptly withdrawn
"for political reasons," despite her high score in the
national university entrance exam. After this development
she relocated to Baku in order to pursue university studies
here. Maryam's remarried father preceded her to Baku, and
has applied to UNHCR for resettlement as a political refugee.
Maryam is not a party to his request, and claims to be
uninterested in emigrating. "I'm an Iranian and want to live
in Iran," she said.


4. (C) Maryam noted that she returns frequently to Iran,
sometimes experiencing lengthy admission delays and
interrogations. Despite the risk that "one day they may
arrest me again," she stressed that she is "doing nothing
wrong," and continues to network with Iranian and Azerbaijani
feminists and cultural activists while simultaneously
pursuing "a normal student life." She occasionally works with
prominent Azerbaijani women's rights activist Novella
Jafaroglu, who has Iranian roots and follows events in Iran.
Maryam participated in the November 28-29, 2008 regional
Women's Rights Conference organized by Jafaroglu and held in
Istanbul last November and attended by more than twenty
Iranian and Iranian diaspora delegates (Note: this conference
was indirectly funded by the USG through an Iranian outreach
grant to Jafaroglu's group; conference participants were not
informed of this indirect funding relationship - see reftels.
End Note).


Alleged Intimidation of Conference Invitees
--------------


5. (C) Maryam reported that two Iranian activists invited to
the conference were unable to attend due to being placed
under house arrest in Teheran (one only two days before she
was to depart). She added that five Iranian attendees at the
Istanbul women's rights conference were taken aside by

BAKU 00000026 002 OF 003


security personnel at Teheran airport while waiting to board
their airplane to Istanbul. She said that two of the women,
one associated with Shirin Ebadi's group, were interrogated
for more than an hour. According to Maryam, all of the women
were asked why they were going to Turkey, and when they
answered were asked if they knew who was sponsoring/paying
for the conference, who else was attending, and why "they"
were singled out for an invitation. While all were
ultimately allowed to depart, Maryam said that the women told
her and Jafaroglu that they were warned to submit full
reports on the conference and who attended after they
returned to Iran, "or we will deal with you." (Note:
According to both Maryam and Jafaroglu, to the best of their
knowledge as of January 10, 2009 no the Iranian Istanbul
Conference attendees has been harassed about the conference
since returning to Iran. End Note).

Monitoring of Women's and Human Rights Activists
-------------- ---


6. (C) Maryam emphasized that all/all women's rights and
human rights activists in Iran are watched by the authorities
and carefully monitored. She added that all of their phone
calls are tapped, as well as "all international phone calls"
made to or by anyone in Iran. Maryam observed that, despite
the absence of any publicity about the conference the
authorities knew exactly who to detain, and where and why
they were going. She stressed that these women are not
campaigning for regime change and were not doing anything in
any sense illegal, wrong, or even provocative by attending
the conference.


7. (C) Maryam described these airport pull asides as
"standard intimidation" intended to bully and frighten, and
to underline the regimes discouragement of international NGO
contacts and washing dirty laundry abroad. She observed
that, until recently, women's and children's rights
associations have been among the few civil society
organizations critical of Iranian society generally
tolerated; this may now be changing, and the risk of arrest
and other "illegal punishment" of activists and sympathizers
by representatives of the regime is real.

Public Repression - Private Liberalization
--------------


8. (C) Maryam contrasted what she described as "increasingly
regressive" institutionalized official and legal
discrimination against women with what she said are
increasingly liberal practices and attitudes in broader
society. Noting that a majority of Iranian university
graduates are women, Maryam asserted that most women in Iran
exercise greater freedom within the home than their
counterparts in Turkey and Azerbaijan. For example, she
said, few Iranian wives would allow their husbands to forbid
them from working (a practice which still occurs in
Azerbaijan). She said that in general "indoors" attitudes
and social practices (including male/female mixing) are
liberalizing, "especially within the younger generation."
She reiterated that the lives of many women in Iran within
the family are freer, and opportunities for personal
independence greater, than in other countries in the region.
"Their laws may be (more) liberal, but their (social)
practices are conservative; our situation is the opposite."


9. (C) She contended that one ironic result of increasing
state measures against women in Iran is that feminism as a
movement is much stronger, better organized, and more broadly
supported in Iran than in Turkey, Azerbaijan. and other
regional countries. Many Iranians are aware of the
discrimination against women and related reactionary behavior
practiced by supporters of the the regime, and are battling
against it ("including Ayatollah Khomeini's granddaughter and
other members of his family)." This can be seen, she said,
not only in the publicized activities of people like Shirin
Ebadi, but in broader grass roots consciousness-raising
activities. She opined that greater understanding of
challenges facing womenin Iran is urgently needed. She added
that organized protests (or the fear of them) in Iran and
abroad have helped stall further institutionalized
mistreatment of women, such as a recent effort by Islamic
conservatives to remove the need for a first wife to agree to
her husband adding a second to the household.

Child Marriage and Honor Killings

BAKU 00000026 003 OF 003


--------------


10. (C) Asked about child marriage laws enacted by the
regime (which permit marriage to women as young as eight),
she said that this law is regarded with contempt by most
Iranians. She alleged the practice is limited to a few
(Iranian) "Kurds, Arabs, and clerics," adding that these same
groups are also the predominant practitioners of "honor
killings," which she claimed are not prosecuted and thus de
facto tolerated by the regime, though condemned by most
Iranians.

Comments on Istanbul Women's Rights Conference
-------------- -


11. (C) Turning to the conference itself, Maryam praised it
for broadening Iranian activists domestic and foreign
networks and brought together disparate ethnic (Kurdish,
Arab, Turkmen, Azeri, Persian, and Azeri) and regional groups
from within Iran as well diaspora Iranians (some affiliated
with banned groups) that would normally not be in contact
with one another. She also praised Jafaroglu and the other
non-Iranian conference leaders for keeping conference
discussions on message and effectively short circuiting
occasional efforts to shift the discussion away from women's
rights issues to those involving the rights of ethnic or
religious minorities and similar snsitive issues.


12. (C) One positive result, sh said, was a series of very
constructive discussons among the Iranians who attended
(including sme local Iranian students),which she said
contiued in rooms and the lobby of the conference hotel
until well after midnight. She cited the ability to develop
contacts between Iranian and foreign NGOs, and better
publicize the "poorly understood" institutionalized
challenges to women in Iran, as additional constructive
aspects. In the latter respect, she related that the
Azerbaijani and Turkish participants were shocked to learn
that the Iranian Constitution explicitly places the legal
position of women at half that guaranteed men.


13. (C) On the downside, she criticized what she
characterized "last minute" logistics preparations (e.g.,
using an attending Iranian student as a FARSI-Turkish
translator the first day because a professional had not been
recruited). More importantly, she argued that the
Azerbaijani and Turkish participants "simply didn't
understand our reality (as Iranians)," and did not take
seriously enough the safety and security risks facing the
Iranians by virtue of participating in an event set up by an
organization (Jafaroglu's) that is a recipient of U.S. and
Israeli government funds and talks loosely about this. While
endorsing more such regional conferences (including possible
events focusing on children's rights, drug addiction, and/or
environment),she urged that a different organizing body be
used as "official" organizer, "ideally a (Turkish or
Azerbaijani) university." Under this scenario she suggested
that groups like Jafaroglu's could still be involved, but
with less profile.

LU