IRANIAN WOMEN'S MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESSES AMID IRIG

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 RPO DUBAI 000057

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 2/5/2019
TAGS: PGOV KWMN PHUM KDEM IR
SUBJECT: IRANIAN WOMEN'S MOVEMENT CLAIMS SUCCESSES AMID IRIG
CRACKDOWN

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CLASSIFIED BY: Ramin Asgard, Director, Iran Regional Presence
Office - Dubai, DOS.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)

1. (C) Summary: Four leading Iranian women's rights activists
described a robust, growing movement that is expanding its reach
beyond young professional women, despite an aggressive
crack-down by hardliners on individual activists. The struggle
for women's equality in Iran has become more focused and better
organized since the inception of the grass-roots One Million
Signatures Campaign two and a half years ago, according to the
women. In their opinion, hardliners in the government are less
threatened by the prospect of gender equality than the existence
of any sort of "people's movement" that could form the basis of
a political opposition to the regime, particularly one with ties
to the West. End Summary



One Million Signatures Now Locus of Women's Rights Movement




2. (C) IRPO officer recently spoke separately with four leading
women's rights activists from Iran who plan to attend the UN
Status of Women conference in New York in early March. They
said that the women's movement in Iran has finally found its
footing in the form of the grass-roots One Million Signature
Campaign. The Campaign's goal is to educate Iranians about the
societal consequences of discriminatory laws against women and
to build widespread support among Iranians for government
recognition and legal protection of gender equality. Campaign
members rely primarily on person-to-person education and the
internet to spread their message.




3. (C) According to the activists, their movement is gaining
momentum "faster than ever" despite the IRIG's increasingly
aggressive crack-down on activists, especially those associated
with the One Million Signatures Campaign. (Note: To date, 47
campaigners have been arrested; many have been sentenced to jail
time and/or lashes.) They asserted that regime pressure has had
the opposite effect: invigorating their cause and building
support among Iranians for expansion of women's rights. The
very public harassment and imprisonment of women (and the
occasional man) for simply seeking improved rights is viewed by
most Iranians as a disproportionate reaction on the part of the
regime, and ultimately signals the hardliners' weakness rather
than their strength.




4. (C) The activists said that most Iranians recognize that the
goals of the movement are limited to improving the rights of
women through the revision of laws and the "correct"
implementation of laws already on the books and rights already
afforded to women by the constitution. Since the mainstream
movement proponents are neither challenging Iran's form of
government, the stability of the current regime, nor even the
supremacy of the velayat-e faqih, the government's heavy-handed
approach is producing a discernable backlash against the
hardliners, who are increasingly viewed as bullies by the
general public. One activist noted that the lashings and jail
sentences typically given to Campaigners by the revolutionary
courts garner widespread sympathetic media coverage inside Iran,
especially on blogs.



Hardliners Pursue "Personalized Terrorism" Against Activists




5. (C) A long-time activist who combines her advocacy for
women's rights with activism on environmental issues described
how the regime conducts "personalized terror" by relating her
own experience with security agents who have been tracking her
for years. She said that since her arrest in 2006 for attending
a hearing of fellow activists at a revolutionary court, she has
been harassed on a regular basis by MOIS agents who attempt to
"control" her activities by exploiting personal information
about her family. For example, she said that she is frequently
subjected to prolonged interrogations that coincide with her
husband's chemotherapy sessions for prostrate cancer. She also
alleged that the security agents tracking her discovered that
her son was gay and promptly disseminated this information,
leading to an "announcement" of his sexual orientation in
several papers and his arrest. She stated that her son, who was
a university student in Tehran, fled to Germany earlier this

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year after having been arrested three times. She assessed this
harassment of family members is hardliners' greatest source of
pressure, and she observed that the impunity with which the
security agents operate has turned Iran into an "open prison."



Women Claim Some Successes Despite Increased Repression




6. (C) All four women noted that the government's tolerance for
rights activists has decreased markedly since President
Ahmadinejad took office in 2005. They pointed to the
government's aggressive actions against campaign activists as
the reason they had only been able to collect 200,000 signatures
in two and a half years. Strikingly, however, they were
optimistic that many of their goals would eventually be
realized. One pointed out that Iranian women are "too well
educated" and "too interested in the world" to be treated as
inferior to males indefinitely.




7. (C) One founding member of the Campaign and leading opponent
to the use of execution by stoning cautioned that it was wrong
to think the movement hadn't made gains in recent years. She
pointed to the defeat of the conservatives' attempt in 2008 to
revise the family law to make multiple marriages easier as a
concrete accomplishment of activists. She also attributed the
decrease in executions by stoning to the women's rights
movement, saying that once people became aware that stoning
sentences were given to women much more frequently than to men,
the public outcry over the issue became too loud for the
authorities to ignore. She claimed that violations of judiciary
chief Ayatollah Shahroudi's directive banning execution by
stoning were carried out by renegade local judges who knew they
were acting in defiance of the government's order. She pointed
out that the December 2008 stoning of two men in Mashhad was
carried out in a cemetery at night was evidence of that carrying
out such punishment was no longer publicly sanctioned.



"Organic" Roots Key to the Movement's Survival




8. (C) The activists all emphasized the organic roots of the
women's movement, with one woman observing that "Iranians don't
need help from outsiders," while another cautioned that foreign
support for their activities would only confirm the regime's
"paranoia" and provide a pretext for increased regime
repression. According to one founding member of the Campaign,
since the project's inception in 2006 they have strictly
prohibited accepting money from foreign governments or
organizations, although they do accept donations from
individuals outside of Iran. She stated flatly that "giving
money to NGOs is the worst thing the American government has
done for human rights in my country since they overthrew
Mosaddegh." However, she said that donations by individual
American citizens have been an important source of revenue and
pointed to Campaign co-founder Sussan Tahmasebi's successful
fundraising in the U.S. as a critical source of the group's
funding. (Note: Tahmasebi is a dual national of Iran and the
United States.) She noted that only the signatures of Iranian
nationals counted against the million signature goal.




9. (C) The Campaign's use of person-to-person education has also
helped the movement gain traction, especially among sectors of
society beyond professional women. According to one activist,
the Campaign has developed a "Mothers' Committee" and a
"Fathers' Committee" as their primary vehicles for conducting
outreach to Iranians belonging to older generations. She said
that peers are much more likely to garner the support of older
Iranians than are young women, whose activism is often regarded
with suspicion or fear by older Iranians.



Comment




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10. (C) Though the women unanimously expressed confidence that
the movement's long-term goals for women's equality in Iran
would be met, they were clearly taken aback by the audacity of
the recent harassment of Shirin Ebadi, which they interpreted as
a direct assault on their own operations because of her close
association with the Campaign. Similarly, they were upbeat
about the Campaign's ability to strengthen civil society through
education and increasing public awareness, but their optimism
seemed to reflect the value and importance of the cause they are
pursuing rather than tangible evidence of their gains. Despite
concerted efforts to portray their efforts as working within the
system, the activists privately expressed skepticism that
participation in the current political system could ever yield
positive results. As one of the women bitterly responded when
asked if she would vote in the June presidential election or if
the Campaign would endorse a candidate, "it doesn't matter who
is elected because the system itself is rotten."
ASGARD