On the occasion of the international day of struggle versus violence against women; 25th November
Another year of rampant violence against women in a patriarchal world has gone by. Women all over the world either by law or in practice are property of men. They are a commodity. Slavery is a fact of life for women. They are like prisoners subjected to torture every day. The same relation of prisoners and prison guards rule over women in society and at home.
As long as women’s body are rented by men, as long as men can buy and sell women, as long as pornography exploit women’s body and money washes the hands of male rapists, as long as thousands upon thousands of women are raped in prisons, on the streets and at their homes, as long as women are imprisoned because they ran away from forced marriage, or raped or forced to sell their body, as long as over twenty thousand women are killed in order to protect the “honour” of the men, family or tribe, as long as over two hundred thousand girls under fourteen years old are bought and sold as gender slaves in the sex trade, as long as thousands of women set themselves on fire to ‘escape’ from violence, as long as women are buried alive because of the suspicion of the family males, as long as thousands of women die because of illegal abortion, as long as women are stoned to death because of falling in love, as long as three billion women are subjected to daily violence no one is free or emancipated.
All these are enough to show that how social, political and economic relations of the patriarchal class system of capitalism all over the world inflict violence against women in society as well as home. All these are enough to show that such a power relation between men and women in patriarchal society is one of its pillars of power. All these are enough to show and expose that how patriarchal views and values amongst men are related to the patriarchal system which rules the whole world. All these are enough to uncover that the violence against women is a means to ensure and protect the oppressing relation of men and subordination of women. These are all enough to show that how patriarchal world and capitalist relations by allowing privileges to men for controlling women, they can control the whole world.
As the chains of violence against women has become ever more internationalised, the struggle and resistance of women has taken more international dimensions. Women take courage from each other’s struggle and treat any advances in their struggle as their own, regardless of which part of the world it may take place.
We, the women in Iran, who have experienced the rule of Islamic, anti-women fundamentalist regime, know well that there is an inseparable relation between widespread violence at home and society and the violence by the state against women. Since the anti-women regime of Islamic republic has come to power, women and their body has become the focal point for establishing and consolidating the rule of the reactionary classes in Iran. The thirty three years old, state violence against women and its extension to the society has become one of the main pillars of anti-women system of Islamic republic. Imposing of Islamic laws over women in Iran is only to serve and protect men’s ownership over women.
We, the women in Iran in unity with all other women all over the world, stand firm in struggle to end all kinds of state and domestic violence. We have also learnt that struggle against any kind of violence cannot be separated from struggle against the whole patriarchal system of capitalism all over the world where horrific violence against women are produced and reproduced. Without putting an end to ownership of men over women, no women or nobody else could be free and emancipated on this planet.
8 March Women Organisation (Iran- Afghanistan)
25 November 2012
www.8mars.com
zan_ dem_iran@hotmail.com