This message was delivered on 8 March 2919 in Netherland (Den hag), Germany(Bremen) and Belgium (Brussels) by : « Campaign to fight state, domestic and social violence against women in Iran »
To all freedom lovers
We activists of ‘the campaign to fight the state, social and domestic violence against women in Iran’ are here to express that the women’s struggle in Iran against compulsory Hijab is not separated from the struggle of the women in the western countries against sexism. Because the women’s body has become a sex object under this world system. We are here to say that the struggle of women in Iran for freedom and liberation is part of the world’s women struggle against patriarchal capitalist system dominating the world.
Forty years ago Islamic republic began its first assault against women’s rights by making hijab for women compulsory to show that this is an Islamic regime that has seized the power.
In Iran the compulsory hijab is at the centre of the state violence against the women. Islamic regime was the first fundamentalist regime that established all the brutal anti-women laws based on the Sharia’s law 40 years ago. This theocratic regime in the last 40 years has tried to institutionalise the culture of patriarchy in the country.
But the women did not remain silent. 40 years ago tens of thousands of women on 8th March came to streets, protested and declared that they would not give in to the compulsory hijab. Since then millions of women have resisted and struggled against the compulsory hijab and other sorts of violence against women.
Remember that in a corner of this world that is called Iran, women are arrested and lashed for practising their most basic rights i.e. the right to wear what and how they want. In this corner women are stoned to death for the ‘crime’ of love. In this corner of the world called Iran, women have no rights to divorce and thousands of women burn themselves or take their own life to free themselves from a violent life. These are only a small part of the sorts of violence of the anti-women laws that the Islamic regime has imposed on women.
We are here to say that the struggle of women against the compulsory hijab and other kinds of violence against women in Iran is not separated from the struggle of millions of women in the world against violence on women. The capitalist’s system that has dominated the world has also subjugated the women all over the world however in different forms. The intensification of patriarchy and controlling the body of women and transforming it increasingly to incubators and a pleasure commodity for men, is an essential part of the capitalists system in order to dominate the world.
In a world that 800 million people are hungry, in a world that 70 percent of its products are produced by the women who are in absolute poverty, in a world that millions of children are in live in war zones under tanks and bombs instead of being in schools and they get killed or their lives are torn apart, in a world in that has brought about feminisation of poverty, feminisation of Aids, feminisation of hunger and feminisation of death as well as hundreds of other example are the bases for the unity of the women in a world scale that put them all together for a common struggle against oppression and exploitation.
The picture that is portrayed from Iran by the TV screens and the mainstream western media is the picture of the Islamic fundamentalists that are making nuclear bomb and the picture of the kind of people that all are terrorists. This is a slanderous picture from the people of the other side of the world.
Women on the other side of the world in a country called Iran are struggling against compulsory hijab and other aspects of oppressions. The people of this country are struggling with the Islamic regime on a daily basis.
The reason for the concealment of these struggles is to legitimise their possible war and occupation under our name. The same excuse that they used for the aggression and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
We are here to tell you that we neither need the fascist regime of the US nor the European male chauvinists imperialists. We need that you, the women and men freedom lovers to stand by the women of Iran support our struggle against the compulsory hijab and other aspects of violence against women. We are determined to continue our struggle and fight to overthrow the Islamic regime of Iran for achieving liberation and freedom. Our people need your support.