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South Hadley, Massachusetts – Prominent attorney, author, and human rights activist Mehrangiz Kar urged a predominantly student audience at Mount Holyoke College to “work on promoting discussion on human rights in Iran” earlier this October. Kar’s lecture “‘With Determined Spirits: Activism and Contemporary Women’s Rights in Iran,” was the inaugural event in Holyoke College’s special lecture series “Bearing Witness” sponsored by the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts.
Kar, who followed the discussion with a book signing, said that the fetishization of the nuclear issue in the West has led to the neglect of women’s and human rights in Iran, while it has made it easier for conservative factions in Iran to paint all opposition as Western-influenced.
The polarization of public debate on Iran has also led to the neglect of the democratic movement in Iran, many have argued. Figures like Kar, Akbar Ganji, and Shirin Ebadi have fallen out of favor with some liberal commentators in the West, while some public intellectuals such as Jurgen Habermas, Noam Chomsky, and Danny Postel continue to write in support of these Iranian activists. In the view of some, there is an Iranian Havel and many in the West don’t seem to care as long is there is an Iranian Chavez who continues to thumb his nose at Bush.
Kar spoke of the shock she and other women in Iran felt after the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the swift rollback of women’s rights won under the previous regime. This shock gradually gave way to determination, as Kar, who worked as a pro bono lawyer for three years fought to earn the respect of the newly appointed Sharia judges. With the help of sympathetic clerics and lay religious intellectuals who provided new interpretations of Islamic law, women activists in Iran found ways to navigate and employ official religious discourse to their advantage. Kar noted that this strategy was effective insofar as it “gave women knowledge of the Islamic system” and as long as reformists dominated the presidency and parliament. However, the electoral success of Ahmadinejad and other conservatives signaled a period in which “freedom of expression isn’t even enjoyed by clerics,” given the recent arrests of dissident clergymen.
Kar then spoke of her own arrest in 2000 for her participation in a conference in Berlin in which she called for a reform of the Iranian constitution. Two years later Kar’s husband Siamak Pourzand was charged with espionage and threatening national security – a form of judicial indictment that is currently proliferating. The torture that Pourzand endured and other prisoners continue to endure, along with the practice of execution by stoning has made Iran one of the world’s worst violators of human rights, Kar said.
Despite these and other serious obstacles, Kar noted that political activism in general and women’s activism in particular has become “more mainstream in Iran.” Kar told the overwhelmingly female student audience that at a time when a conservative Majles is attempting to rollback gains made in women’s family protection laws during the Khatami presidency (divorce, child custody, and polygamy), and vice squads have stepped up their enforcement of the public dress code, women activists such as the leaders of the “Million Signatures Campaign” demonstrate their persistence in promotion of increased legal and political rights for women.
Nonetheless, the tense public political environment has forced activists and ordinary Iranians to the realm of the internet to deliberate on matters political and social. And, despite attempts to crackdown on internet journalism, “the Iranian government cannot completely halt this conversation” – one Kar said was taking place between citizens in Iran and the international diaspora community.
When asked what other channels besides the internet Iranians were using to affect change, Kar responded by criticizing the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the major obstacle to democratic change. “The constitution is fundamentally undemocratic. It needs to be changed,” Kar exclaimed.
Kar noted that the constitution’s various exceptional clauses are invoked to defeat democratic opposition. “What exactly does ‘violating Islamic principles’ mean?” Kar asked to highlight the opaqueness of Iranian constitutional law.
Kar was then asked if democracy promotion in the West helped or hindered the Iranian opposition.
“Democracy promotion in the form of money does not help. One American dollar can serve as a reason for shutting down an NGO or imprisoning the recipient,” Kar said.
Kar closed on a related note, saying that the current international environment was advantageous for conservative factions who increasingly use nationalism as both a foundation of legitimacy and as a pretext for quashing dissent. “Before normalization with the United States we need to be concerned with peaceful change in Iran,” Kar said. “We need to continue to talk and write. The mother of democracy is freedom of expression.”
Sam Fayyaz
Nov 21, 2007
NIAAC
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