At a recent meeting of
the ‘Committee against stoning’ on the occasion of International Women’s day
2004, Pouran Bazargan (1), a veteran of the radical women’s movement in Iran
gave a talk ‘in solidarity with Iraqi Women’ .The following is Iran Bulletin
-Middle East Forum’s translation of extracts of this talk.
“My greetings to you
and all those involved in the struggle for women’s liberation and equality, on
the occasion of international Women’s Day. Over the last two centuries the
battle to eradicate sexual oppression has had many upheavals no doubt there has
been some major achievements, however patriarchy together with class relations,
backward religious and traditional customs have constantly presented obstacles
towards any progress and we still face a long struggle to overcome sexual
oppression. I have no doubt unity and determination will allow us to overcome
centuries of social injustice. We can see aspects of this struggle in Iran,
where women have placed themselves in the forefront of the opposition movement
especially in the last 25 years by expressing their protests in many ways,
including refusing to wear forced veil…
Last year we dedicated
our meeting for the 8th of March to solidarity with Afghan women,
another year we gave our solidarity to Palestinian women and this year we have
decided to offer this meeting to oppressed Iraqi women who are facing a
particularly difficult and significant time
In our neighbouring
country, Iraq, we see similarities with Iran as well as differences regarding
women’s issues: in Iraq as in Iran, a patriarchal society relying on religious
organisations and dogmatic, reactionary interpretations dominate the scene.
During various social and political upheavals, women took up political activity
time and time again, and as modernism grew they demanded respect and equal
rights. However despite some progress in these areas, as soon as the ruling
class and patriarchy felt under pressure , they retaliated by trampling upon
women’s rights and in this respect today we are facing one of the most
dangerous periods in Iraq, unprecedented in its history.
First I would like to
review some of the most important events regarding women’s advances in Iraq. In
1943, while Iraq was under British occupation and most of Iraqi society was
suffering from poverty and hunger, women organised one of the largest protests
demanding bread. In the same decade (1940s), after the Allies victory over
fascism at the time of the growth of leftwing thought and publication of
socialist books, the ideals of women’s liberation gained support. Girls entered
higher education in large numbers and removing the veil became widespread,
especially in towns and cities.
With the downfall of
the monarchy in 1958 after AbdolKarim Ghassem’s Coup d’etat
( an event that was
supported at the time by the majority of the population and is still considered
a positive event by most of the progressive, democratic forces) the active
participation of the communist party in the social and political scene lead to some
gains for the women’s movement. It was during this period that women gained the
right to vote throughout Iraq , including Kurdistan and joined party political
activities. Yet they were also victims of major repressions, including
following events in Mosul that lead to the imprisonment of many women. It was
also at this time that the power of the clergy was reduced and interestingly
enough Najaf became one of the important centres of Communist party activity.
Women excelled in Literature, Arts and other areas of higher education. Amongst them one should mention Nazok
AlMalaekeh who is considered as a founder of modern Arabic poetry. The same was
true in Theatre and cinema. Today Iraqi
women writers, poets, painters living in exile in Europe, number in dozens.
In the political
atmosphere of the 1960s and 70s, the coming to power of the Baathist regime, a
nationalist Laic organisation, marked a time when this party, tried in terms of its propaganda, to appear
progressive. According to UNICEF’s 1993 report on the situation of Iraqi women
and children, during these decades new legislation gave women, full civil
rights.
From the 250 members of the National
assembly, 27 were women and wide network of activities was covered by Iraq’s
National Women’s’ Association. The Labour legislation of 1971, stipulated equal
pay for equal work for men and women. Women employed by the state sector were
allowed one year maternity leave and a women’s income was considered
independent of her spouse and so on. Finally family legislation was taken out
of religious laws and every citizen (Sunni, Shia, Catholic…) could go through a
civil ceremony, free of all religious denominations.
However these laws
were only valid as long as the interests of the dictatorship and the ruling
class necessitated them. As soon as the government faced any difficulties, the
laws remained on paper. If a citizen opposed the regime, he/she would have been
deprived of all of his/her rights. It was in this way that every time there was
a dispute between Iran and Iraq, all Iraqis of Iranian decent paid the price
and hundreds of thousands of them whose ancestors had lived in Iraq for many
generations, some of whom couldn’t even speak Farsi, were considered fifth
columnist just because their ancestors were Iranian and were expelled from the
country. (of course in the last few years we have realised the same is true of
other countries in the world. An example is the United States attitude to
Iranians and Arabs, or France’s attitude to Iranians in the 1980s) . If a man
was not of Iraqi origin , he was forced to divorce his Iraqi wife. Iraqi men
were encouraged to leave their Iranian born wives with financial incentives.
The women were then forced to exile in Iran. This chauvinist repression was
repeated a number of times and women were the main victim of this policy. After
the occupation of Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers were murdered
as they were retreating from Kuwait and of course again the main living victims
were mothers and orphaned children. I will leave that period and talk about our
time:
The main oppression,
which is rarely mentioned, was the 10 years economic sanction and the constant
bombing of strategic targets by US and British planes, all with the support of
the United Nations. This not only increased poverty, deprivation and
insecurity, but lead to the regime imposing more pressure on the weakest link
in the patriarchal society, women. Many of the laws favouring women’s rights
and recognised in the past were taken back. Under the pressure of economic,
military, financial and commercial sanctions, Saddam’s regime raised the flag of
Islam. Allah Akbar was added to the flag of a basically laic country. The
regime retracted to tribal, traditional Sunni customs against Shias and Kurds. To such an extent that polygamy and
some obsolete traditions became common again. Economic sanctions caused major
difficulties for the regime however it opened the way for the kind of religious
and tribal bigotry
That had been weakened
in the past. It was mainly the toiling masses who suffered from these sanctions
, especially women and children. From decades ago, thousands of Iraqis live in
exile but after the sanctions the number of Iraqi refugees rose by millions. A
trend that is still continuing. There are tens of short stories, novels,
written by Iraqi artist and intellectuals in the last few years, depicting the
plight of Iraqi women suffering from years of war and sanctions.
On the 7th
of Feb 2004, a report in LeMonde depicted the situation as follows:
Mrs Omal Secidan, 46,
physician and nutrition expert undertook a study of the consequences of sanction
on women in Baghdad. Following through
examination of 4600 women and young
girls, she concluded from the weight and height of 16% of the girls aged
between 10 and 14 that they were suffering form severe ‘malnutrition’ and 41 %
suffered form chronic malnutrition to such an extent that their heights was
below average. Male members of the same
families suffered to a lesser extent as they were given a larger share of the
food on the family table.
It is worth pointing
out the plight of Kurdish women in Iraq: the war between the central government
and Kurds ,as well as rivalry between two tribal groups , Talbani and
Barzani, created
complicated and painful situation for Kurdish women. Often a women who came
into contact with a man form the opposing tribe (even if this was in the form
of
An attack or rape),
was condemned to death. On a number of occasions, girls were strangled by their
families in their sleep as part of ‘honour killing’. In fact after 1991, as the Kurdish areas came under UN control, this
region was exempted form the deprivations of other regions caused by sanctions,
however the plight of women did not improve. In1992 some 2372 Kurdish women
signed a petition in defence of their basic rights, the number of signatories
rose to 30,000 in one year. The Kurdish parliament required the support of 10
MPs from the two governing parties for the presentation of a legislation. In
1993, 35 MPs of the Talebani group signed the motion but no one form the KDP
(Barzani group) signed this claiming that it ‘wasn’t the right time’ for such
legislation. Of course the women’s struggle continued.
The US/UK military
attack and the overthrow of the Baathist regime opened the gates of hell worse
than ever before. Reports form the dreadful current situation in Iraq talk of
nothing but the excessive violence of the occupying soldiers against the population,
and in this work they repeat the
frightening experience of
repression in Vietnam and Palestine
(such as destruction of homes…) creating constant fear amongst women and
children and depriving them of a normal life. They have created such an
insecurity that most women are staying at home, retracting to the veil and head
cover. In such a turbulent time, sexual oppression is more widespread and
effective than ever before, this time justified by religious and traditional
explanation, crushing Iraqi women.
The occupiers who are
in Iraq under the name ‘establishing democracy’, took on this major crime to
destroy a minor criminal and replacing it with worse. Instead of establishing
civil rights, in a country with centuries of peaceful coexistence between
nationalities and religions, they immediately resorted to tribal relations ( as
the British did in Basra many years ago) and divided the country according to
religious, tribal groups, driving the country back into the pre industrial
stage ( after the 1992 war) and now driving it back into sectarian and
religious divide. The occupying powers’
satellite state has even made the family legislation dependent on religious dictate.
In its report LeMonde adds : On the 13th of January hundreds of
Iraqi women demonstrated against the new family legislation, a truly
reactionary apparently adopted by the
US following Ayatollah Sistani’s Fatwa. The ‘women’s liberation organisation of
Iraq’ produced an international petition calling the new legislation: “against
freedom, anti women and against modernity”.
The signatories to the petition announced that this legislation will
enforce ‘sexual segregation’ in public places, whilst polygamy will become
legal and common place, stoning of women accused of adultery will be reinstated
and the free movement of women will be forbidden.
Although these protests forced a retraction
of this plan, but its return is only a matter of time and the women’s protests
continue.
While expressing our
solidarity with Iraqi women, including Kurdish women, who are facing all forms
of patriarchal repression (either under the guise of religious or tribal
traditions) we believe and declare that defending and echoing their demands is
our task. After all what is the 8th of March but the day of
expression of International Solidarity for women’s Liberation.
(1) Pouran Bazargan joined the struggle against the
Shah’s regime in the 1960s and has remained an influential figure in the
radical opposition movement in Iran.
During the 1970s she spent some time in exile and as a representative of
the Organisation Peykar Baraye Azadi Tabaghe Kargar (Struggle for the
emancipation of the working class) in Middle Eastern countries including South
Yemen, Iraq… and
in with Palestinian organisation.