September 16 will mark the first anniversary of the assassination of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini at the hands of the morality police in Iran. A young woman who had her life ahead of her, tortured to death because she wore the veil incorrectly. What is the international community doing? Which side is she on?
For decades, organizations such as Amnesty International have reported on the worst human rights violations in Iran. There is often talk of crimes against humanity. This was the case in 2022. This will still be the case in 2023.
The Iranian authorities and officials demonstrate unspeakable and limitless cruelty. Arbitrary arrests, farce trials, unfair convictions number in the thousands, even tens of thousands, in a single year. Justice blithely condemns amputation, blinding, public hanging… Acts of barbarity which are matched only by the sinister desire of the Iranian authorities to remain in power, even if it means assassinating its people. , to destroy his youth.
Cultural and religious minorities are targeted and tirelessly harassed. The same goes for LGBTQ2+ people, for human rights defenders, for lawyers, journalists, political dissidents, environmentalists, writers, artists, musicians, students and schoolchildren. In just the few weeks following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian authorities announced that they had arrested between 15,000 and 16,000 people: men, women and children.
For a year, Iranians have demonstrated, at the risk of their lives, their fed up, their thirst for freedom. We are talking about a feminist revolution, because it is women who are at the forefront and the regime is misogynistic. Shamelessly, it intensifies the oppression of women and girls, leveraging artificial intelligence to better track and rape them.
Amnesty has reviewed recent rulings against six women accused of not wearing the veil. The sentences are degrading. They are forced to attend counseling sessions for “antisocial personality disorder”, they are hatefully referred to as a “virus”, “social disease”, “disorders” or associated with “sexual depravity”. In May, a bill, the revised version of which in July was not made public, “aimed at supporting the culture of chastity and the hijab” was presented to Parliament.
The authorities attack their families, doing everything possible to ensure that they cannot demand justice, truth or reparation. Even putting flowers on the graves of their loved ones is refused to them.
This is the case of the family of Mahsa Amini, whose grave, which has become a place of contemplation for all the families of the victims of the demonstrations, has suffered repeated damage. The authorities have hatched a construction project to restrict access. On September 5, an uncle of Mahsa Amini, Safa Aeli, was in turn arrested and is being held in an unknown location. He is 30 years old.
Call for solidarity
The culture of systemic impunity that is rife in Iran must be firmly condemned by the international community, which must imperatively take the side of women and girls, as the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, has just declared: “The The international community must not simply stand by and watch as the Iranian authorities intensify their oppression of women and girls. »
States, she continues, “should respond not only with public declarations and energetic diplomatic interventions, but also by activating legal remedies to call into question the responsibility of Iranian leaders who ordered, planned and committed widespread violations and systematic protection of the fundamental rights of women and girls with […] the obligation to wear the veil. Governments must do everything in their power to help women and girls flee persecution […]ensure that they can quickly and safely access the asylum procedure, and that they are under no circumstances forcibly returned to Iran.”
Iranian authorities must understand, unequivocally, that the world will not just watch as they escalate their use of the death penalty, but as they cruelly oppress women and girls.
Certainly, Canada no longer has diplomatic relations with Iran. This does not prevent him from taking the side of women and girls and sending a clear message to Iranian authorities and officials suspected of human rights violations, if not crimes against humanity, in Iran since 45 years, and to ensure that they are brought to justice. Which includes, among others, the Revolutionary Guards.