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 with Palestinian organisations.