| Tehran police break up 5000-strong demonstration against women's oppression |
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| By the Iranian Revolutionary Socialist League | |
| Thursday, 15 June 2006 | |
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While the attention of the world is transfixed on the Iranian regime's nuclear transgressions the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state continues its crackdown on any dissent by workers, students and national minorities. Now a further oppressed group, women, who are the most downtrodden section of Iranian society, have managed to organise a protest of nearly 5000 of their supporters in Haft-e Tir Square in Tehran.
The women's placards had slogans like "The right to divorce, the right to give evidence, the right to judge, and all the other violated rights". This type of slogan highlights the fundamental discrimination against women under the medieval legal system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
According to Advar News, the news agency of Islamic Iran Students'
Organisation (the Office for Consolidating Unity's (OCU) Fringe), 60
demonstrators were arrested. Most of them are not women but
journalists, writers and student activists and so on. The list of the
detainees includes: Their whereabouts have still not been disclosed. Earlier that morning Ms Shahla Entesari, a women's activist who had received many threatening phone calls from the security forces, was also arrested. Members of Islamic Iran Students' Organisation (the Office for Consolidating Unity's (OCU) Fringe), the Central Committee and General Committee of OCU, activists of women's movement and human rights organisations, members of the Vahed Bus Company trade union and other groups all united to take part in this demonstration against the legalised discrimination and harassment of women in Iran. This type of unity in action across women's, students' and workers' organisations is the key to defeating this crumbling and brutal regime. (More pictures can be found here)
Iranian Revolutionary Socialists' League |
Not since the counter-revolutionary wave of repression in the summer
of 1981, and the subsequent consolidation of the Islamic regime's
power, have women, who played a crucial role in the revolution, held
such a large demonstration. This unprecedented event was the result of
weeks of organising by a number of women activists. Using the internet
and other means they had announced that they would be holding a
demonstration in Haft-e Tir Square to protest against the legalised
discrimination and harassment of women in Iran. The way the
demonstration was publicised on websites is bound to set an example for
future protests of all exploited and oppressed layer in Iran.
At 4:30 on the afternoon of Monday 12 June, nearly 5000 women and
their supporters, which included many human rights and students'
activists, gathered in the square. The response of the security forces
shows how seriously the regime took this protest: four mini-buses full
of officers from the police and other repressive bodies of the state
were present. They included female police officers who attacked the
women using their batons and tear gas. In addition to beating the
women, women's activists and their supporters, the security forces used
pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the crowd and to stop any
onlookers joining the demonstration.
