NCRI – May 3, 2010 – NCRI’s Women’s Committee Chair, Ms. Sarvnaz Chitsaz, in a letter to the UN Secretary General, President of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and aheads of member states, condemned the membership of the religious and misogynist dictatorship ruling Iran in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, describing it as being contrary to the objectives and programs of the commission.
“Membership of Iran’s misogynous regime to the UN commission is a bitter irony and a dagger to the hearts of all freedom-seeking women and equality advocates across the world,” Ms. Chitsaz said. She added, “In the past three decades, this regime has executed and brutally tortured thousands of women political prisoners. It has stoned many women to death on bogus charges and arrested, persecuted and harassed thousands of women for improper veiling. In the meantime, the regime has been condemned 56 times by various UN bodies for its violations of human rights.”
Membership of a regime that has even rejected the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) makes a mockery of all conventions and human rights achievements.
Ms. Chitsaz emphasized: “Of course, it is quite clear that the regime, following its scandalous failure to become a member of the UN Human Rights Council, managed to join the UN commission in collusion with other human rights abusers in order to compensate for that humiliating defeat. These types of futile efforts cannot save the regime from being overthrown. Through their active participation and leadership role, Iran’s courageous women have in the past 30 years, especially in the last few months, insisted on obtaining their just demands, namely democracy and freedom as well as women’s rights and liberties.
In her letter, Ms. Chitsaz noted that the clerical regime had institutionalized the suppression of women in Iran in its laws and virtually imposed a vicious gender apartheid against Iranian women. “Stoning to death, flogging, forced veiling and discrimination in many spheres, including in education, occupation, the right to divorce, as well as insults and degrading practices, such as segregation in classrooms in universities and buses, has turned Iran into a big prison for women,” she added.
Commission on Women, the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 3, 2010
