Systematic violence and arbitrary killing of women and girls will not stop Iran Protests
Systematic violence against schoolgirls has become prevalent in Iran. Now that the girls are resisting being forced into taking part in pro-regime ceremonies, they are beaten in school premises, arrested, and tortured to death in detention.
Although it seems to be sheer madness, but this is the true nature of the Iranian regime.
In the past days, parents have rushed to different high schools to save their young daughters’ lives.
Students of Sadr high school in Tehran experienced an insulting and brutal inspection on October 24. The plan was to take away the girls’ mobile phones. One girl fainted after she was beaten by the principal.
Two weeks ago in Ardabil, 15-year-old Asra Panahi lost her life due to internal bleeding after plainclothes agents attacked the Shahed high school. She was among the students brutalized for refusing to participate in a pro-regime ceremony.
And the NCRI Women’s Committee has repeatedly called for international intervention to stop the suppression and killing of children in Iran.
We have previously talked about Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, both 17 years old. One of them was shot in the head and killed, and the other was hit on the head by batons so much that her nose and skull were smashed.
Now let me tell you about Sarina Saeedi, 16, another Kurdish girl from Sanandaj who was hit repeatedly in the head and eventually died in a hospital.
We also had the case of Sadaf Movahhedi, also 17 years old, who suffered brain damage and died after being hit on the head by batons.
There’s also the case of Setareh Tajik, 17, and Parisa Asgari who were killed by security forces in Tehran.
Arnika Qaem Magham, 17, was brain dead when hospitalized. She had been detained where security forces dealt blows to her head.
Negin Abdolmaleki, 21, was also bludgeoned in the head during a protest. She died due to internal bleeding after returning to her dormitory. Her friends have been warned to keep quiet.
And finally, I want to tell you about the 8-year-old Mona Naghib who was shot in the head while on her way to school by the regime’s security forces in Saravan, which is a city in Sistan and Baluchestan Province in southeast Iran.
We should also mention the many who’re shot and injured, and quite a few who’re kidnapped. Just recently we saw the horrifying CCTV video of a female professor and a dentist, Fatemeh Mashhadi Abbas, who was grabbed and forcibly pushed into a car by 4 plainclothes agents as she was walking in the street.
Up to this day, the NCRI has verified the names of 280 of an estimated 450 persons killed by the state security forces during the uprising. Among them are 33 minors, including 27 women.
These many women among the martyrs bespeak of the widespread and extensive participation of women in the struggle to overthrow the regime. After all, the issue of women’s freedoms and rights lies at the heart of a democratic change and Iranian women’s struggle has been long and bloody. Therefore, the young protesting women and girls know better than anyone else that misogyny is ingrained in the ruling religious tyranny.
Today’s young girls standing up to the regime’s monstrous repressive forces have inherited the same pedigree of courage and resilience.
The Iranian woman, as a historical identity, did not emerge yesterday; her steely character has been forged through 150 years of struggle for democracy in Iran, especially in the past 43 years against the misogynous mullahs.
Sexual harassment and assaults on female protesters in the streets are also among methods the regime uses to scare away women from struggle.
Such outrageous acts are inherent to the filthy nature of the mullahs’ misogynist regime.
The Revolutionary Guards’ sexual abuse of female prisoners has a long precedent in the regime and dates back to the 1980s. It was a common practice and a systematic torture to break resistant women. Of course, it didn’t work out.
Now, the regime has brought such brutality from inside prisons to the open and in the streets to terrorize the public, and especially the women who are leading the anti-regime protests.
But the regime is doing this out of absolute weakness! It has no other options but blatantly committing such acts of sheer inhuman, brutality to quell the protests.
We would like to conclude by urging you to call for the exclusion of the Iranian regime’s representative from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Such a brutal misogynous regime does not represent the women of Iran and doesn’t deserve to be sitting in this commission.
We also call for an independent fact-finding mission to visit Iranian prisons and ensure the release of all political prisoners, and especially the protesters detained in the ongoing uprising.
