The Women of Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign: The ActivistsThey are Women of the Year because: “One Million Signatures seized every opportunity to show the world that they do not agree with the discriminatory laws in Iran.” —Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and 2008 Glamour Woman of the Year
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Watching the thousands of women who joined their peers to defy bullets and police batons in the streets of Iran this June, you’d never guess that each one’s life was, legally speaking, worth only half a man’s. Via shaky cell phone images on TV, viewers around the world saw slender arms raised in the air and green scarves slipping back on the heads of female marchers as they stood alongside men to demand a recount of what they insist was a rigged presidential election. They risked their lives—and some made the ultimate sacrifice, like 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, whose shooting rocked the Internet.
Yet few outside Iran realized that these brave women are denied the most basic rights. Examples abound: Their husbands can divorce them on a whim, demand that they live in polygamy or marry off their daughters at age 13. And if a girl as young as nine commits a capital crime—for example, killing a man who tries to rape her—she can be put to death.
June’s postelection fervor was called a women’s revolt by many, but Iranian women may have first found the courage to speak out thanks to an earlier movement: the One Million Signatures Campaign. For the past three years, members of the One Million Signatures initiative have pressed for women’s rights and have endured the constant threat of jailings and beatings as a result.
This quest for equality was born on June 12, 2006, when hundreds of protesters gathered in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir Square to peacefully demonstrate against the legal restrictions they face. The police attacked them with pepper spray and billy clubs; by the end of the day, 70 people had been arrested. “We never imagined we’d be met with so much resistance,” recalls Sussaan Tahmasebi, a Tehran-based campaign member. “Our demands were so basic.”
But the demonstrators pressed on and devised a plan: They would gather a million signatures on a petition asking parliament to grant equal rights to women. The sheer number of names would prove that equality was the will of all Iranians. Geographic and security obstacles have prevented a complete tally of the signatures, but some estimates put the total so far in the hundreds of thousands.
Iran’s religious, conservative government sees the campaign as a real threat. Authorities have arrested more than 50 campaign members, who have been punished with everything from lashings to solitary confinement in prison. The group’s website has been shut down by the government 21 times. Members hold clandestine meetings in living rooms and basements, and activists say they are under constant surveillance and subject to phone taps. Nonetheless “some say that the campaign is a struggle, but I found the campaign is a chance,” Azadeh, a 30-year-old artist and activist from Tehran, e-mailed to Glamour. “It’s a chance for us to care about ourselves and change our situation.”
So members work below government radar, knocking on neighbors’ doors, or chatting to fellow passengers in shared taxis. Welcoming both men and women into its ranks, One Million Signatures draws support from blue-jeaned secular leftists and black-chadored religious conservatives alike. “Sometimes,” muses a 25-year-old male campaigner, “it will be an unlettered, religious old man who quickly agrees to sign.”
The eyes of the Muslim world especially are upon them, which represents both risks and opportunity. Azadeh sees only the latter. “It is a matter of living,” she says. “I would like to live in a free, equal and healthy society. To make such a society, we should take this responsibility. So I said to myself, ‘Come on! The stage is ready. Go and be in the spotlight!’”
جوانه می زنم
به روی زخم بر تنم
فقط به حکم بودنم
که من زنم، زنم، زنم
/چو هم صدا شویم
و پا به پای هم رویم
و دست به دست هم دهیم
و از ستم رها شویم
/ جهان دیگری
بسازیم از برابری
به هم دلی و خواهری
جهان شاد و بهتری
نه پای چوب دارها
- نه گریه های بارها
- نه ننگ و عارها
- جهان دیگری
- بسازیم از برابری
- به هم دلی و خواهری
- جهان شاد و بهتری
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