Press Release
Calls for the Freedom of Kurdish Women Activists in Iran
The Iranian Islamic laws consider women second-class citizens, thus promoting discrimination, unfair treatments, and inequality beyond brutality towards them. Countless political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, continue to serve sentences that were imposed on them through unfair trials.
Women of lower socio-economic status and/or women from religious and ethnic minority groups suffer disproportionately from such legal discriminations. The situation for Kurdish women in Iran is in particularly more unjust. Not only do these women suffer from discriminatory laws due to their gender, but they also suffer from regional poverty, regime’s policies against ethnic minorities, and the militarization and the instability of the Kurdish region.
Kurdish Women’s Rights Committee of KNCNA condemns and protests the Iranian Islamic authorities’ detention, torture, and death threats to Kurdish women rights activists in the prisons of Sanandaj, Mahabad, Saghez and other cities in Iran. Currently, without due process, and the presence of their lawyers, Zinab Yousefi, Hana Abdi, Chnur Fathi, Shahin Mohamadi, Runak Safarzadeh, and many other Kurdish women activists whose names have not even been publicized by the authorities were accused of working against the revolution’s values and national security and have suffered unjust consequences.
Nasrin Rourast, Maryam Hosssien khah, Tutia Kabudvand, Najibeh Salehzadeh, Fatemeh Goftari, Shilan Oromiaii, Fatemeh Khandani, Zainab Banyazidi, Srvah Kamkar, Chiman Baizidi, Jian Kamkar, Maryam Ghazi, Jalehj Mohamadi, Fathemeh Ghobadi, Fatemeh and Chia Javaheri, Nishtman Ahmadi have been detained and are under investigation. Fatemeh Khandani, Tuba Razapoor, and many other mothers have been hospitalized after they were beaten in the courts. Their “crimes” were defending women’s rights, Kurdish issues, or teaching children the Kurdish language. Some of them are students; others are mothers of active students, cultural and civil right activists, journalists, and members of the Women Rights Organization who were active in the well known campaign by the name of “One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws” for women’s rights in Iran.
We urgently demand an immediate release of all these Kurdish women activists from Iranian prisons. We condemn and protest the Iranian regime’s deliberate murder under torture of Kurdish women. We call upon Human Rights Watch, Women’s Rights Organizations, US’ Human Rights Organizations, and Members of the Parliament of European countries, political parties, Amnesty International, and individuals to raise their voices to free these Kurdish Women activists.
Chair of Kurdish Women Rights Committee, KNCNA,
Soraya Fallah
For more information contact: knc@kurdishnationalcongress.org or Soraya@vokradio.com
www.kncna.org
January/27/ 2008
