By Anne Applebaum
Regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable.
Women in sunglasses and head scarves speaking through megaphones brandishing cameras carrying signs. When they first appeared the photographs of the 2005
Tehran University womens rights protests were a powerful reminder of the true potential of Iranian women. They were uplifting they featured women of many ages and they went on circulating long after the protests themselves died down. Now they have been replaced by a far more brutal and already infamous set of images: the photographs and video taken last weekend of a young Iranian woman allegedly shot by a government sniper dying on the streets of Tehran.
I dont know whether the girl in the photographs is destined to become this revolutions symbolic martyr as some are already predicting. I do know however that there is a connection between the violence in Iran over the last week and the womens rights movement that has slowly gained strength over the last several years in Iran.
In the United States the most Americo-centric commentators have somberly attributed the strength of recent demonstrations to the election of Barack Obama. Others want to give credit to the democracy rhetoric of the Bush administration. Still others want to call this a
Twitter revolution or a
Facebook revolution as if zippy new technology alone had inspired the protests. But the truth is that the high turnout was the result of many years of organizational work carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and above all womens groups working largely unnoticed and without much outside help.
Since 2006 the One Million Signatures Campaign has been circulating a petition both online and in print calling for an end to laws that discriminate against women: for equal rights for women in marriage equal rights to divorce equal inheritance rights equal testimony rights for men and women in court. Though based outside the country the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation founded by a pair of sisters translates and publishes fundamental human rights documents online; it also maintains an online database containing names of thousands of victims of the Islamic republic. In the last decade Iranian women have participated in student strikes as well as teacher strikes and in organizations of Bahai Christian and other religious groups deemed heretics by the regime.
Read more HERE
*This story is from www.Slate.com
By Anne Applebaum
Regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable.
Women in sunglasses and head scarves speaking through megaphones brandishing cameras carrying signs. When they first appeared the photographs of the 2005 Tehran University womens rights protests were a powerful reminder of the true potential of Iranian women. They were uplifting they featured women of many ages and they went on circulating long after the protests themselves died down. Now they have been replaced by a far more brutal and already infamous set of images: the photographs and video taken last weekend of a young Iranian woman allegedly shot by a government sniper dying on the streets of Tehran.
I dont know whether the girl in the photographs is destined to become this revolutions symbolic martyr as some are already predicting. I do know however that there is a connection between the violence in Iran over the last week and the womens rights movement that has slowly gained strength over the last several years in Iran. 
In the United States the most Americo-centric commentators have somberly attributed the strength of recent demonstrations to the election of Barack Obama. Others want to give credit to the democracy rhetoric of the Bush administration. Still others want to call this a Twitter revolution or a Facebook revolution as if zippy new technology alone had inspired the protests. But the truth is that the high turnout was the result of many years of organizational work carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and above all womens groups working largely unnoticed and without much outside help.
Since 2006 the One Million Signatures Campaign has been circulating a petition both online and in print calling for an end to laws that discriminate against women: for equal rights for women in marriage equal rights to divorce equal inheritance rights equal testimony rights for men and women in court. Though based outside the country the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation founded by a pair of sisters translates and publishes fundamental human rights documents online; it also maintains an online database containing names of thousands of victims of the Islamic republic. In the last decade Iranian women have participated in student strikes as well as teacher strikes and in organizations of Bahai Christian and other religious groups deemed heretics by the regime.
Read more HERE
*This story is from www.Slate.com
