The Statement from the Mothers of Laleh Park on the Occasion of the Internation Women’s Day

The Statement from the Mothers of Laleh Park on the Occasion of the Internation Women’s Day
by Laleh Gillani on Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 1:22pm
The International Women’s Day is the Day to Support Mourning Mothers; A Day to Stand by the Brave Women in Prison; A Day to Set Women Free

On March 8th 2011, the International Women’s Day (coinciding with Tuesday the 17th of Esfand) becomes one hundred years old. The struggle of different social classes against dictators is putting the Middle East on display with a different face. Those who had shouted the end of an era for revolutions are humbled today to predict the conclusion of hard, cold winters marring their own faces. Amongst all this, hoping for better days and a world in which they have equal rights, the women of the Middle East wait to celebrate a victory that might materialize for them after all.

When one hundred years ago, millions of German women answering a call from Carla Zetkin poured into the streets for the right to vote, they feared nothing to claim what was theirs. Since then, year after year, as a result of their own efforts, equality and freedom for women elsewhere in the world have been within their reach because women’s emancipation isn’t possible except by their own hands.

In Iran, however, brave and capable women while under severe persecution and repression, fearing nothing, roam the streets alongside the others to protest and demonstrate. Demanding equality, defending human rights and opposing the violation of those rights in Iran, these women are sentenced by kangaroo court during show trials to spend the best years of their lives imprisoned under inhuman conditions.

Women and mothers such as:

Zeinab Jalalian, Bahareh Hedayat, Alieh Eghdam-Doust, Mahdieh Golroo, Atefeh Nabavi, Sahba Rezvani - Manijeh Nasrollahi, Susan Tebyanian, Farah Vazehan, Masoumeh Yavari, Nazila Dashti, Zahra Jabbari, Kefayat Malek Mohammadi, Raihana Haj Ibrahim Dabbagh, Ozra Ghazi Mir-Saeed, Parvin Javadzadeh, Fatemeh Khorramjoo, Hengameh Shahidi, Mahsa Rahmati, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Ronak Safarzadeh, Shabnam Madadzadeh, Nazanin Khosravani, Zoleikha Mousavi and hundreds of thousands of women prisoners who have lost their freedom because of the same discriminating laws that have also taken away their rights, women who are somehow the victims of current circumstances and are paying the prize for the ideological and practical shortcomings and inabilities of the regime.

The International Women’s Day becomes one hundred years old, but in our land, mothers are grieving every day while the regime with utter cruelty, increasingly persecutes them twofold to make them both suffer and at the same time endure separation from their loved ones.

Mothers whose children were slaughtered during 1980’s, Mothers of Khavaran, mothers of Neda and Sohrab, mothers of different uprisings during the last thirty two years of dictatorship, mothers of Kurds and all other ethnic and tribal groups oppressed, and even recently, mothers of Sane Jaleh, Amir Hussein Tehranchi, Mohammad Mokhtari and Hamed Noor Mohammadi.

Yes, every day, the children of this land put their lives on the line, and their blood paints the pavement of our streets while the regime, adding to the number of old mass graves and previously buried unknown victims, refuses to deliver the bodies of the fallen to their families and prevents them from holding memorial services.

We, the mothers and grandmothers who poured into the streets of Iran in 1979 and sacrificed ourselves and our children to attain freedom, justice, and equality but gained nothing except injustice, oppression, corruption and devastation, are once again ready to take to the streets with canes, walkers, and wheelchairs to protect human dignity and reclaim our human rights and those of our children.

To date, in this region called the Middle East, women’s share has been nothing but oppression and inequality, and our pain has continuously been compounded. With the victory of every uprising anywhere in the region, fear of overlooking our wishes by the new rulers has consumed the vast population of women.

On the brink of the hundredth anniversary celebrating the International Women’s Day on March 8th 2011, the Mothers of Park Laleh and their supporters ask all progressive movements in Iran and the Middle East to unite, and we declare our determination and unwavering commitment to our demands. We will stand and endure as before in addition to insisting on our motherly wishes to attain peace and harmony in the world for ourselves and our children. We declare our solidarity and unity with our imprisoned children.

Loud and clear, we raise our voices with you to say:

We demand equality of men and women in all aspects of economic, social and legal matters;
We wish to abolish capital punishment, execution, stoning and torture;
We demand the release of all political prisons and prisoners of conscience regardless of their gender;
We request fair and open trials for the perpetrators of crimes and massacres committed during the last thirty two years.

Signed by:

Mourning Mothers of Iran (The Mothers of Laleh Park)
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Oslo
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Italy
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Dortmund
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Frankfurt
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Colon
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - London
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - San Fernando Valley
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Vienna
Supporters of The Mothers of Laleh Park - Hamburg

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The original Farsi statement can be found at: http://www.madaraneparklale.com/2011/03/8.html