Asieh Amini: Journalist, Activist, Poet
Asieh Amini is an Iranian journalist, activist and poet. As a six-year-old girl, she witnessed the Iranian revolution in 1979 and resented having to wear the newly-mandatory black hijab, to the point that it made her cry. She began attending college in 1993 for journalism and wrote for Kayhan (the daily paper). She advanced to writing for a larger newspaper, Iran, and then became its' cultural editor very quickly. This promotion did not come without some complaints from the male staff, who resented her place of authority.
For a while, Amini worked for a women's issues paper, and then did freelance journalism. After hearing about the execution of a 16-year-old girl in 2006, Amini was horrified. Atefeh Sahaaleh had been repeatedly assaulted and bribed to keep quiet. The morality police eventually found and arrested Sahaaleh for not maintaining her "chastity." Her repeat "offenses" were punished with lashings and eventually execution. This case was difficult to read about, to say the very least. The judge looked at her body and decided that she must be in her twenties, no matter what she said or what proof she provided. Her own grandparent had been one of the ones to report her as promiscuous, despite how she was their caretaker. She had a history of mental health issues that she cited, which were promptly ignored by the court. She asked for forgiveness with her last words, when she had been the one wronged and abused at every turn.
"When I met with the family, they showed me a copy of her birth certificate, and a copy of her death certificate. Both of them show she was born in 1988. This gave me legitimate grounds to investigate the case." - Asieh Amini
Once Amini had uncovered a pattern of such murders, she tried to find a place to publish these findings, with much difficulty. Her boss fired her for going against the Islamic state, and other papers wanted nothing to do with it. However, a women's journal eventually agreed to publish her story.
Amini discovered another young woman who was being sexually exploited and prosecuted by the Islamic state - Leyla. Leyla's case gained international attention which eventually gained her freedom. Amini's journey of advocating for children accidentally uncovered more evil - stonings were still continuing despite technically being illegal. So Amini created a campaign to prove that stonings were still happening and to put an end to them by raising public awareness -
- "Stop Stoning Forever."
Her collaborations with Amnesty International as well as protests drew much attention, including some undesired attention from her own government. In 2009, she was warned to leave before her untimely disappearance, and so she fled the country to settle in Norway. She has since published two books of poetry, pursued a degree in Equality and Diversity, and received several awards for her human rights advocacy.
...Some Thoughts...
During my research, I found that girls in Iran (at least at the time) could be prosecuted as young as nine, and that boys could be prosecuted at fifteen. I don't know why there is such an age disparity between the sexes - whether it's for sexism or some other reason. Many judges act on their own consciences when sentencing people, which leads to extremely harsh sentences from those who only obey the sharia law (over that of their own government, which often covers for them and pretends that any abuses of power don't exist). A man's word always means more than a woman's in these courts - "she was asking for it," "she gave me a look and led me astray," are common excuses made by men who need to be seen as strong and superior and who yet act like helpless slaves to their own lust. Everything about this is insane to me. Sexual assault is tragically common, and yet not all instances involve murder. Some men are simply exploiting their legal system to violate and then discard women. Asieh's findings make that clear. Her efforts to raise awareness are a step in the right direction - to rouse the sane people of Iran to act against such evil on the part of their own government. And today, many protesters are.
Sources:
2. The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson
3. Asieh Amini | National Women's History Museum (womenshistory.org)
4. Execution in Iran - Hanging of Atefeh Sahaaleh (2006) | CosmoLearning History
Comments
Post a Comment