Statement from KMMK-G and IED’s Taimoor Aliasssi, from side event “IRAN’S WOMEN, MINORITIES AND THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTS · One Year After Jina Mahsa Amini’s Death in Custody”. Find our recap of the 54th session of the Human Rights Council for more information.
Hello and Good afternoon to all.
Dear Guests, delegates and participants,
I would like to welcome you, on behalf of the International Educational Development and the Kurdistan Human Rights Association-Geneva —as well as our co-sponsors, Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort, Minority Rights Group and the Impact Iran coalition.
This is a very important panel on the dramatic situation of women and minorities in Iran.
We are here to mark the one-year anniversary of the tragic murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, after her detention by the so-called “morality police”.
Jina was one of the millions of Iranian young women who have been facing for the past 40 years this gender apartheid regime. Its’ obvious features are discrimination, imprisonment, torture, rape, and summary executions.
During Jina’s funeral in Kurdistan last September, girls and women threw away theirs veils and challenged the regime’s rule by chanting the Kurdish women manifest: Women, Life, Freedom! This chant spread all over Iran and became the slogan of a whole nation.
Instead of investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Jina, as well as hundreds of other innocent girls and boys, the regime waged more violence and is now passing new bills that reinforce gender and ethnic apartheid. Jina Mahsa Amini’s father was interrogated three times in the past few days and his uncle Safa Alae was also detained and disappeared.
The regime silenced all the people by cracking down violently on all forms of dissents. It has especially sought to intimidate and silence lawyers and the families of the victims who are seeking truth, justice and accountability for the death of their beloved ones.
The Kurdistan provinces, the cradle of the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom!”, sparked the protests across the whole nation. They suffered some of the most violent repression.
It is no secret that Kurdistan andBaluchistan have been disproportionately affected by the crimes against humanity committed by the regime. In just one day, the 30 September 2022, which we now call “Bloody Friday”, 82 civilians were massacred in Baluchistan. On the 21st November, 9 others Kurdish civilians were targeted and eliminated and 80 others injured by the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Juwanro in Kurdistan.
More than half of 580 protestors killed in Iran, are Kurdish and Balochis. 63 percent of the children killed are also from Kurdish and Balochi minorities.
The regime continues to ban newspapers and to fire university professors. Instead, it recruits extremist clerics into its universities as well as members and fighters of Iraqi Hashdi Sha’abi (Shia Militias) to silence and submit dissident students. In addition, the regime is continuing to apply enforced disappearances of opponents. It places political prisoners in psychiatric hospitals to destroy them. Girls and boys face torture, rape and enforced disappearances and the regime does not even return the dead bodies of the victims to their families!
The regime is always in complete denial: The repression and killing are its sole response in the past 40 years without impunity! It’s time for international community to assume it’s responsibility to put an end to Iran’s long history of impunity, according to international law, minorities and women have a right to protection..
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Now, before the speeches of our honorable guests, I would like to show you a five minutes video on what happened in the past year in Iran.
Also, for your information, this panel discussion is public and will be filmed and I thank you in advance to put your handy cells on the mode silence.
I thank you for your attention.