Mahboubeh Karami
Iran
UPDATE: Mahboubeh Karami has been released! In late August, she was aquitted of all charges against her.
Mahboubeh Karami, a journalist and women's rights defender, was charged in mid August 2008 with "acting against national security," for her involvement with the peaceful Campaign for Equality, which calls for reforms to improve the inequitable legal status of women in Iran.
On 13 June 2008 she was forcibly removed from a bus in Tehran that was passing near a peaceful demonstration being disrupted by security personnel. About ninety other women were also arrested that day. Ms Karami was held in Evin Prison in Tehran, in a section for people who were not permitted visits. She and nine other women held with her went on a hunger strike to protest the conditions under which they were being held. She was released on 25 August 2008 after her family posted bail in the amount of one billion rials (approximately US$110,000), but faces a hearing in a Revolutionary Court on 1 November.
Background on the Campaign for Equality
The Campaign for Equality was launched on 27 August 2006 as a network of individuals working to end legal discrimination against women in Iran. The Campaign informs women of their rights, and is aiming to collect one million signatures from the Iranian public to a petition against discriminatory laws. Although their advocacy has consisted of peaceful activities such as participating in non-violent demonstrations and circulating petitions, they have been met with harsh repression from the Iranian government, as part of a recent pervasive crackdown on a wide range of activists, who have suffered arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, imposition of prison sentences and fines. As one activist Jila Baniyaghoub, told the Associated Press, over the past year the Iranian security forces have "become more and more aggressive even as women's actions have become more peaceful and more tame.” To date, the website of Campaign for Equality has been blocked on at least 11 occasions.
Amnesty International is concerned that Minister of Intelligence Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie publicly accused the Iranian women’s movement and student activists of being part of an enemy conspiracy for a “soft subversion” of the Iranian government on 10 April 2007. Despite the repressive conditions and real threats to their safety, fearless women activists persevere in their human rights work. Amnesty International has been working to support the many initiatives taken by these brave Iranian women.
Meanwhile, a new Family Protection Bill passed in July by the Law and Legal Affairs Committee of Iran’s parliament not only fails to address discrimination against women in relation to marriage, divorce and child custody but, if passed into law, would also lift the condition requiring a man to get the permission of his first wife before taking a second wife. The bill still needs further parliamentary approval and to be agreed by the Council of Guardians, but it represents a very worrying trend.
Write to His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Head of the Judiciary, expressing your concern about the case of Mahboubeh Karami, this prominent journalist and women's rights activist who was arrested on 13 June 2008, held in Evin Prison for more than two months, and who now faces serious charges for her peaceful activism on behalf of women’s rights. Urge that all charges stemming from her peaceful activism be dropped.
Please send appeals immediately to:
Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh / Office of the Head of the Judiciary
Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhouri, Tehran 1316814737, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: info@dadgostary-tehran.ir (In subject line write: FAO Ayatollah Shahroudi)
Salutation: Your Excellency
