Remembering the women in Iran hanged for their beliefs

Martin Luther King once said that “there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for.” There are people in Iran today who believe that to be true

Thu, 15 Jun, 2023 - 19:28

Dr Brendan McNamara

June 18, 2023, will mark the 40th anniversary of the execution of 10 Bahá'í women in the city of Shiraz, Iran. These courageous women were hanged in a city square for their steadfast refusal to renounce their faith, which advocates principles such as gender equality—a value the Iranian authorities do not embrace.

In a cruel attempt to make them abandon their beliefs, the women were killed individually, with each being forced to witness the execution of the next woman. Among the victims was a 17-year-old (the last to ascend the gallows); the majority were in their 20s. A mother and daughter were hanged, one after the other.

In the late 1980s, Ruhi Jahanpour, a young Iranian woman and a cellmate of the 10 women, visited Cork. Her story of how the female prisoners suffered at the hands of the authorities was harrowing and greatly affected her audience.

Along with hundreds of others, Bahá’í and non-Bahá’í, Ruhi had also been sentenced to death, but through some error of administration, she was released. When the authorities realised their mistake and came to arrest her again some three days later, she had fled, eventually settling in Canada.

In 2012, Ruhi testified at the International Tribunal on Iran convened in the Hague. Her 2,000-word testimony outlined the days of beatings she and the other prisoners endured as government officers tried to force them to recant their beliefs. Their actual trials did not take long.

“We went before the judge who asked our name and then asked if we were Bahá’í,” she once told her local newspaper.

When we said ‘yes’ the judge would ask us if we would deny our faith. When we said ‘no,’ the judge passed a death sentence. And that was it.

In a frightening echo of the treatment meted out to Bahá’ís in Iran down through the decades, the women and men campaigning for equality and justice for Iranian women in 2023 are being offered the same “deal”. They are told that if they will publicly admit that they were wrong, recant their advocacy for equality and justice and sign an undertaking that they will “behave” themselves in future, they will be released from prison.

This underscores what has been obvious for so long; the historical and persistent oppression of women, and the denial of human rights in Iran, are not founded on any legal or judicial principles but rather stem from ideology. More recently, this repression has expanded to encompass ever larger numbers of ordinary Iranian citizens.

A global campaign is now being launched called #OurStoryIsOne to honour the executed women and to bring attention to the enduring struggle for gender equality experienced by all women in Iran for numerous decades, a struggle that persists to the present time.

Launching the campaign, Simin Fahandej, Bahá'í International Community Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, connected the campaign with ongoing efforts for equality in Iran.

“More and more Iranians are uniting in a search for social justice,” she said.

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"And they have focused on the equality of women and men as one of the most pressing challenges facing the country. We hope that together we can honour not only the 10 Bahá’í women of Shiraz, but all women across Iran who cherish the principle of the equality of women and men, and who have contributed to building a better future for the country through their perseverance in the face of oppression.”

If, on that fateful night in 1983, any of the 10 women had simply agreed to make such a promise, to sign that piece of paper, their lives would have been spared and they would have been freed.

When word spread about this distressing tragedy, human rights groups, governments, and ordinary citizens worldwide, including here in Ireland, were shocked and outraged. Approximately two years later, prompted by then minister for foreign affairs, Peter Barry, the Irish government made the decision to provide a welcoming haven in Ireland for 26 Bahá'ís who were escaping religious persecution in Iran.

The names of the 10 women hanged in Shiraz on June 18, 1983 were;

Mona Mahmoudnejad (17);
Roya Eshraghi (23) and her mother, Ezzat-Janami Eshraghi (57);
Simin Saberi (24);
Shahin (Shirin) Dalvand (25);
Akhtar Sabet (25);
Mahshid Niroumand (28);
Zarrin Moghimi-Abyaneh (29);
Tahereh Arjomandi Siyavashi (30)
and Nosrat Ghufrani Yaldaie (46).

A public memorial event will take place at UCD on June 17 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the hanging execution of these 10 courageous and innocent women who sacrificed their lives for their beliefs (for additional details, see www.bahai.ie).

Martin Luther King once said that “there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for.” Whether it is the 1980s or the early decades of a new millennium, there are people in Iran who believe that to be true.