In solidarity with other Iranian women and for the first time, Iran’s Sara Khademalsharieh appeared with uncovered hair Monday at an international chess tournament in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Iranian state media reported Monday that Khademalsharieh had competed at the World Rapid Chess Championships without wearing the hijab which under Iran’s Islamic dress codes is compulsory.
The twenty-five-year-old International Master (IM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM) since 2013 is yet to comment on her move. Khademalsharieh, 25, ranks 804 in the world, according to the International Chess Federation (FIDE) website.
Khademalsharieh is the latest of several Iranian female athletes such as sport climber Elnaz Rekabi to appear at competitions unveiled since the nationwide uprising sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini who was arrested by morality police for what authorities deemed as “improper hijab”.
The protests mark one of the boldest challenges to Iran's leadership since its 1979 revolution and have drawn in Iranians from all walks of life. Women have played a prominent role in the uprising. Many among them have removed their headscarves, and in some cases burned them, and inspired both men and women to be brave.
Iran's female chess players have been defying hijab rules for several years. Dorsa Derakhshani, International Master and Woman Grandmaster since 2016, was barred from the national team after refusing to wear a headscarf in 2017 Gibraltar Chess Festival when she was a temporary resident of Spain. The 19-year-old chess player then moved to the United States where she attended Saint Louis University to officially represent the United States.
In 2020, Iran Chess Federation expelled veteran chess player Mitra Hejazipour, also a Woman Grandmaster since 2015, for removing her hijab during the World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship in Moscow in 2019. The 27-year-old Iranian athlete was sacked after superbly playing for her home country for eighteen years. She is playing for France now.
Female athletes defy the hijab rules receive great support and even called heroes by people but endure much pressure from the authorities.
Rekabi was greeted by a cheering crowd when she returned home from the competitions in October. Shortly after her arrival at the airport, the state media published a video interview of her at the arrival hall in which, seemingly under pressure and threat, she had to call her hijab had “inadvertent” dropped. At the time of the interview, she looked distressed and was surrounded by officials and plainclothes security agents.
Niloufar Madani, a member of the national Iranian speed skating team stepped on a podium in Turkey on November 6 to receive the top award while not wearing a headscarf.
She was arrested by the Islamic Republic’s agents after returning to Iran and later a statement attributed to her was published in which she said she appeared unveiled in public by mistake. Most Iranians believe that such statements are made under the pressure of regime agents.
In November, Parmida Qasemi, a member of Iran’s archery national team, also removed her hijab during the awards ceremony of Persian Gulf Cup in Tehran before the unbelieving eyes of Iranian sport officials. However, she also claimed she had not noticed her hijab drop during the ceremony.
Iran’s deputy sports minister, Maryam Kazemipour, in November accused female athletes of acting “against Islamic norms” and said she regretted that they had chosen to show defiance.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has released a 65-page report on Iran's rights violations based on collection, analysis, and documentation of over 13,000 reports from 267 news sources from January 1 to December 20, 2022.
A glance at the rights group’s recent report clearly shows a sharp rise in reported human rights violations since mid-September when the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in the custody of the so-called “morality police” following which protests swept across the country.
The United Nations General Assembly on December 15 adopted a resolution to condemn serious rights violations by the Islamic Republic. The resolution entitled, “Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran” passed by a recorded vote of 80 in favor and 29 against, with 65 abstentions. The resolution called on the Islamic Republic to cooperate fully with the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, including by accepting repeated requests to visit the country.
The new draft resolution came just days after the Islamic Republic was voted out from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for policies contrary to the rights of women and girls. This was the first time in United Nations’ history that a country was expelled from the commission. Passing the resolution was the second step against the Islamic Republic for violations of human rights during the current wave of protests.
The first step by the United Nations to hold the Islamic Republic accountable for its crackdown on protesters was creating a fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Council. The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council voted on November 24 to launch an independent investigation into the regime’s deadly repression of protests that has killed around 500 civilians, including about 60 children.
The number of protesters who have been detained since the current wave of protests began in September is estimated to be around 20,000 but there are no official figures. Authorities release some detainees regularly to make room for those arrested during each fresh round of protest rallies.
HRANA has reported that a total of 22,655 individuals were arrested in violation of their right to freedom of thought and expression while 331 others were summoned to judiciary and security authorities. The number of arrests from among members of religious minorities also indicates an increase of 145 percent in 2022 compared to 2021.
According to HRANA, at least 3,046 protests were held across 31 provinces during the said period out of which 1,289 were union rallies, 266 workers' rallies and 149 related to economic hardships. 1,297 of these were rallies against the suppression of freedom of expression, and 26 student union protests, with one gathering for the rights of children and 18 gatherings for environmental issues.
HRANA found that in addition to the rallies, at least 94 labor strikes and 225 union strikes as well as 344 non-union strikes were held across the country.
According to HRANA, at least 1,289 protests and 225 union strikes were held in 2022, with at least 43 reported instances of prevention of protest gatherings by force. HRANA says most of these protests were related to demands for fairer salary or wages and economic hardships. Apparently, most of the gatherings that were analyzed took place before the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, whose death upended the whole dynamics of protests across Iran.
In reports related to trade unions rallies, there was a 10-fold increase in the number of arrests, 11.5-fold rise in sentencing, and a 13-fold jump in imprisonments, compared to the previous year.
A total of 434 reports of violations of children’s rights were registered by the group in 2022. However, due to secrecy regarding these incidents, such violations could have been immensely underreported. Reports included at least 21,564 cases of child abuse, 23 cases of rape and sexual abuse, 41 murders of children, five self-immolation cases, 54 cases of child suicide, and at least one case of honor killing.
Female and male victims including some as young as eighteen have told Iran International TV that sexual violence against detained protesters is quite widespread. Their stories are very difficult to verify due to victims’ fear of disclosing personal information and retribution against them and their families.
One of the victims said she and others who were arrested with her were stripped naked in front of male officers at Vali Asr Garrison in Tehran, groped in the genital area, sprayed with cold water, and repeatedly tased to force them to consent to make so-called televised “confessions” against themselves and others. “They threatened us with rape,” the victim who was freed on bail after twenty days said.
“There were two female and two male officers in the van [that took us to Enghelab Police Station]. The men body searched us in the most disgusting manner,” another female victim from Tehran who was arrested with others on Enghelab Avenue said, adding that the male officers told them to shut up when they protested to being touched by them when there were female officers present.
A victim from the religious city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, said she and eleven others were stripped in front of male officers and then forced to squat jump while the officers “frenziedly laughed.” Others have also said officers had groped their backsides and squeezed their breasts during arrest and interrogations. Many say they were threatened with rape or even rape of their family members.
These incidents have been reported from detention centers, prisons, and sometimes in places outside the official system such as warehouses out of town in several major cities including Esfahan, Rasht, Tehran, Karaj, Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Tabriz, Sanandaj, Amol, and Mashhad.
There are some reports of much worse violence. Armita Abbasi, a young woman of 20, was reportedly raped brutally after being arrested on October 10. She was taken to a hospital in Karaj on October 18 by security forces with multiple injuries including internal bleeding, a shaved head, and evidence of repeated rape. Reportedly, they tried to pressure the doctors to attribute the rape trauma evidence to a time prior to her arrest. Her trial, according to her mother, has been scheduled for January 26.
Influential Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid Esmail-Zehi in his Friday sermon December 23 referred to reports of rape and torture of detainees. In a tweet on December 5, Abdolhamid had said the accounts of sexual assault on female detainees to humiliate them or to force them to make false “confessions” against themselves corroborate the allegations made by the media and urged the judiciary to investigate such allegations.
Ladan Boroumand, cofounder and research director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, told Iran International that the government is using sexual violence to demonstrate that it knows no boundaries when it comes to achieving its goal of suppressing the protest movement, to humiliate the detainees, and to instil fear in other people.
In a report on December 21 entitled “Brutal Repression in Kurdistan Capital”, Human Rights Watch said it has documented serious abuses, including sexual harassment and assault against detainees. Two women arrested together during the first week of protests in September told the global rights watchdog that security forces beat, sexually assaulted, and threatened them with rape during arrest and while they were held at the police station.
