The One Million Signatures
Campaign: An Effort Born on the Streets
Sussan Tahmasebi*
The One Million Signatures Campaign, is an effort
designed to raise awareness among the public through face to face discussions
and collection of signatures of citizen on a petition addressed to the Iranian
parliament. The petition asks that laws discriminating against women be
reformed and brought in line with international human rights standards. The
Campaign, was inaugurated on a hot summer afternoon in late August of 2006 on
the streets of Tehran. We had planned to inaugurate the Campaign in Ra’ad
Conference Hall, with speakers, celebrity supporters and founders explaining
the aims of the effort, but were prevented from doing so. Instead of holding an inaugural seminar, we
collected signatures right there, outside the conference hall, and on the
streets, from those who had come to attend our event. We explained our goals
and recruited volunteers. Perhaps it was
an appropriate way to start our Campaign, as one of its main aims was to reach
ordinary people on the streets, in public spaces, on the metro, on buses, in
parks, wherever they could be found. The women’s movement had been discussing the
need to reach the public on the “streets” and in the public space, and despite
some attempts at doing so, the activities of the women’s movement in Iran remained
confined mostly to conference halls, seminars and trainings, where the audience often ended up
being other activists. The Campaign, despite serious pressures and crackdowns, ended
up being the first effort to have a sustained presence on the streets and in
public spaces. After all, this was our goal.
In fact the street ended up being the only place that was open to us, as
from then on, we were systematically denied meeting space and conference halls.
The
Need to Change Laws
Iran’s legal code is based on an extremely
conservative interpretation of Sharia law and as such imbeds in it
discrimination against women, which is justified on the grounds of “equity” and
“complementarity.” According to the
drafters of laws and to Iranian officials who over-turned some hard won legal
gains for women prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and men, in
accordance with Islam, have differing roles and responsibilities and therefore
should have differing rights. At the
same time, the social reality of women’s lives has never lived up to the legal
realities of the Islamic Republic. For example, Iranian women today make up
over 60% of university graduates--meaning that women are more educated than
their male counterparts. Women are getting married on average at age 25,
whereas by law 13 is the legal age of marriage. The birth rate in Iran is very
low and on par with many European countries. Further Iranian women today, are
doctors, lawyer, journalists, Engineers, teachers, parliamentarians and even
truck drivers. But the law keeps on
viewing them as in need of permanent guardianship by fathers and husbands and
values them at half of a man. The Campaign sought to address some of these
discrepancies. Specifically it sought to ensure equal rights for women in marriage, equal
rights to divorce for women, end to polygamy and temporary marriage, increase
of age of criminal responsibility to 18 for both girls and boys, right for
women to pass on nationality to their children, equal dieh (compensation for
bodily injury or death) between women and men, equal inheritance rights, reform
of laws that reduce punishment for offenders in cases of honor killings, equal
testimony rights for men and women in court, and other laws which discriminate
against women[1].
A
Dual Approach, Multiple Responses
The Campaign activists relied on a face-to-face
approach for raising awareness among the Iranian public. Activists would engage
in discussions with the public, explain about the laws and the negative
consequences of such laws on Iranians society. If citizens were in agreement
that the laws should change, then they would sign the petition to the Iranian
parliament asking for changes. Prior to signature collection activists would be
trained on the legal issues, on how to engage with the public and security and
safety measures. They would then be able
to collect signatures for the petition. The
need to change laws was an issue that had been raised by Iranian women’s rights
activists across the spectrum for years. For some it was the least of demands
and for others it was the highest of demands. It was however a demand which
could be classified as a least common denominator, around which women from
differing perspectives, from several generations and from different backgrounds
could come together. The Campaign’s demands, its openness and the way in which
it encouraged agency of citizens (from a signature to collection of signatures
to more intensive involvement) was apparent in the great reception it received
from citizens. Over 1000 individuals in over 20 provinces took part in the
Campaign’s training courses, in order to begin collecting signatures.
Activists were offered an opportunity to write about
their experiences of signature collection in the Face-to-Face section[2] of the site of
Change for Equality. In this way, the experiences of activists would be shared
with the public in almost real time. When reading these accounts, one finds
that activists would often begin by collecting signatures from their friends
and family, then move to other social circles and eventually go to the streets
and public spaces. Also, these accounts point to several different reactions by
the public to the efforts of the campaign. There are those who are in agreement
and sign the petition. Then there are those who have to be convinced that this
is the right thing to do and that their agency can have real impact. Of course,
there some citizens who can’t be convinced to sign, either they don’t believe
in women’s equality or they feel that their signature and their demand will not be
heard by officials, driving home the point that awareness raising is still an
appropriate strategy in Iran.
A
Security Response to our Peaceful Efforts
We thought that our efforts in the Campaign were so
peaceful and legal that it would not be met with a security response. But still
we decided to have a membership based on individuals rather than organizations.
We knew that Organizations which were facing increasing pressure under Ahmadi Nejad,
would be too vulnerable. Individuals however could withdraw, leaving the
network intact. Further, we knew that no
one group or individual could be at the helm, rather committees would move the
work of the Campaign forward and responsibilities could rotate. We realized
that in our easy to read Campaign materials[3] we would have to
explain that we were not working against Islam. So we pointed out there were
differing interpretations to Sharia Law, and that demanding changes to current
law, in line with Iran’s international
obligations, would not be in contradiction to Islam.
Despite all this we never anticipated the crackdown
that ensued after we started the Campaign.
When the first activist was arrested, we didn’t believe it was a
systematic crackdown. Instead, we
questioned her approach. When our members were prevented from travel, we
thought it was related to other issues. But the crackdown continued, and we
realized that it was systematic. We were prevented from holding meetings and
conferences, even small meetings in our own homes were interrupted, newspapers
were told not to write about the Campaign, and our members kept getting
arrested while collecting signatures. We
had to become creative in our efforts. Otherwise we would risk withdrawing from
the streets.
In order to keep reaching the public and to stay safe,
we started organizing group signature collection drives. The groups would go to the mountains on the
weekend and talk to the public about our demands. Some would approach the
hikers, while others kept watch to ensure safety and prevent arrest. We used
the same approach in other public spaces.
In an effort to convey our message to larger audiences
theatre skits would be performed about the legal issues we were working to
change. Audiences of 200-300 would gather around the performers, thinking that
they were witness to a real event. The audience would then leave the park, taking the issue
into their homes for further discussion and questioning.
When arrested, activists would be held in the public
ward of Evin prison with female inmates.
Campaign activists quickly realized that many of the female prisoners
were in fact some of the people most negatively impacted by discriminatory
laws. They started writing their stories[4]. Tales of forced
marriage, marriage at a young age and unable to divorce abusive husbands, would
be retold by activists on the site of the Campaign to demonstrate the destructive
impact of discrimination. In turn, other
activists would write about their counterparts in prison[5].
Our
Impact
While we were not able to collect the one million
signatures we set out to, we did however have other important achievements. First,
we managed to create a discourse on women’s rights at the highest levels of
government and in the public. Even with our arrests, which created fear among
the public with respect to joining our efforts or even in signing our petition,
nagging questions remained: What is it
that they are asking for, that is deserving of this extreme response? Isn’t what they are asking for in fact just?
Don’t their demands represent the demands of the majority of the public? Even the most conservative groups we talked
to agreed that our demands were just and explained that they would not accept
anything less for their own daughters!
Conservative women who had previously engaged in
closed door lobbying also came to the fore to ask for some of the same
changes. Minor changes in the laws did
take place, such as changes in inheritance law, changes in regulations requiring
equal compensation to both men and women by insurance companies in cases of
accidents and limited reform of nationality laws, allowing women to pass on
their nationality to their children. These changes were as much a response to
the realities of Iranian society, as the efforts of the Campaign. Lawmakers could no longer avoid these realities,
realizing that pressure was building up
at the grassroots level.
To drive this point home, it is important to recall
the election campaigns of three of four presidential candidates in 2009 [6]. The two
reformist candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, offered
progressive plans to address women’s status, which included a revision of laws
discriminating against women. The conservative candidate, Mohsen Rezaie,
mentioned that laws should be changed to ensure “equality” of women in the
social sphere. The term “equality” belonged to the Iranian women’s movement and
in particular the Campaign. This was possibly
the first time a conservative candidate used it instead of the term
“equity.” Ahmadi Nejad who became
president as a result of the contested elections of 2009, only made regressive
campaign promises with respect to women, which he pushed through during his
first and second terms.
Now in 2013, a new president will take office in Iran.
Women’s groups anticipate that Rouhani will be more positive toward their
demands. Chief among his campaign
promises has been to set in motion the process of reviewing laws which
discriminate against women. This is also
a main demand of the women’s movement.
Whether the One Million Signatures Campaign, which like many other
social movements experienced a hiatus after the unrest following the 2009
elections, will once again re-emerge to
push for equality is unclear. What is
for certain, is that the demands of the Campaign will remain a major and basic
demand of the Iranian women’s movement and the Iranian public. We will continue
to push for women’s equality, including under the law, until it is achieved. The
lesson from the Campaign is that the
independent women’s movement gets its strength from its ability to engage with
the public and so it should continue to talk to citizens on the streets and in
the public sphere and wherever else they can be found.