Two UN experts condemned Iran’s record on women’s rights Thursday for what they said was a “crackdown” against the arrest or harassment of women campaigning peacefully for gender-equality in the Islamic Republic.
“Over the past two years, women’s rights defenders have faced an increasingly difficult situation and harassment in the course of their non-violent activities,” AFP quotes Margaret Sekaggya and Yakin Erturk, the UN special raporteur on human rights defenders and violence against women.
The rapporteur said that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran continued to “harass and intimidate” women’s rights activists involved in the “Change for Equality” campaign and preventing them from traveling.
A women’s rights movement, dubbed the “One Million Signatures Campaign” was launched in 2006 demanding changes to existing laws that are gender biased, such as divorce and child custody. Dozens of the campaign’s supporters have been arrested and later release, most notably Esha Momeni, an Iranian-American student.
She was arrested by Iranian security forces on 15 October in Tehran, after traveling to Iran to research the women’s movement in that country, and was released on bail last week from Evin Prison.
