“Gender apartheid” is how Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad describes the injustices suffered by women, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan.
“Women, Life, Freedom
“Women, Life, Freedom” is the motto of journalist Masih Alinejad’s recent speech at the University of Regina. Committed to the cause of women for many years, Masih Alinejad invites women to join the #UnitedAgainstGenderApart movement, “to defend democracy, feminism and equality worldwide”.
The activist highlights the critical case of “women in Iran and Afghanistan, united in the fight against the Taliban and the Islamic Republic”. Forced to leave Iran in 2009 for her outspoken stance, the journalist now lives in New York, where she continues to actively campaign for freedom.
“As women of Iran and Afghanistan, we endure imprisonment, lashings, rape, blindness, execution and constant terror simply because we seek freedom, equality and dignity”, she points out in one of her many posts on X (formerly Twitter).
Escalating crisis in Iran
“Under the rule of the Taliban and the Iranian Islamic regime, being a woman is a crime” she insists, encouraging women to “share (their) stories to urge the free world to join us in criminalizing gender apartheid”.
“If you’re raped, it’s your fault because you weren’t fully covered,” the feminist activist explained to over 1,000 women at the University of Regina. Since the intensification of police checks to force women to wear the hijab, Masih Alinejad has redoubled her efforts to denounce the ignominy.
“I appeal to the international community and the global feminist movement to react urgently to the escalating crisis in Iran, where women are persecuted relentlessly by the morality police”, she tells her community.
The example of Mahsa Amini
“Women are beaten and sexually harassed simply because they don’t wear a hijab. This started just after Ali Khamenei ordered the police to impose the hijab on women at any price. When they say ‘at any cost’, it means that the police can easily kill women because they don’t wear hijab, just like they killed #MahsaAmini“, the young woman, arrested then died in prison because she didn’t wear the veil, she recalls.
“This is the same regime that rapes women in prison, and we are striving to protect the world from the dangerous contagion of extremist Islamic ideology” she believes; and recalls that “every day, women are bitten by the morality police in the streets.”
The 46-year-old journalist also denounces “the absence of rallies in favor of Iranian women in the West” and says that “real anti-war activists are the brave women of Iran who confront the warmongers in the streets every day.”
Masih Alinejad, the driving force behind several women’s freedom movements
The Iranian activist has won several awards for her commitment, such as the Geneva Summit Award for Human Rights, and the 2015 Democracy Award for Women’s Rights. She also holds the Omid Journalism Award from the Mehdi Semsar Foundation and the AIB Media Excellence Award.
In 2014, Masih Alinejad launched the “My Stealthy Freedom” movement to denounce the forced wearing of the hijab in Iran, a movement followed by many women in Iran. She has also launched other movements such as #MyCameraIsMyWeapon and #WhiteWednesdays. The latest being #UnitedAgainstGenderApart
In 2019, Masih Alinejad is suing the Iranian government in US federal court for harassment against her and her family. During her speech in Regina, she even reveals her story, recounting “that the Islamic Republic faked (her) rape on state television”.
Read more : Wearing the veil: police in Iran step up checks on non-veiled women