Two messages re: Iranian protests and Mahsa Amini shared on behalf of SFMMS physician leaders October 10, 2022 Advocacy 0 This message was sent to all TPMG physicians, managers and staff at KP San Francisco. Dear Colleagues, This is a personal story. Read on only if you are interested. I normally don’t write about “politics” and try to focus on issues that affect public health, healthcare, and our medical group. What we are learning or already know, is that many issues that we like to relegate to domains outside of our medical centers actually affect our health too and these are increasingly recognized as “social determinants of health” because they contribute to mental or physical harm or our overall health status. Social injustices and restriction on human rights are particularly triggering to our sense of justice and reminds us of our common humanity. A few of you have asked me to increase awareness regarding the courageous acts of defiance and protests by women in Iran right now who are taking to the streets to show their hair and risk imprisonment and death. So far >75 protestors have already been killed and in an effort to silence dissent and the brutality, the internet went dark for several days. I was reflecting on why I hadn’t said anything at work and I think it was because I was worried about being “too political”. Also I think it hits too close to home. I was almost arrested once for not covering my hair. I was in Iran doing a medical school rotation the summer of 1992 at a major heart hospital in Tehran. I was 22 years old, the same age as Mahsa Amini, who was killed under the hands of the morality police for not properly wearing her hijab. My female cousin (a midwife student) and I went on a road trip to the mountains. It was June 4, the anniversary of Khomeini’s death so it was a big holiday and most medical clinics were closed so we had the day off. It was hot (over 100 degrees F), there was no AC and the windows were down in our jeep with wind blowing and our head scarves were blown off. We let them stay off. The roads were deserted that day. We were both in the back seat. My uncle, my dad and a driver were in the front. At one point the driver abruptly stopped. A sedan pulled up in front of us and blocked the mountain pass by forming a T in front of us so we could not pass. Four young men all dressed in black came toward our car. They asked the driver to step out and escorted him to the back behind the Jeep where they then beat him to a pulp. I had never seen anyone beaten before. It was so sudden, unexpected, and unreal. It felt like I was watching a scene from a movie. He was only 4 ft 11inches and had leprosy. His teeth were knocked out. My dad and uncle jumped out of the car, both 6 feet tall and in their 50s and the young men dressed in black backed off. A lot of yelling ensued and it turned out that the young men were civilians but were making a “citizens” arrest. They picked up our driver as a hostage and had us follow them to take my cousin and I to a nearby police station. I was certain I was going to be beaten next and die in an Iranian jail for letting my headscarf blow off in the sweltering heat. It’s one of the most traumatic memories in my life. I knew the stories of others who had their lips shaved for wearing lipstick or sustained lashes for not covering their arms and I hadn’t heeded the warnings. I should have been more careful and now I was going to pay the price along with our driver and my cousin. With the help of some sympathetic local police and the luck of the courthouse being closed for the holiday, we were able to end our ordeal after several hours of accusations and counter attacks. In the end, no one spoke to me or my cousin and all the negotiations determining our fate were done without us. This brutal policing of women done falsely in the name of religion is in stark contrast to the prior policing of women to actually forcibly stop wearing the hijab in the 1960s. My grandmother used to say that when she chose to wear a headscarf in her youth, she would be chased down the street by the police trying to pull it off in an effort to modernize the country toward a more western dress code. Wearing hijab is a personal choice and is not compulsory in Islam. Any way you look at it, gender equality begins with choice and freedom. Today the world is small. The internet in Iran is back online and we are seeing and sharing the stories of courageous demonstrators and recognizing that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” as MLK has said. Today, you can help by spreading the word about #mashaamini and other human rights abuses. If you want to see other ways to show solidarity, see the work of Amnesty International, to investigate and hold people accountable for crimes against humanity in Iran or the UN Gender Equality group, which supports worldwide women’s rights. https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-the-protest-bloodshed-in-iran/ Welcome | UN Women – Headquarters Thank you for reading my story and sharing in the struggle for women’s rights across the globe. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following message is shared on behalf of SFMMS Board Member Dr. Yalda Shahram “Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment.” – bell hooks The people are chanting “woman, life, liberty” across the world in support of the women-led protest in Iran. The oppression of women is a global tragedy. In Iran, the people are fed up, especially by the “morality police” enforcing state policies, such as hijab laws requiring head scarves to cover women’s hair. Mahsa (Zhina) Amini was 22-years-old and visiting Tehran with her family when she was detained for showing some hair. The “morality police” have enforced the state policies with laxity or intensity depending on the administration; the current hard-line administration has apparently given them orders to intensify their repression by using state policies to target women. But those with power went too far - Mahsa Amini was killed by the morality police on September 16, sparking the people’s protest beginning in her hometown in the Kurdish province and spreading across Iran and the world. In response the internet has been cut off in many parts of Iran, and an unknown number of protesters, including women, children and men, have been injured and killed. On his visit to New York days after Ms. Amini’s death, Iran’s hard-line president was scheduled for an interview with British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour but did not show up. Their rhetoric is the same old lie - that these protests are led by “foreign sponsored anti-revolutionary” folk. They are hoping the world will lose interest and forget about Mahsa Amini, just as they hoped that we would forget Neda Agha-Soltan, but we are here to say her name loud and clear. The people in the streets of Iran want reform of the social and economic policies with a true democracy, chanting: “death to the oppressor, whether the King or the Supreme Leader”. Woman’s rights are human rights and we denounce colonialist White patriarchal stereotypes of the people of Southwest Asia (the “Middle East”) by supporting their right to choose to wear hijab, just as we support the right to equity in access, experience and outcomes in health care, the right to drink clean water, and the right to choose. The United States’ sanctions on Iran have been hurting the people for many years, but recent escalation of sanctions by the Trump administration have especially caused crippling of the economy, hurting the most vulnerable. Imagine your child is diagnosed with cancer and there are sanctions on their treatment. Imagine the inflation we have experienced in the US x 1000. Imagine graduating from University, with no hope and no opportunity. Approximately 60% of graduates of Iranian Universities are women. Those young women are leading the protests, risking their lives, and we can take action to ensure they have a better future with opportunity, with freedom. Hundreds of faculty at Universities across Iran have signed a petition asking for the release of students arrested at recent protests. The media are largely ignoring the demonstrations: the front page of the New York Times on October 4th has no mention of the University protests for Women's Rights, but people all around the world continue to show solidarity in the streets and on social media. We fear for the lives of the students and vow to show solidarity at every opportunity. Contact your representative and ask them to support the people of Iran with sanctions relief during their struggle for freedom. Sign the petition by Amnesty International to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law in Iran. Together In Ongoing and Sustained Solidarity!! My University faculty title is used for identification purposes only. The views expressed here are solely my own. The University of California has not endorsed these views and no such endorsement should be assumed or implied. Comments are closed.
