Iran activists confident over women's rights petition

August 27, 2007 - (The Middle East Times) Iranians backing a petition to gather 1 million signatures in favor of equal rights for women Monday expressed confidence they could change mentalities despite arrests and a lack of domestic publicity.

"We can change the ideas of people but, for this to happen, we have to be allowed access to them," said poet Simin Behbahani, one of the first signatories of the petition launched almost exactly one year ago.

The campaign began after a women's rights protest in the Iranian capital in June 2006 was dispersed by police who arrested 70 activists.

The petition campaign - dubbed "One Million Signatures," and backed by Nobel Peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi - seeks to bring Iran's laws for women and men in line by collecting signatures on the Internet and in person.

"We have 500 to 600 activists in charge of gathering the signatures on a voluntary basis," Somayeh, one of the volunteers, who declined to give her last name, told a news conference in north Tehran.

Two female activists involved in the campaign, Nasim Sarabandi and Fatemeh Dehdashti, were given six month suspended jail sentences, earlier this year, for acting against the state by spreading propaganda. According to the campaign's organizers, they were arrested in January while collecting signatures on the Tehran metro.

"The women are more ready to resist than men, because they are more oppressed," writer and philosopher Babak Ahmadi said.

"We need many years before completely changing the mentalities, but the movement is progressing, and many young men are signing the petition," he added.

Human rights activists say that Iranian law, based on Islamic Sharia, discriminates against women. A woman's testimony in court is deemed to be worth half that of a man. Women receive half as much as men in inheritance, and they are deemed criminally responsible from the age of nine compared with 15 for boys.

Islamic Sharia law also fixes the "blood money" for a woman - the amount relatives can claim if she is wounded or killed in a crime or accident - at half that for a man. Currently, the blood money for the death of a woman is fixed at 260.25 million riyals (around $28,000).

From:http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070827-093246-1433r