For at least two years in a row now, women have gathered by the hundreds, if not thousands, on June 12 to demand equal rights from the tyrannical Islamic government. They’re sick of being treated as second class citizens — no, animals — in their own society. Publius reported on these events, the first one in 2005 where demonstrators gathered to protest this gender apartheid. It was one of the first such large demonstrations by women, for women, since the revolution. In 2006, the event unfolded once again, with the women taking confidence from the year before that they could once again raise the issue.

Such a thing would prove to be too humiliating for the authorities, however. The women were rounded up, beaten, and taught a lesson that only strengthened their knowledge that the Iranian constitution, supposedly based on freedom and equal rights, is a load of hypocritical crap.

Unfortunately many of them are on trial for the simple act of protest. So today their fellow women came out to protest the impending convictions, only to prove once again that the Islamic regime in Tehran is relentless in repressing its own women.

March 5, 2007 (RFE/RL) — More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested in Tehran for protesting against government pressure being put on women’s rights activists.

The women had gathered outside a court in Tehran on March 4 to show their support for four women’s rights activists who went on trial that day for organizing a protest last summer against discriminatory laws. Reports say many of the protesters and the activists are now in jail.

The arrests are the culmination of a year of increasing pressure on women’s rights activists, who have been arrested, summoned to court, threatened, and harassed. Their protests have also been disrupted — in some cases violently — and their websites have been blocked.

Some observers believe the arrests are aimed at intimidating activists who were planning to hold a gathering on March 8 to mark International Women’s Day and to protest injustice against women.

The move is also seen as an attempt to silence activists who have been fighting for equal rights.

Many of those who had called for holding a protest in front of the parliament on March 8 are now in jail.

Iranian rights groups report that between 30 and 34 women who were arrested are being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Among them are four top women’s movement leaders: Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmassebi, and Shahla Entesari.

They went on trial on March 4 in connection with a June gathering against laws that they consider discriminatory against women. Charges against them include acting against Iran’s national interests and participating in an illegal gathering.

The four leaders were arrested after they left the court and joined other women who had gathered outside Tehran’s revolutionary court. They were reportedly holding banners that said: “Holding peaceful gatherings is our absolute right.”

Activists say the Iranian Constitution ensures the right to holding a peaceful gathering. Yet police forces disrupted the activists on March 4 and drove the women away in minibuses.

Peyman Aref, a student activist in Tehran, told Radio Farda that police used force against demonstrators.

“They were threatened and they were also beaten up,” Aref said. “The crowd — ÄwhichÅ included more than 50 people — tried to resist by sitting on the ground and not reacting to the beatings. Finally, around 10:00, female police came and the activists were arrested.”

Despite the regime’s best attempts, women’s rights activists are making great headway these days. Women’s groups are pushing some major ground campaigns, including ending the practice of stoning and gathering one million signatures to end the discriminatory laws passed against them. The problem for the regime is that these days such ideas are becoming quite popular. Using force is the only way to silence them, in the regime’s eyes.

But these women don’t fight back. When they are attacked, they sit on the ground and pray for it to stop. Cowardly as it is, the government will then send in female riot police so that it looks more like one big catfight rather than a bunch of crazed maniacs with truncheons bulldozing over someone else’s wife.

It’s absolutely despicable, but nobody is fooled. These women are on the front of the lines fighting for freedom in their country. They’re the ones raising the future generation and they’re the ones taking the beating. It is no wonder that, finally, their cause is beginning to make headway.