A 40 years long dead end road: Iranian Woman after the ’79 Islamic Revolution

radius — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 07:34:20 +0000

They were dreaming of freedom and individual fulfilment, but they soon found themself hidden under a Tschador or Hijab, and helplessly kept hostage in a regime of personal violence and political oppression. 40 years ago, at the decline of the Shah monarchy, the woman of Iran were fighting as their male comrades for democratic and liberal reforms.But hardly anybody had to pay a higher personal price for this engagement after the islamic regime of the mullahs conquered power. Despite its autoritarian political regime, under Shah Reza Pahlevi they were encouraged to take a job, they could go out wearing lip gloss and make up, they could dress as woman like to dress anywhere in the world and could go swimming with their friends and relatives, wearing bikinis as would people do in Paris, Mailand, or Berlin.

Iranian students pictured in the Seventies

Iranian basket ball athlets in the mid 60s. The regime of Shah Reza Pahlevi promoted a modern, western living style of woman.

But this period of personal freedom came to a immediate end: On march 7th Ayatollah Chomeini announced, that all woman have to cover their head in public. This old wannabe despote argued that woman should not be encouraged to go out and show up naked on the streets. This new law caused an uproar among the Iranian woman, mainly those of the urban society. On the following day, March 8th or the International day of Woman, tens of thousands from all political factions were out on the streets. Carried out by mothers, daughter and their grandmas, religious and non-religious people, this was the first stand up against the islamic regime.

Rebellion against the new islamic variant of indoctrination: The Iranian woman were the first who went out and demonstrated for freedom and civil rights after the new Chomeini regime tried to silence all political opponents in 1979. Foto: Bettmann/Getty Image

40 years later, all the dreams have gone in vain. The pursue for freedom is kept hidden under the omnipresent Tschador.

Spending most of their lifes under the chador. The daily problems of financial and material decline left no space for dreams of freedom and self determination.

And the woman of the younger generation can rarely imagine what their grand-mothers were demonstrating for on the roads and squares of Tehran some 40 years ago. For the students who grew up only under the mullahs-regime, freedom of expression and the pursue of self-determination bears the flavour of heresy.

The young generation of woman dream of a little bid of “normal life”, i.e. less economic problems, but more financial security. Political or intellectual freedom has to come secondary.

Balkan revisited

radius — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 00:34:36 +0000

Stereotypes use to reproduce themselves with almost the same regularity as the ignorance against the objects of these stereotypes increases. The Balkan region of South-eastern Europe is one such example. In the expectations of many westerners, Balkan countries are synonymous with corruption, failing nations, centuries of civil war, and headache by to much of low quality spirits.
For the Britons was the prospect of having more countries from the Balkan peninsula in the EU reason enough to leave the union all together. And if you tell someone from Croatia, Romania or Greece how much you like the Balkanesque wildness of their countries, you might be lucky if be entitled persona-non-grata there. And for Germans and Austrians it was the Balkan conflict that started the mother of all disasters in their history, the first World War.
To my knowledge there is only one country that takes this stereotype as a challenge and is trying to exploit the undeniable, instead of faking the facts. Bulgaria, in fact is in the very center of the Balkan peninsula. And like the eye of the hurricane is always a very quiet spot surrounded by devastating storms on the periphery harbours Bulgaria in its West-Eastern perimeter the most picturesque mountains that gave the whole region its name (Balkan mountains, locally called Stara Planina or historically Hemus).

But despite this geographically very prominent role of Bulgaria didn’t it fit much of the bad connotations of a Balkan countries: Neither was it involved in any nationalistic segregational movements, nor had it any issues with religious heterogeneity. It used to absorb people from other countries who were expelled as a result of civil war (like Russian aristocrats after the revolution) or genocide (like the turkish Armenians). During the time of fascism, the Bulgarian people successfully resisted the request of the german occupants to deport the sephardic jewish population. In gratitude of this, Israeli survivors of the Holocaust recently honoured this courage by erecting a monument in the form of a jewish shoufa in the city of Varna.

The city of Varna has more reasons to look with great pride on its history. The eldest European civilizations left evidence of their early agricultural communities here (in Ezerovo and Debna), where rich burial sites were excavated that contained the earliest man-made golden artefacts.

It is a tragedy, and here maybe indeed reminiscent of Balkanesque indifference, that these two sites of prehistoric settlements (dating back to ca. 5000 AD) is hidden now and partly demolished under a socialist-era chemical plant.

For archaeologic sites that link Bulgaria to the Roman history (when it was the province of Thrakia), in particular when they are found in the capital Sofia, the authorities are a bit more careful. The excavation works are done under public observation behind transparent walls.

But to makes aware that we are really in the middle of the Balkan region we can find here (on the railway between Varna and Sofia) the only trainstation worlwide that is simply called Balkan.

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A 40 years long dead end road: Iranian Woman after the ’79 Islamic Revolution

Balkan revisited