Helping Iran's Condemned

“In a country of contradictions, a generation leads double lives.” The white words hang starkly against a black background in the trailer for My Tehran for Sale, the film that has landed lead actress Marzieh Vafamehr 90 lashes and a year in prison. The film was an official selection in the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009 for many of the same reasons that Iranian officials hate it. The film’s blunt depiction of the darker side of this “double life” – namely, social and artistic oppression – prevented it from being approved for official screening, although its circulation in Iran a la the black market is what prompted Vafamehr’s arrest in July.
Reports of Vafamehr’s sentence surfaced on the Iranian opposition website Kalameh.com on October 10. The Iranian government has yet to release an official report detailing Vafamehr’s punishment, but it seems that the rest of the world is too wary of Iran’s draconian human rights record to wait for one. Outrage at Vafamehr’s sentence quickly sparked far beyond the nation’s border. Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd lambasted the sentence. Perez Hilton blogged about it.  Media coverage has spanned major news outlets like The Huffington Post and the BBC.
The film’s co-producers, Julie Ryan and Kate Croser, have speculated that the government will attribute Vafamehr’s sentence to her appearance in scenes without the mandatory headscarf; Vafamehr’s character also appears to consume alcohol, which is generally worth 80 lashes for the first offense. They predict that another possible government accusation could be that My Tehran for Sale did not have the required permits to shoot the movie – a charge that director Granaz Moussavi and Croser both deny. But regardless of the official reason for her arrest, Westerners who enshrine ideals of freedom of speech and, by extension, of film are bound to seethe.
Ostensibly, anger has never seemed so hopeless. Beyond general complaints from Iran about the decadence of the Western world, recent allegations of an Iranian assassination attempt on U.S. soil will continue to weaken the already crippled diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S., regardless of the accusation’s validity. So if Iran has little more than contempt for the West, why would it respond to pressure from it? Despite rhetoric from Iranian political leaders that casts the Islamic nation as an uncompromising moral stronghold, Iran has proven that it can be swayed – but only if it is pressured by more than the U.S. alone.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery in May 2006. After intense international outcry, she now faces ten years in prison – not for adultery, but for her alleged role in her husband’s murder. The murder charge was added after the case began receiving international attention, most likely as a ploy for the government to justify her death sentence. Western backlash against Ashtiani’s punishment was amplified not only because of the death penalty itself, but also because of the form of execution. The Iranian penal code is morbidly specific about the types of stones that should be used: Article 104 of the Iranian penal code states that the ideal stone is “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones.”
The international outcry was relatively effective in this case because the U.S., obviously still diplomatically estranged from Iran, was not the only nation openly fighting to save Ashtiani. Remarkable among condemnatory statements from other governments was an offer of asylum by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had developed comparatively friendly ties with Iran at the time. But just as the U.S. government was backed by Americans protesting Ashtiani’s sentence, Mr. da Silva also witnessed protests from Brazilians themselves, including a document that drew 114,000 signatures (signed, notably, by a hodgepodge of Brazilian celebrities). It is also likely that Iran faced pressures from within. Stoning itself is far from accepted as a reasonable punishment for any crime; Iranian leaders, including several ayatollahs, believe that the practice is inhumane and outdated.
But the struggle to free Ashtiani was not waged by governments – American, Iranian, or otherwise – alone. Non-governmental organizations also strongly influenced the campaign. Mina Ahadi, head of the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty, said in 2010 that NGOs play an indispensible role in the process of pressuring Iran to recant sentences like Ashtiani’s. Only “a very broad, international public movement… can help” Ashtiani, she said, adding that “experience shows… when the pressure gets very high, the Islamic government starts to say something different.”
Saving Vafamehr from the initial punishment may not be as painstakingly difficult as it was to save Ashtiani from hers if the appropriate mix of governmental and non-governmental pressure is exerted again. While flogging is not an unheard of or particularly extraordinary punishment in Iran, it is also not universally supported by Iranian leaders either. When student activist Peyman Aref received 74 lashes on October 8 for “insulting” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his handling of the 2009 protests in a letter, Ahmadinejad himself decried Aref’s flogging.
For all its talk hinting at the contrary, the Iranian government is not immovable when governments, citizens, and NGOs push strongly. With the world angrily and anxiously watching, the Iranian government strives to save face. Acquiescing to the demands of America alone jeopardizes the image that Iranian leaders wish to convey to their citizens: that of Iran as the indisputable, morally superior nation. But if these demands are made by other nations and entities as well, the pressure mounts. For Westerners, this means throwing support behind more than just governments and into Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to name a few. Vafamehr is undoubtedly neither the first nor the last to suffer at the hands of Iran’s strict penal code – hands that, though inflexible, can indeed be forced to bend.
Photo credit: The Global Film Initiative