Iran Feature: Activism and Human Rights --- The Story of Fati Masjedi (Bijnen)

EDITOR'S NOTE: As I was preparing this piece for publication, I read that Fatemeh Masjadi and Maryam Bidgoli Women’s rights activists and One Million Signature Campaign members Maryam Bidgoli and Fatemeh Masjedi had been summoned on Wednesday to serve their sentences. They are to report to prison today for their six-month terms.

---

Loes Bijnen writes for EA:

Much has been said and written about Iran's hundreds of political prisoners. Some are well-known, others not at all. There are also hundreds if not thousands of ordinary Iranians who live in permanent fear for their future, who have been summoned to court, who have been briefly arrested and then released on bail. Their computers, documents with their life'swork and family stories have been taken away. They are waiting anxiously for another call to present themselves to a court and a judge that can ruin their lives forever. In the meantime they live in limbo and are slowly getting desperate.

Thinking of Qom, I see seminaries, women clad in black chadors, Grand Ayatollahs, pilgrims, shrines, and mosques. The city breathes holiness and piety.

In this holy city lives a brave human rights defender, an ordinary young woman called Fatemeh ("call me Fati") Masjedi with whom I happened to get in touch recently. And she told me her own story.

Fati is one of those people who lives in complete uncertainty and fear. She has been in prison for a short while. Her PhD-study at Göttingen University in Germany, which she should start in November, could not be pursued. Her passport was seized and only recently returned to her.

In May 2009, a month before the Presidential elections, Fati was co-organising the 5h International Human Rights Conference at the Mofid University's Human Rights Center in Qom. A fluent English speaker, thanks to six years'  in the US in which she earned a Master's degree in History and Women Studies, Fati was in touch with participants from about 30 countries through different embassies.  

At the same time Fati conducted workshops on the situation of women in Qom on subjects such as Family Law in Islamic Sharia and Children's Rights. She was also assisting and comforting a young girl who had become pregnant.

Fati Masjedi became an ardent member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, working for it openly. Fati invited other members of the Campaign to Qom and had appointments with Ayatollah Amini, leader of the Friday Prayers in Qom, and with Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sane'i. Fati presented to them nine recommendations for women's rights from the Campaign and, according to her, the ayatollahs 
were sympathetic.

Of course, Fati's activities did not go unobserved by the authorities. Among the participants in her workshops were intelligence agents, and during the conference she co-organised, she was arrested in Karaj, where she visited the family of a close friend.

Fati's home was searched. Her documents were taken, including those about the girl who had an abortion. In prison she was verbally abused and threatened with rape, although she did not take this
too seriously. After four days Fati was taken to the Revolutionary Court of the city of Qom and charged with activities against national security, with being a member of the "soft revolution", and for having an 
illicit relationship.

Fati remained in prison for 12 days, together with Maryam Bidgoli, a companion in the Campaign. They were released on bail. And now they are waiting, waiting in fear. Fati waits without representation: her lawyer was Shadi Sadr, who was soon arrested herself and, during a brief leave from prison, fled Iran. 

So far this story is not exceptional: there are hundreds of Iranian citizens in the same situation. Fatemeh Masjedi is for me the quiet victim, the unknown soldier in a silent struggle against a regime that has violated human rights on a daily basis and women's rights for many years. 

I imagine an innocent young woman in Qom, sitting at her parents' home, dreading to go out, waiting for a telephone call or for the intelligence agents at her front door who will take her back to prison. Despite this daily threat, Fati wanted her story to be known to the world.

Fatemeh Masjedi speaks in the name of hundreds of powerless victims. From the holy city of Qom. Remarkable.