Dr. Soraya Fallah’s Interview with Radio France International on "Iran: Women Victims of Domestic Violence and the Law"
https://www.sorayafallah.com/p/dr-soraya-fallahs-interview-with-radio.html
Iran: les femmes victimes des violences domestiques et de la loi
Iran: Women Victims of Domestic Violence and the Law
Human rights organizations are warning of a rise in femicides in Iran. Faced with laws that repress women and state violence, Iranian society is trying to combat the silence surrounding "honor crimes." " Femicides and sexist and sexual violence exist all over the world, but what's unique about Iran is that the laws sanctify this violence ," says a sociologist.
Published on:07/03/2025 - 07:07Modified on:07/03/2025 -
In Iran, an Iranian woman is killed every two days. Romina Ashrafi, Arezoo Kami, Najibeh Hassankhani, and Mona Heydari are four victims of this violence against women in the country.
© Twitter screenshots / RFI montage
By :Sara Saidi
An Iranian woman is killed every two days. This is the grim figure revealed by a study conducted by RFE/RL's Radio Farda . One hundred and thirty-three women were killed by their husbands, fathers, or brothers during the first ten months of 2024. The human rights organization Hengaw counted eighteen cases of femicide in January 2025 alone, sixteen of which were committed by male relatives.
So-called "honor crimes" are increasingly visible, as they are publicly denounced on social media. These networks have " broken state censorship, allowing activists and civil society to document cases of femicide, despite the heavy restrictions imposed on traditional media," says Soraya Fallah, a researcher, activist, and women's rights advocate. She adds: " This makes it harder to ignore these crimes ."
But despite this greater visibility, researchers are seeing an increase in cases of femicide. " The combination of increased repression, a patriarchal backlash, and impunity has likely led to more femicides ," explains Soraya Fallah.
Laws based on Sharia law
In 2020, the death of Romina Ashrafi , a 14-year-old girl beheaded by her father while she slept, shocked part of the population without causing any change. More recently, on February 22, 2025, Arezoo Kami , 34, was stabbed several times by her husband, a police officer, following an argument. Their son witnessed the murder. On February 20, 2020, in Gilan province, northern Iran, Najibeh Hassankhani, 40, was burned alive by her husband for wanting to file for divorce.
These crimes of unprecedented violence are not being held to account. For example, the husband of 17-year-old Mona Heydari , who paraded his wife's severed head through the city in 2022, was sentenced to less than ten years in prison. " The Iranian legal framework does not recognize femicide as a distinct crime, and the laws often favor the perpetrators, particularly in honor-related cases. These tragedies reveal the ongoing crisis of gender-based violence perpetuated and institutionalized by the deeply misogynistic laws of Iran's Islamic regime. The lack of protective legislation and a patriarchal system that normalizes violence contribute to the persistence of these crimes ," explains Soraya Fallah.
Indeed, Iranian laws are based on Sharia law. Article 630 of the Iranian Penal Code stipulates, for example, that in cases of adultery, a man can kill his wife as well as her lover. Furthermore, the law of retaliation, that is, the reciprocity of crime and punishment, does not apply to a man in the case of the murder of his child. Worse still, given that, according to the law, a woman's life is worth half that of a man, the reciprocity of crime and punishment can only be exercised by the victim's family by paying half the man's blood money ( diya ). " If you want to kill the husband who killed the wife, if you want to take revenge by killing the other [ through the law of retaliation, editor's note], you have to pay. It is a complementary barbarity ," summarizes Iranian sociologist Shahla Chafiq.
State-sanctioned violence
There are no official and reliable statistics on the number of femicides. " State-controlled institutions do not systematically report gender-based killings. In particular, cases classified as 'honor killings' go unreported due to cultural pressures and family concerns about 'honor' and 'dishonor ,'" analyzes Sorayah Fallah.
A failure by the state that comes as no surprise to Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, director of the Alliance for the Rights of All Minorities in Iran (ARAM) and founder of the StopFeminicide Iran platform, which lists Iranian victims of femicide. " The government itself has shown itself incapable and unwilling to change any rules that would guarantee rights and protections for women. There have been proposals to amend existing laws, but legislation after legislation , proposal after proposal , everything has been rejected, delayed, and refused ," she says indignantly.
This is particularly the case with the proposed law "for the protection of the dignity and safety of women against violence," which would criminalize any behavior that causes mental or physical harm to women. This was examined by Parliament in April 2023, but has not yet been adopted .
Obstruction
Iranian authorities have also closed several organizations and associations that help women and children who are victims of abuse and violence, such as the Mehr-e Chams Afarid shelter in Azerbaijan province in April 2024.
For Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, there is still a long way to go to prevent these crimes in Iran. According to her, this requires educating society. Chahla Chafiq, for her part, believes that the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, which emerged following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, demonstrates the desire of a section of Iranian society to see women's rights established and gender discrimination abolished in the country. " There are femicides and sexist and sexual violence all over the world, but the particularity in Iran is that the laws sanctify this violence. And in contrast, there has been resistance from women for more than four decades ," concludes the sociologist.
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