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TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: abc.net.au > Lateline > Archives
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s275546.htm

Broadcast: 10/04/01
Human rights group moves to prevent stoning death
Tony Jones speaks with Maryam Namazie, the executive director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees. The International Federation of Uranian Refugees is loudly opposing the planned stoning, and is urging other human rights organisations, unions and regular people, to join in the protest.

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Compere: Tony Jones
Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: I'm joined now from our London studio by Maryam Namazie, the executive director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees.

TONY JONES: You've been involved in campaigns like this before to apply pressure to the Iranian Government.

Do they listen to them?

MARYAM NAMAZIE, INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF IRANIAN REFUGEES: Well, yes, we've been involved in many campaigns, given the nature of the Iranian Government.

In fact, I think any government, including one as barbaric and brutal as the Islamic Republic of Iran, do listen to public pressure, and international public pressure has had an impact before, and we're hoping that we will be able to save Maryam Ayoubi's life.

TONY JONES: How hard will that be, do you think?

How much pressure will there have to be on the Iranian regime?

MARYAM NAMAZIE: Any human being living anywhere in the world, irrespective of what country they come from and where they live, I think they have a responsibility to oppose this stoning, to protest the stoning.

I think, you know, if we can get human rights organisations, trade unions, progressive organisations and just regular people, writing petitions, writing letters to the Islamic Republic's embassies in their countries and talking about it to their neighbours, in their schools and communities.

There is a way of galvanising just enough pressure to be able to stop her stoning, just as in 1997 we were able to stop the stoning of another woman.

TONY JONES: Is there any way of gauging the state of mind of Maryam Ayoubi?

She is obviously behind bars.

Is there any way of knowing how she's feeling leading up to this execution?

MARYAM NAMAZIE: I'm sure her feelings are indescribable.

In the same way that for us, for any of us, whether we've ever been to Iran or not, hearing a situation such as this in the 21st century where people are buried in ditches and stoned to death, I think the feelings we all get are indescribable.

She herself fainted when she heard the final verdict of her stoning.

She's obviously in a state that's indescribable.

She has children and is a human being who will be killed in a most tortuous method.

I'm sure she's very pained and desperate.

I'm sure, like so many others who have faced violations and have been saved by public opinion and pressure, she is hoping for our intervention.

In fact, our intervention is her only hope and her last chance.

TONY JONES: What sort of conditions is she being held under at the moment?

MARYAM NAMAZIE: I think, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran's prisons are clear.

It's not anywhere up to the standard of a prison system.

There is no real justice in that country.

The Islamic justice, for example, even specifies - there's a penal code which even specifies the size of the stone that has to be used in her stoning.

It specifies that the stones shouldn't be so large so as it would cause immediate death and should not be too small like pebbles that it won't cause enough pain.

We're talking about a system that specifies the size of stone that should be used, that allows the stoning of women and men to death, that hangs people in public by cranes on a regular basis.

So we can imagine her conditions right now, and the fact that she's basically in an incredibly desperate situation.

TONY JONES: We know there's a growing international protest movement about these forms of barbarity.

Are women inside Iran able to make any form of protest?

MARYAM NAMAZIE: As you said, the Islamic Republic of Iran is an repressive regime.

Political opposition, human rights groups are completely banned in that country.

Anything that's not linked to the regime is not allowed to operate.

But, despite the repression and despite a system which interferes and intervenes in every aspect of people's lives, women and men protest on a regular basis.

And there is protest in Iran.

For example, if you look at the case - the stoning case I mentioned earlier - she was a 20-plus woman who was stoned to death - I'm sorry, she was being stoned and, in the process of her stoning, the residents of the city of Bukan in Iranian Kurdistan opposed her stoning, resisted it and her life managed to be saved.

Both because of international pressure as well because of protests of residents in that city.

So it's something that's happening both outside the country as well as inside the country.

TONY JONES: We know that the largest number of asylum seekers in Europe are now coming from Iran.

We're also seeing asylum seekers from Iran in Australia.

Do you think those people by and large are running from these sort of conditions from this kind of regime?

MARYAM NAMAZIE: Most definitely.

I think since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranians have been one of the top nationalities applying for asylum worldwide.

Currently they're one of the largest.

The reasons they're fleeing are real.

The reasons they're fleeing are extremely real.

And Maryam Ayoubi's case is just one instance.

We're talking about a Government that enforces women's veil.

You don't even have the right to choose what you wear.

People are flogged for attending a new year party, listening to music, dancing with the opposite sex.

These are banned.

Women don't have the right to travel or work without their husband's permissions.

Girls from the age of nine are considered old enough to be married.

So we're talking about a system, for example, of complete sexual apartheid, where for example, women have separate instances to go into Government buildings and public services.

They have to sit at the back of the bus.

And the absurdity of it - even the Caspian Sea is divided by a curtain so that men and women don't swim together.

This is the situation people are fleeing from - two conditions where if you oppose the Government, if you're even a worker who's protesting because you haven't received wages for several months or you're trying to organise.

There's an example of a man who is a leader of the bakers' union.

He's been in prison for the past eight months.

His medical condition is extremely bad, given he's lost one kidney as a result of the torture he's seen.

And his other kidney is failing.

This is the condition that people are fleeing from.

They're not bogus, they're not there, they're not - of course everybody's seeking a better life but, primarily, Iranians are seeking safety and protection from the persecution that they face every day in the Islamic regime.

TONY JONES: We're about to lose the satellite.

We'll have to leave it there.

Thanks very much for joining us on Lateline.