'Foreign Agents' Destabilizing Iranian Society

"My entire body was burning, but when I took some of my clothes off to cool down passersby didn't think of helping me, instead they kept telling me off for forgetting the dress code."
Iranian woman, victim of acid attack

"The acid throwing on our women, which is undoubtedly a horrific crime, is an act very much similar to the killing of Neda Agha Soltan whose murderer is walking on British streets freely and with impunity."
Javad Larijani, human rights secretary, Iran ministry of justice

"People should be in no doubt that the government is doing everything to arrest those responsible for these crimes. The most severe punishment awaits them."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

Iranian women, hiding their faces not to be identified, shout slogans during a protest in front of the judiciary building in Isfahan. Photo / AFP

"The surge in executions shows that President Rouhani has failed to deliver on campaign promises to improve the human rights situation in his country, a year after taking office."
"Unfortunately, a preponderance of reports communicated to me this past year indicate that the situation for individuals in Iran who advocate for the advancement of human rights, or those that document, report, or protest against human rights violations is grave and continues to deteriorate.    Interviews continue to impart that a majority of human rights defenders, including those that defend the rights of women, religious and ethnic minorities, as well as those that work to advance protections for the environment, workers and children continue to be subjected to harassment, arrest, interrogation, and torture and are frequently charged with vaguely-defined national security crimes, which is seemingly meant to erode the frontline of human rights defense in the country."
Ahmad Shaheed, UN special investigator on human rights

Ameneh Bahrami was blinded in both eyes in an acid attack by her suitor for turning down his marriage proposal. She spared him at the last minute from being blinded by acid as punishment for his crime. (Photo: © Reuters)

It is not only in Iran, but other Muslim countries as well where women have been targeted by acid attacks. And acid attacks are not uncommon in India with its ancient misogynistic culture of male entitlement. In India in particular, young men seem to feel entitled to disfigure women and girls who spurn their advances. Young beautiful women are in particular danger of being attacked in this manner if they anger a man whose attentions they have no interest in.

In a picture taken on December 6, 2012, Indian acid attack survivor Sonali Mukherjee (R) walks with her father Chandi Das Mukherjee at a Sikh Temple in New Delhi. (SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images)

But In Iran, the attacks are directly related to incitement from mosques, particularly in the ancient city of Isfahan where thousands mounted an angry demonstration last week even while smaller protests took place in Tehran. Clerics in Isfahan took to their pulpits to incite against the wickedness of women affecting "bad hijab", translated as a lax adherence to the formal dress code. "Immodest dress" charges have led to acid attacks.

When the protests took place, authorities responded by taking into custodial detention Arya Jafari, a photojournalist documenting the protests, along with two reporters, Zahra Mohammadi, head of Isna news agency's office in Isfahan, and Sanam Farsi, its social affairs editor. In the event, four men were arrested in relation to the acid attacks, with their names and the charges against them held from public view.

The administration charges that the acid attacks have nothing to do with Iran other than Iran is the chosen locale for evildoers from abroad to perform these horrendous acts of violence against Iranian women.

The allusion to the 26-year-old university student, Neda Agha, whose face became a symbol in the West of Iranian dissent against a corrupt election campaign in 2009 that re-elected the infamous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when she was shot to death as an onlooker, during its popular 'green' demonstrations, reveals the country's refusal to take responsibility for its human-rights abuse record.

Just as Muslims throughout the Middle East and Europe contend that the 9/11 attacks were the secret work of collusion between the George W. Bush administration and Zionist Israel, to defame Islam, Iran persists in maintaining the killing of the young university student was the work of British agents intent on defaming the Islamic Republic of Iran. The people on the streets haven't been deterred; their 'garbage' radar is firmly fixed to the truth station.

When the UN rapporteur on human rights, Ahmad Shaheed, declared himself appalled by the hanging Saturday of Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, who was convicted of murder in her self-defence against an intelligence officer who had raped her, his report was labelled "biased and at the service of arrogant world powers", by Iran's ministry of justice human rights secretary.

Under claims that Mr. Shaheed's reports were based on information provided by Iranian opposition groups (some members of whom have long been imprisoned and were indeed interviewed by Mr. Shaheed and for their pains were later tortured in an attempt to extract from them information of just what they informed the human rights investigator of, later denying that the torture they inflicted on the prisoners represented 'reprisals'), Amoli Larijani, head of Iranian judiciary, damned the report.