STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news now - we're going to hear from two Iranian women who've spent time in prison for protesting their government's dress code. The protest began a couple of years ago when an Iranian Kurdish woman died in police custody after she was accused of wearing her head scarf improperly. NPR has agreed to use only the women's first names to protect them from retaliation for speaking to a foreign news outlet. Here's NPR's Peter Kenyon.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: I spoke with Shaqayeq, a 38-year-old former journalist from Tehran. She says her third arrest was the most dramatic with armed men showing up at 3 or 4 in the morning to take her to prison, where she spent nearly a month in solitary confinement. But for the last five days, she says she was moved to another cell with one other inmate, an activist named Varisheh. Shaqayeq says she was the first person Varisheh had seen in four months. She described meeting the activist as a life changing experience.
SHAQAYEQ: (Through interpreter) We talked and shared things about our lives. I got to hear about her social activism and the things she had done. I especially remember one thing - her spirit of hope and faith in the resistance.
KENYON: Varisheh is facing the death penalty. And SHAQAYEQ says she knows she could also be sentenced to death for protesting. Two other activists she knows have already been given the death penalty based on charges she calls delusional.
VARISHEH: (Through interpreter) These are all strange and rare things to hear. It feels like living under totalitarian rule. Your womanhood is being criminalized. Being a woman who fights for her rights, who is politically active, it is considered to be a crime.
KENYON: Another activist, Motaherreh, says the regime has even threatened her family to make her stop protesting. She says they put pressure on her father and her husband.
MOTAHERREH: (Through interpreter) My father is a war veteran and is schizophrenic. They threatened him many times to force me to stop. On top of that, they put my husband under so much pressure that he divorced me.
KENYON: Analyst Sanam Vakil, director of the Mideast and North Africa program for the London based think tank Chatham House, says these recent crackdowns have received a lot of international attention and earned widespread condemnation for the regime. But she says it's important to remember that while Iranian security forces are keen to portray this as business as usual, more people are now witnessing Iranian women rising up and refusing to submit to the will of the state when it comes to their fundamental rights.
SANAM VAKIL: It certainly shows the ferocity and determination of Iranian women who have been, for four decades, at the forefront of activism and pressing for greater rights. But of course, they need much more international support - support from NGOs, Western governments - to champion their cases and to provide solidarity under this immense repressive system that refuses to back down.
KENYON: In Vakil's view, that's currently not happening. She's hearing positive rhetoric for the women risking their liberty or even their lives for this cause but not seeing anything near to adequate moves on the ground to back it up.
VAKIL: Unfortunately, right now, it appears that Western governments are having a hard time walking and chewing gum on the range of challenges they face vis a vis the Islamic Republic. Iran's nuclear program is advancing. We're on the precipice of Iranian response against Israel for Israel's assassination against the Hamas leader. In this climate of tensions, pressing on human rights and women's rights above all falls to the wayside. And this is an unfortunate reality.
KENYON: September 16 will mark the second anniversary of the death and custody of 22-year-old Mahsa - or Jina - Amini, detained by Iran's so called morality police for an alleged head scarf violation.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERMANOS GUTIERREZ'S "MESA REDONDA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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