IRAN BANS "WOMEN" – THE SHUTTING DOWN OF ZANAN

Number 21 ● 15 April 2008

On January 28^th, 2008, the Fars news agency was the first to report that the independent journal Zanan ("Women"), the most prominent journal for women published in Iran, is destined for closure according to state authorities. Supplementary reports further indicated that the government-controlled Press Supervisory Board revoked the journal’s license for “publishing information of a morally dubious nature” and presenting a gloomy image of women in the Islamic Republic with the intention of "harming the public’s mental health.”

The crackdown on Zanan follows an extensive pre-summer campaign launched by the authorities in April 2007 against women who violate Iran’s dress code, and recent clampdown on social activists and human and women’s rights organizations. It also reflects the continuous campaign on the part of Iran's conservative-dominated Judiciary, headed by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to assiduously neutralize the independent press in the country. Such measures are especially evident in light of the upcoming 2009 presidential elections and the mounting criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who has not yet produced the socio-economic reforms he promised during his 2005 election campaign.

With its shutdown, Zanan joined a long list of publications banned in the past decade, such as the daily Zan ("Woman"), founded by Fa'ezeh Hashemi, daughter of former President 'Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Payam-e Hajar ("The Message of Hajar") edited by A'zam Taleqani, daughter of the late senior cleric Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqani (closed down in 1999 and 2000 respectively). However, as opposed to its predecessors, Zanan had managed over the years to overcome difficulties and survived the extensive press purge of 2000-2001. Zanan's last published volume online, numbered 152, marked 16 years of ongoing activity, an impressive achievement given the short life of most of the independent publications in Iran (and especially those for women) during the last century.

The monthly journal Zanan was founded in late 1991 with the professed intention of protecting and promoting the rights of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the course of its publication, the journal abstained from addressing direct political issues that might have endangered its existence, but rather published in-depth investigative articles on a range of social issues bearing political implications. In 1998, the journal exposed the growing number of HIV/AIDS carriers in Iran, and pointed out the apathy of the authorities towards this phenomenon. In other volumes, the journal addressed issues such as the discrimination against women in universities, domestic violence, panhandling, increase in prostitution and the high suicide rates in Iran.

Throughout the 1990s Zanan gradually emerged as a major feminist “institution” and a mirror reflecting the social realities in Iran to outside observers. In the post-war era, following eight years of war against Iraq and the Islamic militant ideology that accompanied it on the home front, different streams of thought and diverse voices on social and feminist issues were exposed in Zanan's pages. In many of its issues, Zanan also explored and debated the regime’s policies through theoretical discourse, interviews, cultural research, legal analysis and advice, literary and film reviews and so forth. In January 2003, with the celebration of its 100^th volume and twelfth year of operation, Zanan launched an online edition (www.zanan.co.ir).

Zanan’s founder and managing editor, Shahla Sherkat was an enthusiastic supporter of the new regime during the early 1980s. Following the Iran-Iraq war, Sherkat increased her social and feminist activism, and in the early 1990s she was fired from the editorial team of the state controlled magazine Zan-e Rouz ("The Woman Today") for expressing “modernist, Western and feminist tendencies”. Consequently, after her dismissal, Sherkat founded Zanan in a section allotted to her in the offices of the intellectual and philosophical monthly Kiyan. Similar to Zanan, the founding of Kiyan in the early 1990s was prompted by journalists (later known as the Kiyan circle) who were dismissed for their intellectual leanings from Kayhan network, which was confiscated from its owners after the 1979 revolution and subjugated to the office of the Republic’s spiritual leader. Up until its closure in 2001, Kiyan regularly published articles by the theologian and philosopher 'Abdul-Karim Soroush and played a central role in the development and promotion of the concept of civil society in a theocratic state – an idea that President Mohammad Khatami adopted later in his presidential electoral campaign of 1997.

Over the course of its years of publication, Zanan prevailed over financial hardships, official warnings, threats of suspension, and legal impediments on the part of the authorities. Between March and April 2000 the Supreme Spiritual Leader launched an attack on the press in a series of sermons and speeches, triggering a wide-ranging crackdown on the local media. Ayatollah 'Ali Khamene'i denounced the reform movement and complained that several unnamed publications are utilized as a “stronghold for the enemy”, and engaged in the promotion of "American-style reforms". Consequently, over forty newspapers and periodicals were shut down. According to the Reporters sans frontières annual report, during this period Iran was the country with the highest number of journalists and media personalities imprisoned, among them: Akbar Ganji, editorial board member of the daily Fath ("Victory") and reporter of the newspaper Sobh-e Emruz ("This Morning"); 'Ezzatollah Sahabi and Hoda Saber of the bi-weekly periodical Iran-e Farda ("Tomorrow's Iran"), and Mohammad Hassan 'Alipour, the publisher of the weekly Aban.

The sweeping wave of detentions and newspaper closures in 2000 transpired in the midst of debates over the amendment of the Press Law and following a controversial conference that was held in Berlin under the auspices of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The April 2000 conference was entitled, “Iran Following the Elections” and addressed the Majlis (Parliament) elections that had taken place approximately two months earlier. The conference featured a group of senior lecturers identified at that time with the reform movement in Iran, including religious figures, intellectuals, lawyers, human rights activists, editors and journalists. The Iranian leadership saw this conference as an attempt to undermine the regime's basic framework and severe legal actions were taken against the participants on their return. The editor of Zanan, who participated in the conference, was sentenced to four months in prison, but in contrast to other publications that were shut down at the time, the authorities allowed Zanan to continue publishing until January 2008.

Zanan's closure, a short time prior to the Majlis elections (March 14, 2008), suggests a continuous campaign of repression directed at the reform movement in Iran and at the independent press. This campaign can be dated back to the elections for the seventh parliament in 2004, which was dominated by members of the ultra-conservative faction. The government's move to shutdown Zanan has reverberated through Iran and around the world, prompting international petitions that called on Iran's leadership to renew the journal's license. Zanan’s legal advisor even claimed that the order to shut down the publication is illegal, since it does not meet the procedures stipulated by law. However, a legal procedure against the state on such an issue entails a long, drawn-out process that is beyond the journal’s financial resources. Moreover, while in the past publishers and editors could renew their operation under a different name, the Press Law of 2000 makes this option rather difficult.

About a dozen newspapers have been banned from publishing in Iran since early January 2008, yet despite repeated crackdowns the Iranian leadership is obliged to take cautious steps towards the local media. On July 8 1999, the closure of the daily Salam ("Peace") incited a week of violent rioting, which began with a students’ demonstration at Teheran University and then spread rapidly to other cities. “The 18thof Tir” (the date according to the Persian calendar on which the demonstration began), has become a symbol of social protest.

Considering the troubled history of the press in Iran, Sherkat was aware of the delicate stature of her journal. Upon receiving the 2005 Courage in Journalism Award from the Washington based International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), she cautiously underscored that “in developing countries, journalism is like walking on a tightrope. One false step might lead to a downfall.” Zanan's last issue was posted online in February 2^nd, a couple of days after the initial announcement of its closure. The 152^ndissue is dedicated to the late Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, who was assassinated on December 27, 2007. Playing with Bhutto's first name, the journal's front cover headline reads: "Benazir/unique - woman of steel and shot silk". Marking the end of her era, Bhutto's profile is featured on a red color sheet as she holds her left hand high in sign of peace. Upon the closure of the journal, this front cover acquires an additional symbolic feature as it bears the end of Zanan's era as well■

*Liora Hendelman-Baavur is a research fellow of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

The Alliance Center for Iranian Studies (ACIS)

Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv 61390, Tel Aviv P.O.B. 39040, Israel

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Iran Pulse 21 ● April 15, 2008 © All rights reserved.