Women and Suicide in Iran Law, Marriage and Honour Killing

1st Edition

Visit the link below to download the full version of this book:

https://medipdf.com/product/women-and-suicide-in-iran-law-marriage-and-honour-ki
lling-1st-edition/

Click Download Now

Women and Suicide in Iran
Law, Marriage and Honour-Killing

S. Behnaz Hosseini
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2022 S. Behnaz Hosseini
The right of S. Behnaz Hosseini to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or

registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hosseini, S. Behnaz, author.
Title: Women and suicide in Iran : law, marriage and honour-killing / S.
Behnaz Hosseini.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge Books, 2022. |
Series: Routledge research in gender and society | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021018128 (print) | LCCN 2021018129 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032073347 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032077253 (pbk) | ISBN
9781003208501 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Suicide--Iran. | Women--Suicidal behavior. | Women--
Violence against.
Classification: LCC HV6548.I7 H67 2022 (print) | LCC HV6548.I7
(ebook) | DDC 362.28082--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018128
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018129
ISBN: 978-1-032-07334-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-07725-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-20850-1 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003208501

Typeset in Times New Roman

by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface

1 Traditional society and violence against women

2 Honour killings and the rule of Islamic law

3 Child marriage and its consequences: poverty, addiction, and

divorce

4 Marriage and life after divorce: caught between tradition,

poverty, and suicide

References
Index

Acknowledgements
This book is based on research conducted on the Kurdish women in Iran
between 2017 and 2020. I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues
for encouraging me to start this work, persevere with it, and finally publish
it. In Iran, I thank Saedeh Dehnavi for academic support and fieldwork in
Kurdistan. I visited Iran in 2017 and interviewed people in most of the
cities in the Kurdish region. I am so grateful to the women and families who
agreed to share their stories with me, and I hope I will help to list each of
their voices.
In the Oxford and during my fellowship at FRSG group in
Anthropology department at Oxford University, I am grateful to my
professors, Philip Kreger and Soraya Tremayne, for their advice and
support during the finalization of this project. I am also grateful to my
colleague Ourania Roditi, who has read and commented on several
chapters.
Completion of this book has been a lonely and painstaking process. The
acute sensitivity of the subject, lack of sufficient resources, hesitancy and
fear of the people during interview, and misinformation and false rumours
emanating from Iranian officials and their opponents made it more difficult.
My research was funded by a small grant with JIWS in the USA.
I would like to thank ÖH Sonderprojekt for their support with
publication.
Preface

In 2017 I was requested by the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation

Service (IND) to give an expert report on a sensitive case: namely, whether
there was any reasonable justification for a 16-year-old girl not to report an
honour crime to the Iranian authorities, that is, an attempt on her life by her
father. While the Dutch Immigration Service did not dispute that a crime
was committed against my client and her now dead sister, she was denied
asylum in the Netherlands. The IND stated that, while it understood the
difficulty women have when going to the police to report domestic violence
in countries such as Iran, it is not impossible to do so. This crime was so
heinous—the client was heavily burnt and her sister killed—that the IND
found it incomprehensible that she did not go to the police.
That girl is now a 22-year-old woman. She is Kurdish-Iranian from the
city of Sarpol-e Zahab in Kermanshah, and she and her family belong to the
Ahl-e Ḥaqq (Yarsan) religion. She was born in 1997 and the crime was
committed on 30 or 31 October 2013, when she was just 16. A paternal
uncle of my client had proposed to her father that the girl should marry his
son (my client’s cousin). Although her father agreed, the young girl refused
because the groom-to-be was too old, and she was in love with somebody
else. She did not, however, tell her father about her boyfriend, a student she
knew from school.
The two had been showing interest in each other for a few months but
had never spoken, then he approached her and she agreed to spend some
time with him. In October 2013 my client and her boyfriend were kissing in
a car near a park, and they were seen by her father. When she got home, her
father confronted her and beat her. He made it clear that he wanted her to
marry her cousin. My client was locked in her room and forbidden from
attending school. After a few days, her father dragged her outside, doused
her in petrol, and tried to set her on fire. Her sister Nasrin, who tried to
intervene, caught fire as well and later died in the hospital. My client
managed to escape. She found a bucket of dirty water in a neighbour’s
courtyard to put out the flames, and the neighbour drove her to the hospital
where she was treated for severe burns. She stayed in the hospital for about
two months, not knowing that her sister had died, as the hospital staff and
her maternal uncle kept that information from her. During her time in the
hospital, her paternal uncle (the father of the cousin she was supposed to
marry) visited her and threatened to kill her if she went to the police.
Two months later, her maternal uncle took her home. His family nursed
my client, who was still very ill and bedridden for many months, unable to
even go to the bathroom. She stayed with her uncle for two years as he took
care of her. One year on, my client was still unable to go to school, so her
uncle arranged for a teacher to come to the house a few times a week. After
two years, he told my client that her father had been threatening him,
demanding that he should throw her out of his house. Her uncle said that
she would never be safe in Iran and arranged for her to immigrate illegally
to Europe, paying for this journey. That is the story of how she came to be
in the Netherlands.
My report to the IND stated how uncommon it is for women to contact
the police for fear of tarnishing the family’s reputation and bringing
dishonour. In this particular case, nobody tried to seek justice and/or
protection from the Iranian authorities. As there have been cases where
Iranian courts convicted fathers on the grounds of violence/attempted
murder against their daughters, the IND argued that there was no reason for
the client not to press charges against her father. Another point they took
into account was that my client stayed in Iran for two years after the assault.
As a result, the IND stated that she had ample opportunity to seek justice
and protection against her father and his brother from the Iranian
authorities. The IND also claimed that it would have been expected of my
client to at least attempt to report this crime with the help of her maternal
uncle, who took care of her.
In conclusion, it is undeniable that she could have asked her uncle to go
to the police on her behalf. The IND did not accept my client’s explanation
that it was not culturally permissible for her uncle to press charges against
his brother-in-law. Apparently, her father had come to the house while she
was ill and tried to take her away and kill her; however, she was not aware
of this visit. My client was extremely anxious due to the fact that the IND
did not believe her explanation that, based on the prevailing cultural norms
and customs in her country, filing criminal charges against her father was
simply not an option.
My recommendations reflected my client’s opinion: that she was
eligible for asylum as, based on Islamic law and the prevailing social
norms, it had not been feasible or realistic to file criminal charges against
her father. Although my client was eventually granted asylum, this example
illustrates the challenges that thousands of refugee women face when
authorities in potential host countries cannot understand the particular
circumstances prevailing in these women’s countries of origin. This
extraordinary story prompted me to write a book on the different aspects of
gender-based violence that women around the world are subjected to. Since
many of these violent crimes lead to death and the majority go unreported, I
came to see this publication as an effort to make women’s voices heard and
provide the world with much-needed information and understanding about
the help they so desperately need.

1 Traditional society and violence

against women

DOI: 10.4324/9781003208501-1

This publication aims to break new ground in discussing the painful and
difficult subject of gender violence—in its many different manifestations—
in Iranian Kurdistan. The topic has lain dormant, at least until quite
recently, and in fact has never been fully addressed. The fieldwork for the
present study was conducted by the author in Iranian Kurdistan in 2018.
Although my analysis of concepts such as honour, shame, patriarchy, and
gender-based violence relate to women throughout the country, some
aspects of honour-based violence (HBV) affect Iranian Kurds more severely
than other communities in Iran.
Iran is the second-largest country in the Middle East, the 17th largest in
the world, and with 87 million inhabitants, the 17th most populous. Its
ethnic makeup is complex, and there are large socio-economic differences
among the country’s regions. Iranian Kurdistan includes the provinces of
West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam, and Hamadan, and borders
Iraq and Turkey. There is also a significant Kurdish population in the North
Khorasan Province in north-eastern Iran.
 The Kurds themselves generally consider Iranian Kurdistan (eastern
Kurdistan) to be one of the four parts of Greater Kurdistan, a roughly
defined geo-cultural historical region where the Kurdish people make up
the majority of the population. Greater Kurdistan is also comprised of parts
of south-eastern Turkey (northern Kurdistan), northern Syria (western
Kurdistan), and northern Iraq (southern Kurdistan). The majority of the 4.5
million Iranian Kurds are Sunni Muslims and are settled across the borders
of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria (Koohi-Kamali, 2003). An additional four
million Kurds are estimated to live in Iraq, 10–12 million in Turkey, and
600,000 in Syria (Eickelman, 1998: 203).
The capital of Kurdistan Province in Iran is Sanandaj. With a population
of 414,069, it is the 23rd-largest city in Iran and the second-largest Kurdish
city. Sanandaj was founded about 200 years ago, yet, in its short existence,
it has grown to become the centre of Kurdish culture. Today, the population
of Sanandaj is mainly Kurdish; it used to have an Armenian minority which
gradually emigrated from the city. According to the latest census by the
Iranian Statistical Centre in 2011, Kurdistan Province had almost 1.5
million inhabitants. Urban residents made up 66% of the total, while the
rest lived in rural areas.
According to a labour force survey published by the Statistics Centre of
Iran in 2018, the unemployment rate in Iran for 2017 was 12.1% in total:
10.2% for men and 19.8% for women. The percentage of unemployment in
urban centres and in the countryside was 13.4% and 8.2%, respectively,
while the unemployment rate for the regions of Kermanshah and North
Khorasan was 21.6% and 9.7% (Statistical Centre of Iran, 2017–2018). In
the Kurdish region of Iran, unemployment triggers a sense of vulnerability
and causes individuals to fear for their future. Unemployment also creates a
sense of loneliness and alienation due to meagre social support and non-
existent government support such as social benefits, cash transfers, or loans.
There is a large inequality gap between the Kurdish region and other
regions, especially in the big cities.
Runciman (1966) points out that individuals perceive basic inequalities
by comparing their position with the same “reference group” in the same
category to understand their relative deprivation gap. For the whole
community, however, other indicators of inequality are effective. A good
overall measure of one’s standard of living in a society is the cost of food
(Runciman, 1966). As incomes rise, the total percentage of income spent on
food decreases, and the share of non-food items, such as education, health,
housing, etc., grows. The lower the food costs in a society, the higher the
society’s standard of living. In accordance with the Iranian Household
Budget Survey from 1985 to 2017, the amount of income spent on food in
urban Kurdistan was about 50% that of urban Iran, generally, while the
share of food in the villages was very similar to villages in other areas. This
was probably due to the general gap in living standards between rural and
urban areas. According to the Statistical Centre of Iran, by 2017, the
percentage allocated by households to food, in both rural and urban areas,
was 37.2%, up by 13.9% compared to 2016.1
After centuries of monarchic rule by bilingual Turkic- and Persian-
speaking dynasties, and despite the multilingual, multi-ethnic diversity of
the population, Persian nationalists under Reza Shah, who was in power
from 1925 to 1941, declared that Iran could only have one national
language and one national culture. Intensifying the nexus between
language, culture, and race, they spread Persian Aryanism as a scientific
fact, creating a nationalist discourse or, more precisely, a set of identitarian
narratives on culture that would shape not only Iranian politics but also
social science research, the writing of history, and public debate for the
century to come. It is convenient here to use two (admittedly simplistic)
labels to describe the mindsets: “nationalists” and “ethnicists”. The
nationalists claimed to represent a reified Iranian nation, which the
ethnicists argued is based on one ethnic group; the ethnicists sometimes
referred to ethnic groups as nations without citizenship, in other words,
those of Kurdish ethnicity were not citizens of Iran (Saleh, 2013: 204).
Under Reza Shah, Kurds were no longer allowed to wear their traditional
attire, a source of national pride. Kurds did not discard their attire, but
rather kept it hidden, and the tribespeople in the mountains never really
abandoned it at all (Roosevelt, 1947: 251).
The Kurdish regions in Iran enjoyed semi-autonomy until the late
1800s, but Kurdish claims for self-determination were suppressed by Reza
Shah in the 1930s (Ghanea-Hercock, 2003: 12–16). In the aftermath of
World War I, a major blow to the Kurdish quest for emancipation came
when the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and later the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne
quashed their dreams of being an independent state. The idea of Kurdish
freedom returned during the occupation of Iran by Allied forces in 1941. As
the Iranian army retreated and crumbled, much of its weaponry fell into
Kurdish hands, while at the same time, many of the exiled Kurdish leaders
were freed and were ready to return to their communities. The Soviet
occupation of the area also emboldened the local Kurdish population. The
indirect reliance of the Soviets on Kurdish tribes for the preservation of
security in the region meant that the occupying power hesitated to subdue
hopes for an independent statehood. In the end, the Soviets, who were not
particularly trusted by the Kurds due to their history of brutality against
them at the end of World War I, extended an official invitation to 31 local
significant Kurdish chiefs to visit the Soviet Union (Eagleton, 1963: 14–
16).
Soon afterwards, in the town of Mahabad in western Iran, a committee
called the Society for the Revival of Kurdistan was formed, chaired by Qazi
Muhammad. With Soviet support, on 22 January 1946, the short-lived
Republic of Mahabad was established (Ansari, 2003: 88) and the Kurdish
nationalists gained a foothold in Iran. Nevertheless, on 15 December of the
same year, the Republic collapsed. This was mainly due to lack of tangible
Soviet support and the opposition displayed by the tribes. Their opposition
was heavily influenced by economic motives; for example, the tribesmen
were severely affected by the loss of tobacco trade between them and the
rest of the country, which was suspended following the Soviet presence
(Roosevelt, 1947: 265). There was a heavy presence of government security
forces in the Kurdish areas, and the activities of Kurdish separatist groups,
such as the Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party, were closely monitored
(Koohi-Kamali, 2003). Put somewhere else, the Kurds realised, following
the withdrawal of the occupying army, how great their dependence had been
on the Soviets economically and militarily. Finally, under pressure from the
Western powers, including the United States, Iranian forces entered
Mahabad, burnt Kurdish books, closed the printing presses, banned the
language, and executed insurgents including Qazi Muhammad himself
(McDowall, 2004: 245).

Introduction
The 1978–1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, which led to the overthrow of
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ended with the approval in December 1979
of a new theocratic constitution and the declaration of Sayyid Ruhollah
Musavi Khomeini, known in the West as Ayatollah Khomeini, as supreme
leader of Iran.
The Kurds participated in the revolution of 1979 and presented demands
for a federal democratic state, the recognition of the Kurdish language, and
the use of said language in education and publications. Several anti-regime
demonstrations took place in the main Kurdish cities of Mahabad, Paveh,
Kermanshah, Marivan, and Sanadaj (Maghsodi, 2001: 297). After the Kurds
were denied a seat in the Assembly of Experts, which convened in 1979 to
draw up the new constitution, Ayatollah Khomeini warned the Kurdish
leaders that any attempts to undermine Iran’s territorial integrity would be
crushed, and he sent the Revolutionary Guards to north-east Iran to tackle
the Kurdish insurgency (Zabih, 1982: 85). Despite Khomeini’s warnings, in
1979, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (founded in 1945) rebelled and
demanded full self-determination, which the regime in Tehran perceived as
an attempt at anti-Persian separatism (Hiro, 2013: 152). In response,
Khomeini issued a Jihad and a Fatwa against the Iranian Kurds in the same
year, declared its leaders enemies of the state, and initiated a military
campaign against them. The hostilities continued well into 1980. Despite
heavy casualties, the Kurdish leaders evaded capture and retreated to the
mountains. The military campaign against the Kurds ended with hundreds
of deaths and the banning of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan.
Oppression persisted through the 1980s. Widespread poverty and starvation,
killings, and executions were common while Khomeini’s Jihad was still in
effect. The 1979 rebellion eventually ended in 1982 with 10,000 Kurds
killed and 200,000 displaced. The repression continued with killings,
executions, and imprisonments, which, together with a lack of economic
rejuvenation, further impoverished the region (Vali, 1998, 2003, 2014,
2015).
Unsurprisingly, the situation of the Kurds in Iran resurfaced during the
Iran–Iraq War. Suffering and death were widespread, and Kurdistan
underwent further social and economic destruction. In fact, by appealing to
the patriotism of Iranians, the Islamic government consolidated its power
over liberal voices in the country. The outbreak of the war occurred only
shortly after the revolution, which in a way precipitated the “concentration
and centralisation of power and the evolution of the instrument of
oppression” (Saleh, 2013: 34). A wholesale oppression of the Kurdish
people then began. According to Human Rights Watch, in addition to the
destruction of many Kurdish villages, a large segment of the Kurdish
population was displaced, and vast areas were contaminated with landmines
(Human Rights Watch, 2019). It is estimated that 16 million landmines
were laid during the Iran–Iraq War and are still located along the western
border of Iran.2
On 28–29 June 1987, during the Iran–Iraq War, and although the city of
Sardasht in West Azerbaijan Province on Iran’s border with Iraq was not
considered a military target, Saddam Hussein attacked it with what is
believed to be mustard gas. This city, where Kurds were the dominant
ethnicity, ranked first in deaths from suicide in 1991. After the war,
although there was some minimal reconstruction work done by the local
business sector, the region continued to suffer from stark underdevelopment
(Vali, 2020). Even now, after all these years, many of the survivors suffer
from respiratory problems, while a large number of people suffer from
long-term psychological and mental health problems as the result of the
attack (Shaddox, 2007).
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kurds supported the reformist
Mohammad Khatami for president and enjoyed a short-lived, although not
far-reaching, freedom to express themselves. A Kurdish party was
established, which entered the Iranian Parliament in 1997. Newspapers and
magazines started to be published in the Kurdish language; cultural and
literary organisations were set up; and the first Shiite Kurd, Abdollah
Ramazanzadeh, was appointed as governor of Iranian Kurdistan. However,
these reforms did not last, as Khatami was unable to stand firm against the
hardliners in his party. Their main concern was that Khatami’s “realpolitik”,
which sought to both reinforce and reconcile patriotism and national pride
in the country’s rich heritage with a recognition of Iran’s ethnic and cultural
diversity, would undermine the regime’s “political legitimacy” and the
values of the Islamic Revolution (Saleh, 2013: 49–50).
The Kurds boycotted the 2005 elections, when the hardliner Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was elected president. One of the main issues for the Iranian
Kurds was the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq,
which was legally declared an autonomous governing body within the state
of Iraq in 2005, following the Iraq War in 2003. The protests that broke out
were, once again, violently suppressed by the Iranian security forces.
Kurdish disillusionment with Iranian politics continued even when the
moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013 and again in 2017 (Gunter,
2020: 62–63). Discrimination in the areas of housing, employment, and
political rights alongside arbitrary arrests, persecutions, and torture
persisted, while Kurdish parents were even prohibited from giving Kurdish
names to their children. As unemployment dramatically increased, many
local youths left for other cities seeking jobs.
The desperate financial situation and the lack of viable options have
given rise to the phenomenon of Kulbari. A Kolbar is a man or woman who
is employed to carry goods on their back across the borders. Kolbars bypass
customs and travel through mountainous roads under harsh conditions. The
urgency to address this phenomenon has become more acute, with one
Iranian non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Hengaw, stating that in
2018, 231 Kolbars were killed or severely injured (Gunter, 2020: 67).
During the second week of June 2020 alone, two Kolbars were shot and
wounded as they were crossing the border areas of Bāneh and Sardasht in
the provinces of Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan (Kurdistan Human Rights
Network, 2020). There are no reliable statistics about the number of
Kurdish girls without fathers nor about widows and wives whose husbands
have disappeared or were imprisoned or killed. This practice unearths many
issues, such as the harshness of the working conditions, the risks involved,
and that these men and women are often targeted by the border guards, who
suspect them of smuggling drugs and other contraband.
Permanent reopening of border crossings, achieving sustainable
development, and guaranteeing security for Kolbars’ passage are some of
the hot topics these days in the border provinces of the country, since these
issues affect the lives of thousands. In 2019, for some unknown reason, the
passage of Kolbars in the border provinces of the country, and in particular
in Kurdistan, was blocked. It did not reopen until the representatives of the
border towns of Bāneh, Marivan, Sarababad, and Saghez brought the issue
to the Islamic Consultative Assembly and provincial authorities. For a
period of one month, the passports required to pass the crossing were
temporarily returned, pending a decision by the Ministry of Interior on a
more permanent solution. (Border guards and economic activists believe
that Kulbari borders should reopen and remain permanently open.)
Although this line of work is exceptionally dangerous since people have to
walk among mountain cliffs and minefields, it makes up significant
economic activity, and it still is the main job opportunity in the area.
According to statistics, 60,000 Kurds are working as Kolbars, smuggling
goods through the Kulbari passages in the province, which contributes to
the poverty and social damage in these border areas. This could cause
further damage to the economy of the country. In the context of opening
and managing the Kulbari passages in the country’s border provinces,
strategic plans and approaches are required in order to take advantage of
these passages in a way that leads to sustainable development and security
for everybody involved. Of course, the reopening of these passages will
lead to a greater dependency on the central authorities, since they are, after
all, responsible for border control. It should be noted that Kurdistan
Province has four border stretches in the city of Bāneh and Marivan through
these Kulbari passages.
Throughout their history, Kurds have been denied the right to
nationhood, and as a result they have been subjected to systematic violence
within the territories they inhabited (Khayati, 2008: 68–69). In the case of
Iran, Kurds have been subjected to “systematic and sophisticated violence”,
and their quest for democracy has been labelled as separatist, threatening
the territorial integrity of the country. Military operations in the region have
resulted in additional violence and have forced thousands of Kurds to flee
(Khayati, 2008: 68–69). Given that Iranian Kurds, alongside Baluchis, are
the only non-Persian and non-Shia communities in the country, they have
suffered severely from widespread discrimination, deprivation, and unequal
access to economic opportunities (Saleh, 2013: 123). As a result, Kurdish
regions remain socially and economically destitute: the poorest and most
undeveloped regions in Iran with the highest rates of unemployment
(Kaviani Rad, 2007: 103–114). Because of the state’s discriminatory
policies against the Kurds, the economic opportunities in these areas do not
measure up to those in other parts of Iran. These regions are also the least
educated areas in the country (Mohammadpour & Soleimani, 2020). Yet,