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NEWS
MONTHLY BULLETIN - OCTOBER 2000
Monthly Bulletin of the Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
For correspondence, write to:
17, Rue des Gords, 95430 Auvers-sur-Oise, France
or send your email to: womenscommittee@iranncr.org

Women of Iranian Resistance in World March 2000 Against Poverty and Violence
Millions of women, from all ages and all nations, marched in mid-October to call for action against poverty and violence against women.

The participation of a worldwide network of some 5,000 NGOs from 159 countries made the World March 2000 a great success as they demonstrated the solidarity and determination of all women around the world to achieve gender equality, justice and peace on Earth.

The Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the Iranian women's associations participated in these events in Brussels, Washington D.C. and New York, among others.

World March of Women 2000 in Europe was held on Saturday, October 14 in Brussels. "The Third Millennium belongs to us," was the message they were enforcing and the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium received a delegation of the marchers.

The Women's March in Washington, D.C. was held on Sunday, October 15. "This march is against the champions of patriarchy that deny the human, democratic and social welfare of women," said Ramesh Sepehrrad, spokeswoman for the National Committee of Women for a Democratic Iran, an association supporting the National Council of Resistance.

On Tuesday, October 17, the International Day Against Poverty, thousands of women gathered in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. They chanted in at least 100 languages: "Solidarity for women of the world."

A petition signed by 4,616,352 women around the world and containing 17 demands to end poverty and violence, was presented to a representative of U.N. Secretary General. "(The U.N.) should strengthen democracy, but working only with governments is not enough...They should support people's and grass roots groups that work within communities," said an activist from Burkina Faso.

Spanish Premier's Wife Refuses to Go to Iran over Women's Rights
Mrs. Ana Botella decided not to accompany her husband, PrimeMinister Jose Maria Aznar, on his visit to Iran to express her rejection of the oppression suffered by women in that country. The refusal in this case is due to "everything that there is behind what the veil symbolizes in Iran" namely the treatment of women "and the violation of their rights." (BBC Monitoring Service)

An Iranian Woman Receives Literary Human Rights Award - Rivers of Blood
The New Human Rights Award for Literature for the year 2000 was granted to an Iranian woman, Fariba Hashtroudi, an author, journalist and archeologist and a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, for her novel, "Les rives du sang (Rivers of Blood)."

The award, an initiative by the New Human Rights Organization, was granted to Ms. Hashtroudi in a ceremony held at Palais de Lassay, site of the French National Assembly, in the presence of a number of ministers, parliamentarians and political and literary personalities of France on Tuesday, October 17.

Ms. Jacqueline Raoul-Duval, member of the jury who decided to grant the award to Fariba Hashtroudi, said, "We admire Fariba Hashtroudi for her professionalism and excellence, but also because she is a woman who has vowed to expose the savagery hidden in the depth of suffering and torture inflicted by the soldiers of the Islamic Revolution on little girls who are legally married at the age of eight, the youngsters who are wrapped in black chadors, the young and old women who are stoned or shot to death, and women who only have the freedom to commit suicide."

NEWS
Beat your wife, but don't leave any scars
ISNA, September 11 - Interview with Ayatollah Hossein Moussavi Tabrizi, former Revolutionary Prosecutor: The first solution to correct a woman who does not fulfill her nuptial duties, is not divorce. There are various ways to prevent the family's disintegration including the punishment of the wife in such a way that it would not leave any scars, otherwise the man will have to pay compensation."

Unmarried women need not travel abroad
Iranian state television, October 1 - A top cleric wrote to the Iranian Majlis speaker, expressing his opposition to the bill proposed in the Majlis to let unmarried women travel abroad alone to continue their education. Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi said: "This bill will neither solve any problems nor is it necessary in the first place."

Every six days a woman is mutilated in Tehran
AFP, October 16, Tehran - A woman in Tehran is raped, murdered and mutilated every six days as the capital faces an escalating crisis over runaways.The Iran paper said the bodies of 30 women, some of them underage, have been found in the past six months, all of them with their faces burned and all of them victims of rape.

Teenager imprisoned at home
AFP, September 24 - The state-run daily Iran wrote that a 15-year-old girl who had fled home to object to her father's second marriage, was arrested for wandering in the city and ordered to stay home for three months.