Enough is Enough

Dear UN Secretary-General, António Guterres

Enough is Enough – Open letter of Protest to UNGA 77

As you prepare to receive world leaders at the UN annual meeting among them will be the president of the Islamic Republic. This open letter of protest is not only about the unrepresentative nature of his presence but the way the Islamic regime in its entirety views and treats the Iranian nation, in particular, Iranian women.

The appearance of Iranian women has been a symbol for the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. However, since 2005 when the then President Khatami, as the head of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, issued a directive to the coercive apparatus of the State and its affiliates to propagate the culture of hejab and chastity, an open war has been declared on the women of Iran and their place within society.

From the original discriminatory laws affecting every aspect of women’s lives, to disregarding international obligations, refusal to accede to and ratify CEDAW, to legislating against the presence of women in public spaces and work places, to adversely affecting the physical and mental health  of women by prohibiting birth control and actively encouraging multiple child birth to setting up numerous judicial and extra judicial agencies and patrols to control women’s appearance in public have made criminals of hundreds of thousands of women for non-observance of the hejab rules, long prison terms, forced televised confessions and now culminating in the tragic death of a young twenty two year old woman, Jina (Mahsa) Amini, while in police custody.

The level of violence targeted at Iranian women in law and in practice is neither tolerable nor acceptable. It can no longer be allowed to continue. The judicial and extra-judicial persecution, ill-treatment and harassment of women must stop.

The international community has a collective responsibility in sustaining this regime and is complicit in the state sponsored violence perpetrated against women in Iran by condoning the regime’s actions through financial support and EU’s actions in colluding with the regime to evade sanctions through various mechanisms. We ask you as the highest international arbiter and the Secretary General of the United Nations in a spirit of solidarity with the Iranian nation, to defend their rights violated systematically by the entirety of the Islamic regime who are squandering the future of our country Iran.

Enough is enough.

Respectfully

Hossein Ladjevardi

President – ACI

Paris – September 20, 2022