An Iranian-born writer and activist for women’s rights in her home country wrote that, forced by the regime, “my sister publicly disowned me on prime-time Iranian television,” in an op-ed published Tuesday in The New York Times.
Masih Alinejad, a journalist and founder of the My Stealthy Freedom movement, which encourages Iranian women to rebel against Iran’s mandatory hijab laws, wrote that over the course of twenty years, “the Islamic Republic has tried to intimidate me and my family.”
Alinejad recounted that she was forced to flee her native land, after “exposing the regime’s mismanagement and corruption” and later “for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
But the attacks on her and her family increased, after she founded My Stealthy Freedom in 2014. Though Alinejad is in the West, her family, still in Iran, “has taken the brunt.” Relatives have faced financial pressure, such as having licenses to operate businesses threatened unless relatives offered damaging information about her. Others have been threatened with losing their jobs unless they offered “secrets” about her. Once, the Intelligence Ministry offered to arrange a “family reunion” with Alinejad in Turkey. “I can only imagine what they had in mind for me,” she wrote.
The most recent approach taken to attack Alinejad by Iran’s regime was to exploit her “family on the Iranian equivalent of ’60 Minutes’,” a tactic she described as a “new low.” “It was by far the most ferocious attempt to shame me, intimidate me and break my spirit,” Alinejad observed. “Stalin would have been proud.”
In one segment, two men interviewed Alinejad’s sister and niece. Her sister suggested that she had been brainwashed into opposing the mandatory hair covering. Her sister declared that the reason she disowned Alinejad was because “I saw that she was challenging the Supreme Leader. Everyone who’s familiar with me knows this. My red line is the Supreme Leader.”
Alinejad observed that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei once declared that the campaign against the hijab was “insignificant.” By having Alinejad’s sister denounce her, he showed “that he’s apparently changed his mind about the significance of our campaign.” That’s especially true as the show ignored the “real story” of Iranians who have no access to necessities like water and electricity.
Alinejad credited her parents for rejecting pressure to appear on the show.
After noting that her sister told the interviewer that she would give up her life for the hijab, Alinejad concluded that she too would give up her life “for women like her to live in freedom.”
[Photo: BBC News / YouTube]