Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and commend Senator Chambers on tabling this timely motion on women's rights in Iran. We have seen photographs of life in the 1970s, with women marching down streets in Tehran wearing very fashionable 1960s and 1970s clothing. That changed after the overthrow of the Shah and the installation of Ayatollah Khomeini. Women in Iran had equal divorce rights at a time when women in Ireland could not get a barring order against a violent partner and would not get the right to divorce until 20 years later. Women in Iran had the right to work and could even become judges. In Ireland, the marriage ban was not ended until 1973 and, at the time, women could not serve on juries.

The brutal abuse of Mahsa Amini and her death while in the custody of the Iranian authorities serve as a stark reminder that the rights of women across the globe are not guaranteed and that they can be rolled back. The first protests against headscarves in Iran, which did not become mandatory until the 1980s, happened three weeks after Ayatollah Khomeini arrived back to the country on an aeroplane from New York. Since then, there have been mass protests in 1999, 2005, 2009, 2017 and 2019 and there have been extremely brave women such as human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and, more recently, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was sentenced to prison for 38 years - she is on medical leave - simply for defending women's right not to wear a headscarf. It was brought home much closer to our shores by the five-year prison detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratclifffe, who only this year was released back to her family. During a visit to her family in Iran, she was detained unlawfully for five years. A former British Government and Prime Minister left her there, and nearly caused her to be held there for much longer.

The recent death in custody of Mahsa Amini is just a new iteration of the same oppressive actions of the regime that have been going on since 1979. The morality police was set up to ensure that women adhere to the Islamic dress code and is the force responsible for the arrest, detention and untimely death of Mahsa. We are currently seeing the largest ever rising up of the women's rights movement in Iran. There is political will for change but those women alone cannot take on the might of an oppressive regime that has been in place since 1979. The beating heart of women's rights in Iran has never quite gone away, but it has not had the support of the international community, partly because Iran is a nuclear power and partly because it is too important on the world stage.

The citizens of Iran are currently under an Internet blackout, which is a clear violation of their right to freedom of expression. In effect, it is stopping Iranian people detailing what is happening to them inside the borders of Iran and co-ordinating the protests in a manner similar to that at the time of the Arab Spring revolution in 2011. It is evident that the situation is dire and that women are under threat of persecution by the morality police and attack by the security forces for exercising fundamental rights of freedom of expression, assembly and protest and to choose what one wears. These are very simple freedoms that we take for granted but that Iranian women do not have.

I wish to touch on something Senator Ó Donnghaile said regarding the fact that Mahsa was Kurdish. Kurdish people are being exploited and brutalised not just in Iran but throughout the region, in the countries that straddle what should be an independent Kurdistan.

How should the Oireachtas and the Irish people support this fight? We need to use our diplomatic will and fight and our role on the UN Security Council to condemn the Iranian Government for what it is doing. We need to put forward the call for women to have the right to choose what they wear, for people to have the right to go on to third level education, for women to have the right to divorce and for the marriage age for women in Iran to be increased. I do not want to walk away from the Chamber without us having a clear ask of the Minister in terms of what he can do, particularly in the context of Ireland's membership of the UN Security Council, to support women in Iran and let them know, among all the other revolutions and protests they have had, this one will not be in vain. It will not go away because the will is there among women in Iran. We now need international will to support the largest women's rights revolution, which is happening before our eyes.