On the 5th of March 2022, an international conference entitled “Women, Force of Change in Iran, Global Peace and Stability” was held in Berlin. It was organised by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). In her speech, the newly elected President of the NCRI, Maryam Rajavi, specifically greeted all Ukrainian women and suggested that this year’s International Women’s Day be renamed to Women’s Resistance in Ukraine Day. The wife of the Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, Urška Bačovnik Janša, who was described by the NCRI as an “activist during the second half of the 2021 Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union,” also spoke at the conference.
At the conference, which she attended via video link, the wife of the Slovenian Prime Minister, Urška Bačovnik Janša, highlighted the extraordinary political, social, cultural and ideological challenges that the Iranian women are facing, including the new NCRI President, Maryam Rajavi. The first lady of Slovenia, therefore, highlighted Rajavi’s courage and her commitment to empowering the women of Iran.
In addition to Urška Bačovnik Janša, many other influential women also spoke at the international conference in question, who wanted to mark International Women’s Day and who also called for solidarity. More than 50 percent of NCRI members are said to be women, so at the global conference in Berlin, they wanted to make it clear that change is “urgent, inevitable, and long overdue.”
The exceptional courage of the women of Iran
” Iranian women have been on the frontline of protests against Iran’s Islamic regime. They have shown enormous courage, intelligence, and strength,” Bačovnik Janša pointed out in her speech. “We, women around the world, can be proud of all of them. But despite all their heroic efforts, the Islamic Republic of Iran continues restricting the rights of Iranian women and erasing them from all levels of society,” she added.
The wife of the Slovenian Prime Minister then also pointed out that Iranian women continue to face laws that are unimaginably discriminatory – especially for the 21st century. Women are not able to travel abroad or even obtain a passport without the written permission of their male guardians. Women are also prohibited from singing and dancing, and they even face up to fifteen years in prison or being lashed for the so-called bad hijab. ” I continue being deeply affected by numerous reports of sexual abuse that Iranian women have witnessed in prisons,” Bačovnik Janša said, and also pointed out that many women continue to be executed, and that there are serious concerns over the judicial system of Iran, which she called “rigid.”
According to her, the women who were executed for murder were actually the victims of horrendous domestic abuses. ” They will kill to defend themselves or their children since they have no legal means to end an abusive marriage.”
At the end of her speech, Urška Bačovnik Janša called on her fellow Western women and Western governments to stand against the policies of the Iranian regime, which is strangling women’s freedoms. “Words of western women’s organisations and government must be put into action. We must be there for Iranian women,” she concluded.
Peter Truden
