An Eye for an Eye: Iran's Blinding Justice System

By Azadeh Moaveni Sunday, May 15, 2011

Ameneh Bahrami, a victim of an acid attack sits in her Tehran apartment with her mother and the remains of the clothing she wore when she was attacked.

Kaveh Kazemi / Getty Images

Iran's judiciary has postponed the blinding of a man as punishment for throwing acid in the face of a young woman in 2004, after she rejected his offer of marriage. The delay came in the face of mounting outcry both inside Iran and in the West over the sentencing, which is permissible under qesas, a principle of Islamic law allowing victims analogous retribution for violent crimes.

The case has stirred passionate interest in Iran since 2004, when Majid Movahedi, a university student, accosted Ameneh Bahrami on a Tehran street and tossed a red bucket of sulfuric acid in her face. Bahrami, an attractive young engineer, had repeatedly spurned Movahedi's proposals and reported his harassment to the police. She was blinded and severely disfigured in the attack, and has spent the intervening years between Iran and Spain undergoing numerous unsuccessful operations to reconstruct her face and repair her sight.

Much of the public outcry in Iranian media, news websites, and blogs, surrounds the Iranian legal system, which produces such verdicts by practising an 'eye for an eye' approach to justice based on seventh century Islamic jurisprudence. These principles effectively offer victims of violent crime two legal choices, forgiveness or qesas, analogous retribution. "Bahrami must sit in the place of the judge and either forgive her attacker or take revenge" says Asieh Amini, an Iranian women's rights activist living in Europe? "The legal system pushes her into a dead-end, and it's really the law that's deficient here." Bahrami eventually chose qesas, determined that her experience would serve as deterrence for future crimes. "I want people like him to know that they will suffer forever if they cause someone such suffering," she said on BBC Persian television Saturday.

Speaking on the interactive television program Saturday, Bahrami said she favored a more modern course, suing for damages. "I want him to be punished foremost. But if there are human rights considerations, then I'll accept two million Euros and his life imprisonment," she said. The program featured an emotional exchange between Bahrami and Movahedi's weeping mother, who begged for her forgiveness. It drew a flood of callers from inside Iran, many of them concerned that Bahrami's "forgiveness," while perhaps the most humanitarian course, would encourage such a horrific crime by implying legal leniency. "Ameneh, daughter of Iran, we understand your joy and we support you," wrote a prominent Iranian blogger, Dalghak Irani, featured on the program.

Bahrami, who was scheduled to herself administer the blinding drops to an anaesthetized Movahedi, learned of the delay outside the Judiciary Hospital in Tehran. Human rights groups and Western governments pleaded with Iranian authorities last week to call off the punishment. Iran's government usually responds to such foreign pressure by lashing out rather than backing off, but Bahrami's case poses a unique dilemma: unlike many human rights cases which excite opinion primarily in the West, it has resonated deeply throughout Iranian society; the attention inside Iran raises the prospect of a public backlash at a time when the regime is deeply divided by political infighting. "There's no doubt public opinion inside Iran has been stirred up," says Amini. "There's been a huge outpouring of sympathy for both of them, and this puts pressure on the government."

Apart from its headline-grabbing story line, the case is transfixing Iranians because it reflects how their society's old mores are clashing with modern norms. This was no village crime committed by an illiterate, but a tragedy that unfolded in the nation's capital between two educated urbanites. It underscores how Iranian women's social standing — they are now in the majority at universities and active throughout society — fits awkwardly with deep-seated patriarchal attitudes. Women direct top-grossing films in Iran, run galleries, and write best-sellers, but are still covered by cultural mores that often approximate the severe conservatism of neighboring Afghanistan. "This case really highlights the sexist attitudes and double standards within Iran society," says Nayereh Tohidi, an Iran expert and a professor of women's studies at California State University, Northridge. "[Based on] such customs, a man sees it as his prerogative to want and possess the woman he desires, regardless of her feelings and mutual love." Tohidi adds, "This 'eye for an eye,' tribal approach to crimes underlies how the law reinforces a cycle of violence instead of reducing it. A young blind man is going to be added to a young blind woman for society to take care of."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071529,00.html

The 18-Day Miracle: Egyptian People Power Ousts Hosni Mubarak

By Abigail Hauslohner and Yasmine El Rashidi / Cairo Friday, Feb. 11, 2011

Egyptians in Tahrir Square celebrate the news of President Mubarak's resignation

Ben Curtis / AP

Word had circulated in the afternoon that President Hosni Mubarak and his family had left the capital. The news sent a frisson through the protests until it was clarified that he had simply flown to Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort town in the southern Sinai where he spends much of the year. People shrugged, and thousands of angry protesters continued marching toward the presidential palace following Friday's midday prayer. And then, just a couple of hours later, came the momentous news: Hosni Mubarak had finally resigned as President, giving in to the No. 1 demand of demonstrators who had waged a largely peaceful street campaign against him for 18 days. "Egypt is free! Egypt is free!" came the shouts from Tahrir, replacing the fervent calls for Mubarak's departure.

Rage and determination gave way to unbridled joy as Vice President Omar Suleiman appeared on state TV with a curt announcement that Mubarak had "waived" his presidency and handed power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The announcement was a shock, coming less than a day after Mubarak had appeared on state TV issuing a defiant vow to remain in office until a successor could be elected. But the even greater shock, in the wider picture, is the fact that a nonviolent people-power revolution has swept aside the strongest and most entrenched of the Arab world's U.S.-backed autocrats — perhaps forever changing the architecture of power and geopolitics in the Middle East.

Mubarak flew to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh Friday, Feb. 11, having said the previous night that Suleiman had been put in charge of handling the government's response to the crisis, which began 19 days ago when protesters took to the streets to demand Mubarak's ouster. But the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had already begun on Thursday to address the nation independently of the government to which it is ostensibly answerable, issuing a communiqué setting terms for resolving the crisis. The council expressed the military's "commitment to protect the people" and its support of their "legitimate demands" and vowed to "continue meeting on a continuous basis to examine measures to be taken to protect the nation and its gains and the ambitions of the great Egyptian people." But that left many guessing as to the army's ultimate intentions, and a second communiqué, on Friday, vowed to lift the country's 30-year state of emergency when the "current situation has ended" and promised to guarantee a free and fair presidential election. At the same time, however, the council stressed "the need to resume orderly work in the government installations and a return to normal life to preserve the interests and property of our great people."

The military will no doubt permit and even join in the popular celebration of Mubarak's ouster, which will doubtless continue through the night. But it will then expect the protesters to go home — and will likely get its wish. Beyond that, of course, things get tricky: a military-based regime that has ruled Egypt since 1952 has jettisoned Mubarak, its chieftain for the past 30 years. Yet the regime itself has survived the popular uprising and will now look to negotiate a new order, aimed at addressing the demands of the protest movement, while at the same time protecting its institutional interests. For weeks, the protesters in Tahrir Square have been chanting, "The people and the army are one." And the army has clearly played a major role in preventing the regime from massacring its opponents, and ultimately in pressing Mubarak into retirement. But the coming days and weeks will test the extent to which the military and the citizenry share the same ideas about how Egypt should be governed.

Just before the dramatic announcement, the air had been thick with tension, curdled by anger over Mubarak's address late Thursday night, which many had seen as a defiant slap-down of their demands. There was also great anxiety over potential clashes with proregime forces. "Everybody is really mad now," said activist Marwa Nasser as she prepared to go into the streets. Activists reported that plainclothes thugs — widely associated with Egypt's Interior Ministry and ruling party officials — had been sighted gathering near the presidential palace in northeast Cairo.

Mubarak's meandering, legalistic speech Thursday night appeared to be a gigantic head fake to the enormous crowds that had gathered in Tahrir: they — and, in fact, much of the world — had been led from reports from military and government sources to believe they would hear him step down. Everyone from Egyptian army officers to the White House appeared blindsided by the Egyptian President's remarks.

But on Friday, even before Suleiman's terse statement, there had already been a general sense among the millions protesting in Cairo, Alexandria and other towns and cities across the country that a power struggle at the highest levels was under way — and that the confusingly vague army communiqué laid out the day before supported the theory that the army wasn't fully on board with the regime. Meanwhile, popular opinion had tipped further in favor of the demonstrations in recent days, as more and more celebrity personalities, ranging from singers and sports stars to popular religious sheiks, had jumped on the revolution bandwagon with heady expectations preceding Mubarak's speech Thursday night. Even state TV offered sympathetic coverage of the protests on Thursday before airing the late-night presidential speech that shocked the nation. Friday's religious sermon to the thousands in Tahrir Square praised the growing struggle and condemned the regime. In Alexandria, CNN reported, a sheik who had previously been banned by the government from preaching led the address. As protesters knelt on the asphalt in Tahrir Square and in front of Cairo's state television to pray beneath the midday sun, soldiers joined them in prayer from the other side of the wire, atop their tanks. Some reported handshakes between soldiers and protesters. One journalist and blogger said via Twitter that he saw an army general cry as he greeted the protesters. In Alexandria, al-Jazeera reported, the presidential guard, supposedly Mubarak's final line of defense, handed out food and water to protesters outside the palace.

The Egyptian military was considered to be the only decisive power broker in this struggle, and activists were sensitive to any cracks in its support for the regime. For weeks, protesters had spoken of a sympathetic army, one that kept up a consistently peaceful relationship with demonstrators and, many insist, sided with the revolution. (Read "Mubarak's Malingering Leaves Egypt at a Dangerous Crossroads.")

Nadia Abdel Nasser, a 59-year-old grandmother, was among those protesting loudly in Tahrir Square Thursday night; she says two of her sons are currently serving in the army. Both men, she says, have been "with the revolution" since the start. "They're celebrating," she says excitedly just before Mubarak's speech. "They told me, 'Mom, even if we are outside the square, we are with you in Tahrir.' " Shortly after dawn prayer on Friday, an army officer told Reuters that he and 15 other midranking officers had joined the protesters.

With Mubarak seeming to be digging in, the crowd in Tahrir had called for an immediate coup, chanting, "One, two, where is the people's army?" In the end, they did not need it; Mubarak gave in.

Until then, Egyptians had cited Tunisia as an example to bolster their resolve, with diehards in Tahrir Square arguing that their numbers were larger than those in Tunisia and that they would stay as long as it took — even six months — to get Mubarak to leave. "People won't give up," says Marwa Nasser. "We don't care what he says, we just want him to go." It took Tunisian people power a month to get rid of a dictator. Egypt took 18 days. Now Egypt is its own example — and a thunderous one to the rest of the Arab world.

— With reporting by Yuri Kozyrev / Cairo

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2048575,00.html

The Tunisia Effect: Will Its "Hunger Revolution" Spread?

By Angela Shah / Dubai Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011

ENLARGE PHOTO+

Residents rush to buy bread at a bakery in Tunis's Medina on January 16, 2011. Dozens of people crowded on Sunday at the few stalls open at the main market in Tunis as soldiers patrolled the streets but spirits were high after the overthrow of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Fethi Belaid / AFP / Getty Images

No group is watching the events unfold in Tunisia more closely than fellow Arabs, most of whom live under autocratic governments and are feeling the same economic pinches of bleak job prospects and high food prices. Ali Dahmash, an activist who runs a social media agency in Amman, called it a "hunger revolution." Says Dahmash, "This is not just about politics and having a kind of freedom of speech or religion. This came out of despair. It was because of the economy."

Mishaal Al Gergawi, an Emirati commentator and businessman, agrees. "Tunisians and Algerians are hungry. The Egyptians and Yemenis are right behind them," he wrote Sunday in a Dubai newspaper column. He referred to the young Tunisian vegetable seller who immolated himself in the town of Sidi Bouzid several weeks ago to protest police preventing him from doing business, thus setting off the revolt. "Mohamed Bouazizi didn't set himself on fire because he couldn't blog or vote. People set themselves on fire because they can't stand seeing their family wither away slowly, not of sorrow, but of cold stark hunger."(See how Tunisians are putting their hopes in the military after the fall of Ben Ali.)

Over the weekend, the social networking site Twitter exploded with posts from both the Arab world and its disapora in English, French and Arabic. They cheered on the Tunisian protesters and speculated which Arab leader might be the next to go. Posts quite openly called for the ouster of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak or Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. "Algeria is even worse than in Tunis. The police will actually go ... well, it's very vicious," Dahmash says. "In Egypt, the president has been there for 27 years in a [perpetual] state of emergency. With that, they can do anything in the country."

Like Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt have economies plagued by high food prices and a lack of jobs. On Sunday, protests broke out in Libya despite a speech by Gadhafi that rebuked Tunisian protesters for impatience, saying they should have waited for Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down in three years, as he had said he would. At the Tunisian embassies in Amman and Cairo, protesters gathered to express their frustrations while supporting the movement in Tunisia. One twitter poster even advised Queen Rania of Jordan that she should go palace-hunting in Jeddah — the coastal Saudi city is where Ben Ali fled Friday night after fleeing the country.(Can Gaddafi's son reform Libya?)

Still, for all the demonstrating in Arab capitals and candor on social websites, some Arabs are still reluctant to speak publicly of regime change in the Arab world. "The leaders are all genuinely paying close attention to this," says a Syrian executive who lives in Dubai. "They're thinking, 'Holy moley, how are we going to manage this?'"

Dahmash agrees. Ben Ali fled Tunis on Friday, and by Saturday morning, Dahmash says, food prices in the Jordanian capital had decreased by about 5% — probably upon orders of the government. More than the number, the reduction "is a sign of fear, in my opinion," he says.(See how Egypt's opposition is trying a new strategy.)

Expatriate Tunisians like Walid Cherif are watching events unfold at home with a mixture of excitement and disbelief. "If you had asked me a week ago, none of us would've even imagined this happening," he says. "I'm very proud of it." He's not sure, however, that events in Tunisia will lead to revolt in the rest of the Arab world. Tunisia has always been different from its Arab siblings, he says. "Tunisia is known as one of the most progressive Arab countries in the world," We're the only country where polygamy is illegal in the Muslim world. Did that happen in other Arab countries? No."

In the meantime, Tunisia is still searching for a new person to lead it. Since gaining independence from France in 1962, the country has had only two leaders. During the past weekend, it had three. The army has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and there have been reports of violence. Fires in two prisons have killed dozens. Despite the current chaos, Dahmash says he thinks the revolt will lead to a stable, legitimate government. Unlike much of the Arab world, Tunisia, he says, "has well-developed institutions. The people are mature and well-informed."(See pictures of the protests that brought down the Tunisian government.)

That should help what's being called the "Jasmine Revolution" to flower, compared to the unrest and violence that has plagued Iraq since U.S. soldiers forced Saddam Hussein from power. Cherif, who grew up in Tunis and left North Africa in 1996 to study for an M.B.A. at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., says he believes the events of the weekend are the start of a peaceful, more inclusive future for his country. "We're sure we're never going to have a dictator in the future, because whoever is going to come as president knows the power of the people," he says. "If they want to be a regime in total control like before, they'll have to think about it twice."

Dahmash, who has lived in Miami and Tampa and earned an MBA from American Intercontinental University in Ft. Lauderdale, says the Arab world wants change. "But we don't want change to come from abroad," he adds. "We want change to come from inside." The Syrian executive, who asked that his name not be used, agrees. "I personally have a feeling this event is the beginning of more to come." Unfortunately, he added, "it's going to get uglier. I simply don't believe change comes about as a byproduct of peace."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2042736,00.html