IRAN. WOMEN ARRESTED IN PEACEFUL PROTEST COULD BE EXECUTED

the total number of arrests following a gathering of hundreds of women's rights defenders who had made their way from Tehran's Daneshjoo Park to Laleh Park to mark International Women's Day on March 8 remained uncertain, as was the fate of those arrested by security forces, which reportedly used harsh tactics to disperse the peaceful demonstration. On the eve of the event, the Women Rights Association of Iran had prepared a resolution calling for an end to gender discrimination and demanding the social and legal rights of all Iranian women.
Many of the women who handed out some 2,000 copies of the resolution were arrested "and unfortunately I think their verdicts will be execution," said Zolal Habibi of the US-based group Women's Freedom Forum at a panel discussion in Iran to assess the role of women in combating Islamic fundamentalism.
"For the last 27 years, Iran has been the only country that has had a fundamentalist regime in power, and which has actually turned its views and abuses into the laws of the country," said Habibi, pointing to harsh punishments such as stoning, a sentence that can be handed down for adultery.
"If you are able to escape from the hole when you are being stoned to death, you will be spared," Habibi said. "[But] while men are buried to their waist, women are buried to their neck." Still, women have persisted in their fight for equality, Habibi said, recalling 13-year-old Fatemeh Mesbah, who was arrested when selling newspapers and executed the following day, in 1981; Mother Zakeri, executed at the age of 70 for supporting the Iranian Islamist opposition group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran; and Mujahedin leader Ashraf Rajavi, executed by the Iranian regime in 1982.