UNITED IN STRENGTH
On Saturday afternoon 22nd October 2022 I attended The Time has Come “Women, Life, Freedom” rally on our beautiful peaceful Strand. Those words Women, Life, Freedom send a very clear message as to why people attended this rally. The aim of the rally was to act in solidarity with the women, children and men in Iran and the other communities around Australia and internationally to send a very clear message that the brutality that women, children, and men in Iran are experiencing for speaking out for fundamental human rights is simply not acceptable.
As a mother and grandmother of daughters and granddaughters I cannot imagine being the mother of the twenty-two-year-old Iran woman, who was murdered by the
Morality Police for showing a few strands of hair outside of her hijab. This young woman has a name she was Mahsa Amini, and she did not deserve to die in such a cruel and demeaning manner.
She was a young woman with her life ahead of her, she did not deserve to die for showing a few strands of hair! Women, children, and men living in Iran deserve at the very least basic human rights, they have been oppressed with appalling brutality for forty-four years under the Islamic regime.
The brave women of Iran have had enough, and they are now resisting including young students at high school and university and they are being met with live ammunition and hordes of thugs in plain clothes. Many young dissidents have disappeared.
The regime has set fire to the most notorious political prison, Evin prison, many political prisoners have been burned and shot.
Surely, as human beings living in Australia, a country where human rights are valued, we cannot look on without speaking out against this brutal unacceptable behaviour.
We must support the Iranian people along with the international community by opposing the silencing of the Iranian people in their struggle for human rights.
The Iranian people are demanding a change of regime and basic human rights and we must support their voices.
We are judged by the standard that we walk past, let us not walk past and turn a blind eye to this gross injustice. Surely the demands of the Iranian people are fair and just!
CATHY O’TOOLE, Aitkenvale