Canadian jailed in Iran has health issues
Charges against Homa Hoodfar remain unclear
Homa Hoodfar, the recently retired Concordia University professor detained in Iran, was researching women’s participation in political life in Tehran when she was arrested and held for interrogation by Iranian security forces this week.
She has not been permitted to leave Tehran’s Evin prison since Monday, and has been denied access to both legal counsel and consular assistance.
The prison is notorious around the world for its housing of political prisoners, and in Canada because of the 2003 torture death within its walls of Montrealbased photographer Zahra Kazemi.
There are fears Hoodfar is being used by hard-line leaders of the Revolutionary Guard to pressure the more conciliatory President Hassan Rouhani, under whose rule Iran has agreed to nuclear regulation in exchange for the easing of sanctions.
Hoodfar, 65, who has Iranian, Canadian and Irish passports, was first arrested in March as she was preparing to leave Iran to celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian new year, with her family in Britain.
Her computer, books, passport and personal effects were seized.
Freed on bail, she was interrogated at various times over the weeks since, largely over her research during Iran’s recent election, in which 17 women were elect- ed, most aligned with Rouhani. This research involved attending public meetings, interviewing feminist activists, and giving interviews herself, according to people close to Hoodfar.
“She’s an academic, and it’s important to emphasize this because maybe the accusation against her is that she really is not an academic, she’s an activist. But she’s not. Her inquiry is about activists, which is different,” said Kaveh Ehsani, a close friend and colleague, and assistant professor of international studies at DePaul University in Chicago.
Hoodfar has not yet been publicly charged, although her interrogators — thought to be the counter-intelligence unit of the Revolutionary Guard — initially cited several laws she was being investigated for breaking.
Hoodfar, who has a neurological condition and recently had a stroke, could not remember these particular laws, Ehsani said, but he believes there are four main possibilities. The most dire is sedition, cooperating with a foreign state against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which could mean Canada or some other country. He thinks this is the least likely.
She could be accused of being a member of an illegal organization, or creating one, or engaging in propaganda against the state. In any case, Ehsani thinks one key goal is to get her to incriminate others involved in activism on behalf of women, in part because of their recent electoral success.
Hoodfar, who recently retired from Concordia’s anthropology department, has been involved with the advocacy group Women Living Under Muslim Laws.
“We’re just worried,” said her younger sister, Katayoon Hoodfar, in an interview from Britain. Her medical condition is such that “if she’s interrogated for a long period of time, she won’t be able to cope.”
Hoodfar suffers from myasthenia gravis, a condition that causes muscle weakness, for which she needs regular medication.
She also had a minor stroke last year that has affected her vision.
A Global Affairs Canada spokesperson said Canada is “actively engaged” on this “priority” matter and working with “like-minded allies” to assist Hoodfar.
Iran does not legally recognize dual citizenship, and so does not typically allow consular access to Iranian dual nationals.
Hoodfar and her sister grew up in Tehran as the children of a housewife mother and army colonel father.
Homa left at age 19 to study in Britain, first in Manchester, then Canterbury, before taking the teaching and research job in Montreal.
Her work has spanned Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in England, Arab women in Egypt, and Persian women in post-revolutionary Iran.
Somewhat reluctantly, she was involved in the debate over the veil and hijab in Quebec culture. She had always been most interested in sexuality, and has written extensively on it, but found herself forced by political circumstance to look more deeply into the political aspects of veiling and female genital mutilation.
Hoodfar has returned occasionally to Iran, but her home is Montreal. She was married to Tony Hilton, a professor of social psychology at Concordia, through whom she has an Irish passport. He died of a brain tumour in December 2014, aged 77. They have no children.