An Iranian woman has made a stunning rebuttal of Senator Fatima Payman after she insisted that women in the Islamic Republic ‘have a voice’.
The independent Western Senator sparked controversy on Saturday when she gave an interview to the Iranian state-owned outlet Press TV at Western Sydney University.
Senator Payman described Iran as an ‘incredible place’ that allows ‘women to participate in the workforce to ensure that they have a voice and their voices are heard’.
‘They’re involved in the democratic process – realities that we’re not privy to living here and listening to the propaganda that we receive from very single-sided organisations with a specific agenda,’ Ms Payman said.
But the senator’s glowing review of Iran, where the UN has found that women and girls are treated as ‘second-class citizens,’ was swiftly condemned online.
The regime’s infamous morality police ensure women always cover themselves with a hijab, with those who disobey being subjected to imprisonment, beatings and even, on some occasions, death in police custody.
Prominent Iran-born journalist Masih Alinejad, who lives in exile in the US, gave a scathing critique of Ms Payman’s comments on Tuesday.
‘I am a woman from Iran, and I testify that you, Senator Payman, are lying,’ Ms Alinejad wrote on social media.
‘As a woman, I was sentenced to prison. I was sentenced to lashes, and I survived one kidnapping attempt and two assassination plots – simply for expressing myself.
‘Many other Iranian women can testify that they have faced the brutality of the morality police simply for showing their hair. Many mothers are facing repercussions simply for asking why the regime killed their loved ones.
‘That is the reality of the Islamic Republic, the regime you are whitewashing.’
From a young age, Ms Alinejad protested against wearing a hijab. When she was 19 she was arrested by the morality police for anti-government activity and held in prison without charge. Eventually she was sentenced to five years in prison and 74 lashes, but her sentence was suspended for three years.
In 2009, fearing she would be arrested again, she fled to the UK, and is currently based in New York City, where she has remained an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime.
Ms Alinejad said Ms Payman’s statement ‘sounds like it was written by the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic itself’.
‘The only thing women are ‘ensured’ under the Islamic Republic is systematic oppression,’ she fumed.
‘If she truly believes women’s voices are heard, I invite her to go to Tehran, remove her hijab, and try speaking freely. Let’s see how long she enjoys this so-called ‘democratic process’ before she’s thrown in prison.
‘You owe an apology to millions of Iranians whose suffering you have dismissed and erased with your blatant lies.’
In 2014, Ms Alinejad launched a Facebook page that invites Iranian women to post pictures of themselves without a hijab.
The page quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of likes in protest of the country’s strict rules.
‘I want to live in a country where both me, who doesn’t have hijab, and my sister, who prefers hijab, can live along each other,’ she said at the time.
Ms Alinejad has said she is not opposed to the hijab per se, but believes it should be a matter of personal choice.
Ms Payman was born in Afghanistan before moving to with her family in 2003.
She was elected as a Labor senator but left the party last year over its position on the Israel-Gaza conflict.