The internet today can be a powerful tool in the battle for justice. The battle may be remote, at quite a distance from you, but your voice can add to the pressure of thousands of others from across the globe. Something like this happened a little over two years ago, when women across the world came together to campaign on the internet for the freedom from imprisonment of an Iranian-Canadian academic called Homa Hoodfar.
I remember reading about her in an email group. Of Iranian origin, Hoodfar’s family had fled the country when Islamic law was introduced after Ayatollah Khomeini took over. She had eventually settled in Canada, where she was until recently a professor of anthropology and sociology at Concordia University.
Leaving home is never easy and, like many people who are forced to do so, Hoodfar’s family had kept their home in Tehran in the hope that they would one day return. In recent years Hoodfar would visit the city, staying at her home, combining personal visits with research, her main area of interest and commitment being the rights of Muslim women.
A little over two years ago, Hoodfar was in Iran, and preparing to leave after spending over a month there, when members of the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard arrived at her house and raided the premises, confiscating her passport and other papers. After three months of intense interrogation, they arrested her and held her in the infamous Evin prison for 112 days.
The campaign for Hoodfar’s release ran into roadblocks at the governmental level, as Canada did not have diplomatic relations with Iran and, therefore, official channels of communication and political pressure were not available. Instead, human rights organisations such as Amnesty International stepped in. As did hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women activists from across the world.
The internet was filled with petitions demanding her release. They came from everywhere — Cambodia, Pakistan, India, Malaysia — leaving those who had imprisoned her puzzled. They had accused her of being an agent of MI5 and the CIA, but here was support from so many different countries — not from governments but from ordinary citizens — many of them women. What was happening?
Hoodfar had been, and remains, a member of a multi-country network called Women Living Under Muslim Law (WLUML). It was the WLUML network that began to mobilise support on the net. Within a very short while, an avalanche of mails began to land in inboxes via email lists, Facebook and other forms of social media. Send addresses were provided, petitions put up for signatures, updates provided on Hoodfar’s condition (she needed regular medication, which was difficult to ensure in prison and there was considerable concern that her health would deteriorate), and many of us who read everything that came our way began to feel we knew the person whose release we were fighting for.
When you imagine someone imprisoned like this, you create a portrait of a tall, strong, strapping person in your head. I’m not entirely sure where this comes from, but it does. To face the experience of being thus incarcerated requires a certain strength and courage. Hence I imagined Hoodfar to be physically strong, not really expecting to ever meet her. But then I did — and spent a week or so in her company.
“I’m not entirely sure why they arrested me,” Hoodfar, who is, petite and unassuming, told me, “I’m not the kind of political person they were looking for.” Within a short period of time, she had figured out a survival strategy that stood her in good stead: “I was determined not to let them break me,” she said, “and for that it was important not to dehumanise them.” So she talked to her captors, she read them the law (about which they knew nothing) and, despite the psychological torture, she continued to make conversations. “Perhaps the thing that surprised them most,” she said, “was the support that poured in from different corners of the world.”
It wasn’t so easy, of course. The Revolutionary Guard threatened her with 15 years of imprisonment, sometimes with death. I asked her if she felt fear, and she answered with a story.
“Twice in my life,” she told me, “I’ve been lost deep in the forest at night.” One time, search parties had to be sent out for her and, from where she stood, she could hear them but there was no way of letting them know where she was. The darkness was intense, the forest full of shadows. “I’m not sure if that experience helped, but I like to think it did.”
Hoodfar was released in September 2016. “I know there was a huge campaign,” she said, “and I’m grateful, but the most important thing for me was the support of women from across the world. Sisterhood is truly powerful, and sometimes the net can help amplify that power.”
Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan
Email: blink@thehindu.co.in