Statements of Solidarity with the 2022 Iran Uprising

Statements of Solidarity with the 2022 Iran Uprising

Statements of Solidarity with the 2022 Iran Uprising

By : Iran Page Editors

The feminist uprising in Iran has captured the attention of the world and inspired expressions of solidarity and coalition from feminists, activists, and scholars around the globe. We offer this page as a living archive of this breathtaking historical moment and a testament to the deep intellectual and political tradition of transnational feminism. This is a partial list that includes statements from professional organizations, as well as collectives, and individuals, and is not meant as an endorsement of any individual group or collective. Taken together, these statements reflect the widespread desire to support the Iranian people’s self-determination and to condemn state repression. 

Transnational Feminist Statements:


Afghan poets, writers, and journalists in solidarity with the uprising of the Iranian people:

Persian:
https://asranarshism.com/fa/1401/07/02/afghanistan-intellectuals-solidarity/?fbclid=IwAR0nCAeO-xGLtWrBJWJaUDdUVgIt25nDsQWTSCu0ElSHRiqmrQ0O375nhvQ

English:
http://slingerscollective.net/collective-statement-of-afghan-poets-writers-and-journalists-in-solidarity-with-the-uprising-of-the-iranian-people/ 

Afghan women’s Letter of Solidarity with Iranian women: 

Persian:
https://asranarshism.com/fa/1401/06/29/women-protest/?fbclid=IwAR0oYAavPZiScKw__AFOxHNIPHvEgIgI2UE9B6sSCBicxcpKBvuB1avURjo

English:
http://slingerscollective.net/statement-of-afghan-women-in-solidarity-with-women-of-iran/ 

Cross-Regional Feminist Statements:

Call for Transnational Feminist Solidarity with Iranian Protests:

English and French:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdl5dOG6TO00d6S_iOqpNHaweYF_KMfMPqIloreXPjB4mgDXg/viewform

Listen to the Voices of a Feminist Revolution in Iran (an academic and activist community’s open letter):

English:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdz9B-jlyN60PjoStPSOiVWtvwefeLddCxdkCI5uwvnAWujOg/viewform

Gabriela Philippines—Alliance of Filipino Women’s solidarity statement: 

English:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci_qGtnrWpC/ 

Indian Women’s Organization: Kafila Collective: 

https://kafila.online/2022/10/02/letter-to-consul-general-iranian-consulate-mumbai-indian-womens-organisations/

https://kafila.online/2022/10/01/in-solidarity-with-the-iranian-people-fighting-for-democracy-and-justice-ayesha-kidwai-nivedita-menon/

Iranian Diaspora: Statement in support of the protests in Iran, and in solidarity with political prisoners, from a group of Iranian activists in exile and former political prisoners

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5459-so-that-the-woman-life-freedom-movement-does-not-die-a-call-for-solidarity-with-the-political-prisoners-of-the-iranian-regime

Iraqi Kurdistan: Statement of solidarity from writers and artists

Persian: 
https://bit.ly/3reZHEt

Sudanese Message to Iran:

Arabic and English: 
https://menasolidaritynetwork.com/2022/09/26/a-message-from-sudan-to-the-women-of-iran/

Turkish Feminist Speech in solidarity given in Ankara: 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cixl6h0tqLD/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Yemeni Women’s Organization: Mwatana for Human Rights:

https://mwatana.org/en/solidarity-with-iranian-women/

Statements from academic and professional associations:


Academics across the globe:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHDZw1X3mqa4IWC3DNb4HzyCotTubQiXJDqtOFNhtRZJRnfg/viewform?fbclid=IwAR3qmjYvEw94NCHbkdfGCECvIu1VlARNCb_ROezkUn1hVnbz3OgfWfD4Ol4

Association of Asian American Studies:

https://aaastudies.org/advocacy-statements/statement-of-solidarity-with-iranian-uprising/?fbclid=IwAR06mYK63Wi2QWxf2AVTJOk2mY59YoMvX6LCkVpri_6GbZvdPbFnL1O8S5A 

Association for Iranian Studies:

https://associationforiranianstudies.org/sites/default/files/AIS-CAF-Statement-solidarity-with-the-Iranian-academics-petition.pdf 

Columbia University and Barnard College Faculty Statement:

https://www.aaupcu.org/ 

Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA): 

https://mesana.org/advocacy/committee-on-academic-freedom/2022/10/06/recent-attacks-by-iranian-authorities-on-civilian-protests

Council of Ontario Universities: 

https://ontariosuniversities.ca/ontarios-universities-condemn-violence-in-iran

International Sociological Association: 

https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/isa-human-rights-committee/isa-statement-concerning-the-iran-protests?fbclid=IwAR30kyk_4RxkEwyrIutfdA_fTA8N_HA3O-39yonUoEY6iijyXCKE4-E23co 

Iranian Sociological Association:

Persian:
بیانیه انجمن جامعه‌شناسی ایران درباره حوادث منجر به بروز اندوه و خشم عمومی

English:
https://www.isa-sociology.org/uploads/imgen/1350-iranian-sociological-association-statement-in-english.pdf

MIT History Faculty:

https://twitter.com/iPouya/status/1578888601651539969?s=20&t=9zniKCG5_2lH-ESEouVvpw

National Women’s Studies Association:

https://mailchi.mp/nwsa/nwsa-stands-in-solidarity-with-iranian-protestors

Psychology Against Tyranny: A statement by a collective of Iranian

Psychologists in support of the Iranian people

Statement in Condemnation of the Attacks on University Students in Iran:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sjoEv1o_gB2mSCCX0_cXoxLoRzlRTU40dyALxt0UsGA/edit

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412