Written by Molly Kinahan
February 5, 2020
In 2010, Mehri Ghazanjani arrived in her home country of Iran to the news on a small TV screen that five Iranian Kurdish activists were being sentenced to death. Among them was 32-year-old activist Farzad Kamangar, who after a five-minute trial containing no evidence was sentenced to execution and subsequently killed. Rather than being an armed fighter – the kind of Kurds the Iranian government claimed they were fighting – he was a journalist, a poet, and a teacher, but simply being Kurdish and an activist was enough of a crime in Iran for him to be unjustly put to death. This event spurred Ghazanjani, an activist herself, to research the mobilization and journey of the Iranian Kurds, a decision which would cost her her home country. Driven by a sense of injustice and a passion for equity, this research was only a part of Ghazanjani’s long and tumultuous education and activism story.
“Education is very valued culturally speaking in Iran”, Ghazanjani tells me over a cup of coffee. Her family was no exception. Her father was, and still is, a literature teacher and was very concerned for her education. Along with her regular mandated school classes, Ghazanjani’s parents enrolled her in English classes twice a week. “I always had to do my best to be the top student,” she explained. The class offered free tuition to those who scored the highest marks, and as her family didn’t have the money to pay the fees, this was her only option. Education fees were not uncommon in Iran. Ghazanjani’s early education in Iran was around the time of the country’s $500 billion revolution. In addition to a shrinking agriculture sector, increasing urbanization and population growth, much of the country was left facing economic hardships like Ghazanjani herself. Many poorer families were very reliant on the public school systems, leaving them incredibly vulnerable to fees implemented by the ailing government. The only alternative to state-run public schools was the country’s elitist and expensive private schools. The public and private school divide was a very real thing. Ghazanjani dictates that in Iran, “if you send your kids to private school, it’s a means to an end, and that end is showing off your economic wealth and status in society.” Although private schools carried higher status (and usually produced better grades), Ghazanjani enjoyed public school education as she felt it made her more determined to get the most from the educational opportunity. The more crowded classrooms meant that she had to work to stand out: “I had to fight to show myself and gain the attention of the teacher”.
Although during her time as an elementary school student, public school was free, the country still found ways to gouge money from those looking to educate their children. While Ghazanjani was still in school, a new program was introduced to the education system – a middle ground between public schools and private schools. The new program promised a better education and a way for Ghazanjani to set herself apart from her classmates. It required students to pass an entrance exam, which posed little problem for Ghazanjani as she was at the top of her class. However, the fee to attend these schools was an issue. Ghazanjani, of course, got into the program, but with a mother who didn’t work and a father who was an underpaid literature teacher, the fees became impossible. “I ranked the highest, I went into the school, but we didn’t have the money to pay for it”, she explained. As the rest of her classmates tended to be wealthier, Ghazanjani was often humiliated for her inability to pay the fees – “I always felt very embarrassed…I would get called from class and told I had a balance of payment”. Even at a young age it was difficult to not feel resentment towards a government who valued fees more than educating their public.
Ghazanjani and her fellow female students were segregated from their male classmates. Along with the average school subjects, the girls were taught to sew, cook, and other skills for the “proper housewife,” while the boys were taught technical skills for future employment. However, she acknowledges that her teachers didn’t mindlessly follow what the state mandated them to teach. “I had really fantastic teachers who would often go beyond the curriculum and tell us that it’s necessary for girls to get their independence and get educated”.
Other gender disparities of course existed over the course of Ghazanjani’s education. In Iran it is mandatory for women to wear hijabs, but women often choose to express themselves physically in other ways through clothes and makeup. However, even at her university, they had security monitors who made sure that the women were dressed properly. There were other issues women faced in education. Sexual violence and harassment were very much present, and as she informs me, “we didn’t always feel safe on campus”. However, Ghazanjani does emphasize that the education of women in the culture is not as controversial as Western powers often push us to believe. She explains that education for women in Iran is the norm. Ghazanjani tells me that, “an unintended consequence” of the new reformed Islamist conservative government was that more and more traditionalist families felt safe sending their daughters to university. “When I entered university there were more girls than boys in the school”.
These glaring inequalities, such as how the women’s dorms at her university had a curfew while the men’s dorms did not, built bitterness for female students. She tells me how “we had to come back to the residence by 8pm, and security would go door-by-door to check attendance”. Inequities such as these were one of many frustrations with political powers which spurred Ghazanjani’s entrance into student activism at the University of Tehran. She and her fellow schoolmates organized a resistance movement. They went door-to-door, gathering signatures from thousands of female students, demanding for the removal of the rule monitoring women. In retaliation, the university sent a letter to the family of every student who signed the petition, stating that their daughters wanted to stay out late and be “loose”. Fortunately, many families actually sided with the girls. They wrote back and stated they were okay with the removal of the monitoring. Of course despite this, nothing ever changed.
Talks of university privatization were often in the air, creating anger and tension for students. “[Privatization] would open the door to all sorts of evils”, she tells me. Public universities provided real proper education opportunities for students, like Ghazanjani, who were from lower income families. Privatization would likely lead to high tuition and less accessible education. This, like most issues in Iran, led to a protest. “In Iran everything is political”, Ghazanjani explains. “You go out to protest the quality of food on campus and within a second the protest will become an anti-government protest”.
I inquire if the university did eventually end up privatizing, and she explains to me that one of the most effective mechanisms used to pacify social movements is to offer formal talks in which both sides can speak. While organizing this consultation, the government can make the changes they want while appearing to compromise. This was the case in Iran. The university never privatized, but that doesn’t mean it was a win. The government acknowledged concerns, and once everyone was placated they introduced more schemes and programs which required financial contributions. These programs included working off or buying your diploma. University students were now required to work a government job for a number of years to pay off their education. If they didn’t want to do this, they could pay outright but prices were steep. At the time when Ghazanjani was getting her degree this price was around $500, which although may not seem like much here, Ghazanjani explains, “you have to think in terms of how much that means in Iran”.
After Ghazanjani’s graduation the country was on the verge of crisis. “Everyday we would see the shadow of war”, she tells me. “I couldn’t see any future at the time in Iran.” Her husband had yet to serve time in the Iranian military – something which was mandatory, and with Iran’s position in the world increasing volatile, the country was becoming quite unsafe for an activist like her. Both Ghazanjani and her husband wanted to continue their education and coming to Canada seemed like a good choice to become their new home. Ghazanjani completed her masters degree at McGill University and began her graduate studies. As a sociology student who had always made activism a priority in her life, she began to focus her studies on social movements as it came time for her to embark on her research.
It was around this time when scholar and activist Farzad Kamangar, as well as four other Kurds, were sentenced and put to death in Iran. The reaction was immediate. Protests and strikes were planned and cities with large Kurdish populations declared martial law. Even at a time of great ethno-nationalism, both Kurdish Iranians and non-Kurdish Iranians were angered, saddened, and shocked by his unjustified killings.Ghazanjani, who had dedicated a large chunk of her life to anti-government activism, was feeling these same emotions. “It shocked me”, she described. “I knew there were ethnonationalist tension in Iran, but that in some way made me know I had to dig into this”. She packed her bags and headed to Iraq, a refuge for many Iranian Kurdish activists to study the persecution of Iranian Kurds. This was perhaps her biggest gesture of activism. Being linked with Kurds who were publicly persecuted and scapegoated by the Iranian government would mean it would be unlikely for Ghazanjani to ever be allowed to return to Iran. Making this choice meant giving up the home she knew for 22 years. “My family lives in Iran, so that was the strange cost to my research”.
Despite the personal cost, Ghazanjani wanted to learn why – with all the risks involved – Iranians Kurds would make the dangerous “no-return journey” to Iraq to join Kurdish activist groups. I couldn’t help but ask her the same question. She, after all, at least in my eyes, had made the “no return journey” just as they had. She states simply: “I wanted to do something that would make a positive change, and hopefully help people”. She argues this experience was the most important part of her graduate education – it was a “self education”. It was clear that, despite the personal costs, she genuinely appreciated the fact that she was free to do this research. “The media often tries to overemphasize the danger in going back to the Middle East”, but as she explains, “but I didn’t see it that way.” Going back to the Middle East after many years in Canada was strange. “When you go back things are not the same; people are not the same. They move on without you. You don’t belong there anymore. You feel like you’re a new immigrant”, she tells me. “I’m a Canadian citizen and I love it here, but [I] don’t feel at home… it’s my home, but I don’t feel 100% at home”. It was hard for me to imagine the immense pain of leaving my home country for good as Ghazanjani chose to do. “It’s a very strange and tragic situation, you don’t belong anywhere”.
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