WUNRN
Iran Parliamentary
Committee Has Adjusted the "Family Support Bill"
Regarding Reference to Polygamy.
Women's Rights Activists Consider a Victory.
Iran
Panel Adjusts Bill - Reference to Polygamy
9/10/2008
REUTERS
TEHRAN
• An Iranian parliamentary committee has thrown out a government proposal which
women’s rights activists feared would have encouraged polygamy in the Islamic
Republic, media reported yesterday.
“It
is a very positive move,” campaigner Sussan Tahmasebi said of the decision by
the legal and judicial committee to change the bill on families. “We think it
is great that parliament listened to women’s voices,” she said.
Activists
had lobbied against the measure, which they said would have allowed a man to
take a new wife without the consent of the first one. The bill also covered
other family issues and parliament is now expected to vote on the amended
version.
The
conservative-controlled legislature was originally due to debate the “Family
Support Bill” last week, but it was sent back to the committee for more work
after it caused controversy.
Newspapers
quoted committee chairman Ali Shahrokhi as saying it had removed two articles
which had angered activists and others—one dealing with polygamy and another on
taxing money the husband agrees to pay his wife under a marriage contract.
Under
Iran’s Islamic law, men can have up to four wives but many Iranians see
polygamy as unacceptable and it is not common.
Shahrokhi
said families would have been “exposed to collapse” under the proposal on
polygamy, which critics say would only require a man to get a court decision
showing he has the financial means in order to take a second wife.
“We
did not see this article as logical and we deleted it,” Etemad daily quoted him
as saying. “Iranian families and women should know that we are not indifferent
to their issues.”
The
government rejects allegations that Iran discriminates against women. Its
spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, this week warned that if the bill was rejected
polygamy would “be implemented without any rule or regulation.”
Tehran
sociology professor Hamidreza Jalaiepour said the draft law had proved
controversial also among conservatives, who form the most powerful faction in
Iranian politics after hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in
2005.
Polygamy
is socially taboo for many middle class people in urban areas, Jalaiepour said.
The practice is not widespread in cities but more accepted in some rural areas,
he added.
Tahmasebi
described the move to amend the bill as a major victory but said campaigners
still had problems with other aspects of it, for example on women marrying
non-Iranians.
She
said she now hoped for a “positive dialogue” with lawmakers on this and other
issues affecting women in Iran. Tahmasebi is involved in a campaign to collect
one million signatures in support of improving women’s rights in Iran.
Campaigners
say dozens of them have been detained since the drive began in 2006 in what
Western diplomats see as part of a wider clampdown on dissent. Most were freed
within days.
The
activists say women in Iran face institutionalised discrimination that makes
them second-class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody and other
aspects of life.
Iran’s
ruling clerics say Iranian women are protected from the sex symbol status they
have in the West and that the country is implementing divine law.
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