Islamic
Fundamentalism and the Sex Slave Trade in Iran
Donna
M. Hughes
Professor
& Carlson Endowed Chair
Women’s Studies Program
University of Rhode Island
A measure of
Islamic fundamentalists’ success in controlling society is the
depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights
of women. In Iran for 25 years, the ruling mullahs have enforced
humiliating and sadistic rules and punishments on women and girls,
enslaving them in a gender apartheid system of segregation, forced
veiling, second-class status, lashing, and stoning to death.
Joining a
global trend, the fundamentalists have added another way to
dehumanize women and girls: buying and selling them for
prostitution. Exact numbers of victims are impossible to obtain,
but according to an official source in Tehran, there has been a
635 percent increase in the number of teenage girls in
prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic conveys how rapidly
this form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are an estimated
84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the
streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in
the city. The trade is also international: thousands of Iranian
women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.
The head of
Iran’s Interpol bureau believes that the sex slave trade is one
of the most profitable activities in Iran today. This criminal
trade is not conducted outside the knowledge and participation of
the ruling fundamentalists. Government officials themselves are
involved in buying, selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.
Many of the
girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is
epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their
children to support their habits.High unemployment – 28 percent for youth 15-29 years of
age and 43 percent for women 15-20 years of age ‑ is a
serious factor in driving restless youth to accept risky offers
for work. Slave traders take advantage of any opportunity in which
women and children are vulnerable. For example, following the
recent earthquake in Bam, orphaned girls have been kidnapped and
taken to a known slave market in Tehran where Iranian and foreign
traders meet.
Popular
destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab countries
in the Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran province
judiciary, traffickers target girls between 13 and 17, although
there are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10, to send to
Arab countries. One ring was discovered after an 18 year-old girl
escaped from a basement where a group of girls were held before
being sent to Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The
number of Iranian women and girls who are deported from Persian
Gulf countries indicates the magnitude of the trade. Upon their
return to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalists blame the victims, and
often physically punish and imprison them. The women are examined
to determine if they have engaged in “immoral activity.” Based
on the findings, officials can ban them from leaving the country
again.
Police have
uncovered a number of prostitution and slavery rings operating
from Tehran that have sold girls to France, Britain, Turkey, as
well. One network based in Turkey bought smuggled Iranian women
and girls, gave them fake passports, and transported them to
European and Persian Gulf countries. In one case, a 16-year-old
girl was smuggled to Turkey, and then sold to a 58-year-old
European national for $20,000.
In the
northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, local police report
that girls are being sold to Pakistani men as sex-slaves. The
Pakistani men marry the girls, ranging in age from 12 to 20, and
then sell them to brothels called “Kharabat” in Pakistan. One
network was caught contacting poor families around Mashad and
offering to marry girls. The girls were then taken through
Afghanistan to Pakistan where they were sold to brothels.
In the
southeastern border province of Sistan Baluchestan, thousands of
Iranian girls reportedly have been sold to Afghani men. Their
final destinations are unknown.
One factor
contributing to the increase in prostitution and the sex slave
trade is the number of teen girls who are running away from home.
The girls are rebelling against fundamentalist imposed
restrictions on their freedom, domestic abuse, and parental drug
addictions. Unfortunately, in their flight to freedom,
the girls find more abuse and exploitation. Ninety percent of
girls who run away from home will end up in prostitution. As
a result of runaways, in Tehran alone there are an estimated
25,000 street children, most of them girls.Pimps prey upon street children, runaways, and vulnerable
high school girls in city parks. In one case, a woman was
discovered selling Iranian girls to men in Persian Gulf countries;
for four years, she had hunted down runaway girls and sold them.
She even sold her own daughter for US$11,000.
Given the
totalitarian rule in Iran, most organized activities are known to
the authorities. The exposure of sex slave networks in Iran has
shown that many mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual
exploitation and trade of women and girls. Women report that in
order to have a judge approve a divorce they have to have sex with
him. Women who are arrested for prostitution say they must have
sex with the arresting officer. There are reports of police
locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs.
In
cities, shelters have been set-up to provide assistance for
runaways. Officials who run these shelters are often corrupt; they
run prostitution rings using the girls from the shelter. For
example in Karaj, the former head of a Revolutionary Tribunal and
seven other senior officials were arrested in connection with a
prostitution ring that used 12 to 18 year old girls from a shelter
called the Center of Islamic Orientation.
Other
instances of corruption abound. There was a judge in Karaj who was
involved in a network that identified young girls to be sold
abroad. And in Qom, the center for religious training in Iran,
when a prostitution ring was broken up, some of the people
arrested were from government agencies, including the Department
of Justice.
The
ruling fundamentalists have differing opinions on their official
position on the sex trade: deny and hide it or recognize and
accommodate it. In 2002, a BBC journalist was deported for taking
photographs of prostitutes. Officials told her: “We are
deporting you … because you have taken pictures of prostitutes.
This is not a true reflection of life in our Islamic Republic. We
don’t have prostitutes.” Yet, earlier the same year, officials
of the Social Department of the Interior Ministry suggested
legalizing prostitution as a way to manage it and control the
spread of HIV. They proposed setting-up brothels, called
“morality houses,” and
using the traditional religious custom of temporary marriage, in
which a couple can marry for a short period of time, even an hour,
to facilitate prostitution. Islamic fundamentalists’ ideology
and practices are adaptable when it comes to controlling and using
women.
Some may think
a thriving sex trade in a theocracy with clerics acting as pimps
is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic
fundamentalists. In fact, this is not a contradiction. First,
exploitation and repression of women are closely associated. Both
exist where women, individually or collectively, are denied
freedom and rights. Second, the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran
are not simply conservative Muslims. Islamic fundamentalism is a
political movement with a political ideology that considers women
inherently inferior in intellectual and moral capacity.
Fundamentalists hate women’s minds and bodies. Selling women and
girls for prostitution is just the dehumanizing complement to
forcing women and girls to cover their bodies and hair with the
veil.
In a religious
dictatorship like Iran, one cannot appeal to the rule of law for
justice for women and girls. Women and girls have no guarantees of
freedom and rights, and no expectation of respect or dignity from
the Islamic fundamentalists. Only the end of the Iranian regime
will free women and girls from all the forms of slavery they
suffer.
The author
wishes to acknowledge the Iranian human rights and pro-democracy
activists who contributed information for this article. If any
readers have information on prostitution and the sex slave trade
in Iran, please contact me at dhughes@uri.edu
Dr. Donna M.
Hughes is a Professor and holds the Carlson Endowed Chair in
Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island