Why has Iran jailed Canadian professor Homa Hoodfar?

Iranian officials have reportedly charged an Iranian-Canadian academic and two other dual Iranian nationals, but Homa Hoodfar’s family and her lawyer say they have not been informed of the actual charges against her.

Hoodfar’s niece, Amanda Ghahremani, said on Monday that the family is waiting to get specific details before commenting on the situation.

Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, Iran’s prosecutor general, reportedly told local news agencies on Monday that Hoodfar, Iranian-British woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi have been indicted, The Guardian reported.

The specific charges have not been revealed, the newspaper stated.

At the end of June, Iranian officials revealed that Hoodfar was being accused of “dabbling in feminism and security matters,” Homa Hoodfar’s family told The New Arab at the time.

“Dabbling in feminism is so vague and so broad that I can’t quite understand what they would be charging her with,” Ghahremani said in late June. “We’re very confused and concerned about what it means to be dabbling in feminism and security matters.”

Hoodfar, an anthropologist whose research focuses on women’s rights, has had no access to a lawyer or her family since she was detained on June 6, Ghahremani said. The 65-year-old is a retired professor from Concordia University in Montreal.

Iranian media outlets with ties to the country’s Revolutionary Guard have also reported that Hoodfar is being accused of attempting to foment a feminist, “soft revolution” against the government, her family said in a statement.

Hoodfar, who also holds Irish citizenship, is currently being held at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, the family said.

“Her lawyer hasn’t seen her, her family hasn’t seen her, we have no details about how she’s doing, and we’re very, very worried,” Ghahremani said.

At the end of June, Iranian officials revealed that Hoodfar was being accused of “dabbling in feminism and security matters”

No diplomatic ties

Hoodfar was first arrested in March of this year, after members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit raided her home in Tehran and confiscated her personal belongings, her family said.

She was in the country to visit relatives, and she took the opportunity to conduct archival research into women’s participation in public life, they said. Released on bail but unable to leave Iran, Hoodfar was interrogated several times since March.

Canada says it is “actively engaged” in Hoodfar’s case and it is working with its allies to assist her.

Ghahremani said she personally met last week with Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion and his parliamentary secretary, MP Omar Alghabra, to discuss her aunt’s case. She said she is “satisfied that they are doing what they can do.”

Canada and Iran severed all diplomatic ties in 2012 during the tenure of Canada’s former Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

Canada currently does not have an embassy in Tehran, though efforts to re-establish relations have been underway since Canada lifted sanctions on Iran after it signed a nuclear agreement with the P5+1 countries last year.

“The decision to close the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa taken by the Conservative government is costing us today too many Canadians laying in Iranian prisons,” wrote Monia Mazigh, head of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, an Ottawa-based advocacy group, in a recent letter to Dion calling for Hoodfar’s release.

The lack of normalised Canada-Iran ties is making Ottawa’s ability to advocate for Hoodfar’s release more difficult

Iran’s domestic politics

The lack of normalised Canada-Iran ties is making Ottawa’s ability to advocate for Hoodfar’s release more difficult, according to James Devine, a professor at Mount Allison University and an expert on Iran.

But domestic politics in Iran may be having a larger impact on the case, he said.

Conservative elements in Iran – upset over President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to open up to Western countries on trade and foreign relations – are attempting to influence Iranian foreign policy, Devine told The New Arab.

“Rouhani’s critics and his opponents have been striking back at him at the domestic level,” he said, “so taking people like Homa Hoodfar … is a way for them to try and undermine Rouhani’s foreign policy while at the same time not formally getting involved or interfering in foreign policy itself.”

Canada is not alone in trying to free citizens held in Iran, Devine said.

The British government, for example, is also attempting to secure the release of dual British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, whom the Iranian authorities have accused of attempting to overthrow the government.

Devine said these cases show that even with diplomatic ties with Iran, securing the release of dual nationals is a difficult task, partly because Iran does not recognise dual citizenship and thus views the detentions as issues of domestic security.

The animosity Iranian hardliners have towards Canada, something that increased dramatically while Harper was in power, may also make any concessions Rouhani could make to Ottawa costly for him politically, Devine said.

“That complicates this in the sense that if Rouhani makes a deal with Canada, he’s making a deal now with one of the countries that the hardliners have [identified] as a real threat to Iranian security and as an enemy.”

As of June 26, over 4,600 academics, including Noam Chomsky and Richard Falk, have signed an online petition calling for Hoodfar’s release

International pressure

As of June 26, over 4,600 academics, including Noam Chomsky and Richard Falk, have signed an online petition calling for Hoodfar’s release.

“Any accusations against Prof. Hoodfar are undoubtedly based on a fundamental mis-interpretation of the nature of her ethnographic research which has never been a threat to the Iranian regime. Instead, her arrest points to a renewed campaign to target and intimidate other scholars writing about Iran,” the professors wrote.

The Iranian Canadian Congress, a non-profit community group made up of Iranian-Canadians, also called on Canada “to pursue her case actively and with the utmost care.”
Ghahremani said her aunt’s work is strictly ethnographic, and any interpretation of her research as seditious is “wholly inaccurate”.

“My aunt’s academic work is incredibly transparent. It’s easily accessible – it’s published in journals and online – and her work is ethnographic and it looks at Muslim women’s daily lives,” she said.

“Her work is there to improve women’s lives and research itself is not illegal, and research into women is not illegal, in Iran.”