Husband and wife Mehran Mohammadi, 37, and 36-year-old Shahin Gawelli lived in Sanandaj, a city in the Kurdish west of Iran.
“Shahin and Mehran married 15 years ago and were in love,” a friend of Gawelli told Rudaw English, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The friend said the couple had financial struggles and this strained their relationship. Even though Mohammadi had an engineering degree he could not find employment.
In her frustration with their troubled relationship, Gawelli would periodically go to stay at her mother’s house.
Eventually, she decided to divorce her husband. Mohammadi did not want a divorce and threatened that if she did not return to him he would kill himself and her.
“No one thought he would do such a crazed act,” said Gawelli’s friend.
On May 27, he went into his mother-in-law’s house and called his wife. He doused both of them in kerosene and set them on fire. Gawelli passed away on the same day and Mohammadi succumbed to his grave wounds a few days later.
The couple left behind their 14-year-old child.
Two months into the Iranian year, which began on March 21, at least 23 cases of femicide by husbands, fathers, brothers, and ex-husbands were reported, according to Etemad, a reformist newspaper, which detailed various cases of femicide in several cities of Iran involving beating, drowning, and immolation of wives and daughters.
Femicide, domestic violence, and other forms of gender-based violence are a pervasive problem in Iran's patriarchal society. A lack of legal protections for women create a climate of impunity for perpetrators.
“Lacking the right to divorce and to take custody of children are great impediments for women and for many years there has been work to enact a fair law but this has not been fulfilled yet,” legal expert Mariam Husseini, told Rudaw English. Men kill wives, sisters, and daughters in the name of "honor," often aware they will face scant legal repercussions.
She also noted that “the idea of possession and personal ownership of women by men … has made men treat women like purchased goods in some cases.”
On March 8 of this year, the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in Iran released a report of over 300 pages detailing the Iranian government’s brutal oppression of “Women, Life, Freedom” protestors who called for greater freedoms and rights for women.
The UN report lays out how institutional discrimination worsens gender-based violence. Security forces not only suppressed the protestors but also used inflammatory rhetoric to demonize their demands for equality, describing the protests as a “willingness to get naked”.
The report found a justice system that fails to protect victims. This lack of accountability discourages women from reporting violence, creating a cycle of impunity for perpetrators.
Translated by Didar Abdalrahman