Scores of angry women stormed the streets of Marivan on Thursday, carrying the corpse of the 36-year-old Shler, chants against sexual harassment and assault filled the corners of the city.
Rasuli was a mother of two. Her husband had left Iran to the neighboring Kurdistan Region to provide his family with a living, and one neighbor saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of her.
On the night of September 3, her neighbor Goran Qadiri knocked on her door, seeking her help with his sick wife.
Rasuli followed her neighbor to the second floor of the building before realizing that Qadiri had different intentions. In an attempt to escape being sexually assaulted, Rasuli jumped off the window of the building, but after six days in the hospital, she passed away.
Screams of Rasuli’s mourning mother filled the neighborhood as her funeral was held on Friday. Women had set up the funeral tent in front of the same building Rasuli jumped for her life from.
The death of Rasuli spread throughout the Kurdish-populated Western Iran (Rojhelat), leading women’s rights activists to arrange several rallies demanding the arrest of Qadiri.
“My children were good and did not harm anyone, but a devil like this took the life of my daughter,” seventy year old Frishta Khadmatkar, mother to Rasuli told Rudaw English. “I was at my house two blocks away when they told me that my daughter was at the hospital.”
Khadmatkar’s tears had made it hard for her to speak, but she continued to talk about the incident in which she lost her daughter.
“All the neighbors know that man tried to fool my daughter and sexually assault her, and when she realized she had no options, she jumped off the building,” she said. “I call on the authorities to implement the law and execute the perpetrator, only then would I rest.”
The perpetrator was a drug addict
Qadiri’s reputation seems to have been very bad among his own neighbors as well.
“I have been here for some years and I knew Shler, they were a food family and had no problems, but Goran was a very bad person, he was using drugs and known for knife fights,” a neighbor of Rasuli who wanted to remain anonymous told Rudaw English. “He had been arrested a few times before.”
Recalling the night of the incident, the neighbor said that she heard a noise calling for help at around 2am .
“When I came out, I saw that Shler had thrown herself off the building and her bloody body was lying on the ground,” she said.
Civil activism in Marivan
The city of Marivan is among the cities with the most amount of social activists in compare to neighboring cities, and such incidents often are met with great public resistance.
“Unfortunately, Shler is not the only victim of the old laws and patriarchy, in Iran and Kurdistan, these problems face women on a daily basis,” Sumaya Ruz, a women’s rights activist in Marivan told Rudaw English. “But due to legal gaps in punishing perpetrators, both women feel unmotivated to file lawsuits and the Kurdish community views the victim as a criminal as well.”
Ruz called on men to also pitch in to the process of defending women’s rights, claiming that it is not a one sided fight.
“Thousands of innocent women like Shler before being a victim of a sick man, the law, Shariaa, and patriarchal society have already made them vitcims,” she said.
