Parveen Bakhtiar Nezhad, Women’s Rights Activist, Dies at Age 56

Parveen Bakhtiar Nezhad, who spent many years working in civil society and journalism in the field of women’s rights and specifically violence against women, died at midnight on Tuesday, October 8th in Tehran. She was the wife of Reza Alijani, a national religious activist.

Being a women’s rights activist and civil society figure, journalist, and at the same time the wife of an activist and political prisoner and living in Iran was a great challenge that Parveen Bakhtiar Nezhad successfully overcame.

She began her journalism career in 1995 with the publication “Iran Tomorrow” and after this publication was shut down, she moved along with other writers to “New Society.” The newspapers of the reform period including Khordad, Aftab-e Emrooz, Yass-e No, Nowrooz, Shargh, and Etemad were always venues for publishing her articles.

Ms. Bakhtiar Nezhad published the book “Silent Tragedy,” a research study on honor killings, in 2002.

After the events of 2009, Bakhtiar Nezhad emigrated to France along with her husband Reza Alijani and their two children. However, Parveen could not bear life in exile and returned to Iran in 2016, where she was regularly summoned for interrogation for a month.

Parveen Bakhtiar Nezhad was born in 1962 and married Reza Alijani, a national religious activist, in 1984. This marriage produced two children who currently live with their father in France.

She died at midnight on Tuesday, October 8th at her home in Tehran due to pulmonary embolism.

Source: DW