Iranian Broadcasting Corporation and Repeated Violations of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Promoting False Beliefs Instead of Building Culture
The promotion of the stereotype that disability is atonement for past sins in a popular series broadcast on Islamic Republic Television has sparked protests and criticism from disability rights activists. According to the protesters, not only are people with disabilities not portrayed as independent and capable characters on Iranian television, but also, due to the ignorance and negligence of filmmakers, as occurred in the series “Sataish,” negative attitudes and social stigma towards them are promoted and propagated.
Showing disability as the fate of the negative character in the story clearly conveys the message to the audience that disability is the result of moral mistakes. As a result, when viewers encounter a disabled person or their family in everyday life, they are led to believe that the person or their family must have been disabled as a punishment for past sins.
In this scene, Ghulam says to Anis: “May God heal my sister, a few minutes ago I was complaining that you left me in the way, which means there are worse times than you.” This dialogue conveys the moral conclusion of the story more firmly and clearly to the audience and fuels the common misconception that disability is a punishment for sins. Also, a person with a disability is used as a symbol of helplessness and helplessness that others feel pity for and turn to gratitude for their situation.
This sequence, however, was not the only example of the spread of stereotypes in the series “Praise.” As the Iran-Spid newspaper writes, the closing credits of “Praise” also indicate that the producers of this series continue to ignore the semantic load of words, phrases, and the repeated efforts of disability rights activists to change language and public perception. The song reads: “I am like a blind person who has given his cane to a firefly.” Since the use of the term “blind” instead of blind has a negative connotation and is not recommended by activists in this field, using this term in a series that talks about “vision” could destroy the impact of the culture-building efforts of the past few years.
This is despite the fact that the IRIB is officially responsible for raising awareness about the rights of people with disabilities and, according to the law, must take action in this direction. According to Article 21 of the Law on the Protection of the Rights of People with Disabilities, approved in March 2017, “The IRIB is required to allocate at least five hours of its programs per week, free of charge, at appropriate times, to programs of organizations and non-governmental organizations supporting people with disabilities in order to familiarize people with the rights, capabilities, and problems of these people, and to take steps to subtitle films and programs on various IRIB networks, use interfaces for the deaf, and broadcast audio descriptions of films for blind people.” After about 18 months since this article came into force, the IRIB has not only not yet fully implemented it, but also, through ignorance and lack of supervision over the content of produced programs, is reducing the impact of independent culture-building and moving in the opposite direction of its legal obligations.
Article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also obliges States Parties to take action to “combat stereotypical, biased and harmful practices relating to persons with disabilities” and “promote positive perceptions and greater social awareness” of these individuals. Iran ratified the Convention in 2008, but incidents such as the TV series “Sataish” show that the Iranian government and the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation, which is affiliated with it, have not yet taken serious and planned action to implement this article of the Convention.
In response to the "Praise" series sequence, disability rights activist Mahnaz Sofi wrote on her Telegram page: "Many of my friends and I are trying to change people's views of people with disabilities by creating culture and inclusiveness, and then you ruin all our efforts with a fifteen-second sequence from the podium of a popular series? Why don't you use your pen to create culture?"
He added: "We no longer expect you to create a series to create a culture of understanding and recognition of people with disabilities, but I hope that in an era when the whole world is moving towards respect and equal rights for people with disabilities, we will at least no longer witness such dialogues in Iranian series."
Journalist and disability activist Muhaddeseh Jafari also wrote on her Twitter account: "There has been a lot of criticism of the series' closing credits song and of course the subject of Anis and this character's wheelchair. Why do they portray disability as the cause of bad deeds? From the filmmakers' and writers' perspective, is disability the result of a great sin? Why don't they portray disabled psychologists and lawyers in their films?"
This incorrect practice has a long history in television series and has been criticized many times by disability rights activists. For example, according to ISNA news agency, in February 2015, following the broadcast of an episode of the series “Kimiya,” Shahram Mobaser, an activist with the Disability Center in Region 2, posted a text on social media about the image that the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) has left in the minds of the audience of the disabled, which reads in part: “Unfortunately, the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation (IBRC) has once again spread a false, stereotypical, and rotten culture in one of its own series, Kimiya, due to the lack of awareness of the creators of this series. A culture that instills in the viewer that anyone who becomes disabled is paying for the evils and injustices they have done to people and is now suffering divine punishment with their disability. For years, the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation (IBRC) has been unintentionally, but in this way, destroying all the efforts of activists and associations active in the field of empowerment and culture building for people with disabilities. "He never tried to make the lead role of a film about a person with a disability successful. We very rarely see a doctor, a university professor, a businessman, or a lawyer with a disability in films and series. But in series, bad and evil people always have disabilities, and this is how people in my country care about their human dignity."
It should be noted that, globally, the actions of disability rights activists have led to a more or less prominent presence of artists with disabilities in television and cinema, in such a way that the positive and negative characteristics of these characters are defined beyond their disabilities, and disability is somehow normalized and is not the main focus of the characters and stories of these people. The presence of the physically and mentally disabled actor Steve V in the popular comedy series "Rami" in the United States was a successful example of this type of disability inclusion in the field of art. Contrary to what is common in the Iranian Broadcasting System, it was not Steve V's disability that added to the humor of the story, but rather the power of his expressive humor and acting that led to the popularity of this character. Although the Iranian Broadcasting System has a long way to go in terms of the participation of artists with disabilities on stage, and most of these roles are still performed by actors without disabilities, implementing the law and creating a positive culture can be the first and most effective step towards the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Iranian Broadcasting System.
Source: Human Rights Campaign
