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God bless her. This is so sad. This is Marziyeh a woman from my country Iran. Look at her face. She had acid thrown on her face because her hijab was considered “inappropriate.” Two things about her story break my heart. First: for more than a decade, I have watched powerful female politicians from the West visit my country, cover their hair, and tell us they are doing it to “respect Iranian culture.” Iranian culture didn’t do this to her. Theocracy did. Compulsory hijab is not our culture. It is the culture of those who use religion to control women. Iranian women have paid with prison, lashes, their eyes, their faces, and sometimes their lives for saying NO to it. Second: the United Nations elected the Islamic Republic to its Commission on the Status of Women. Yes. The regime that brutalizes women over their hair was chosen to help oversee women’s rights. That’s like putting the arsonist on the fire-safety committee. So that is why I am determined to ate the West to respect women. Not the Islamic Ideology that destroy our lives. My speech at United Against Gender confers Apartheid in Berlin. See less