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Pouran Bazargan
Pourandokht "Pouran" Bazargan (Persian: پوراندخت (پوران) بازرگان) was an Iranian teacher, revolutionary and translator. She was notably the first female member of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK). Biography Bazargan was born in a middle-class family in the city of Mashhad and was brought up as a devout Muslim.[1] As an adult she became principal of Refah School, a girls school in Tehran.[1] In the 1960s, she began her political activism within a religious organization opposed to the Shah.[2] Bazargan joined the MEK as its first female member, and married Mohammad Hanifnejad, a co-founder of the group.[1] Bazargan was a regular of Ali Shariati speeches at Hosseiniyeh Ershad and was personally in touch with him.[3][4] According to Ali Rahnema, Shariaiti who knew that Bazargan was associated with the MEK, introduced Simin Jariri to her.[4] Bazargan left Iran in 1981 after government crackdowns of political activists, and resided in a number of countries, including Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, to act as a liaison for the group.[5] In 1974, after the death of Hanifnezhad, she married fellow MEK member Torab Haghshenas.[6][5][7] In 1975, she sided with the Organization of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.[1] Among her family members in the MEK, only her sister converted to Marxism while her brother Mansour Bazargan (who had been imprisoned since 1972 in Iran) and sister-in-law Fatemeh Amini (who died under torture refusing to betray her MEK colleagues to Iranian authorities) remained Muslims and associates of the Islamic faction.[1] After the Iranian Revolution, Bazargan continued her support for the communist Organization of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class,[1] pursuing her political activity in exile.[5] She was the widow of the MEK's martyr and co-founder, as well as being the first woman to join the MEK.[7] She was also employed at the Palestinian Red Crescent Hospital in Damascus and in the Sadra refugee camp in Beirut.[8][7] In exile, Bazargan translated many works from French, English and Arabic with her husband Torab Haghshenas and launched a website name Peykar Andisheh.[5] The couple espoused a more internationalist view and became critical of armed struggle because they believed guerrilla movements were isolated from the workers' movement.[5] Bazargan died of a "long illness" in 6th of March 2007.[5][9] References
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