The story of Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi’s latest movie, Holy Spider, which garnered a lot of attention at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, is based on the serial murders that took place in the Iranian city of Mashhad in the 2000s. Saeed Hanai, who is the subject of the film, killed 16 female sex workers in Mashhad between July 2000 and August 2001, and was executed in April 2002. The story of the man known as the “Spider Killer” has been the subject of three films: Maziar Bahari’s original 2003 film And Along Came a Spider, The Killer Spider by Ebrahim Irajzad in 2020, and finally Holy Spider, directed by Abbasi in 2022.

Over the last 20 years, there have been multiple incidents of serial murders in Iran that have been striking not only for the horrific nature of the crimes involved, but also for how they were received by the Iranian public. One such case was that of Gholamreza Khoshroo, 32, who raped and murdered nine women before being caught and hanged in 1997. Another was the 2005 case of Mohammed Bijeh, a 22-year-old who raped and killed 41 boys.

However, Holy Spider, beyond addressing Hanai’s criminal case, offers references to the Iranian social and political contexts. Hanai’s case is one of the most controversial and mysterious criminal cases in Iran’s judicial history after the Islamic Revolution, and is still surrounded by a lot of speculation and doubt.

Although Holy Spider has the tone and theme of a crime-thriller, it answers the “whodunnit” question at the very beginning. With the identity of the murderer made known, the director creates tension by exploring a much different and larger question that lies behind the case. Hanai’s murders represent a much larger problem and dilemma. We realize the array of reactions to the murders among the public and authority figures, and the social picture that can be derived from these becomes the film’s main subject.

Holy Spider is a reflection of Iranian women’s position in society as it addresses the difficulties women face in all their quests and efforts. This is also the case for the film’s heroine, a journalist who is investigating the main case and is held back at almost every moment and on every turn of her research, simply because she is a woman. The director uncovers the tensions present in Iranian society and stemming from its contradictory nature, where women can be highly trained professionals such as doctors and engineers but are also subject to strict controls over what they wear and how they look in public.

As Abbasi stated, although the film is based on Saeed Hanai’s murders, it is not a documentary, so it does not adhere to the realities of the events. The purpose of the film is not to inform us about the serial murder case with a documentary-like approach. What makes the film distinctively insightful is that it analyzes Saeed Hanai’s character on the basis of what exactly motivates him to kill by especially analyzing the religious and political beliefs that influence his decisions and actions.

Roya Karimi Majd is a veteran journalist and reporter for Radio Farda with a focus on societal issues, including women’s rights. During the making of And Along Came a Spider, she worked with Maziar Bahari in researching the details and fallout from the Hanai case from different angles. Karimi interviewed Hanai and recalls that “Saeed Hanai was a very simple and honest person but not very intelligent.” “In a lot of murder trial footage, or even when watching films about him, you sometimes feel you’re watching an actor: someone whose every movement has been planned to influence the judge’s verdict. But in the interview with Hanai, I never felt he was hiding anything or lying.”

Hanai was remarkably candid in the interview about not just how he had gone about the killings but his motivations for doing so. Karimi says he also sometimes brought up seemingly unrelated matters that gave some clue as to his psyche: most importantly, having been the victim of violent abuse from his mother as a child. The discussion was not included in the final cut of the film, but Hanai told Karimi that his mother used to try to bite off chunks of his flesh, and his body always showed the marks left by her fingernails.

It seems that some social groups want to believe that Hanai is telling the truth and that he killed the sex workers for religious reasons as this scenario is more in line with the Iran they describe. Yes, Iran has problems in terms of human rights and women’s rights, and it cannot be said to be a democratic and free country. The whole world knows this! However, the screenwriter, like the opposition to any government or regime anywhere, is solely concerned with sending a specific message to international viewers, and not with the truth about Iranian society and politics.

The rapists and traitorous men in this movie all have religious and government profiles. For example, all such men wear an agate ring, which the director repeatedly highlights with multiple zooms. In the Holy Spider, men of all levels and positions in Iran look at women in a derogatory manner or as commodities to meet their sexual needs: filmmaker, hotel worker, police, and judge – every man in every position has some sexual disorder! Some get satisfaction by humiliating women, some by raping them, and some by killing them. Iranian society on the whole is presented as disturbingly sick, and it comes as little surprise that someone like Saeed Hanai would emerge from it.

Of course, Hanai’s story could be a compelling subject for a crime, police, or horror movie, but the way this story is handled is ideological. At the same time, it should be noted that the Iranian regime is to blame for how easy it is to persuade the audience of this line of thinking. In several scenes of the movie, the judge tries to deny the connection between Saeed Hanai’s actions and his religious and revolutionary past, and to convince the audience that his decision was an arbitrary act that was not accepted by the government and the law. However, his efforts fail, and based on the viewers’ knowledge of the regime’s existing views on women, the viewers feel that Hanai’s actions were fully in line with the regime’s constant preaching of “commanding good and forbidding evil.”

When it becomes clear that a state oppresses a part of its people – in this case, women – with the excuse of protecting their “chastity” or “decency” by interfering with what they can wear, who they can have relations with and how, etc., it is easy for the audience to think that in such an atmosphere, any individual may find it in themself to “educate” or “cleanse” society of “corruption.” In this way, the audience easily establishes a connection between Hanai and the Iranian regime that enabled his abominable actions, and, in turn, it identifies Hanai’s actions with the Iranian regime.

It is becoming increasingly widespread for women to fall victims of violent gender-motivated attacks. According to the United Nations, globally, one in every three women aged above 15 experience either physical or sexual violence at least once in their lives. This means that 736 million people on Earth are victimized.

It is noteworthy that women become victims of violence solely because of their gender. There are many regulations and mechanisms established to combat violence against women at national and international levels. The number of scientific research projects on the subject increases as well, providing a substantial amount of data on the causes behind violence against women.

The UN data on violence against women gives a striking statistic, according to which in 2018, one out of seven women between the ages of 15 and 49 was subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. There is a similar picture regarding femicide. In 2020, 58% of a total of 81,000 women lost their life globally at the hands of their partners or family members. This means that every 11 minutes a woman was killed by her partner or family member.

Women falling victim to their intimate partners or male relatives shows that violence is also fed by and is relatable to cultural norms. This is a reflection of the deep-rooted present-day reality that men continue to dominate the hierarchy structures across societal sectors. This is also obvious in daily life where in the majority of families traditional gender-based roles prevail.

Women being targeted by their intimate partners makes it more challenging to combat violence. Close contact and privacy between the victimizer and the victimized make women more vulnerable to violence, and cause delays in detecting and preventing violence. Another culturally specific factor is that some people regard violence as a legitimate or reasonable means of handling problems occurring in personal relations.

Yet, with the exception of self-defense and the state’s monopoly on violence, violence is utterly illegitimate and breaches the rule of law. Under all circumstances, violence must be rejected including violence directed against women and children.

Stalking is a fast-evolving threat

Stalking refers to “the act or crime of willfully and repeatedly following or harassing another person in circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to fear injury or death especially because of express or implied threats.” This is a relatively new form of violence and targets especially women. As technology advances, stalking becomes easier.

According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) in the United States, 31.2% of women—twice the rate of men—have encountered stalking at least once in their lifetime. In specific, 32.4% of women in Australia, 23% in Britain, and 19% in Germany have been exposed to stalking. According to a 2015 study in Turkey, 27% of women encounter stalking at some point in their lifetime.

Stalking can be as traumatic as physical violence. Studies show that stalking victims experience depression, anxiety, insomnia, and social anxiety disorder much more often than other people. Stalking can be the beginning of a catastrophic process that often results in physical violence.

Many studies show that stalking pushes women into a dark tunnel that ends with physical and sexual violence, or with femicide. In the U.S., the rate of women who are stalked by an intimate partner and also physically attacked by the same offender is as high as 81%. In fact, stalking is considered a crime in many countries such as Britain, the U.S. (across all states), France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain and Turkey.

Prison sentences are a vital instrument to deter stalking. However, a study in Britain shows that the option of rehabilitating offenders should not be ignored. The mixed method of imprisonment and rehabilitation can be extended to other crimes of violence against women in order to rehabilitate offenders and minimize the risk of reoffending.

As in most of the crimes against women, including stalking, offenders don’t consider their behavior as a crime. A woman’s existence as an independent individual and one that is equal to a man is still a very modern phenomenon. The only way forward is to change harmful and archaic mentalities.

The Istanbul Convention (IC) is a convention by the Council of Europe on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. It has been signed by 45 countries, but 11 – including the United Kingdom – are yet to ratify it. Countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia have been planning to halt their plans to ratify the convention because of “elements of ideological nature,” which the Polish Minister of Justice has declared to be harmful.

Bulgaria, too, is struggling with constitutional troubles regarding the convention. The U.K. government signed the convention nearly a decade ago but is progressing slowly toward its ratification. Turkey was the first country to ratify the convention but recently officially withdrew from it.

The U.K. and the Istanbul Convention

When a government decides to ratify a convention, the state is legally bound to follow it and there is a time frame granted to enact the necessary legislation in order to give a treaty domestic effect. With regard to the U.K.’s progress towards the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, there are three articles whose terms the country hasn’t fulfilled; these are Articles 44, 59, and 4(3).

Article 44 rules that “(1) parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to establish jurisdiction over any offense established in accordance with this Convention, when the offense is committed: a) in their territory; or b) on board a ship flying their flag; or c) on board an aircraft registered under their laws; or d) by one of their nationals; or e) by a person who has her or his habitual residence in their territory.”

This means that Article 44 of the Istanbul Convention gives provision for countries to initiate jurisdiction over a crime committed by one of their nationals outside the country. However, the United Kingdom already exercises territorial jurisdiction over crimes such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), and trafficking, which are also crucial parts of the convention. Besides these, there are crimes such as rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence where the U.K.’s jurisdiction does not apply and in order to comply with the convention, changes in its domestic laws are required.

Articles 59 and 4(3)

Currently, people with certain visas (such as spousal or fiancé visas) in the U.K. have “no recourse to public funds” which means that as foreigners they might not be able to apply for all U.K. benefits or services. For this reason, the Istanbul Convention’s Articles 59, which refers to residency status, and 4(3) remain marked as “under review” since the European treaty demands that services and support for victims must not discriminate on the basis of residency or immigration status.

Ratifying the Istanbul Convention would mean that the U.K. government has to take serious actions to change its domestic legislation. Even though these changes need time, it is remarkable that the U.K. has been struggling – or has been passive – regarding changing its domestic laws regarding this issue for nearly a decade. According to the progress report published in 2017, the UK government stated, “We will only take steps toward ratification when we are absolutely satisfied that the UK complies with all articles of the Convention.”

The progress report includes information on the measures to be taken and legislation required to enable the U.K. to ratify the convention. The IC Change, which is a volunteer-led campaign calling on the U.K. government to ratify the Istanbul Convention, criticized the report as being short and missing a series of points. In June 2021, the U.K. will mark eight years since the government signed the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

In Belgium, 300,000 women are victims of domestic violence and around 150 women are murdered every year.

How Effective Is the Istanbul Convention?

In the Netherlands and Belgium, the Istanbul Convention entered into force in 2016. According to a Dutch research in 2020, every ten days a woman in the Netherlands dies as a result of domestic violence. Kirsten van den Hul, former member of parliament for the Labour Party (PvdA), stated that there is a misconception about the nature of the problem. She claims, “People often think of certain cultures or classes, but violence against women and girls happens everywhere. This includes Europe and the Netherlands. Even with highly educated white people.”

In Belgium, 300,000 women are victims of domestic violence and around 150 women are murdered every year. Magda De Meyer, Chairman of the National Women’s Council, stated, “If you see that femicide claims more victims than terrorism, why isn’t it higher on the agenda?” Journalist and writer Kris Smet stated that the femicide of women is “absolutely ridiculous in this civilized country” and that “there is still a lot of work to be done here.”

According to French Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti, last year in France, “106 domestic crimes were committed in which 90 of the victims were women.” All the women victims were killed by their ex-spouses.

In Germany, according to Deutsche Welle, every day, a man tries to kill his partner or ex-partner. One in three attempts is successful in the country. Vanessa Bell from the NGO Terre des Femmes has claimed that “femicide is still a taboo topic in Germany.”

Even though all the above countries have ratified the Istanbul Convention for a while now, it is remarkable that there has not been a dramatic change or decrease in offenses and cases of femicide. It is also clear that conservative intellectuals in several countries feel that the current direction of the European Union on societal issues will mean a further crumbling of its Christian or Islamic identity and conservative values.

Slovakia, for example, joined the Istanbul Convention in 2011, but hasn’t ratified it yet. According to Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, the government maintains the right not to ratify the convention. He added that Europe can’t implement measures against the sensitivities and beliefs of individuals in member states. Fico stated that as long as he is prime minister, if concerns regarding the interpretation of controversial provisions are not addressed and, in particular, if the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman is not adopted, he will “never ever” give consent to submit this agreement for ratification.

Krasimir Karakachanov, the Bulgarian Minister of Defence, claimed that through the convention “international lobbies are pushing Bulgaria to legalize a ‘third gender’ and introduce school programs for studying homosexuality and transvestism and creating opportunities for enforcing same-sex marriages.” In addition, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church have turned against the convention as well.