Plea For Perspective and Sanity

I hereby, beg, grovel, plea, implore, beseech, supplicate to the Supreme Eminences and Grandest of Grandest Ayatollahs of the Islamic monarchy to please tell us what is the logic behind kicking and beating up women and banning imported tea and sugar(including sugar cubes) in the holy and martyr-raising goverment offices of nation of Iran? Is there a correlation or a causal relationship that us earthly peons cannot begin to grasp?

Kamangir has this surreal report from Iran: [...]

1- The executive deputy of the president published a statement banning the usage of sugar and sugar cubes in government offices. The statement emphasizes the use of alternatives, including dates and raisins, instead (Mehr).

2- The executive deputy of the president mandated government offices to only use Iran-grown tea (Baztab).

However, in the same country, the Police literally kicks a girl into a car. Her “crime” is to take her veil off in public, according to my understanding of the video.

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Iran: Crackdown on Women, Student, and Dissidents Continues

Click to enlarge the picture (link via sheema). (for more info go to http://www.hriran.org/)

In related news: Reporters Without Borders reports that Four women get jail terms in crackdown on "cyber-feminists".

And this:

Ghassem Sholeh Sadi, Professor of Law at Tehran University, a former member of Islamic regime’s parliament and a practice attorney has been notified that he has been convicted to eighteen month of imprisonment. His alleged crime is an open letter which he had addressed to the ‘supreme leader’ more than five years ago.
According to Radio France International (RFI- Wednesday April 12, 2007) Ghassem Sholeh Sadi, Professor of Law at Tehran University, a former member of Islamic regime’s parliament and a practice attorney has been notified that he has been convicted to eighteen month of imprisonment. His alleged crime is an open letter which he had addressed to the ‘supreme leader’ more than five years ago.

In that letter he had politely criticized some of the domestic as well as international actions and policies of the Leader and the Regime. This is the second time that he will be going to jail as a punishment for his courage in calling into question the excesses of the Iranian theocracy. In a radio interview with RFI, from Tehran on Wednesday 12 April, he once again reiterated his criticism of the regime in no uncertain terms. He said he was not going to be intimidated by prison or any other punishment .

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Iran: Crackdown Continues over Dress Code for Men & Women

Hejab for Men

"I want the whole world to know that they oppress us and all we can do is put up with it" Tofigh, 15

BBC: Thousands of Iranian women have been cautioned over their poor Islamic dress this week and several hundred arrested in the capital Tehran in the most fierce crackdown on what's known as "bad hijab" for more than a decade.
It is the talk of the town. The latest police crackdown on Islamic dress has angered many Iranians - male, female, young and old.


But Iranian TV has reported that an opinion poll conducted in Tehran found 86% of people were in favour of the crackdown - a statistic that is surprising given the strength of feeling against this move.
Police cars are stationed outside major shopping centres in Tehran.

They are stopping pedestrians and even cars - warning female drivers not show any hair - and impounding the vehicles and arresting the women if they argue back.

Middle-aged women, foreign tourists and journalists have all been harassed, not just the young and fashionably dressed.

Individual choice

Overnight the standard of what is acceptable dress has slipped back.

Hard-won freedoms - like the right to wear a colourful headscarf - have been snatched away.
It may sound trivial but Iranian women have found ways of expressing their individuality and returning to drab colours like black, grey and dark blue is not something they will accept easily.

"If we want to do something we will do it anyway, all this is total nonsense," says a young girl, heavily made up and dressed up. She believes Islamic dress should be something personal - whether you're swathed in a black chador or dressed in what she calls "more normal clothes".

Interestingly many women who choose to wear the all enveloping chador agree - saying it's a personal choice and shouldn't be forced on people. "This year is much worse than before because the newspapers and the TV have given the issue a lot of coverage compared to last year; it wasn't this bad before," says Shabnam who's out shopping with her friend.

Permission denied

At the start of every summer the police say they will enforce the Islamic dress code, but this year has been unusually harsh.
Thousands of women have been cautioned by police over their dress, some have been obliged to sign statements that they will do better in the future, and some face court cases against them.


Even shop mannequins considered "too revealing" are dealt with

Though the authorities want coverage internally to scare women - they don't want the story broadcast abroad.

The BBC's cameraman was detained when he tried to film the police at work and the government denied us permission to go on patrol with the police.
"Really we don't have any security," complains Shabam's friend Leyla.

"Since we came out this morning many people we met have continuously warned us to be careful about our headscarves and to wear them further forward because they are arresting women who are dressed like this," she says.

Boutique owners are furious. Some shops have been sealed - others warned not to sell tight revealing clothing.

One shopkeeper selling evening dresses told us the moral police had ordered him to saw off the breasts of his mannequins because they were too revealing.

He said he wasn't the only shop to receive this strange instruction.

Respect

There's even been less traffic on the streets because some women are not venturing out - fearful they will be harassed.
And it's not even safe in a car. Taxi agencies have received a circular warning them not to carry a "bad hijabi".

"They have said we shouldn't carry passengers who wear bad Islamic dress and if we do we have to warn them to respect the Islamic dress code even inside the car," said one taxi driver.

And it's not just women who are being targeted this year.

Young men are being cautioned for wearing short sleeved shirts or for their hairstyles. Morad - a hairdresser whose gelled hair is made to stand straight up - says it's necessary for him to look like this to attract customers.

"These last few days I don't dare walk down the main roads looking like this case I get arrested," he says. "I use the side streets and alleys."

Morad is scared because his friends have told him they've seen the police seize young men and forcibly cut their hair if it's too long.

Fifteen-year-old Tofiq who'd also gelled his hair to stand on end said he too was afraid but he wasn't going to change.

"I want the whole world to know that they oppress us and all we can do is put up with it," he said.

Some parents have complained that harassing the young over their clothing will only push them to leave the country.

But one MP has said those Iranians who cannot cope with Islamic laws should leave.

Some commentators have suggested that the government is conducting this crackdown to distract attention from the rising cost of living in Iran and increasing tension with the international community over the nuclear issue.

If so, it's a strategy that risks alienating people who've got used to years of relative social freedom and do not want to return to the early days of the revolution when dress rules were much more tightly enforced.

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Pious License to Kill

From Shariar Zangenh:

The New York Times has a news item on its Thursday's front page that is old news to most, if not all, Iranians.

The Islamic vigilantes in the pay of the state who had admitted to gruesomely stoning, drowning and burying alive five people to death were exonerated by the Islamic Republic's Supreme Court. The one page opinion affirms the right of the pious, explicitly granted in the Holy Book, to shed with impunity the blood of those they deem "morally corrupt".

Should an error of judgment have been committed by the pious, the victim's family is entitled to blood money compensation, Diyya, officially set by the state and adjusted annually to reflect inflation. The rate of compensation is based on the market value of camel, the hoofed animal, and doled out at the rate of full face value for male deceased and half of that for female or non-moslems of officially tolerated religions; all others are not entitled to anything.

Those who have followed this case know the number of victims of this particular gang to be far greater than the five mentioned in the official documents. They also know that this is not an aberration; rather, it is the norm in the Islamic Republic.

What sets this latest publicly acknowledged episode apart from the others is the Islamic Supreme Court's ruling. Up till now the other cases were either not reported, were swept under the rug by the authorities, the victims were demonized posthumously and if all failed, a show trial was staged, a sentence announced and the culprit(s) never saw a day of incarceration, let alone capital punishment so favored by the Islamic courts.

Based on this Islamic Supreme Court's precedent setting ruling, vigilantism is now the official law of the land. One, any one of any race creed or color, can at any moment become a victim of any self proclaimed "pious" -- and, should by an outside chance be possible to prove that he was mistaken in his evaluation, as long as he has had good intention in enforcing the pious' unwritten code of conduct, blood money will be paid as proscribed by law and all will be well in the land of believers.

Perhaps the Lady Nobel Laureate, famed Iranian lawyer who rightly champions the cause of the incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, would find the time to effectuate her often declared and yet not actuated threat of filing grievances at "relevant international entities". While she is contemplating the drafting of the long awaited complaint, in light of the recent ruling, she might want to extrapolate on her mantra of compatibility of Sharia jurisprudence with those of democratic values

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Iran: Babol University

یکشنبه ۲۶ فروردین ) ۱۵ نفر متحصنین دانشگاه بابل،که سه تن از آنها در اعتصاب غذا بودند، با یورش نیروهای امنیتی و درگیری آنها با دانشجویان متحصن ‌که در دانشگاه تنها بودند، ربوده شده و به مکان نامعلومی منتقل شدند

Akhbar rooz:--15 university students have been abducted in Mazandaran, Iran.

In a related News: Executing thousands of female opponents, which is unprecedented anywhere in the world. In a recent demonstration by teachers asking for better and equal pay, some 10,000 demonstrators, mostly women, showed up.

Some 1,000 women teachers were arrested in one fell swoop by the Suppression forces and transferred to various prisons. The head of Islamic Iran's National Prisons Organization recently admitted there were over 100 "independent" prisons around the country, each run for their own use by various so-called security or intelligence organizations. Most are only quasi-official and some definitely "illegal" if such a word can be applied to the Islamic administration of Ahmadi-Nejad in particular and the Mullahs in general, where their very presence has illegal roots and foundation.

Finally, Human Rights
Watch demands release of the detained teachers.

Link via sheema

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Iran: Mahmood Salehi, leading labour activist arrested

From: Laborurnet.net:

Report by WPI England

Mahmood Salehi, a leading labour activist from the city of Saghez, was re-arrested on Monday April 9 by the Islamic regime’s security forces. Salehi who was at work at the time was taken during his lunch break by armed security forces to the public prosecutor’s office regarding his bail on charges of organizing May Day strikes and demonstrations last year.Later at the public prosecutor’s office, a revised court verdict was read to him summarily sentencing him to one year imprisonment and 3 years suspended sentence.

He was immediately transferred to the city of Sanandaj prison.Clearly this is an attempt to intimidate and attack the labour movement both in Iran and internationally. Last Year Manhood Salehi was bailed under immense international pressure from trade unions, and labour and progressive organizations internationally.

In addition, this is an attempt to undermine the vibrant workers’ movement Iran which is preparing to organize for this year’s international May Day celebrations following a huge teachers’ strike in Iran in the last couple of months over pay and conditions which resulted in the arrest of 45 teachers’ activists in the city of Hamedan on Saturday 7th April 2007.With nation-wide and daily protests such as the teachers’ strikes challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime is fearful of a powerful confrontation on May Day and is attempting to undermine the momentum of this movement by threats, intimidations and arrests of activists and labour leaders.

Note to the Editors:
Mahmood Salehi has been arrested twice since May 2003 for organizing May Day during recent last years. He was freed as a result of huge international campaigns for his release on both occasions. Mahmood Salehi has been recalled to the court over and over and has been under permanent threat and pressure by the Islamic Republic of Iran since his first arrest in May Day of 2003.

In a Related News: Iran: More Arrests of Teachers!

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Iranian Cartoon!

"You think , therefore, you are a Spy!"

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