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November 15, 2005 VOLUME 18
E-ZAN VOICE OF WOMEN AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM IN IRAN
To our readers,
On October 26, 2005, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
called for Israel to be "wiped off the face of the
earth". White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the Iranian
President's comments "just reconfirms what we have been saying about the
regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we
have about Iran's nuclear operations". US congress and the UN Security
Council reacted with a swift condemnation and criticized Ahmadinejad for his
outrageous remarks. The Iranian regime responded with endorsing remarks by the
Supreme Leader, Ali Khameini and mullah-sponsored anti-Israel and anti-US
rallies in Iran, Southern Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.
Ahmadinejad’s remark has put Iranian
relations on a different diplomatic course. His dangerous character gives the
threats against Israel and US a different credibility.
While revealing the true face of Islamic Fundamentalism, Ahmadinejad’s recent
threat is also targeting Arab and other Muslim nations which beg a serious look
at relations with the Iranian regime. Yet, the silence has returned to the
diplomatic scenes and no policy actions in place to restrain the fundamentalist
regime in Tehran.
Meanwhile, 75% of ministers and
deputy ministers of Ahmadinejad’s government are from the notorious oppressive
body of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). His policy of terror and
violence is already in full gear at home, targeting women more than ever. With
his IRGC cabinet in power, Ahmadinejad has called for more censorship, gender
segregation and oppression at home.
The world community must realize the
danger of Islamic Fundamentalism is beyond just words, it is line with sweeping
domestic and foreign policy agenda presented by Ahmadinejad.
Tehran’s danger is growing and U.S. and Europe should wake up from their sweet
diplomatic dreams. Tehran’s regime will never give up its
pursue of nuclear weapons and will continue to be a serious threat to all of
us.
One way to turn the table on
Ahmadinejad’s fundamentalist regime is to refer Iran’s nuclear case to UN Security
Council while supporting the Iranian opposition groups who are capable of
removing this regime from power.
Political isolation, sanctions along with support for Iranian opposition
will bring this regime of terror down.
E-Zan Featured Headlines
Shargh State-Controlled
Newspaper – October 16, 2005
An Iranian woman found guilty
of having an extra-marital affair with an Afghan and being an accomplice in the
murder of her husband has been sentenced to death by stoning, a press report
said in Shargh newspaper said. The report identified the woman by her first
name of Soghra, and said the killing took place in the Varamin district south
of Tehran. The woman's lover, only identified as Ali
Reza, was sentenced to death for committing the murder.
WFAFI Radio VOW News – October 17, 2005
According to reports received from Iran, universities are observing new
rules on segregation between male and female students. In Lahijan Azad University, any gathering of female and male
students on campus ground is strictly prohibited. On October
17, 2005,
officials of Disciplinary and Security Committee in Lahijan Azad University issued warning to many students and
threaten them with expulsions. Students across various campuses in Iran have organized sit-ins and
campus-protests to challenge the latest regulations and blatant gender
apartheid.
Agence France Presse – October 20, 2005
Iran's Islamic regime has
slapped a ban on foreign films deemed to be "feminist",
"secular" or pro-American, with hard-line President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad also pushing his vision of a Koranic society. A ruling by the Supreme
Cultural Revolution Council, a watchdog headed by Ahmadinejad, bans "the
distribution and screening of foreign films which promote secular, feminist,
liberal or nihilist ideas and degrade oriental culture.”The report said the
directive has been widely circulated, especially within the Ministry of Culture
and Islamic Guidance and state television and radio. "The Iranian people
have a mission to create, on this sacred Iranian ground, an ideal society
founded on the Koran," Ahmadinejad was also quoted as telling a local
gathering titled "Servants of the Koran". He promised his government,
less than three months into its four-year mandate, would "advance with
strength to favor the spread of a Koranic culture".
AKI News Agency – October 26, 2005
The wave of censorship in Iran, which began with the rise to power
of hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, continues after the targeting of
newspapers, journalists, internet sites and bloggers. In the past few days,
sites and blogs that focus on women's rights and issues have now been censored.
Iranian web surfers have been blocked from navigating in particular the
websites of 'Womeniniran', 'Irwomen', 'Iftribune' and 'Womeniw', four of the
most popular feminist websites in the country.
In total, it is estimated that there are 130,000 websites which Iranians
have been prohibited from navigating.
The Guardian – October 29, 2005
… President Ahmadinejad has hit
every duck in his own row…he has delivered promptly on his commitment to battle
liberalism, feminism and secularism, banning films, closing websites and
sending out enforcers to pull the chador firmly down on the foreheads of
Iranian women again, and is good on staging huge demonstrations such as the
anti-Israel ones in Iran yesterday.
The Reuters News Agency – October 31, 2005
A court report in the
Etemad daily said a taxi driver, identified only as Hamidreza, became furious
when his elderly lover Setareh proposed marriage. "I went to her house and
she said she had deep feelings for me and suggested we get married," he
told the court. Hamidreza explained he already had a wife and children.
"She then got frustrated and slapped me," he said. The man knocked
her unconscious and suffocated her with bed-sheets before making off with her
jewelry.
Middle East Times – November 1, 2005
Sociologist Jaleh
Shaditalab of Iran's National Welfare Organization said that most of the
victims were in forced marriages and that abuses also included mental torment,
humiliation and being prevented from working.She said that the figures were
drawn from a national survey of the problem.
In February 2005 the UN's top official on women's rights, Yakin Erturk,
chastised Iran over what she said were
abuses and discrimination built in to the Islamic republic's laws. Iran's laws "do not
provide protection for victims of domestic violence and make it difficult to
escape violence through divorce", she said, adding that suffering wives
also faced "time-consuming judicial procedures and stigmatization".
Middle East Times – November 7, 2005
An 80-year-old Iranian
killed his wife because he could not tolerate her wearing makeup outside the
house, the government Iran newspaper reported on
Sunday. The man, identified only
by his first name, Eyvaz, beat his 30-years-younger wife to death with a club,
the report said. The two had often bickered because she wanted to apply
cosmetics and go out alone, it said. "We could not understand each other's
demands because of our big age difference. Lately, she was putting on makeup
and going out on her own, ignoring my objections," the man was quoted as
saying to police. Laws in the Islamic republic of Iran oblige women to cover
their hair and bodies. But some Iranian women take liberties with the strict
dress code promoted by the government and tend to apply heavy makeup.
Entekhab
State-Controlled News Agency – November
13, 2005
A 9 year old boy,
Mostafa Ebadi, is married to a 13 year girl, Samira Feiz-Bakhshi, in the village of Talesh in Iran. They are considered as
the youngest married couple in Iran. They couple are to
live with the parents of the groom. Mostafa, the groom, claims “my ill father
wanted me to marry Samira as soon as possible. I am his only child.” Samira,
the bride, said “our wedding took place in line with our tradition and laws.
Although many may not consider this right, but life conditions are different
for everyone.”
Iran Focus – November 14, 2005
Iran’s State Supreme Court
upheld a death sentence against a woman who had been accused of murdering her
abusive husband, the state-run Fars news agency reported on Monday. The
woman, only identified by her first name Fatemeh, had previously been found
guilty of stabbing her husband, identified as Mojtaba, in June 2004, though
throughout her trial she defended her motives. Fatemeh said that her abusive
husband repeatedly mistreated her children.
She faces imminent execution after the State Supreme Court upheld the
death sentence.
Radio Farda (US-Based) -
November 14, 2005
In the last six months, the
rate of temporary marriages have risen 45% with compare to last calendar year. According
to State-Run Mehr News Agency, in the last 6 months, permanent marriage has
only increased by 13%, at the same time the registered divorce rate has raised
14% with compare to the same time frame last year.
E-Zan
Featured Reports
Tehran seeking new ways to censor the Internet and track
dissidents and women’s organizations
More sites banned,
overhaul of filtering system planned
Reporters Without Boarder
October 18, 2005
Reporters Without
Borders today accused the Iranian government of seeking to increase its control
of the Internet in recent measures that have included contracting an Iranian
company, Delta Global, to set up a new online censorship system.
While developing a
woefully oppressive model of Internet management, Iran is participating
actively in international talks about Internet governance that are being held
as part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the press
organization said.
“These new measures
point to an ideological hardening in the Iranian government and a desire by the
new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to centralise authority,” Reporters Without
Borders said. “They also show that factions exist within the conservatives, as
the latest website to be banned, Baztab.com, is run by supporters of the
Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.”
“We are also worried by
statements coming from the company that seems to have been given the job of
managing Iran’s Internet filters,”
the press freedom organization added. “If what this company’s chief executive
turns out to be correct, online surveillance and censorship is to be stepped
up. This is very bad news for Iranian bloggers and Internet users.”
The head of Delta
Global, Rahim Moazemi, told the local news agency ISNA in late September that
his company had won a government contract for the management of the Internet
control and censorship system. He said he wanted to put an end to “the anarchy
of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs)” by centralising the filtering system.
He also claimed that Delta Global’s technology was capable of blocking access
to all the tools used to get round censorship.
Iranian filtering
currently uses the “smart filter” technology developed by the US company Secure
Comuting, which claims the Iranian authorities never paid to license this
software. Iranian Internet censorship is not homogenous and varies according to
the ISP used, of which Iran has several hundred. So
a website may be accessible in one city and blocked in another.
Access to at least four
websites that include coverage of Iranian women’s issues - www.womeniniran.org,
http://irwomen.com, www.iftribune.com and www.womeniw.com - has been blocked
since the start of September. Those in charge of these sites have reacted by
launching an online petition at:
www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?womeno
A court meanwhile on 12
October “provisionally” banned the news website Baztab.com although it belongs
to former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohssen Rezai, a supporter of
Ayatollah Khamenei, and is supposed to be backed by the Iranian intelligence
services.
Baztab published reports
that were embarrassing for the president. The site’s editor, Foad Sadeghi, said
it was banned as a result of a complaint by the secretariat of the High Council
for National Security about its articles on the nuclear negotiations that are
currently under way.
The ban points to
internal struggles within the conservative camp, between President
Ahmadinejad’s supporters and those still loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei. It seems
that the president, with the support of the military, is trying to take control
of the internal state apparatus and impose his mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah, as
Khamenei’s successor.
During the preparatory
meetings for the WSIS (which is to take place in Tunis on 16-18 November), Iran called for a “new
model” of Internet governance that would put an end to the existing US hegemony.
Iran: Judiciary sentences a women to
stoning, another to death by hanging
Women's Committee of the National
Council of Resistance of Iran
October 19, 2005
In a bid to terrorize
and intimidate the public and step up general suppression, particularly against
women, the mullahs' misogynous regime has again resorted to issuing stoning
verdicts.
The state-run daily
Etemaad wrote on October 15 that the Judiciary had sentenced a woman, named
Soghra, to death by stoning. The victim was also sentenced to 100 lashes before
being stoned to death. Javan daily wrote on October 18 that a young woman by
the name of Raheleh had been sentenced to death by hanging.
Some time ago, Abbas
Alizadeh, then-Head of Tehran Province's Justice Department
told the Iranian state television, "We hand out harsh sentences in our
courts. The province's criminal court issues verdicts that are very heavy. You
might ask why we do not make these public. We have some political, social and
international considerations, which prevent us from making those definite and
heavy sentences."
Earlier, reacting to the
widespread wave of international protests and outrage after the Iranian
Resistance revealed a video tape of stonings in Iran the mullahs' judiciary
refrained from making those verdicts public and insisted that those sentences
be carried out in secret.
Ms. Sarvnaz Chitsaz,
Chairwoman of the NCRI's Women's Committee, said, "It appears that with
the presidency of Ahmadinejad, the medieval dictatorship ruling Iran, faced
with widespread discontent, uprisings and protests by different sectors of
society, has abandoned these considerations and pretenses and resorted to
blatant suppression of Iranian women."
Ms. Chitsaz urged
international human rights and women's rights organizations to voice protest
against these criminal verdicts and called for urgent action by the United
Nations to prevent the issuing and implementation of such inhumane verdicts.
The NCRI's Women's
Committee draws the attention of the international community to stoning and
death sentences against women who are themselves victims of the regime and
calls for urgent action to save the lives of women who are awaiting the
implementation of stoning verdicts or death sentences.
Aref News
Iranian Girls
Are the Most Wanted for Human Traffickers in United Arab Emirates
October 29, 2005
According to the
Aref News website, the Arab Sheikhs pay the highest and show the most interests
in girls 14 to 20 years of age. The
report continues to say that Lebanese girls and some from other Arab countries
in Northern
Africa are
next in line to Iranian girls. Women
from middle Asia and Western Europe are mostly employed by nightclubs
and servants of hotels in Dubai.
The report also
says that the business of human traffickers in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E)
is mostly run by Iranian men and women, who receive a percentage of the
deals. This is handled under the cover
of legal activities such as tours, which gives girls hope of receiving money. They promise girls money in order to persuade
them and bring them to the U.A.E. Most
of these girls temporarily become sexual slaves of the U.A.E. Sheikh, and then
become victims of prostitution. Some of
these young Iranian women leave home under legal employment status are
transferred to the U.A.E. with forged marriage documents. Upon entry to the U.A.E., the girls are sold
to various networks.
Some girls are
taken to nightclubs and pornographic movies on Iranian and Arabic
satellites. An Iranian resident in
U.A.E. regarding this matter said: “Targeting and capturing the ring leader of
the trafficking is not difficult and is easily possible to arrest them in Tehran.
But we don’t know what is the reason that they easily travel back and
forth to the country. The agents hunt
for young people and force them to such misery.” He added, “It is shocking for any Iranian
with dignity to see these young Iranian girls with make-up and semi-naked in
front of nightclubs and dancing in the U.A.E., especially in Dubai.
It is not clear why the Iranian Embassy has not done anything to prevent
this disaster.”
How
can we stop Iranian hardliners and their connection to the terrorists?
By
Gazal Omid
November 5, 2005
The Islamic government of
Iran, which came to power
nearly three decades ago, has been a safe harbor and incubator for terrorism.
Although the Iranian government is Shiah and many of the Islamic hardliners and
terrorists are Sunni, they readily set historical and religious differences
aside to focus on a common goal; spreading hatred and working toward the destruction
of the United States and Israel, which they declare to be “EVIL” powers.
Eerily, Khomeini’s first speech when he came to power in 1978 was held in Behesht Zahra Cemetery, where he preached that Iran should export its
Islamic version of freedom to all countries, particularly those south of Iran and throughout the Middle East. After being nearly
defeated by Sadam, losing 500,000 young people and creating 1,000,000 refugees,
the government of Iran finally stopped the
incessant broadcasting of that infamous speech, which had brought nothing but
misery to Iranians and other people in the Persian Gulf and now prohibits any
mention of it in press or radio. That does not mean, however, that his
successor, the self-titled “Ayatollah Khameini”, hesitates to imprison
journalists who speak unkindly of the late so-called Imam Khomeini.
In the past decades, as the world struggled to find ways to achieve peace with Iran, hardliners benefited
from low-key attention and grew bigger and stronger than ever. In the recent
election, Mr Khatami, the “Moderate President,” was defeated; replaced by
Ahmadinejad, a repressive radical who, by his own statements, promises to drag Iran back to the medieval
barbarism of Khomeini. Despite overwhelming evidence, he denies he was a leader
in the US embassy hostage incident
and a brutal interrogator in Evin prison. Of course, he also denies that Iran wants nuclear power. The
present government of Iran has been assembled from a coven of cowards who do
the dirty work but don’t take the responsibility; murderers who, since the
Islamic revolution, have killed more than 135,000 citizens who bravely
criticized the regime and alleged “experts”, who know less about governing than
an intelligent child. They deny everything, believing this is “Tagieh,” a
misused Islamic rule, which in translation means, “On rare occasions, one may
lie if the lie benefits Islam or saves a life.” As a Shiah religion expert, I
have great respect for Prophet Mohamad and his true religion but lies,
deception, killing, torture and the atrocities perpetrated in this “Islamic
Iran” are crimes against humanity and go strongly against His teachings.
Terrorism brings shivers
to civilized people’s spine. A newly shaped ideology among extremists has them believing
that killing others will take them to heaven; so long as they pray to Allah and
read the Koran. In reality, terrorism is a cancer growing on the body of Islam.
Iran denies any involvement
with terrorists but we need to question why it spends millions of dollars in Iraq subsidizing Hamas or
anyone who fights against Israel? Why has Iran become the vacation spot
for so many Arab extremists?
The government of Iran claims it has no
interest in becoming a nuclear power, even as they break the UN seals and
continue processing uranium. Now, the question is: What can we do to stop Iran? First, the world must
not wait the estimated five or ten years required for that government to have
nuclear power, to act.
However, marching an
American army into Iran would be a deadly
mistake. I say this with conviction because I witnessed Iran's mullah’s ability to
manipulate people to fight against Iraq and the American hostage
rescue expedition, which was destroyed in the Iranian desert. Iran was on the brink of bankruptcy
when Iraq barged into the country
in early 1979. The Iranian people could have ousted the mullahs right then.
Instead, the urge of the people to fight against an outside enemy and protect
their borders resulted in half-a-million war casualties and subsequently, over
the past two decades, the lives of 135,000 Iranians who opposed the government.
For Iranians nothing is more important than their sovereignty. Once again, they
will fall for the same tricks and will unify and rise to defend their homeland.
Considering Iran's extreme variation in
climate, invaders would be challenged, not only by the weather but also by
other foreign elements, including language and the hidden passageways in the
ancient buildings of every city. America would be fighting another
urban militia war and would either have to demolish the ancient infrastructure
and be forever resented as barbaric invaders or suffer huge losses by local
militia. I don't want the Persian culture sacrificed nor do I want Americans
killed. It would be a tragedy for all.
Pressuring Iran in the UN may be helpful
but sanctions are not the way to go. Of all the sanctions imposed against
brutal dictators, none have been effective. The economy of Iran is largely dependent on
oil and exporting goods. If Iran’s income is cut, the
people, not the government, will suffer. Iran will devote every penny
it can suck from people's blood to reach its nuclear goal, starving the Iranian
people in the process, and the loss of millions of lives will be on our hands.
Civilized foreign governments must unite to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear
power. It is widely known that Iranian politicians, including former
presidents, have offshore accounts, investing their stolen money in Canada and other countries.
These assets must be frozen. Many of these investments are the source of income
for organizations and “charities” hostile to America and Israel. Iran has become a safe haven
for terrorist cells. Who knows if Bin Laden is in Pakistan or Iran? In my opinion, he has a
better chance to hide in Iran than in Pakistan. The same goes for Al
Zarkawi. I am convinced that anyone who is hurting America and Israel is welcome to hide in Iran.
To put an end to
Khomeini’s long legacy of madness and find peace in the Middle East and in the world, Iran’s theocratic regime must
go. Iranian people need help to identify a visionary, a capable leader to bring
Iran into the 21st century. Iranian opposition needs guidance and a
headquarters in the free world. People around the world need to understand that
talking about Iran is one thing; living under the current Iranian regime is a
Hell they cannot imagine. Those who have lived it will never forget. Other
nations must help the Iranian people put an end to the Atomic Mullahs. I
believe, if Iran becomes a nuclear power,
the world needs to dig either their shelters or their graves.
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