Tuesday, June 13, 2006

SISTERS OF MERCY IN IRAN

Agh, so much to comment on, so little time. And 4 1/2 hours of football a day to deal with. Others haven't been quite so lucky over recent days.

Yesterday, Iran Press News reported on a violent crackdown on protesters at the General Women's March held in Haft'eh Teer Square in Tehran.
Many of the regime's guards and agents were dressed in plain-clothes and passed themselves off as demonstrators until they began to attack and beat the protestors. They had batons, tear and pepper gases as well as all kinds of other chemical agents that make people sick and disables their breathing and vision which was continuously launched into the crowd.

The regime's new tactic in their so-called attempt at a "kinder, gentler" way of treating protestors is to send out armed, green-clad female thugs and have them beat women demonstrators. The green outfits (as seen in photos) with nun-like hijabs connect in one piece to the rest of the shapeless shroud.
Kind and gentle, my arse.

Yahoo News has a couple of pictures:


Winston has more, as does Kosoof:



Azamehr writes:
"We are women, we are human, but we don't have any rights!" protesters chanted.

This is what they wanted:
  • Banning polygamy;

  • Reversal of men's uncontested right to divorce;

  • Equal child custody rights for mothers and fathers;

  • Equal rights in marriage (such as a woman's right to choose where she works, to travel freely, etc.);

  • Increase in the legal age of children to 18 years of age (currently girls are viewed as adults at 9 years of age and boys at 15 years of age, making them eligible to be tried as adults);

  • Equal value placed on women's testimony in court; and

  • Elimination of temporary work contracts which disproportionately and negatively impact women.
Yet Elaheh Rostami, a lecturer at SOAS and a promoter of the Islamic regime, claims "Iranian women have more rights now than before the revolution."

How could the British universities have sunk to such a low level to employ such idiots as lecturers?
It's not just British lecturers - have a look at some of the bile directed at Peter Tatchell when he flagged up the treatment of Ahwazi Arabs in Iran for one of his Comment is Free posts.

Trying to brush events like these under the carpet or accusing those of condemning it of sucking up to Bush, Blair and the Neo-Con Fighting Machine (see the comments) isn't doing the Iranian public any favours at all. From the BBC:
The viciousness of the police attack caused men who were passing by in the street to protest, our correspondent says.

"These are our sisters, how can you do this?" passers-by shouted at police.

The women then gathered again on the other side of the square, but the police used pepper spray against them and onlookers.

As the police started making arrests members of the public who had nothing to do with the protest repeatedly shouted: "Leave them alone."

One man screamed at the police, saying: "Why do you take money from the government to beat women like this?"
Do you think that passers-by who had the guts to stand up for the rights of their fellow countrymen and women were worried that in doing so they were "creating conditions for an attack on Iran"? I don't think so.

posted by Dan @ 12:17 pm