Feminist Peace Network

The following is from E-Zan volume 31 from the Women’s forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran:

State-run News Agency ISNA - November 21, 2006 Ayatollah Safi-Gholpaygani in an interview with the news agency said: “It is truly shameful to see women participate in sports such as mountain hiking. Instead they must participate in competitions to promote the Islamic values.” On the issue of women’s employment, he added: “We must not be proud of having women participate in the Councils. Women must stay home and take care of the household affairs, that is their job and they should not consider themselves as unemployed because they are working at home. Women’s chastity is important and homes are the place to protect that.”

Agance France Presse - November 21, 2006 Justice minister Jamal Karimi-Rad Tuesday reaffirmed that Iran is not carrying out death sentences by stoning, despite such verdicts still being handed down to several adulterers. “We have had no cases of stoning. Such a verdict might have been issued by a lower court but it has never been executed,” Karimi- Rad told reporters, adding that “it is extremely difficult” to prove the offenses punishable by stoning. The sentence has not been removed from the statute books in the Islamic republic. Earlier this month, Iranian women’s rights activists launched a campaign to repeal the sentence, to secure “there will be no further such verdicts carried out,” women’s rights lawyer Shadi Sadr said. She said that research conducted by fellow activists had shown that the sentence had been handed down by a court in the northeastern pilgrimage city of Mashhad as recently as April against a man and a woman convicted of adultery. “In our investigations, we found out about nine women and two men in different Iranian jails who had been sentenced to stoning,” she said.

Agance France Presse - November 22, 2006 Women are increasingly the victims of violence in Iraq, as direct targets of assassinations and as widows left without support after the deaths of their husbands, an Iraqi women’s activist said Wednesday. “Many women activists have been murdered, many women university professors. Many women physicians have been killed, women in the police forces, reporters, and journalists,” Rajaa Al Khuzai, president of the Iraqi National Council of Women, told a news conference in Vienna. “We are losing an average 100 Iraqi [men] every day…so I think [we have an additional] 3,000 widows every month…and all of them are young and have no support for them and their families,” she added. “If we want to see stability in the region we have to highlight the role of the women…women who will make the change on the ground,” said Edit Schlaffer, chairwoman of the Vienna-based Women Without Borders.

BBC World News - November 24, 2006 Iranian women have been warned to be on the look- out for cameras hidden in places where they undress, such as fitting rooms, gyms and swimming pools. The chief of Iran’s police, Esmail Ahmadi Miqadam, said some shop owners were fitting spy cameras themselves. Iranian authorities want to stop a wave of secretly-filmed pornographic DVDs hitting markets and internet sites. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been championing a drive to banish unwanted Western cultural influences from Iran. Last year, Western and “indecent” music was banned from state-run TV and radio stations. Correspondents say the release of pornographic DVDs of privately-filmed events is a growing trend in Iran.

State-run News Agency - November 26, 2006 ISNA Reported: Haydar-ali, 53-year-old father in Tehran killed his 24-year-old daughter, Zainab, because of her promiscuous behavior and conduct. He suffocated her during her sleep at 2 a.m. In the court he said: “I accept the charges for killing my daughter. I could not control her behavior and now I know she is asleep underground.” According to Article 220 of Islamic Penal code, “parents who intentionally kill their children because of promiscuous conduct will not face retribution.”

India Zee News - November 27, 2006 Iran’s conservative cultural body has banned a female writer’s award-winning bestseller, which deals with a married woman’s secret and unrequited love for another man, a press report said on Monday. “The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has prohibited publication of ‘I will turn out the lights’ by Zoya Pirzad,” the Kargozaran paper quoted publisher Alireza Ramezani as saying. “We have not been informed of the reasons for the ban,” he said, adding the vetting officials had refused to renew the publication permit for the book, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in 23 editions since 2001.

Radio Farda - December 7, 2006 Government of Iran is discussing resumption of flights to city of Antalya, Turkey. There are three conditions for resumption, however. First condition was to prevent Iranian female tourists visiting the city from going to the beach with bikinis, second to prevent consumption or sale of alcoholic beverages to them, and third was ensure they are observing the Islamic covering throughout their stay in Turkey.

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