Feminist Peace Network

From the Women’s Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran (WFAFI):

Agance France Presse - January 18, 2007
An Iranian-French journalism student who had been prevented from leaving Iran for nearly a year was en route to Paris on Friday, the French foreign ministry said. Mehrnoushe Solouki, a 38-year-old graduate student from Montreal, Canada, was arrested in February in Iran while working on a documentary film on the Iraq-Iran war. Solouki was freed in March after posting bail and had since been under house arrest in Tehran pending the outcome of an investigation. Iranian authorities do not recognize dual citizenship and insisted Solouki was an Iranian national. Solouki boarded an Iran Air flight from Tehran that was due to land in Paris on Friday morning, according to a diplomatic source in Tehran.

“We are pleased that Madame Solouki is returning to France,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani. The journalism student was arrested after interviewing relatives of members of Iran’s armed opposition, the People’s Mujahedeen. Iranian authorities confiscated her notes and film footage and called her in for questioning. Solouki said in November that Iranian authorities had accused her of “attempting to produce a propaganda film.” She has complained of being held in inhumane conditions, sleeping on the floor of a jail cell and being subjected to daily interrogations.

Adnkronos International (AKI) - January 25, 2008>
Iranian authorities are looking at new restrictions that will create different school textbooks for boys and girls. Ali Reza Ali Ahmadi, responsible to the interim public education minister, told a seminar on textbooks there was a need to provide students with books according to “the requirements of age and sex” to satisfy their particular needs. “The spiritual, physical, and mental needs of boys and girls are not identical, and therefore textbooks that give them information cannot be the same,” Ali Ahmadi told the seminar. “The goal is not, however, one that will discriminate against female students but on the contrary give a more precise response to the needs of students.” The education official asked textbook authors “not to photocopy western textbooks, because our textbooks must only have space for our values and not those of other cultures”.

Adnkronos International (AKI) - January 28, 2008
Iran’s most important women’s magazine, Zanan, (Women) has been forced to close after 16 years of publication, after being accused of painting a “dark picture” of Iran. Zanan’s founder Shahla Sherkat is considered a prime example of Islamic Iranian feminism. She has been accused of “offering a dark picture of the Islamic Republic through the pages of Zanan” and of “compromising the psyche and the mental health” of its readers by providing them with “morally questionable information.” The magazine, has for years been considered a place where controversial topics in Iranian society have been discussed, ranging from domestic violence, to cosmetic surgery and relationships. It has been at the forefront in the fight for fundamental women’s rights in Iran. The magazine has also used very subtle and creative language in order to avoid being shut down.

Voice of America - January 28, 2008
The United States is calling for an investigation into the death of Ebrahim Lotfallahi, a law student from Kordestan province in Iran who died in government custody. In a written statement, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, “The United States is deeply concerned about the tragic death under suspicious circumstances of Ebrahim Lotfallahi, an Iranian student of Kurdish descent detained by the Ministry of Intelligence on January 6th. We call on Iranian authorities to conduct a full investigation.â€? Mr. Lotfallahi’s brother visited him in prison and said he was in good spirits. His family does not know what, if any, charges were brought against him. On January 15th, Iranian officials informed his family that he was dead and had been buried in a local cemetery. They claimed Mr. Lotfallahi had committed suicide in his cell. His family has not been allowed to see his body and is calling for an autopsy. The case bears similarities to the death in October of a young female medical student, Zahra Bani Yaghoub, who was arrested by security forces in the western city of Hamedan while walking in a park with her fiancé.

Reporters without Boarders (RSF) - January 30, 2008
Reporters Without Borders condemns a decision by the Commission for Press Authorisation and Surveillance on 28 January to suspend the feminist monthly Zanan (”Women” in Farsi) for “publishing information detrimental to society’s psychological tranquillity.” The press freedom organisation is also concerned about a summons received by Jila Bani Yaghoub of the daily Sarmayeh on 23 January from a Tehran revolutionary court in connection with a case for which she was arrested in March. “The Commission for Press Authorisation and Surveillance is the judiciary’s right arm in its crusade against news media that stray from the official line,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It has been responsible for the suspension of many publications which the courts subsequently close down for good, often imprisoning their journalists. In Iran, the right to information is still seen as a threat to national security.” Dozens of news media have been suspended by the commission since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president. Deputy state prosecutor Nasser Saraji told the official news agency ISNA in October that the commission had suspended 42 publications and cancelled 24 licences since 2005. Other newspapers have been temporarily or provisionally suspended by the courts. Yaghoub is being prosecuted for covering a women’s demonstration on 4 March 2007, when she was arrested and held for three days. She is charged with “participating in an illegal demonstration,” “activity against national security” and “publicity against the Islamic Republic.”

The Associated Press - January 30, 2008
Iran’s chief of judiciary has decreed that executions in the country no longer take place in public, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. The report said the official, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, on Tuesday decreed that “execution cases no longer be carried out in the open.” The report said executions henceforth could be public only after a special approval by the head of the judiciary. The decree also banned publishing pictures and broadcasting video footage of executions. Earlier on Monday, state television broadcast a video footage showing two men it said were convicted of serial rape and murder of women, after their hanging in the central Iranian city of Arak.

Agance France Presse - February 4, 2008
Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death after the supreme court upheld the death sentences against them, the Etemad newspaper Monday quoted their lawyer as saying. The two were found guilty of adultery — a capital crime in Islamic Iran — after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the company of other men while he was away. “Branch 23 of the supreme court has confirmed the stoning sentence,” said their lawyer, Jabbar Solati. The penal court of Tehran province had already sentenced the sisters identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar (no age given) to stoning, the daily said. Solati explained that the two sisters had initially been tried for “illegal relations” and received 99 lashes. However in a second trial they were convicted of “adultery.” The pair admitted they were in the video presented by the husband but argued that there was no adultery as none of the footage showed them engaged in a sexual act with other men. “There is no legal evidence whereby the judge could have the knowledge for issuing a stoning sentence,” Solati said, adding that he had appealed to the state prosecutor. “The two sisters have been tried twice for one crime,” Solati protested.

PRWEB - February 5, 2008
The Iranian Parliament is currently considering a draft penal code that for the first time legislates the death penalty for what the regime defines as apostasy. Further, the law gives the regime global jurisdiction, holding groups accountable around the globe for differing from the regime on religious issues.The Iranian Parliament is reviewing a draft penal code that for the first time in Iranian history legislates the death penalty for apostasy. The draft clearly violates Iran’s commitments under the International Covenants on Human Rights, to which the State is party. “The draft penal code is gross violation of fundamental and human rights by a regime that has repeatedly abused religious and other minorities,” stated Institute on Religion and Public Policy President Joseph K. Grieboski. “This is simply another legislative attempt on the part of the Iranian regime to persecute religious minorities in the country and around the globe, especially Bahá’ís.”

February 13, 2008
Iranian activist Parvin Ardalan was Wednesday named winner of the 2007 Palme Prize for “making the demand for equal rights for men and women a central part of the struggle for democracy in Iran.”Braving “persecution, threats and harassment,” the jury cited her efforts noting an “ongoing campaign for a million signatures against discrimination.” Ardalan, a journalist, was co-founder of the women’s cultural centre Markaz-e Farhangi-ye Zanan in the mid-1990s that has raised awareness and documented women’s rights in Iran, the jury said.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities, Misogyny, Gender-Based Violence