City boy

Adnan Hasanpur (pictured), a journalist for the Asu Kurdish-Persian weekly and Heyva Butimar an activist from the Kurdish areas of Iran are to be hanged. Their crimes were described by the Islamic Revolutionary Court as “Propaganda against the Islamic Republic government, and acts against national security“.

Arrested on January 25th Adnan was first told that he is convicted of spying. Heyva worked for a private environmental agency. The pair had spent the last six months in the Marivan prison with no access to a lawyer and were not allowed to be visited by their families. They were transfered to Sanandaj three days ago where they will be hanged publicly.

There are good reasons to believe that Islamic Republic who became second on the list of top executioners in the world last year is going to beat China this year, even though China has 1.3 billion population, while Iran has 70 million.

In the league for top child and minors executioners though, Islamic Republic is the current champion.

Today three out of the nine Amir Kabir University activist students in jail, Majid Sheikhpur, Ali Saberi and Abbas Hakimzadeh were released after 70 (M.S.) and 43 days (A.S, A.H) from prison.

Majid was arrested during the ISA elections in which he was elected to be on central committee for the ISA with over 900 votes. Nariman Mostafavi, another member of the central committee for the ISA has commented that:

“..whatever these student activists have done was for freedom, democracy and human rights in Iran.. using whatever reason, there have been attempts of crackdown on this uprising. Even if the movements are done through the constitution of the Islamic Republic, they still brutally crack down on them.”

Majid Tavakoli, Ahmad Ghasaban and Ehsan Mansouri who judge Hadad has identified as the “criminals” of the case have been on the hunger strike since Saturday (July 14).

Meanwhile yesterday at 5 o’clock the Intelligence officers together with the handcuffed Abdollah Momeni went to his house and seized many documents, books and equipment.

His wife who was at the home together with their children said “my husband looked very stressed and much thinner than usual..they were very rude and they even searched the children’s toys for ‘evidence’“.

Since Ahmadinejad came in to power, the cost of living and oppression of the regime have increased steadily, making life unbearable for much of the people of Iran – 12 million of which who live under the poverty line according the government’s own official statistics.

In the last year the government has had a number of campaigns to frighten people away from the streets – this is apparent not only in the crackdowns on women rights activists, student activists, and workers activists, but also in the hejab crackdown, increasing amount of public executions, becoming the world’s leading child executioner and also what it called campaign against “immodest people” who they defined as thugs, criminals and later homosexuals too.

This last campaign which ran pretty much side by side with the fashion police showed the true face of the regime – public beatings by the masked “policemen” who went in to people’s homes, dragged them out to the streets and beat them brutally in public. No trials or court hearings, and certainly no rights to appeal! Just straight vicious Islamic sharia law in action.

The increasing rise in robbery and drug use which unsurprisingly is in correlation with the rise in poverty was used by the regime as the justification to show such brutality, right in front of the people’s homes.

However what went unnoticed by many is that this campaign is used against the regime’s opposition activists too. In the past the regime had put political activists in to non-political prisons in order to give them a bad name and reputation among the people and other activists, but this time it found the perfect opportunity to take it further than before – beat them in public and hang them later.

One such case was the brothers Pourya and Pouya Fazlollahi, one a football player for the Saipa youth F.C. and the other a wrestling champion. Hardly an immodest pair, but their crime was that they used to hand out political flyers and articles to their friends, particularly those by Reza Pahlavi.

Early in the morning on May 17th they heard their door broken open and masked men rushing in to the house. The brothers soon had a gun pointed to their head, handcuffed and then dragged out in to the street. The bruises tell us what happened afterwards.

Sixteen men repeatedly hit them with chains and batons until they went unconscious while their parents, grandfather and neighbours watched in horror. A shot was then fired in the air to disperse the crowd and the brothers were put in to a car’s trunk and driven away to a detention centre.

Pourya’s conditions were so bad that he had to be transferred to a hospital where his friends staged a riot in order to help him escape. No one knows what’s happened to his brother, Pouya, however another youth arrested the same day by the name of Saeed Eshaghi was on the list of 20 arrested “criminals, immodest people and homosexuals” to be hanged on July 13th..
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Azad Baghi Mohammad is the latest Iranian activist who has been arrested in Turkey. For a long time the Turkish government has done secret dealings with the Islamic Republic in order to exchange political prisoners as “criminals”.

Azad born in 1958 had been arrested many times before and was known to help Iranian refugees who escape out of Iran to Turkey by employing them in his company. He has a 14 year old daughter and a 16 old son, who together with his wife were called to appear in court to receive their deportation order. Azad himself who is suffering from heart problems could not attend the court himself as he is currently hospitalised.

Iranian dissidents are not only harassed in their own country but also in everywhere else where the Islamic Republic has influence..

For more information about this case and to find out how you can help please call Mr. Mehrnegar in Turkey on 00905367306831.

The July 9, 1999 Tehran student rebellion was the single most important movement against the Islamic Republic government. The student movement had steadily got more and more furious against the useless Islamic government who had failed to bring about any changes, even under the name of Khatami’s ‘reformist government’.The students were ready to rebel against the fundamentalist dictatorship. This regime had taken away every beautiful thing from their life.

The July 9 rebellion was triggered by a series of events, including the closing down of the popular reformist newspaper “Salam”. A number of students were key figures in starting the protests however all student groups and movements united together quicker than anyone had thought of, resulting in the sudden attack of the police and the security forces, as well as repeated attacks by the Ansar-e Hezbollah militia who came, killed, and handed what was rest of the freedom loving students of Tehran to take to torture camps at the notorious Evin prison.

The streets near the Tehran University campus were filled by riot police, burnt cars, and Ansar-e Hezbollah thugs who came on motorbikes in series of attacks - they used whatever weapon they had (mainly chains, but also with batons, guns), and did whatever they wanted. The riot police stood back and watched as the huge number of students came in human waves and scared the revolutionary guards away.

As the news spread, the freedom loving Iranian families from across Tehran showed their face - they risked their life too by bringing food to the students.

The rest is history of course.

The 8th anniversary of this event in Iran started by attack on the Advar-e Tahkim Vahdat (High Council of the Office for the Strengthening Unity) who had gathered outside the gates of the Amir Kabir University in protest of the nine Amir Kabir students currently in prison. The university authorities had decided previously to shut the campus down university down in order to prevent huge protests like last year’s students day. The official reason given by the university for being shut was “electrical problems”!!

Six members of the Advar-e Tahkim Vahdat (H.C. Strengthening Unity) attacked and arrested by the security forces in the early hours of the 8th anniversary are:

-Mohammad Hashemi
-Ali Nikoo Nesbati
-Mahdi Arabshahi
-Bahare Hedayat
-Hanif Yazdani
-Ali Vafghi

They had started their protest from 6 in the morning and at 7:30 the plain-clothed security forces together with revolutionary guards attacked them and took them away.

At 11 o’clock plain-clothed security officers attacked the Advar’s office and arrested further 8 members there. Fire shots were heard. Following members were arrested:

-Abadollah Momeni
-Bahram Fayazi
-Habib Haji Heydari
-Mojtaba Bayat
-Saeed Hosseinia
-Masoud Habibi
-Morteza Eslahchi

There were many protests across the world by the Iranian community outside of Iran, mainly infront of the Islamic Republic embassy. I will try to put up the London pictures soon.

There are currently 24 known cases of politically active students in the Evin prison, most if not all are kept in the Section 209 which is famous for it’s physical and psychological tortures.

(It look me a long time to sit and write about this as I have been very ill for the last few days..)

Useful information:
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The fire place today is a sign of status as well as a source heating. The outdoor fireplace is also in vogue these days. The pellet stove presents a rather romantic setting. The fireplace inspection provides rule for home fire safety and ensures no possibility of risk. Outdoor fireplace needs more care and precaution because of its size and volume.

Popular anti-war Labour MP Clare Short promoting the documentary

I just heard the great news that the undercover documentary Execution of a teenage girl produced by Arash Sahami (left in the picture) won the television documentary award at the Amnesty International Media Awards tonight. Arash Sahami and his team risked their lives by going undercover in Iran to capture the story of this little girl and the tragic end to her life..

The Observer (July, 2006) described the documentary as:

An almost impossible to watch documentary about the life of Atefeh Sahaaleh. a 16-year-old girl who was hanged in a public square in Iran in 2004 after being charged with ‘crimes against chastity’. Using eyewitness accounts, reconstructions and undercover footage, the programme slowly recreates Atefeh’s life and shows why the same life was brutally extinguished. At times you really just want to look away from the screen unable to believe this is happening - but don’t, because this truly is one of the best documentaries of the year and one of the most important

As the Islamic Republic closes yet another newspaper, it introduces a TV channel which Ahmadinejad has called “the oppressed people’s media”.

PRESS TV is an English language media outlet by the Islamic Republic, claimed to be well financed and to have branches in 27 countries worldwide. I have not yet had the time to check their “alternative news” properly to see how much of a propaganda tool it really is and also how effective it will be in providing false versions of the news in the interest of the terrorists worldwide.

Last week I saw one of their correspondents here in London and she wasn’t wearing hejab!.. I just wonder how many lashes she would have received for not wearing the hejab if she was in Tehran. However from this alone you can tell that Islamic Republic is going to use deception to further it’s cause and agenda while exporting it’s revolution worldwide.

These days are rather depressing, especially with all these recent bombings and security breaches in UK in the last few days..

The head of the ILNA (”Iranian Labour News Agency”) Masoud Heidari resigned yesterday after pressure from the Islamic Republic.

Since Ahmadinejad came in to power, there has been a lot of pressure on this news agency because of their coverage of the politically active students who are now widely referred to as “Starred Students” (if they get 3 stars, they get permanently banned from the university).

The pressures in the Islamic Republic government came from the Ministry of Science office who were very uncomfortable about the wide spread and up to date information about the crackdowns on the Iranian students reported by this popular news agency, to a point where they threatened to filter the agency’s website.

Amir Kabir University ISA student activist body has blamed the Ministry of Science directly for ordering harassment and arrests of active students. Since Ahmadinejad came in to powerful the MOS has become very radicalised and has worked closely with number of universities such as Amir Kabir and Tehran University which are both known as very politically active grounds for students. Ahmadinejad changed both university’s presidents when he came in to power last year through forced resignation of the old chairs, as part of what has become known as the Islamic Republic’s Second Cultural Revolution.

President Ahmadinejad does a little dance while waiting for the arrival of the Venezuelian President Chavez. Reports suggest that the pair will be spending much of the time together talking about how evil America and the West are.

The ISA student activist body at Tehran Allameh Tabatabaei University reports that the university has now gone as far as creating their own fake ISA body and has started to use the ISA logo with it!

University has reportedly put up huge banners around the university, honouring the “martyrs” of the Islamic Republic, using the name and logo for the ISA.

Similarly in late April the Basiji “students” at Tehran Amir Kabir University handed out fake issues of student publications which had very anti-regime articles and then used them as an excuse to first shut all the student publications down, arrest all the editors for them, and then physically attacking any student activists who protested with knife.

A Basiji “student” protest. Placard reads:
“Second cultural revolution: Today’s need at university”

The move comes after the Basiji “students” started calling the ISA “illegal” and asked for the “Second Cultural Revolution“, referring to a repeat of non-other than the Islamic Republic’s 1980-1987 cultural revolution to first shut down all universities, Islamicize all the courses, create an Islamic atmosphere, remove all foreign influences from the courses and also any lecturer with any connections to “East or West way of thought” (!)

Although Islamic Republic denies that the second cultural revolution has already started, since Ahmadinejad came in to power he has replaced all those academics suspicious of being modern free thinkers with his own friends from the Basjiji revolutionary guards or members of the elite clergy. This includes the presidents of the most prominent universities such as the Tehran University and Amir Kabir University.

When the newly selected president for Tehran University, cleric Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani stepped in to the university for the first time last year, students attacked him and took off his turban: