‘We live in fear of a massacre’; The only British newspaper journalists inside the besieged Syrian enclave of Baba Amr reports on the terrible cost of the uprising against president Assad; Loyalties of ‘desert rose’ tested
The presidential elections on June 12th, 2009 were supposed to bring about a change, but contrary to all expectations the ultra-conservative populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was confirmed in office. As clear as was the result, as loud and justified were the accusations of vote-rigging.
Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a women’s rights activist, is a founding member of the Stop Stoning to Death Campaign and the Iranian Women’s Charter. She was director of Entesharat-e Banoo (Banoo Publications) and Entesharat-e Jamee Iranian (Iranian Society Publication). She was the director of the Association of Women Writers and Journalists NGO. She is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.
Feminist Association of Tunisian Women for Research and Development.
Physical and sexual violence against women in Iran, including violence perpetrated by state security forces, is rapidly increasing.
As Zohra explains, “Your [US] leaders say they are here to secure Afghanistan, especially for the women. The reporters happily wrote stories about how the Taliban did not let women to go to school. And this is true; many of our women cannot even to read. But now girls cannot go to school, and where is the Taliban? It is not the Taliban who are stopping the girls. What mother would let her child to go to school if they think a bomb will drop on them? For the girls does it matter from which hand the bomb drops?”
Dear Stakeholders in Afghanistan, Forgive this letter. We felt we could share with you our burdens without incurring your anger or pity. Much has happened to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers since we met with you for a wonderful hour in Kabul. Like it is with 30 million other Afghans, our mounting challenges are ‘intolerable [...]
by Hamid Dabashi (originally published on al-Jazeera) Hassan Nasrallah is in trouble. This time the troubles of the Secretary General of Hezbollah, which were hitherto the source of his strength, are not coming from Israel, or from the sectarian politics of Lebanon. Seyyed Hassan’s troubles, which this time around are the harbingers of his undoing as [...]
by: Afsaneh Najmabadi Introduction Something happened in 2003-04: transsexuals and transsexuality in Iran suddenly became a hot media topic, both in Iran and internationally. The medical practice of sex-change by means of surgery and hormones dates to at least the early 1970s in Iran; for nearly three decades the topic had received occasional coverage in [...]
