This has to be a joke: Proposed Iranian law requires minoriities to wear colour bands

[notyoueither]

Let's see what they do to journalists who pry too much, shall we?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3070895.stm

Canadian journalist 'beaten to death'

Zahra Kazemi was arrested while taking photos of Evin prison

Iran has acknowledged that a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist was beaten to death after her arrest outside a prison in Tehran.

Vice President Ali Abtahi said Zahra Kazemi died "of a brain haemorrhage resulting from beatings".

Ms Kazemi, 54, was detained on 23 June for taking pictures of Tehran's Evin prison. She was later pronounced dead after falling into a coma

But officials in Tehran are still refusing to allow Canada to conduct its own investigation into the photographer's death.

"We are knowledgeable enough to examine the body and find out the cause of her death, so we will not allow foreign teams to investigate," Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian told the AFP news agency.

I examined the body myself and there were no bruises or cuts of the face

Massoud Pezeshkian
Health Minister

He agreed that Ms Kazemi's cause of death was a brain haemorrhage, but said the investigation was ongoing.

"I examined the body myself and there were no bruises or cuts of the face," Mr Pezeshkian said.

"We are going to examine the corpse again and I will view the report, and I have appointed a medical team to look into this case."

Strained relations

The Iranian authorities initially said Ms Kazemi had died of a stroke after falling ill during her first police interview.

Her relatives insisted she had been tortured and beaten into a coma by her interrogators.

Iran's President Mohammad Khatami ordered four ministers to investigate the death of the freelance photographer.

Relations between Tehran and Ottawa have become strained over the case.

Canadian deputy prime minister John Manley said on Monday that bilateral relations would be damaged if Ms Kazemi's body was not returned.


Stephan Hachemi wants an independent autopsy in Canada
But Iran's Interior Minister Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari said Ms Kazemi's death had nothing to do with Canada "since she is an Iranian citizen."

Ms Kazemi, who held an Iranian passport, was in Tehran to take pictures of the recent student protests for the British agency Camera Press.

Her son, Stephan Hachemi, 26, has demanded that her body be returned to Canada for an independent autopsy.

Mr Manley said Ms Kazemi's death had become "a very serious issue".

"We believe the family, of course, deserves a full explanation for what happened," he said.

"The body should be returned."

[notyoueither]

That was for taking a picture of a building in the middle of a city.

You say there is a free press in Iran, Gepap?

[notyoueither]

Is the Beeb too right wing for you?

How about HRW?

http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-media/markup/msg00201.html

Iran: Journalists Receive Death Threats After Testifying

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: [hr-media] Iran: Journalists Receive Death Threats After Testifying
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 14:30:56 -0800

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Presidential Commission Heard Their Testimony of Torture During
Detention

(New York, January 6, 2005) -- After testifying to a presidential
commission about their torture during detention, a group of Iranian
journalists have received death threats from judicial officials under
Tehran chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch is extremely concerned about the safety of the
journalists, whose testimony to a presidential commission, tasked with
investigating mistreatment of detainees, provided detailed information on
their torture and mistreatment while they were detained, without being
charged, by secret squads operating under the authority of the judiciary.

"We want the Iranian government to know that the world is watching what
happens to these young journalists. The Iranian government is responsible
for their safety," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Middle
East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. "The Iranian
authorities should be protecting citizens who testify before presidential
commissions instead of sending them death threats."

On December 25, Hanif Mazroi, Massoud Ghoreishi, Fereshteh Ghazi,
Arash Naderpour and Mahbobeh Abasgholizadeh—all of whom are journalists
detained by the government—testified about their detention before the
presidential commission. Fereshteh Ghazi provided details of her
treatment by interrogators, including severe beatings that resulted
in a broken nose during one interrogation session. The detainees were
kept under lengthy solitary confinement in a secret detention center
and were repeatedly subjected to psychological and physical torture.

On January 1 two other former detainees, Omid Memarian and Ruzbeh
Mir Ebrahimi, also appeared in front of the commission. In their
testimonies, as made public by commission member Mohammad Ali
Abtahi, they confirmed details of their torture.

Since their appearances before the commission, Saeed Mortazavi, chief
prosecutor of Tehran, has threatened each of these former detainees with
lengthy prison sentences and harm to their family members, as punishment
for their testimony. Mortazavi continues to issue numerous subpoenas for
the journalists without specifying charges. His operatives also harass the
journalists by phone on a daily basis.

On January 3, Mortazavi held a press conference denying any mistreatment
of detainees and threatening to prosecute the former detainees for
"allegations against security forces and prison officials that
are politically motivated."

The journalists’ testimonies exposed Mortazavi’s role in authorizing
their torture to extract confessions and in compelling them to appear on
television to deny their mistreatment while under detention.

"The brave testimony of these young journalists has reaffirmed evidence
of Mortazavi’s leading role in the torture of detainees," said Whitson.
"It’s high time for the Iranian government to investigate Mortazavi’s abuses
and bring him to justice."

Saeed Mortazavi has spearheaded the judiciary’s attack on press freedoms
since the current crackdown began in 2000. He is responsible for the
closure of numerous newspapers, as well as the arrests and prosecution of
journalists, which is detailed in the recent Human Right Watch report on
Iran, "Like the Dead in their Coffins." The report can be found at:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/iran0604/

-----------
Please help support the research that made this bulletin possible. In order
to protect our objectivity, Human Rights Watch does not accept funding from
any government. We depend entirely on the generosity of people like you.
To make a contribution, please visit http://hrw.org/donations/

Seems pretty free to me. NOT!

[notyoueither]

This is fun. I'm still on page one of google.

Maybe I should wait for people to catch up before proceeding to page two of... wow, theere seem to be a lot of pages from 'iran journalist dead'.

[Slaughtermeyer]

Originally posted by Ned


Slaughter-your-member, the link is no longer valid. But what I said can be inferred from the public statements of Iran's current Fuhrer about wiping Israel off the map, etc. I also infer it from what al Qa'ida did to that Jewish-American reporter they caught in Pakistan. They had him admit he was Jewish, then slowly cut his head off while he screamed and scream and screamed....

I fixed the link. What percentage of al Qa'ida members are Iranian? Any evidence, even fabricated Zionist evidence, that any of the people holding the Jewish-American reporter in Pakistan were Iranian?

[Ramo]

Let's see what they do to journalists who pry too much, shall we?

Reporting on abuse in detention facilities is totally different from reporting on what Parliament just passed. Iran is certainly not at the point where the latter would be suppressed.

[notyoueither]

She took a picture of a prison.

[notyoueither]

And how would you know what offends the old coots, anyway?

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Lbst7dHSFxcJ:https://www.upi.com/view.cfm%3FStory...ct=clnk&cd=100

Iranian journalist gets 8-year jail term
By MODHER AMIN

TEHRAN, May 4 (UPI) -- An opposition journalist and writer was sentenced to an eight-year jail term for having links with "monarchist and counter-revolutionary elements," state-run media reported Saturday.

Siyamak Pourzand, 70, was also found guilty of threatening "state security and collaborating with the Savak (the security and information organization of the deposed monarchy)," the government daily Iran reported.

The paper said Pourzand, the editor of several political and literary publications before the 1979 Islamic revolution, accepted all charges against him, including espionage, "direct and indirect links" with people close to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late ousted shah, and running a private club that showed American and European films to young people.

The convicted journalist, who was a commentator for several reformist newspapers, was seized by security police in November. His trial began in March after four months of detention in a secret location. Pourzand also recently worked for opposition radio stations based outside of Iran, a potentially culpable act inside the conservative country.

Pourzand is the fourth journalist to receive a jail sentence in Iran in the past month. On April 17, a court in Tehran sentenced Ahmad Zeid-Abadi, a journalist at the pro-reform daily Hamshahri, to 23 months in prison and a five-year ban on all public activity, for alleged anti-Islamic propaganda. A day earlier, another court in the northwestern city of Tabriz sentenced Ali-Hamed Iman, editor of a regional weekly, to eight months in prison and 74 lashes.

Earlier this month, Hojjat Heydari, who worked on a weekly publication in the central holy city of Qom, received a four-month suspended jail term and a six-month ban on working as a journalist. Heydari was found guilty of insulting the tenets of "the Islamic revolution" and putting out "false news" in an article. The court said the article was aimed at encouraging "corruption and immorality" in the city.

Two others, Banafsheh Saamgis, of the newspaper Iran, and Mohsen Sharnazdar, editor of the newspaper's music supplement, appeared before a court May 1 after the publication of a review of a book about Iranian women musicians, which says the Prophet Mohammad enjoyed listening to music sung and played by women.

Having been scandalized by the review, several mullahs in Qom called for the "judgment of God" to be applied to the managing editor of the paper. "God's judgment" is widely understood to mean the death penalty.

Over the past two years, courts, dominated by hard-line conservatives, have ordered that 82 publications be suspened or closed, including 21 dailies, according to spokesman for the Association for Defending Press Freedom, Masha'allah Shamsolva'ezin. Twelve journalists are currently in jail in Iran.



© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

That the prophet enjoyed listening to music sounds like a good idea to put someone in jail?

It sounds to me like they don't much like much reporting of anything outside what you learn in a madrassa.

[Ramo]

Pictures. And as a prelude to...? Governments don't lock people up merely for admiring the architecture of state buildings.

[notyoueither]

Are you seriously going to argue that the authorities in Iran deal fairly with anything that could be laughingly called a free press?

This could get hilarious.

Ramo says she's a spy, so she deserved what she had coming?

[Ramo]

nye can't read.

[notyoueither]

I can read apologies for totalitarian governments just fine, sunshine.

What I'm wondering about is why you'd be justifying the mullahs.

[notyoueither]

I'm just at the bottom of page 1, btw.

[notyoueither]

and I've skipped several links...

[Ramo]

Where exactly did I justify or apologize for anything the mooolahs did?