Is it imaginable that in the 21st century a modern woman and outstanding actress receives lashes for her art? Sadly such brutality is common in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The most recent victim is the wonderful actress Marzieh Vafamehr. She received a jail sentence of one year and 90 lashes in a court trial last Saturday. Vafamehr had been arrested in July and held in Evin prison until the end of the month, when she was released on an unspecified bail. The Islamic Republic accuses her of violating the hijab -- the Islamic veiling forced on Iran's women for 32 long years.
The Iranian regime has a long and sad history of the most barbaric human rights abuses, and most tragic are explanations by regime officials that they are defending moral values and the security of their country. Crimes like flogging, amputations, executions and other forms of severe torture have nothing to do with defending moral values, but do all represent one thing: insanity.
The Iranian regime has lost legitimacy to defend the security of Iran and its citizens -- to be more precise, it never had any legitimacy in the first place. How could they when all that they can do is hijack the home of over 70 million Iranians and take them as hostages? One recent hostage is Marzieh Vafamehr.
Her "guilt" was to portray how the theater work of an actress was banned in Iran in the film titled My Tehran for Sale two years ago. What has happened to the figure she presented in this film is now happening to Marzieh herself. The actress Vafamehr portrays flees to Australia after being persecuted in Iran. It is a step that Marzieh might be facing now as well -- leaving her country after being targeted by the Iranian regime.
The gravity of current human rights abuses becomes more visible and shocking as just before Marzieh's sentence, a young student and activist was lashed over 70 times for expressing his criticism of Ahmadinejad. This barbaric act has left severe wounds on his back. While the international community is usually very quick in condemning these grave human rights violations, it is unfortunately also very slow in transforming public condemnation into concrete action to prevent further human rights abuses. This is not an issue that can be solved through negotiations and engagement -- there is only one language that this regime understands well: pressure.
Through political and economic pressure, the international community can use its power to make the regime's isolation complete and by that reaching out to the Iranian people. Those in Iran who care so much about democracy, freedom and respect for human rights -- and Marzieh Vafamehr is one brave example -- are in grave danger. Public condemnation by all democracies around the globe is a great step, but it can only be the first step and should immediately be followed by powerful measures to limit the Iranian regimes financial and logistical assets. Courageous voices like Marzieh Vafamehr are not only the Iranian society's talented artists, but also very visibly Iran's democratic future. To make this future become reality soon is something the international community can influence immensely.
As for Marzieh and Iran's brave civil society, every day counts.
Kenneth Roth: Davos: Global Governance in a Changing World
Iran's human rights abuses go largely unnoticed
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"Synagogues Adjest Ticket Policies For High Holy Days"
"It is the same for synagogues, except because Jews are not supposed to carry money on holidays, they have membership fees instead of baskets. You can ask for free membership or cheaper membership fee.
You can visit any synagogue at any time the only occasion is the High Holidays when they have tickets and only non-members pay for it. If you can't afford to buy the tickets you can ask for free tickets. You can seat anywhere in synagogues too, tough some of them it seems have some reserved seats, but it is not the rule.
The reason for the tickets mostly because they have to rent facilities, they can get twice or three times the people that they can seat and partly security.”
Nostalgic!
Look at Cuba.
More trade and better relations will do more to change Iran than more isolation. Look how much isolation has "changed" North Korea.
How many amputations were there in Iran in the last lets say 5 years?
The sanctions are not reaching out to the Iranian people, they are hurting them.
The point is that the Iranian government claimed she was arrested for not wearing the hijab (among other things) when it was, in fact, politically motivated.
My wife is is a smarter investor than I am, my kids are big shots.
Thank God for my grand children and fishing.
The point is courtb that it is Iran's problem not ours.
The people pretending that they care about one lady in Iran and ignoring thousands of starving women in Africa are full of it. The last thing we Americans want is to focus on Iran a go to war,
The person who makes such a accusation should provide some proof.
F&F
Lets all wait for her answer on the amputations.
How about admitting that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the paradise you think it is (solely on the basis of its hatred of Israel and rampant anti-Semitism), and that it oppresses its own Shiite citizens.
Some are literally raped and beaten to death.
This is what goes on in Iran's infamous prison.
Canadian reporter beaten, raped in Iran
TORONTO (AP) — A Canadian photojournalist was beaten, tortured and raped before she died two years ago while in custody in Iran, a former Iranian army doctor who examined her said Thursday.
Shahram Azam said he examined Zahra Kazemi, a 54-year-old Canadian freelance journalist of Iranian origin, in a military hospital in Tehran on June 26, 2003, and noticed horrific injuries to her entire body that could only have been caused by torture and rape. It was just days after she was arrested for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the ruling theocracy.
Azam examined Kazemi in the emergency room after she was transferred from Tehran's Evin prison. Reading from notes taken from the examination, Azam said Kazemi arrived unconscious with bruises all over her body.
She had a skull fracture, two broken fingers, missing fingernails, a crushed big toe and a smashed nose. She also had deep scratches on the neck and evidence of flogging on the legs and back.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-03-31-canadian-journalist_x.htm
If you are against torture and favor intervention I can give you a list of over one hundred countries that are worse than Iran.
It would be nice if we could stop the government of Iran from committing these abuses, but unfortunately that would require a war to topple the regime, which would be extremely bloody and expensive. Stopping Gaddafi was relatively easy. Stopping Iran is much harder. The population of Iran is about 10 times larger than Libya, it's terrain is more rugged and mountainous, and they have more and better weapons. Iran also has the backing of Russia and China, unlike Libya.
He only cared about Libya.
I wonder.
The Huffpost actually allowed this column.
Bravo!