rferl.org
By Golnaz Esfandiari and Farin Assemi

Roya Toloui, a prominent Iranian Kurdish women's rights activist, who was recently released from prison on bail, says she was tortured and forced to make confessions while confined. Toloui, the editor in chief of the monthly "Rasan" magazine and the founder of the Association of the Kurdish Women Supporting Peace in Kurdistan, was arrested last August following unrest in several Iranian Kurdish cities. The charges against her include "acting against national security" and "disturbing public order." Toloui told Radio Farda that Iran's Islamic establishment should be condemned because of serious human-rights abuses.
PRAGUE, 30 January 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Roya Toloui and several other Kurdish human-rights activists were jailed following protests in several Kurdish cities against the killing of a young Kurdish activist, Shivan Qaderi, by Iranian security agents in July.

Qaderi Protest
Protestors had called on the government to arrest Qaderi's killers and put them on trial. During some of the protests government buildings and offices were attacked. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that during the protests government forces killed at least 17 people. Many others were arrested.
In August, HRW called on the Iranian government to conduct a full and impartial investigation into the "violent response " to the protests in Kurdish cities. HRW said that the government opened fire on demonstrators protesting the killing of Qaderi.

Local journalists and activists, including Toloui, had reportedly criticized the wave of repression that followed the unrest.
Toloui who had been summoned to court on several occasions in connection with her human-rights work, and was arrested in her home in Sanandaj on 2 August.

Human Rights First, a U.S.-based rights group which campaigned for the release of Toloui, describes her as a vocal critic of the Iran government's policies on minority and gender issues. The Writers in Prison Committee of the International PEN had also expressed serious concern about Toloui's arrest and called for her release.

She was released in October after having spent more than two months in prison, including 17 days in solitary confinement, she said.

Charged With Several Crimes

She told Radio Farda in a 27 January interview that authorities brought many charges against her ranging from "acting against Iran's national interest " to " disturbing public order."

"In total they brought [at least 10] charges against me," she said. "Anything not considered a crime against others was a crime when it came to me, for example the publication of my book in the Kurdish language in Iraq's [Al-Sulaymaniyah] was considered a crime. There were other charges, the most important of which is acting against national security and also giving interviews to different foreign radio stations was considered propagating lies against the establishment."

Toloui, who is currently outside Iran, added that her interrogators were putting pressure on her to confess that she was one of the main organizers of the protests that erupted in the wake of Qaderi's murder in Sanandaj and other Kurdish cities.

"They wanted me to make a [written] confession, they were forcing me to confess," Toloui said. "I wrote that I will speak only in the presence of my lawyer and they laughed at me. I wrote that this is against human rights and that I had the right to see my lawyer. They lost their patience and they ordered that my children should be brought in and they threatened me and said that they will burn my children alive in front of my eyes."

Torture Claims

Toloui added that she was also subjected to physical torture that included beatings. She did not want to elaborate. Her claims of torture cannot be independently verified.

"During the night of 6 August, Kurdistan's deputy prosecutor, Amiri (no first name available), personally tortured me in the most brutal ways and subjected me to such behaviors that cannot be expressed," she said.

Toloui told Radio Farda that she was later transferred to a prison where convicted murderers and drug traffickers are held. She claims the transfer was a move aimed at putting her under more pressure. But she added that despite her difficult time in jail she refuses to be silenced.

She says the international community is focusing its attention on Iran's controversial nuclear activities while more attention should be paid to human rights abuses that are occurring inside the country.

"I was tortured and I want to complain about it to all of the world's human rights organizations," she said. "I say the Islamic Republic should not be taken to the UN Security Council only because of its nuclear issue but our main problem -- the main issue of the Iranian people -- is the abuse of their rights and pressure from the regime."

Toloui is one of the signatories of a letter signed and published last year by women's rights groups, personalities and activists that calls for a change in Iran's Constitution in order to guarantee equal rights for women and men.

Toloui says she is now concerned that her fate could create fear and concern among other women's rights activists who are fighting for more rights and freedom.

"Its very difficult for me to talk about [what I went through]," Toloui said. "I'm partly worried that women who are actively involved in the women's movement would fear that they could face torture in case of arrest. But my message to all Iranian women who fight for their rights is that their struggle should [continue] with courage."

Human rights organizations and activists say torture is prevalent in Iran's prisons. In July, Iran's hard-line judiciary acknowledged -- in an unprecedented report -- that human-rights abuses, including torture, have in some cases taken
place in prisons and detention centers

By: Kameel Ahmady

The aim of this paper is to explore how identity and ethnicity as distinct from other groups in the area has been seen by Yezidi Kurds throughout the last century. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its lands into a number of countries where Yezidis live there have been many political and social changes which have had direct impact on the lives of the community, and the ways they practice and express their faith. Lalash and Jayia shangar where I spend some days to do filed work and document what you read .
Read more
http://kurdishinfo.com/userimages/belgeler/yezidiler_english.html

Hundreds Detained for Planning Protest

(New York, February 1, 2006) ? The Iranian government has responded to a strike planned by Tehran?s bus drivers for January 28 by preemptively detaining hundreds of drivers, including several union organizers, Human Rights Watch said today. Most of the workers remain in detention without charge or access to counsel. Human Rights Watch called on the Iranian government to release them immediately.
The bus drivers, members of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, had organized the strike to protest the detention of their union leader, Mansour Ossanlu, and to demand recognition of their trade union activities.
Iran?s new government boasts of representing the interests of working men and women. Their violent crackdown on the bus workers? union make these words ring hollow,? said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch.
The police detained Ossanlu, the director of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, at his home on December 22. Iranian security agents have since held him, without charge or access to his lawyers, at ward 209 of Tehran?s notorious Evin Prison. Ossanlu is reportedly suffering from a serious eye complaint and is in need of urgent medical attention.

Shortly after news of the planned strike in response to Ossanlu?s detention, the government launched a crackdown against the union?s leadership. Gholamreza Mirzaii, the union?s spokesman, told Human Rights Watch that on January 26, security and intelligence agents arrested the union?s board of directors to disrupt the planned strike. Mirzaii said that he himself fears arrest by the authorities at any time.

The security forces also launched a pre-dawn raid on the home of Yaghub Salimi, another member of the union, on January 28. Salimi was not home at the time, but the authorities detained his wife and two children, along with the wives of two other union officials and three of their children, during the raid.

Salimi, in interviews with media outlets outside of Iran, has stated that security forces beat and intimidated his wife and children, and that his 2-year-old daughter sustained facial injuries as a result of her arrest. Authorities released his family members after Salimi presented himself to the authorities.

On the day of the planned strike, security and intelligence agents identified and detained hundreds of union sympathizers when they showed up for work in the morning. According to Mirzaii, the security and intelligence forces beat and physically intimidated the workers in connection with the arrests.

Mirzaii told Human Rights Watch that although the union has not been able to compile exact numbers, it believes that police detained more than 500 workers, who are being held in Evin Prison without charge. He said that the authorities released a small number of detainees on Sunday and Monday, though they have not been allowed to return to work and company officials have threatened to fire them.

As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Iranian government is obligated to guarantee freedom of association, ?including the right to form and join trade unions.? Article 26 of the Iranian Constitution permits ?the formation of parties, societies, political or professional associations.? The right to strike is recognized by Iran?s Labor Law. Article 142 of this law states that in case of a dispute between workers and employers resulting ?in the stoppage of work while workers are present in the workplace or in deliberate reduction of production by the workers,? a mediation board shall investigate the dispute.

The Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company was founded in 1969, but has been inactive since 1979. The bus workers resumed their trade union activities in 2004. However, the government has refused to recognize the union.

Human Rights Watch called on the Iranian government to stop its persecution of workers and their families, not to retaliate against the workers, and to guarantee their safe return to work.

Iran Focus- Iranian authorities hanged in public an individual accused of being a “trouble-maker” in the central city of Kerman, the state-run ISNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

The unnamed individual who was hanged in a one of the city’s public squares was charged with being involved in armed clashes with the security forces, creating “insecurity and trouble”, and kidnapping.

Agence France-Presse
Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad labelled George W. Bush a warmonger who should be dragged before a "people's tribunal", the day after the US president called for a "free and democratic Iran". "God willing, in the near future we will judge you in a people's tribunal," Ahmadinejad said in a speech carried live on state television.

"You who support the Zionist puppet regime, you who support the destruction of Palestinian homes, you have no right to talk about liberty or human rights," Ahmadinejad said in comments directed at the US president.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Bush called the Islamic republic "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people".

But responding to Bush's speech, Ahmadinejad lashed out at "those who are up to their elbows in the blood of the people, who are implicated everywhere where there is war and oppression, who start wars in Asia and Africa, killing people by the million."

The Iranian president also vowed Wednesday his country would not surrender its nuclear ambitions and blasted an agreement between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to take up the case.

"Those who possess stocks of nuclear arms meet together and take decisions and think that the Iranian people will submit to their decisions," the president said in a speech carried live on state television.

"I tell these countries who want to violate the rights of the Iranian people that the Iranian people will not be influenced by their propaganda," he said, vowing the Islamic republic would "continue on the road to victory".

The foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members agreed in London overnight Monday to haul Iran's case to New York after the country resumed sensitive nuclear fuel research work and deepened fears it could acquire the atom bomb.

A referral is likely to come during an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board of governors, which begins on Thursday.

"They believe they are dealing with a second-rate people with no culture. But we will build nuclear power stations everywhere in the country with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts," Ahmadinejad asserted.

"Our people will not bow to a few tyrannical countries who think they are the whole world," he added.

"The language of the Europeans and the West is from the Middle Ages. They live in a colonial dream. The action of the Westerners will have no influence on the decisions of the Iranian people," said the president, who was speaking during a visit to the southern city of Bushehr.

Bushehr is where, with Russian assistance, Iran is building its first nuclear power station. The Islamic regime insists it only wants to generate electricity.

LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he would meet Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in London on Wednesday and tell him Tehran had a final chance to convince the world its nuclear programme is peaceful.

"I shall be saying to him that he really needs to see this agreed position by the international community not as a threat but as...a final opportunity (for Iran) to put itself back on track," Straw told BBC radio.

The Sun
USELESS Europe has finally asked the UN to denounce Iran. It is too late.

While the EU wasted three crucial years, Tehran’s malevolent mullahs have taken irreversible strides towards building a nuclear bomb.

It blatantly exports global terror and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

Asking the UN Security Council to step in is pointless. China and Russia will block it.

The only option for the West, short of war, is to support the Iranian people who loathe their extremist leaders.

This benighted nation is young, intelligent and pro-western. Yet men routinely face torture and execution, while girls are raped and sold off as part of a hideous slave trade.

Meanwhile, the EU has stupidly labelled the only effective internal opposition, the PMOI, as terrorists.

The PMOI has never targeted the West. It publicly ceased attacks on the Iranian military in 2001.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw must today demand EU action to lift this crazy ban.

And stop appeasing a regime that aims to hold the Arab and Western world at nuclear gunpoint.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Tuesday Iran is "held hostage" by a clerical elite that represses its people and urged the world not to allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.

He also accused Iran of sponsoring terrorists in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, saying "that must come to an end."

Bush made his comments in his State of the Union as the United States expressed confidence that Russia and China would support sending the Iran nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council.

"The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions -- and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons," Bush said.

A new campaign for the rights of Iranian asylum seekers in the UK has been launched.
The International Federation of Iranian Refugees in the UK has launched a campaign against the British government's policy of deporting asylum seekers to Iran. The organisation believes that Iran is unsafe for return and an immediate stop should be made to the deportation of Iranian asylum seekers. It is also campaigning against further detentions of Iranian asylum seekers and urging the release of those already in detention.

For further information contact: Siamak Amjadi on 07946 752534 or 07931 866985 or email: ifiruk@yahoo.com
The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

http://irr.org.uk/2006/january/fq000022.html

The Council of the Socialist International (SI), continued its meeting in Athens on Tuesday with a discussion of issues concerning the Middle East.
Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) vice-president Doreid Yaghi called for implementation of the relevant UN Resolutions, and international investigations into the killings of political leaders in Lebanon. as well as the despatch of an SI delegation to Lebanon.
President of Cyprus' Movement of Social Democrats (EDEK) party Yannakis Omirou said the primary issues of the region were the Palestinian issue and the undermining of the stability in Lebanon.
On the Palestinian issue, Omirou said that despite the steps it has taken, Israel needed to do more to provide guarantees for the Palestinians, while Hamas -- which won the absolute majority in the weekend elections in Palestine -- had the obligation to respect the state of Israel. He added that dialogue was the only way for problems to be resolved.
Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) delegate Khosrow Abdollahi called for reinforcement of the democratic forces of Iran so as to rid the country of a regime "of another period", but ruled out any type of military intervention. He also called on the West to curtail its economic interests so that oppressive regimes would not be reinforced through the serving of those interests.
The delegate from Pakistan called for effective measures in order to combat fundamentalism, and for the return of the democratic leadership to Pakistan.