TUNCELI, Turkey (Reuters) - Four Turkish security personnel and two Kurdish separatists were killed early on Sunday after rebels launched a rocket attack on a military station in eastern Turkey, a security source told Reuters.

The initial attack occurred around 1 a.m. (6 a.m. EDT) in Bingol province, when around 15-20 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) shot rockets and long range firearms at the security headquarters, the source said.

The separatists fled after two of their members were killed in an ensuing firefight with security personnel.

The military has launched a search operation, backed by helicopters, to find the group of separatists.

Media reported two soldiers were also killed early on Saturday after separatists fired on a separate military base in the southeastern province of Silopi.

Analysts say the PKK, weakened by Turkey's military attacks on its hideouts in northern Iraq, have stepped up attacks on civilian and military targets.

The PKK launched its armed insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey. Some 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Turkey, like the European Union and Washington, considers the group an terrorist organization.

Two Turkish soldiers were killed Saturday in clashes with Kurdish rebels close to the southeastern borders with Iraq, the Army Command said.
In a statement, the Army Command said the clashes occurred at the village of Silopi, close to Sirnak province, leading to the death of the two Turkish soldiers.
The region had recently witnessed tensions between the Turkish Army and members of the rebel Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).
The army had intensified its operations against the PKK since December and waged a number of attacks on their strongholds in northern Iraq.

NCRI – Twelve teenagers were arrested by the State Security Forces (SSF) – mullahs' suppressive police – for laughing aloud in a gathering with Health Minister as keynote speaker in the western city of Sanandaj. 
 

The minister was speaking of restricting and curing regional illnesses when the youths laughed inadvertently. However, the SSF agents arrested six of the 12 teens. Journalists covering the event intervened but failed to free the minors. The SSF commander on the scene threatened the persistent journalists with arrest if they followed up the story.
 

The mullahs' regime is sensitive to public protests and treats all matters as security issues. Sanandaj has always been considered a sensitive spot for the Iranian regime since it is hated by most of the local residents.

Earlier this month the city was brewing when the mullahs' local officials refused to give in to the local residents' demand to  free   Farzad Kamangar – a teacher and a political prisoner from jail.

The protesting crowd marched from Kamangar's residence to a village where he used to teach a few miles outside the city. The SSF agents stopped the marchers and forced them to go back to Sanandaj riding on police buses.

 The Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested Kamangar in Tehran in July 2006 and held him in various detention centers in Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Tehran.
 
During a period of detention in Ward 209 of the notorious Evin Prison -- run by the MOIS -- in August 2006, officials tortured him to such an extent that they had to transfer him to the prison clinic to receive medical attention. He was severely tortured and was subject to ill-treatment while in detention in the cities of Sanandaj in Kurdistan province and Kermanshah.
 
The mullahs' Supreme Court upheld an earlier death sentence by a lower court for three Kurdish political activists Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heidarian and Farhad Vakili on Friday. The three were first arrested in April 2006 and tried in the lower court in February 2007.

Iran Human Rights, August 30: One man was hanged in the prison of Semnan (east of Tehran) yesterday morning August 29, reported the official Iranian news agency IRNA.

The man was identified as "Mohammad Hassan B.", and convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death in the Semnan revolutionary court, according to the report.

A number of the percipients were arrested in the ceremony

NCRI - On Friday, the mullahs' regime dispatched thousands of the State Security Forces (SSF)—mullahs' suppressive police -- to stop the memorial service held by the families of the victims of the 1988 massacre in Khavaran cemetery in suburban Tehran. A number of the participants were arrested.

Friends and families of the slain prisoners affiliated with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and other political groups held a memorial service for their loved ones. The mourners walked toward the cemetery in groups of 100 to 150 people.

However, they were confronted with thousands of the ruling clerical regime's repressive forces such as the SSF, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the paramilitary Bassij force as well as other security agents.

Tow days prior to the ceremony, the Khavaran district, in south eastern Tehran was cordoned off by the security agents for a two kilometer radius.

They prevented the participants from entering the roads leading to Khavaran. In addition to such suppressive measures, the agents arrested a number of participants and seized driving licenses of people trying to enter the roads leading to cemetery and were ordered to collect their permits at the police precinct in Sepah Square.
 
Khavaran is the site where a part of some 30,000 members and supporters of the PMOI and other groups are buried in mass graves.  They were savagely massacred during the summer of 1988.

Despite repressive measures, the friends and families of the slain prisoners mark the event every year.

The Iranian Resistance once again calls on all international human rights organizations and international tribunals to follow the leaders of the mullahs' regime for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners and bring them to justice. 

NCRI – The State Security Forces – mullahs' suppressive police – in an unprecedented move even by the clerical regime's standards arrested 1,600 Tehran residents in a single nightly raid on Wednesday.

"The detainees will be handed over to prosecutors for building a case against them. Such criminals will be handled by capital's special court branch number 20," said Mahmoud Salar-Kia, deputy prosecutor general of Tehran. Since the start of the so-called "boosting public security plan," in April 2007, hundreds of thousands of citizens, mostly women, have been stopped on the streets by the SSF "Chastity Units" and other suppressive police tasks. In the least costly scenario, the subject of such suppressive measures would often end up in prison and then the individual has to sign a confession-like paper admitting to guilt and promising not to do it again.

The so-called "boosting public security plan" was first introduced in April 2007 to combat popular uprisings. Mass street arrests of hundreds of thousands of women and youth under the pretext of "mal-veiling" and cracking down on "thugs and hooligans" followed. In the same period, more than 300 prisoners were sent to gallows.

NCRI – In a clear insult to Iranian women, Ali Borhan, a prayer leader on Thursday compared Iranian women who refuse to wear the traditional chador to "bare-back donkeys," in the central city of Mehriz, reported the state-run website Asriran.

"Residents in Mehriz will not tolerate women wearing anything but chador. The way women appear in public is worse than appearing naked," Borhan said.

"We will not accept tapes [music cassettes] distributed in our city and will not tolerate women with improper outfits. They would be better off not wearing anything," he added.

"Women wearing garments in place of chadors are just like bare-back donkeys. It is something that we will prevent at all costs in the city," Borhan told a small congregation of worshipers.

Borhan showed his anger at those trying to open movie theaters in the city by saying that he would stand up to "anyone dare building a theater" in Mehriz regardless of its consequences.

"Islamic centers should concentrate on Islamic laws and teach how to properly read the Quran's verses," Borhan finished his preaches to the worshipers made up of the paramilitary Bassij forces. 

Human rights monitors are concerned over the detention of Iranian Kurdish teacher and human rights activist Masoud Kurdpour. According to Iran Human Rights Voice, a web-based Iran human rights advocacy group, Mr. Kurdpour was summoned to the offices of Iran's security service in the city of Bokan on August 5th and subsequently detained. In an interview with the Voice of America's Kurdish Service, Ja'far Kurdpour said family and friends fear for his safety:

"On Monday [August 25th] Kurdish prisoners in Iran's prisons started a hunger strike and issued a statement protesting the bad conditions in the prisons and the unlawful treatment and violations of [international] agreements of which Iran is a signatory. My brother is one of the prisoners on hunger strike. Masoud Kurdpour's lawyers have not yet been allowed to see him. Family members who visited him in the prison in Bokan city say he looks very weak and his health is in danger."

In a report released in July, Amnesty International said Iran's government is failing in its duty to prevent discrimination and human rights abuses against its Kurdish citizens, particular women. "Iran's constitution provides for equality of all Iranians before the law," said Amnesty International, "but, as our report shows, this is not the reality for Kurds in Iran."

Among the Iranian Kurdish prisoners of conscience identified by Amnesty International is Mohammad Siddique Kabudvand. In May of this year, Mr. Kabudvand was sentenced, after a closed trial, to eleven years imprisonment for "acting against state security" by establishing the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan and one year in prison for what Iranian authorities called "propaganda against the system."

In it human rights report for Iran, the U.S. State Department noted that Mr. Kabudvand was sentenced in September 2006 to one year in prison for allegedly inciting rebellion.

Vague and unsubstantiated charges like "inciting rebellion," "acting against state security" and "propaganda against the system" are routinely leveled by Iranian authorities against Iranian citizens who seek only to exercise basic human rights, including the right of peaceful, political dissent. The U.S. calls on Iran to respect the rights of Iranian Kurds, and all the people of Iran.

VOA News

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 28 – Iranian authorities hanged five people, including a woman, in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, state media reported on Thursday.

All five were hanged on Wednesday, the official daily "Iran" wrote.

The four men were identified as Amin, Majid, Najaf, and Vahid. They were accused of murder.

The woman was identified only by her first name Shabnam. She had been convicted of stabbing her husband to death over a divorce dispute.

Executions in Iran have sharply risen over the past two months. At least 63 people have been hanged in August, and 29 people were hanged simultaneously in Tehran on 25 July.

Over the past week, two young men, Behnam Zare and Reza Hejazi, were hanged for crimes they allegedly committed when they were 15 years old. Both were hanged without the knowledge of their lawyers or relatives.

NCRI - Kurdish political prisoners have gone on hunger strike nationwide over prison conditions, said a statement marking the start of the protest on Monday.

"There are 40 prisoners in the northwestern city of Orumieh, 15 in the northwestern city of Mahabad, 13 in the western city of Sanandaj and eight in Tehran's notorious Evin prison," said the statement not locating the four remaining prisoners.

The statement calls on the "world conscience" to act on behalf of political prisoners under the worsening conditions in the mullahs' jails. Eight Kurdish journalists and political prisoners are on death row, according to the statement.

The Kurdish prisoners called for "an immediate stay of execution sentences for political prisoners and an end to all forms of torture and degrading punishments."

The strikers also demanded that prisons throughout the country come under an international monitoring committee.   

The mullahs' inhuman regime holds political prisoners in Evin prison ward 209 run by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). In addition, Gohardasht prison, 40 kilometers west of Tehran, is another facility with an unknown number of political prisoners constantly living in grave conditions.

Kurdish prisoners, all jailed for political motives in Iran, on Monday began an indefinite hunger strike to promote human rights.

The news, released by the Kurdish agency, Mokrian, was confirmed by the sister of Adnan Hassanpour, the award-winning journalist who has been condemned to death.

Hassanpour was awarded a media award in Italy by the Information, Safety & Freedom Association.

The prisoners' hunger strike is to "sensitise Iranian and international public opinion" to "protest against the death sentences given to Kurdish representatives" and to "denounce continuing human rights violations in prison and outside prison".

Eight Kurdish intellectuals and activists have been condemned to death in Iran, while another six have been sentenced to penalties of up to 11 years for their alleged political and militant activities.

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's northern Kurdish enclave may be a haven of relative peace and serenity but independent journalists there say challenges to the political establishment are being met with intimidation and threats.

In the largely autonomous territory, streets are swept clean and people walk without fear -- a stark contrast to the concrete walls and barbed wire that have defined life for most Iraqis in more than five years of war.

Still, about 60 Kurdish journalists were killed, threatened, attacked, or taken to court in the first half of 2008, says the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Last month, Soran Mamahama, a 23-year-old writer for Livin magazine, published in the Kurdish town of Sulaimaniya, was gunned down outside his home in Kirkuk, a week after his report linking security officials to prostitution rings.

In the past few years, many other Kurdish journalists have been beaten, jailed, threatened with death or simply hassled by the authorities while doing their job.

"In Kurdistan there is no freedom for journalists. I have proof of that -- the most recent proof was Soran," says Hemen Mamand, a young radio reporter in Arbil who wears a small likeness of Che Guevara around his neck.

"We don't know who killed him, but we do know that the government didn't care," said Mamand, who himself was threatened when he wrote a story about an alleged case of corruption linked to Kurdish President Masoud Barzani's powerful KDP party.

While the rest of Iraq was mired in chaotic, bloody civil strife following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Kurdish north aggressively promoted its image as "the other Iraq" -- a place of stability, prosperity and above all, security.

The last decade has seen a scrappy independent press emerge to challenge the region's two dominant political parties. But that has coincided with a "marked deterioration in press freedom" and spates of attacks, said Joel Campagna, who headed a CPJ mission to Kurdistan last year.

"NO PROBLEMS HERE"

CPJ and Amnesty International have launched campaigns to draw attention to such events and pressure Kurdish authorities to hold those who are threatening journalists to account.

"The recent incidents have really stripped off the veneer and revealed it's not much different than other parts of Iraq," Campagna said.

Although violence has dropped sharply, Iraq remains the world's most dangerous place for the press, with more than 130 journalists killed working there since 2003.

Many reporters in Kurdistan see themselves as most at risk when they report critically about Kurdish security forces, government officials or political parties.

They say Barzani's KDP party, based in Arbil, and the PUK, its historic rival, controlled by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and based in Sulaimaniya, wield near-total control of their respective Kurdish domains.

"In Kurdistan, there isn't really a political opposition. So the government thinks that journalists are the opposition," said Rebin Rasul Esmail, who until 2004 was a senior editor for Hawlati, a leading independent newspaper.

In 2006, men tried to abduct his wife, fellow journalist Azhen Abdul Khaleq, off the street. The couple believed the attack was related to Abdul Khaleq's reporting on officials' attempts to sexually assault female journalists.

Kurdish officials categorically reject suggestions they strong-arm the press or look the other way when violence occurs.

They paint a picture of a feckless, ill-trained media that traffics in unsubstantiated reports and personal attacks.

"The problem, you know, with our journalists, they think they are free to say anything and do anything," State Interior Minister Karim Sinjari said in an interview. "Somebody tells them something, and they make a story."

Asked about attacks or intimidation of the press, Arbil Governor Nawzad Hadi Mawlood said only: "No problems here."

Sinjari pledges to protect reporters and investigate crimes, but says he can do nothing if journalists fail to report them.

"NO RED LINES"

Reporters acknowledge the Kurdish media often fails to properly source reports or back up assertions. It's also an open secret that many reporters are on government and party payrolls.

"Journalists are a big part of the problem," the former editor Rasul Esmail said.

Others blame the government for starving the press of information, leaving reporters little choice but to cast about for leads or trust disgruntled insiders.

Kurdistan's parliament may soon resume debate on a new press law some hope will encourage a more mature, thriving press.

An earlier version of the law laid down fines of up to $8,400 for reports about people's private lives that "insult" them -- even if true -- or "stain common customs and morals."

Facing a widespread outcry, President Barzani rejected the draft law.

A U.S. official in Arbil said the draft caused concern because it "could be used to stifle free expression." "A free and independent press will make an important contribution to democratic development" in Kurdistan, he said.

Ahmed Mira, editor of Livin magazine, is awaiting the results of a probe into his colleague Mamahama's death.

Mira is no stranger to intimidation. In 2007, he was seized from his home and thrown into solitary confinement after he wrote an article calling into question Talabani's health. Talabani is in his 70s and had heart surgery this month.

Still, Mira promises his magazine will not be cowed.

"There are no red lines. There is no censorship for any subject published in Livin," he said.

(Additional reporting by Sherko Raouf in Sulaimaniya; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Damascus, 26 August (AKI) - Military intelligence services have ordered Syrian Kurdish writer and prominent rights activist Mashaal al-Tammu to stand trial, Syria's Human Rights Observatory reported.

It quoted human rights campaigners saying they saw al-Tammu entering a Damascus courthouse on Tuesday.

He had not been seen since he vanished on 15 August after leaving the northern Syrian city of Kubani, bound for Damascus.

Although Al-Tammu's car was found close to the armed forces' headquarters in the city of Aleppo, Syrian security services denied claims by human rights groups that they were involved in his disappearance.

Human rights lawyers are currently evaluating the situation and trying to determine if al-Tammu has been ordered to stand trial before a civilian or a military court.

Tammu, 50, is the official spokesman for the Kurdish Future opposition movement.

Freedom of expression remains tightly controlled in Syria, and security forces have sweeping powers of arrest and detention.

A total 1,500 people were arrested for political reasons in 2007 and hundreds more who were arrested in previous years remained in detention, according to rights group Amnesty International's 2008 report.

NCRI - Eleven prisoners hanged in Iran in the past week. Among those executed, there was a prisoner 15 at the time of the alleged crime and another was hanged for a crime allegedly he committed 19 years ago. The mullahs' inhuman regime hanged nine other prisoners in different cities throughout the country.

On August 20, the Iranian regime hanged six prisoners without naming them in the northeastern city of Birjand while two others were hanged in the Qezelhesar prison 40 kilometer west of the capital, the state-run dailies Khorasan and Qods reported respectively.  

According to the state-run daily Etemaad a man identified as Bahram who had allegedly committed a crime 19 years ago was executed in the northern city of Tabriz on August 20. The same source reported another hanging this time in the northeastern city of Bojnourd also on August 20.

This morning a young man, Behnam Zare, after spending five years in prison, was hanged for a crime allegedly committed when he was 15 in Adela Abad prison in the southern city of Shiraz.

The mullahs' inhuman regime has stepped up executions throughout the country as a criminal and fearful reaction to the popular uprisings and other crisis in Iran.

Emphasizing that silence and inaction by the international community over the brutal violation of human rights in Iran emboldens the mullahs to continue and expand its crimes, the Iranian Resistance calls on the UN Secretary General, Security Council, High Commissioner for Human Rights and other competent international bodies to take urgent measures to prevent growing trend of executions in Iran. It also calls for immediate referral of the clerical regime's human rights dossier to the UN Security Council for adoption of binding measures.

NCRI – The mullahs' inhuman regime on Tuesday hanged Beham Zare for the alleged crime committed when he was 15, according to his attorney.

Despite much international appeals to save his life, the young man was executed in Adel Abad prison in the southern city of Shiraz.

France as the current EU rotary president issued a statement on Monday condemning the hanging of another juvenile, Reza Hejazi, on August 19 by the Iranian regime.

"The European Union categorically condemns the hanging in Isfahan on Tuesday 19 August of Reza Hejazi, convicted of a murder he was said to have committed in 2004, when he was 15 years old. It is very concerned by this news, which brings to five the number of executions in Iran since the beginning of this year for crimes committed when the perpetrator was a minor," the EU statement firmly said.

According to rights groups there are at least 114 youths facing gallows for the crimes allegedly committed when they were minors. The youngest is a 13-year-old boy named Ahmad Nowroozi sentenced to death by the mullahs' judiciary three years ago in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan.

Shareef Pasha Khandan (1865-1945)

Muhammad Saaid Pasha Hussein Pasha, known as Shareef Pasha Khandan, was born in 1865. Khandan family was a close supporter to the Baban Pashas. After the end of the Baban Emirate’s reign, his father went to Istanbul. Shareef Pasha kept on his studies in Istanbul and learnt Italian, French and Greek.

In 1885, he went to Paris, where he completed Military Academy and became a General. In 1898, he was appointed the ambassador of the Ottoman State to Sweden.

In 1908, he returned to Istanbul and founded (Kurd Development and Superiority Association) in cooperation with Amin Alli Badirkhan and Sheik Shamziny. Hence Shareef Pasha emerged as a key Kurdish politician.

Due to this stand of him, the Itihadies set him aside and did not give him any administrative posts. In 1919, he founded a Radical Ottoman Party in Paris calling for the foundation of a constitutional and parliamentary state.

The Party issued a magazine entitled (Mashrutiyat) of which 55 issues were published. Shareef Pasha believed that the rights of any nation or suppressed group could be recognized only under a democratic and constitutional regime.

During World War I, Shareef Pasha prolonged his activities with less momentum. He was preparing for postwar circumstances hoping that a better ground would be available to fulfill the rights of the Kurdish nation.

In June 1918, he met Sir Persi Koks in Marssil and asked him, as a British Official, to consider Kurds fate. In March 1919, Shareef Pasha, as an authorized representative, submitted a memo supplemented with a map of Great Kurdistan to
Paris Peace Congress in which he asked for establishing an independent state for the Kurds. It became a cornerstone for enhancing Kurds rights in Sèvres Treaty approved in August 10, 1920.

Three years later, all his hopes faded in Lausanne Treaty. The overt injustice of the results moved him to pessimism and serious miseries. Shareef Pasha Khandan passed away in the end of 1945 in Italy and was buried in Cairo Cemetery, away from his homeland.

KURDSAT

Forty-four Iranian passengers were killed and 10 injured in the crash of an Itek Air Boeing 737 passenger jet shortly after takeoff from Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek, the Iranian news network Khabar reported Monday. Khabar quoted the Iranian embassy in Bishkek as saying that the names of those Iranians killed in Sunday's crash would be announced as soon as the official identification process was finished.

The bodies and the 10 injured passengers would soon be transferred to Tehran by an Iranian plane, the report added.

The news agency Mehr said that the Kyrgyz youth basketball team on board the crashed plane was on its way to Tehran to attend Thursday's Asian basketball championships.

The team had decided to come to Iran earlier for training sessions in Tehran for better acclimatization.

The Iranian Civil Aviation Organization said earlier that the crashed plane was from the Kyrgyz national fleet and not Iranian-owned.

By LEILA SARALAYEVA
Associated Press Writer

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - A passenger jet carrying 90 people, including a Kyrgyz high school sports team, crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday near the Kyrgyz capital, killing 65, government officials said.

The Boeing 737 was headed to Iran when it crashed near Bishkek's Manas International Airport, said government spokeswoman Roza Daudova. Twenty-two people, including two crew members, survived the accident.

Earlier, Daudova had said there were at least 68 dead and 25 survivors, but she later gave lower figures.

An airport official said the crew reported a technical problem about 10 minutes into the flight and that the plane was returning to the airport when it crashed. The official said she was not authorized to give her name.

Officials said the crash followed the sudden decompression of the jet, which came down in a field near a village.

Among the survivors, were seven out the 17 members of the basketball team from a school in the capital, Bishkek, said Health Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Bayalinova. Presidential adviser Tokon Mamytov, however, later said that the athletes were volleyball, not basketball players.

Eighteen survivors were hospitalized, and four others were sent home with no serious injuries, according to Daudova.

Daudova said the people on board the plane included 24 Kyrgyz citizens, 52 Iranians, three Kazakhs, two Canadians, one citizen of Turkey and one Chinese.

Kyrgyz Interior Minister Moldomusa Kongatiyev said the plane went down 6 miles from the airport.

Maj. Damian Pickart, public affairs officer for the U.S. air base located at the Manas airport, said U.S. ambulances and firefighting equipment were dispatched to the crash site in response to a Kyrgyz request for help.

Several government officials said the plane belonged to Itek Air, a Kyrgyz company, but was operated by Iran Aseman Airlines. But Mamytov, the presidential adviser, said the plane was both owned and operated by Itek Air.

Itek Air has been banned from operating in the airspace of the European Union because of failure to meet safety and aviation standards, according to a list published by the EU July 24.

Kyrgyzstan is a poor, mountainous country west of China. The U.S. air base in the ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan supports operations in nearby Afghanistan.

Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan and the country's largest city, has a population about 1 million and is situated in the northern part of the Central Asian nation.

Manas International Airport is about 16 miles northwest of downtown.

TEHRAN: An Iranian appeals court has upheld a four-year jail term handed down to a Kurdish women's rights activist, a press report said on Sunday.

"An appeal court in West Azarbaijan confirmed the four-year jail sentence with exile for Zeinab Bayzeydi," Kargozaran newspaper said, quoting her lawyer Mehdi Hojati.

Bayzeydi will have to serve her jail term outside home province of West Azarbaijan, which has a substantial Kurdish population.

The 26-year-old had been involved with the "One Million Signature" campaign, an initiative launched in 2006 seeking to change Iranian law regarded as discriminatory to women.

Several women have been arrested for their involvement with the campaign in Tehran and Kurdish-populated areas, including Bayzeydi, Ronak Saffarzadeh and Hana Abdi, who was given five years in jail.

Earlier this month, the French presidency of the European Union condemned the arrest of the three rights activists and called for their unconditional release.

Iranian women's rights campaigners demand equal rights in marriage, child custody and divorce. A married woman in Iran needs her husband's consent to work and obtain a passport, and the blood money paid for a woman's life is half that for a man.

The signature campaign, which is backed by Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, was launched following a protest in a Tehran main square in June 2006, when about 70 people were arrested amid reported police brutality.

www.soszeynab.com

NCRI – Last week six women and a man touring the southern city of Shiraz were beaten and arrested. The State Security Forces (SSF) – mullahs' suppressive police – Chastity Unit patrolling the streets stopped a group of East Asians touring the city for not observing the strictly imposed dress code. Not having a translator, the group resisted the SSF agents and was severely beaten and arrested.

The Asian tourists then spent a few hours at the SSF custody before finally being released by their country's embassy.

This was not an isolated incident of the kind. In the past year there have been tourists harassed by the SSF enforcing the dress code in line with the suppressive "boosting public security plan."

The so-called "boosting public security plan" was first introduced in April 2007 to combat popular uprisings. Mass street arrests of hundreds of thousands of women and youth under the pretext of "mal-veiling" and cracking down on "thugs and hooligans" followed. In the same period, more than 300 prisoners were sent to gallows.

NCRI – The Park Management Organization (PMO) prohibited women riding on bicycles to enter parks in Karaj 40 kilometers west of the capital.

PMO hanged signs banning women cyclists from riding their bikes in the city's parks and outdoor greens.
 

Mullahs' officials defended the move calling it "immoral" and against "Islamic dress codes."  

Riding bikes has become very popular among female college students. In the scorching summer heat of Tehran and other cities the outdoor sport would give women some comfort. Although, women were very cautious about what they wore when riding not to get into trouble with the so-called "boosting public security plan" in effect since April 2007, the new order stop them from biking.
 
The so-called "boosting public security plan" was first introduced in April 2007 to combat popular uprisings. Mass street arrests of hundreds of thousands of women and youth under the pretext of "mal-veiling" and cracking down on "thugs and hooligans" followed. In the same period, more than 300 prisoners were sent to gallows.

Mullahs' human rights violations cannot be evaluated by customary standards. On July 25, in the notorious Tehran Evin prison 29 prisoners were sent to gallows. The action brought unanimous condemnation by the international community for the ruling clerics in Iran. However, it made no difference when the following week the regime's henchmen hanged 10 more prisoners to set another record high even by their own standards.

NCRI – Tehran University students will face metal detector gates entering the school.

A new policy is in effect starting September 22, opening school year in Iran, allowing the government appointed university officials to install the new security gates not only at the various colleges but at the entrance and exit doors of the student dorms. 

Every student has to insert his electronic ID card into the machine when going to and leaving the school grounds.

The school's authorities have adopted another suppressive measure by adding to the height of fences surrounding the university grounds.
 
The move has caused protests among students since its introduction last week.
 
The Iranian Universities were the seen of much unrest the last two semesters in a row with the Student Day, December 9, on its focal point.

On December 9, 2007, thousands of students gathered on university's main campus chanting anti-government slogans. Streets leading to the campus gates were filled with the State-Security Forces (SSF) –mullahs' suppressive police— agents prevent the students from other Tehran's universities to enter the school.