در همبستگی با نویسندگان سایر وبلاگها

Free Akbar Ganji
for more go to khabarchin

These days the hot topic in the Persian blogging world is the election in Iran... another representative for the murderer Mullah regime? What better joy but to vote for one!

The latest news consists of violence against civilians in Khuzestan and sunday night Fox channel had a program about Iran. They were analyzing the different ways to stop the Iranian regime from becoming a nuclear power. They had invited Seyed Hossein Mousavian, the Islamic Republic's former ambassador to Germany. In the 1990s, during Mousavian's ambassadorship to Germany, several dissidents were assassinated in Berlin. When asked if he thinks Israel will attack the Iranian nuclear facilities, dressed in black tailored suit and his Swiss bank accounts loaded with blood money of the Iranians, the former Iranian ambassador looked into his interviewer's eyes and said, the Israelis will not dare bomb the nuclear facilities.

Shadi Sadr, winner of the Ida B. Wells Award has been denied permission to leave Iran.

Dad's been here for the past month. This means going to junkyards to find and buy something for the garden. This means tasty Persian food... cooked by my father a genius in the art of cooking and last but not least a new addition to my little girl's favorite people! Dad isn't well and isn't anything like what he used to be. Mom's death has driven him to a different state of existence. We are one of those kiss and show affection families and I love to embrace dad in my arms and kiss his face several times. The little girl is reflecting it and I want to eat her up like watermelons. When my husband leaves home for office or to jog, she says: Dad, I miss you. (Baba! Delam barat tang shod) On another note. I have written a new poem with Ron Hudson and I like it a lot. We each have described our individual experiences with the revolution in Iran. I'm only posting two parts from the poem. Tehran I She smiled and spoke softly of Tehran and her family, of her uncle who left to buy bread, never to return home again. He was found a month later, bullet-ridden in an alleyway, once Khomeini had returned home. Terror filled our expatriate hearts at the taking of the Embassy and the thought that our youth would be lost for a war that we did not desire. Perhaps out of sense of responsibility, or because they, too, felt exiled in France, our Iranian friends invited us to meals or offered us rides when we faced long walks to and from home in Montpellier. Decades later, I attended a concert of classical Persian music. Luck would have my friend Sam and me seated in the very front row as Shajarian "The Iranian Paravotti" sang. At the end of the concert each musician bowed and placed his hand over his heart before reaching that hand toward us, the audience: a loving gesture... from their hearts to ours. Teheran II When the students scaled the walls of The House of Satan – their name for the U.S. Embassy – I would cry myself to sleep in fear of losing a loved one to the men, those handing out red flowers while holding machine guns. Soon public executions began - mass murder of dissidents and religious minorities; stoning, arbitrary arrests, flogging. Countless people were buried or burned. We feared and trembled with eyelids closed, a frightened gesture, a fearful prayer... from our hearts to theirs. ... and the poem continues

دکتر ناصر زرافشان و پيمان پيران، زندانيان سياسی اعلام اعتصاب غذای نامحدود کردن

Dr. Naser Zarafshan and Peyman Piran are on hunger strike.

Sacred flows the shapeless air --
whispers to the wind as the Peris* fly
and when in the crowded valley of mind
the questions arise;
whence comes this splendid faith,
believing in having one voice, one color, one shore,
the sonorous queries push back
and from within the wanderings, doubts
the answers come ashore, no matter how far.

from the poem On both sides of the pond by Sheema Kalbasi & Alessio Zanelli

* Peris: Persian spirits of great beauty who guide mortals on their way to the Land of the Blessed.

We endorse the Prevent imminent execution of political prisoner Hojjat Zamani, by the Iranian government Petition to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, US Congress, US Senate, European Parliament.

Check the Human Rights Watch every morning. It will remind you that you are not the center of the World...

Iranian Truth: What policy would you like foreign governments to take in promoting human rights in Iran?

Sheema Kalbasi: Do not appease mullahs and do not do anything to extend the legitimacy of the regime. The ruling mullahs should be regarded as what they truly are: a band of murderers that should be brought to justice.

Read the rest of the interview on Iranian Truth.

The upcoming report by Iran's powerful judiciary about the mistreatment and torture of bloggers and internet journalists in custody must begin a process of full accountability for serious human rights abuse, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights News

Iranian Truth: I've noticed also that there's a lot of emphasis on human rights in your blog. What do you think the biggest human rights abuses are in Iran? Sheema Kalbasi: Institutionalizing an apartheid system based on gender and adherence to a particular clerical class; mass murdering of the dissidents and religious minorities; desecration and destruction of holy sites and cemeteries of people of "unrecognized faith"; denying higher education and work to Bahaies; cruel punishments such as stoning; arbitrary arrests of journalists, bloggers, Jews; gender discrimination; public executions; flogging,... I could add a few more items to the list but I'm running out of breath! The Iranian Truth has done several interviews with the Iranian English bloggers. They will appear under Interviews on the right side of his blog.