.:NOROUZ is HERE: Meet the HAFT SEEN:
HAPPY PERSIAN NEW YEAR!
.:meet the HAFT SEEN:.
The Haft Seen is to Norouz as the Christmas Tree is to Christmas…check out a full explanation of the Haft Seen. Whether you’re Persian and never knew all of these details or you’re interested in learning more about the Persian culture and New Year– read on & learn more!
Haft Seen (Persian: هفت سین) or the seven ‘S’s is a major tradition of Nowruz(Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in Iranian calendar), the traditional Iranian new year. Today the haft sin table includes seven specific items, all starting with the letter S or Sîn (س in the Persian alphabet). The items symbolically correspond to seven creations and holy immortals protecting them. Originally called Haft Chin (هفت چین), the Haft Seen has evolved over time, but has kept its symbolism. Traditionally, families attempt to set as beautiful a Haft Seen table as they can, as it is not only of traditional and spiritual value, but also noticed by visitors during Nowruzi visitations and is a reflection of their good taste. The Haft Seen items are:
- sabzeh(سبزه) – wheat, barley or lentil sprouts growing in a dish – symbolizing rebirth
- samanu (سمنو)- a sweet pudding made from wheat germ – symbolizing affluence
- senjed (سنجد)- the dried fruit of the oleaster tree – symbolizing love
- sîr (سیر)- garlic – symbolizing medicine
- sîb (سیب)- apples – symbolizing beauty and health
- somaq (سماق)- sumac berries – symbolizing (the color of) sunrise
- serkeh (سرکه)- vinegar – symbolizing age and patience
While traditionally incorrect, sometimes a missing Seen is exchanged with another item starting with an S. For example:
- sonbol (سنبل)- the fragrant hyacinth flower (the coming of spring)
- sekkeh (سکه)- coins (prosperity and wealth)
Other items on the table may include:
- traditional Iranian pastries such as baghlava (باقلوا),
- “toot” (توت)- (usually white) berries, naan-nokhodchi (نان نخودچی)
- dried nuts, berries and raisins that is called “Aajeel” (آجیل)
- lit candles (enlightenment and happiness)
- a mirror
- a sweet mint syrup called sekanjabin
- decorated eggs, sometimes one for each member of the family (fertility)
- a bowl with goldfish (life, and the sign of Pisces which the sun is leaving)
- a bowl of water with an orange in it (the earth floating in space)
- rose water for its magical cleansing powers
- the national colours, for a patriotic touch
- A Poetry book, such as the Shahnama or the Divan of Hafez, and/or a holy book such as the Bible for Christian, the Qu’ran for Muslims or a holy book of another faith.
I love getting creative with our family’s Haft Seen & making it more personal. Here are some wonderful pictures of different Haft Seen’s from around the world.
Working Class and Female in Iran
March 10, 2010 by Mandana
Filed under Featured, People on the Move
Read this article by Setareh Sabety, an Iranian-American writer and poet, who has been featured on touchIRAN in previous articles as well.
To mark International Women’s Day, I decided I should write about three Iranian women whom I came to know well when living in Iran just before Ahmadinejad’s first term. The three of them worked for me as housekeepers or babysitters and my knowledge of their lives is limited to our employer-employee relationship and class differences. But we spent a lot of time together and often our talks and interactions were more intimate than those I had with women I knew socially. For whatever it is worth I thought that I should expose the lives of three very ordinary Iranian women from different backgrounds and different sensibilities. This is for them.
Shahin khanoom was a portly and feisty woman in her 40s who loved to eat and talk. She lived in Karaj with her husband and two children. Her husband, who used to be employed in a factory, was now too old and sick to work. Shahin khanoom was a good cook and experienced housekeeper. She was literate and looked forward to her Koran classes. She wore a black chador which was always dirty, was an active member of her mosque and was devoted to the Mahdi whom she swore to every other sentence. Shahin khanoom was not overly devout, at least around us, never really proselytizing and more concerned about making a living than the nuances of Shiite Islam. She was very friendly and managed to charm any guest in our house into giving her a good tip. Shahin khanoom knew everyone in our neighborhood of high rise apartments and was the one everyone came to when looking for help. She found jobs for many of her friends and relatives. She feigned love for my children the way only Iranian nannies do with shameless conspicuousness that may be partially fake but is comforting nonetheless.
Shahin khanoom came to me in tears one day. Her daughter had just finished her high school and was taking English and a computer literacy course. She had found a good suitor, a rich boy from the neighborhood but did not have enough money for a dowry and could not possibly agree to the match for fear of losing face that the lack of a proper dowry would surely cause. So, I set out to collect money from friends and family to add to my own contribution and gave it to her. She told me she would buy a fridge and other household musts for her beloved daughter. I told her I would love to attend the ceremony. She promised to invite us all, to the delight of my own eight year old daughter.
When several weeks passed, I asked Shahin khanoom about her daughter’s wedding plans and was told that the suitor had reneged. I was very upset for the poor girl and assured Shahin khanoom that another prospective husband would soon surface. A few days later her daughter came to pick her up and I ran into her in the lobby and noticed that she had had a nose job! I soon realized that the dowry money was really meant to be used for a nose job. I was going to bring it up to let her know that I had discovered her lie but decided not to when the next day Shahin khanoom came to me crying. Her husband had become angry when she, coming home from work, had cooked a dish that he hated and her son loved. He had thrown the dish at her and hit their son before storming off. Whether or not the story was meant to deter my anger at her or not I decided to comfort her and forgive her the lie about the dowry. A nose job, after all, was fast becoming as important prerequisite for marriage as a dowry in Iran.
Shahin achieved her dream of opening a hairdressing salon after two years of working for us. Only to close the salon just six months later because she was losing money. When she left to open her salon Shahin khanoom introduced her sister-in-law to replace her.
Fatemeh was in her early thirties, illiterate with the accent of her native Kerman. Her husband, Shahin khanoom’s brother, was an opium addict who ate opium because it was cheaper than smoking it. He worked in a shoe store belonging to another relative but did not make enough to support his habit far less his four year old son and wife. So they had decided that he should stay home and take care of their four year old son who was still too young to attend public school. Fatemeh khanoom had no experience as a house keeper but was hard working and proud. She lived in the outskirts of Karaj further from the capital than Shahin khanoom in a rented house whose toilet was a shack at the bottom of the yard. She left her home early in the morning walking down an often muddy road and taking two buses to get to our house. She never missed a single day’s work and was, unlike Shahin khanoom, very honest with a work ethic that seemed to belong more to New England than Kerman.
One day she came to work with her young and incredibly precocious son. She told me that her husband had been unable to score opium the day before because she had refused to give him money. Going through withdrawal the addict husband, one of many thousands in Iran, had taken it out on the boy and beaten him. I told Fatemeh Khanoom she could bring the boy to work every day if she wanted. Once a month I would ask the husband, who was skinny and frail, to come and wash windows or do some other job so that I could pay him something too. Fatemeh khanoom never again refused to pay for his opium. He was not a bad man, we had come to agree, but he was an addict who like many could not quit. When I asked Fatemeh khanoom why she did not divorce him for he was useless and abusive to boot, she told me that she would lose face in her village if she went back for her yearly Nowrouz (Iranian New Year) visit without her husband. When I asked her was it better to have an addict for a husband than none at all she told me the men in her family all smoked opium (Kerman produces the best quality of opium in the world and Kermanis are known to have a penchant for smoking it). But even if her relatives where not opium smokers it was better to keep one’s husband even if he was a murderer than walk around with the stigma of divorce. When I told her then I should probably never visit her village she told me having money changed everything and I would quickly be forgiven and have many suitors! While in Iran I often saw how money could dissolve the most rigid of religious and traditional strictures.
Roya was the first woman I employed when I returned to Iran after twenty some years in 2002. Roya khanoom was in her early twenties, a student in the last year of accounting at Tehran Azad University. Her father had been the driver of a friend’s dad before the revolution. A pretty, energetic and smart girl, she was the eldest of four sisters. She performed her prayers and fasted during Ramadan but did not believe in the hijab, which she took off the minute she got inside the house regardless of the presence of unrelated men. Her father who was a fast-talking north Tehrani from Gholhak was a kind of jack of all trades who broke his fast with a shot of iced vodka that I would give him when he came around sometimes for iftar (breaking of fast after sun down). Her sister was studying English at the University in Rasht and was in love with a boy that she was secretly dating but whom she could not marry, according to tradition, until her older sister, Roya, had married.
Roya and I became very close since I was going through a difficult second marriage and she was always having boyfriend problems. She was very open-minded and hated the mullahs in power. She was, like the rest of us, very disappointed with Khatami and watched satellite Iranian television broadcasts from Los Angeles and Dubai. Like most young people I met when I lived in Iran her biggest dream was to leave. She loved clothes and makeup and spent the part of her salary which she did not give to her father on grooming. She was hard working and dedicated, a veritable manager who was running my household the second week on the job. Roya was extremely articulate and a great debater making me joke that she should study Fegh (religious law) in Qom.
She had a fiancee whom she loved. They had been dating for two years. He was a college graduate and worked for the Ministry of Commerce. It was important for Roya that her husband be at least as well educated as her. She had turned down a rich bazaari suitor for that very reason. She argued with me that a husband who is not as educated as his wife would end up resenting her. A husband feeling intellectually inferior to a wife was fatal to a marriage according to the wise beyond her years Roya. The pragmatism of women that I met in Iran, young and old, never ceased to shock me.
Finally a date had been set for her wedding after much bickering between the two families regarding the number of guests and responsibility for costs. A wedding in Iran is a serious business transaction. The price of the Mehr (or bride price) is of utmost importance. As Roya’s dad explained to me, “I have to ask for a high Mehr because if the boy turns out to be rotten who do I go to get my daughter’s reputation back?” The Mehr, (which can be cashed any time after the wedding) which I initially abhorred as putting a price tag on the woman in a marriage, actually saved Roya from the fate of Fatemeh khanoom.
The morning of the wedding Roya and her family went to the notary to sign the wedding contract but her fiancé did not show up. A few days later a distraught Roya came to me in tears. The fiancee who had managed to hide his heroin addiction had had an overdose and had been taken to the hospital a few days before. The boy’s father, afraid that the marriage would not last long and that the high bride-price would be demanded once the bride and her family found out, forced him to leave Roya waiting. If it had not been for the Mehr she would have been married to an addict which was surely worse than the pain and humiliation she had to endure for being stood up.
When Ahmadinejad got elected I moved from Iran leaving behind my own bad marriage. I have tried to keep in touch with the three women. Fatemeh works for my mother now and her husband is still at home although her son goes to school and gets straight A’s. Since I have moved she has been forced out of her rented houses five times. With the high price of rent she still does not have a place with a bathe or shower. With the high price of goods she can only feed her family as much meat as my mom buys for her. Her husband still eats opium and sleeps most of the day. Shahin khanoom’s husband passed away, she married a rich Haji, and is an active supporter of Ahmadinejad at her mosque according to her sister in law. Roya went on to get a job at a company after she graduated. She makes half of what she made as a babysitter and housekeeper but it was better position to have for her reputation and for finding a husband. More than seven years on she is still not married. On the phone recently Roya told me that she had never recuperated from being stood up. In her neighborhood, amongst family and friends she had lost face. She asked me if I could get her a visa and help her to leave “this hell.”
Follow Setareh Sabety on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SetarehSabety
Setareh’s article was originally posted here.
Iranian Women Gain Momentum & Become the Regime’s Biggest Threat
January 18, 2010 by Mandana
Filed under Featured, People on the Move
Iranian security forces recently beat and arrested some 30 “mourning mothers” holding a peaceful weekly vigil in a Tehran park to demand news of their sons and daughters who had been killed, disappeared or detained in the unrest following June’s disputed presidential election.
The shocking scene encapsulated an acute quandary for the regime. It has a tight grip on the levers of repression – but one of the most potent threats it faces comes from unarmed women protesting peacefully.
The authorities feared female activism long before the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, viewing women’s demands for equal rights as inseparable from a wider drive for greater democracy.
“If the regime accepts the principle that women have equal rights, it has to revise and re-think its entire ideology, which is based on the pre-modern interpretation of Islamic law,” Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a senior research associate and legal anthropologist at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said.
As a social movement, women’s groups have been the most organised and vibrant movement in Iran for at least five years. The regime fears their proven ability – as it does that of university student movements – to galvanise and appeal to the country’s youth with a nationwide network of activists.
“They [the authorities] are worried that mobilisation on the basis of gender issues … may generate political alliances that end up going beyond women’s rights and challenge the structure of the Islamic Republic in terms of unequal treatment of citizens in general,” said Farideh Farhi, a renowned Iran scholar at the University of Hawaii.
That is precisely what happened after Mr Ahmadinejad’s election. The women’s movement and the opposition are now inextricably enmeshed.
Anti-regime solidarity on the gender issue dealt the Iranian government an embarrassing setback last month. State-media claimed that a prominent student activist, Majid Tavakoli, had dressed as a woman to escape arrest after delivering a diatribe against the regime during demonstrations on National Student Day.
The regime derided the activist, who had previously been jailed for 15 months, as a coward denying his manhood. But male opposition supporters wittily subverted the regime’s gender prejudices by posting photographs on Facebook of themselves sporting Islamic headscarves.
Their “be a man campaign” was designed to show both solidarity with a hero of the student movement and with Iran’s women, who are obliged by the authorities to wear the hijab in public.
The wives of prominent political prisoners have, meanwhile, posted loving open letters on the internet to their menfolk, while urging the regime to release them.
Vindictively, in a bid to silence prominent dissidents, the regime has arrested female members of reformist families, who often are uninvolved in politics. The authorities recently detained the sister of Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel peace laureate who has been abroad since the June election, speaking out against the regime’s human rights abuses.
The regime’s clampdown on female protesters has generated highly damaging publicity. The harrowing, on-camera dying moments of Neda Afgha Soltan, 26, a philosophy student shot dead by a basij militiaman during a peaceful demonstration, made her a worldwide symbol of the opposition movement.
“Their very visible crackdown against women has been immensely counter-productive. As one activist said to me, ‘even when we demonstrated against the Shah we never saw women being beaten in the face’,” said Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at St Andrews University in Scotland.
The violent repression of women protesters is further de-legitimising the regime and straining the loyalty of security forces. It leaves the authorities “open to questioning on the part of the supporters of the government who have traditionally seen themselves and the Islamic Republic as the ‘protectors’ of women and their ‘motherly virtues’,” Ms Farhi said in an interview.
Hadi Ghaemi, the Iranian-born director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York and Netherlands-based NGO, said the regime believes that “by detaining and prosecuting the women’s rights activists it will prevent a larger number of women coming to the streets – which is the [government’s] real nightmare”.
He added: “I’ve seen what are claimed to be tough memos from within the intelligence services talking about one of their priorities being keeping women out of the demonstrations.”
Haleh Esfandiari has personal experience of the regime’s paranoia about Iran’s women activists. The Iranian-born US academic and grandmother spent 105 days in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison in 2007.
Her interrogators were “alarmed and “befuddled” by Iran’s wome
n’s rights movement. But, she wrote, they also “told me they feared a backlash if they used excessive force to disperse female demonstrators”.
That was three years ago. “Now the gloves are off,” said Ms Esfandiari.
The clampdown, however, is failing. Women have been on the front-line of recent protests, braving beatings, injury, arrest and worse.
The regime has not learnt from experience. Repression failed to crush the most prominent women’s organisation, the “One Million Signatures Campaign”, a four-year-old grassroots movement that is collecting a million signatures for a petition pressing for legal reforms that would end discrimination against women.
While the 1979 Islamic revolution curbed their legal rights, it encouraged their education.
Women now outnumber men at universities, and are highly visible in the workforce as well in social and cultural circles.
Ironically, many women activists in jail come from pro-regime and conservative families, Mr Ghaemi said. “These young women are very much in opposition to their own parents’ way of thinking.”
mtheodoulou@thenational.ae
by Michael Theodoulou, Foreign Correspondent
Source: The National
IRAN in REVIEW: 2009 Timeline of Events
Photograph: Amir Sadeghi/AFP/Getty Images
2009 has been quite the year for Iran. It seems that since the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the news and unrest hasn’t stopped in Iran. Since the June 12th elections, which was claimed by the defeated candidates and people around the world as a mass fraud, people haven’t been able to take their eyes off of Iran.
Check out the Timeline of Events that have ensued throughout the last half of 2009. What was the outcome? Where will this leave the Iranian people in 2010? Is FREEDOM closer than it was before?
June 13 - Authorities say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, has won the election with nearly 63 per cent of vote. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who polled 34 per cent of the vote, describes the result a “dangerous charade” and thousands of protesters clash with police.
June 14 – Mousavi asks the powerful Guardian Council, which has the power of veto over government legislation and can bar candidates from elections, to annul the results.
June 15 – At least seven people are killed during a march by Mousavi supporters in Tehran, state media says. Protests break out in other cities.
June 16 – Thousands of pro-Mousavi demonstrators march in northern Tehran. Authorities ban foreign journalists from leaving their offices to cover the street protests.
June 19 - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, says that the protest leaders will be held responsible for any bloodshed if demonstrations over election continue. He says Ahmadinejad won the polls fairly by 11 million votes.
June 20 - Riot police are deployed to disperse groups of several hundred Iranians who have gathered across Tehran.
A suicide bomber blows himself up near the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, in Tehran, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reports.
State television says 450 people are detained during clashes in the capital in which 10 people are killed, including Neda Agha-Soltan. Graphic footage of her death is seen around the world on the internet and she becomes a symbol of the opposition movement.
June 23 - Guardian Council again rules out annulment of the poll, saying there have been no major irregularities. Riot police and Basij militia in Tehran prevent planned protests.
Barack Obama, the US president, says the United States is “appalled and outraged” by Iran’s crackdown on opposition supporters.
Britain expels two Iranian diplomats after two of its own are expelled from Iran.
June 26 – Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, an elected body which appoints and monitors the performance of the supreme leader, calls for the execution of leading “rioters”.
June 28 – Authorities detain several local British embassy staff for alleged involvement in the unrest. Britain calls the arrests “harassment and intimidation” and demands their release.
July 17 – Clashes erupt between police and opposition protesters for the first time in weeks in Tehran after Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, declares that Iran is in crisis.
July 20 – Mohammad Khatami, another former president, calls for a referendum on the legitimacy of the government.
July 30 – Clashes erupt after hundreds of Mousavi supporters gather to mourn Neda Agha-Soltan at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. Hundreds of police fire teargas to disperse protesters from nearby streets.
August 1 – Iran puts a number of prominent individuals on trial charged with trying to overthrow the religious establishment.
August 3 – Khamenei formally approves the second term presidency of Ahmadinejad.
August 5 – Ahmadinejad is sworn in by parliament.
August 8 - A court charges a French woman, two Iranians working for the British and French embassies in Tehran and dozens of others with spying and aiding a Western plot to overthrow the system of religious rule.
August 25 – A prosecutor demands “maximum punishment” for Saeed Hajjarian, a senior reformist activist, accused of acting against national security.
September 3 – Parliament approves most of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet.
September 9 - Mousavi says on a website the detention of Alireza Hosseini Beheshti and Morteza Alviri, two senior reformists, was a “sign of more horrendous events to come”.
September 11 – The Etemad-e Melli website says Mohammad Ozlati-Moghaddam, a member of Mousavi’s campaign headquarters staff ahead of the election, has been detained.
October 18 – Mousavi pledges to press ahead with efforts to change Iran despite a crackdown on protests, his website reports.
October 28 – Khamenei says it is a crime to cast doubt on the June election, which the opposition says was rigged.
November 4 - Police clash with Mousavi supporters in Tehran on the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy.
November 22 – Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist former vice-president, who was arrested after the election, is sentenced to six years in jail, Iranian newspapers report. He is released on bail pending an appeal.
December 19 – Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, dies. The opposition holds demonstrations as he is buried.
December 23 – The home of Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei, a senior reformist cleric, is attacked, an opposition website reports.
December 24 – Iran bans memorial services for Montazeri with the exception of those in his birthplace and Qom.
December 27 - Police confirm that five people are killed in clashes between police and protesters which coincide with the religious event of Ashoura. There are reports that Seyyed Ali Mousavi, the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, is killed, but the claim cannot be independently verified.
Source: Agencies
Iran Tightens It’s Grip On Internet Expression & Bloggers
100’s of Bloggers, Journalists and Iranian Internet Activists have been arrested for exercising their personal right to SPEAK THEIR MINDS.
Read this interesting, yet disheartening article by Clothilde Le Coz and see how you can help touchIRAN support the basic human rights of Iranians inside Iran.
Iranian Blogger, Sasan Aghaei, Who Runs Azad Tribune Was Arrested Last Week By Iranian Officials.
Last week, the Iranian blogger Sasan Aghaei, who runs the site Azad Tribun, was arrested by intelligence ministry officials after they carried out a search of his Tehran home. It is not known where he was taken. Aghaei is also a reporter for the daily newspaper Farhikhteghan, and he’s the third employee of the paper to be arrested since the election. His two other colleagues, Reza Norbakhsh and Masoud Bastani, were both given six-year jail sentences.
The Iranian police recently stepped up their efforts at Internet censorship by creating a special 12-member unit. The unit is under the supervision of the prosecutor general and is charged with acting “against fraud attempts, commercial advertising and false information” and hunting down “insults and lies.”
This is just the latest troubling development in a country that is now the biggest imprisoner of cyber-dissidents in the Middle East. Currently, eight Iranian cyber-dissidents are in jail for expressing their opinions online. Among them, four were jailed after the disputed June 12 presidential election. At least 100 journalists and bloggers have been arrested since the election, and 32 are still being held. At the same time, roughly 50 other journalists have been forced to flee the country to escape the relentless repression.
Back in August, Iran adopted a new cyber-crime law that gave the police free reign to crack down on the Internet, and they are taking full advantage of it in order to prevent government opponents from sharing information. So far, the police are blocking thousands of news websites, and putting people in jail.
As the world saw in the aftermath of the election, Twitter and Facebook were used by Iranians to fill a
Students Surfing The Web And Working On School Work At Sharif University. The Internet Has Been Severely Filtered And Moderated Since The June Elections. It Has Been Reported That Often The Speed Of The Internet Is Intentionally Slowed Down To Block The People Of Iran From Media Coverage.
void left by the regime’s censorship of journalists. More than a million Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate during Friday prayers on July 17, and they relied on the Internet and mobile phones to help organize and communicate. Local and international journalists were not allowed to cover the event. On top of that censorship, people who used the Internet and social networks to spread news and information are now being accused of spying or “conspiring against the Islamic Republic.”
At one point, the regime described the news media as a “means used in an attempt to overthrow the state.” It’s therefore no surprise to see it ridding itself of these undesired witnesses by jailing them or forcing them to flee the country.
Revolutionary Guard Goes After Bloggers, Others
The Revolutionary Guard, a branch of the Iranian military that’s closely linked to the Supreme Leader, is directly involved in online censorship. On June 17, it ordered all website editors to remove “any content which encourages the population to riot or which spreads threats or rumors.”
Since June 12, at least 10 bloggers have been detained by the authorities. Hadi Heidari, a well-known cartoonist who edits a Persian cartoon website, was arrested in Tehran on October 22. He was attending a religious tribute to political prisoners at the home of Shehaboldin Tabatabai, a leading supporter of the reformist party Participation. Tabatabai was also arrested. Heidari was eventually released in November.
Aside from him, Hassin Assadi Zidabadi, a blogger who also heads a student human rights committee, was arrested in October. Mohammad Davari, the editor of reformist website Etemad Melli, is also in prison. His colleague, Fariba Pajooh, a journalist who also runs a Persian blog, was arrested on August 24, and is still imprisoned at the Evin jail after being summoned to the Tehran Revolutionary Court.
Of course, the most famous journalist to have been arrested and held by the regime is Maziar Bahari. He recently gave an interview to Fareed Zakaria, which you can watch here:
Journalists Fleeing Iran in Droves
The list of people detained and arrested in Iran grows longer every day. Bloggers are being targeted just as much as traditional journalists. Newspapers are now controlled by the regime. As a result, Iran is currently experiencing its biggest exodus of reporters since the 1979 revolution.
Among the fleeing reporters and bloggers, many have been mistreated, tortured or jailed. They leave the country in order to avoid physical violence or another arrest. Most of them escape with the help of smugglers, a process that exposes them to great danger. In the countries where they initially seek refuge, such as Turkey, Iraq or even Afghanistan, they are exposed to more harassment and police surveillance.
The current campaign of brutality, intimidation and censorship in Iran is slowly but surely thinning the ranks of the country’s independent journalists and bloggers. They are being forced to choose between saying nothing, speaking out and being jailed, or fleeing the country. In truth, that’s no choice at all.
Read The PBS Published Article Here.
2009 Women of the Year: The Women Of Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign
November 17, 2009 by Mandana
Filed under Featured, People on the Move
Glamour Magazine named The Women of Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign as the 2009 Women of The Year.
The following article was published by Glamour & written by Carla Power, upon acknowledging this powerful group of Iranian women who have made an impact throughout the world!
Photographed by Raha Askarizadeh during a secret meeting in Tehran with the powerful group of female activists.
Watching the thousands of women who joined their peers to defy bullets and police batons in the streets of Iran this June, you’d never guess that each one’s life was, legally speaking, worth only half a man’s. Via shaky cell phone images on TV, viewers around the world saw slender arms raised in the air and green scarves slipping back on the heads of female marchers as they stood alongside men to demand a recount of what they insist was a rigged presidential election. They risked their lives—and some made the ultimate sacrifice, like 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, whose shooting rocked the Internet.
Yet few outside Iran realized that these brave women are denied the most basic rights. Examples abound: Their husbands can divorce them on a whim, demand that they live in polygamy or marry off their daughters at age 13. And if a girl as young as nine commits a capital crime—for example, killing a man who tries to rape her—she can be put to death.
June’s postelection fervor was called a women’s revolt by many, but Iranian women may have first found the courage to speak out thanks to an earlier movement: the One Million Signatures Campaign. For the past three years, members of the One Million Signatures initiative have pressed for women’s rights and have endured the constant threat of jailings and beatings as a result.
This quest for equality was born on June 12, 2006, when hundreds of protesters gathered in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir Square to peacefully demonstrate against the legal restrictions they face. The police attacked them with pepper spray and billy clubs; by the end of the day, 70 people had been arrested. “We never imagined we’d be met with so much resistance,” recalls Sussaan Tahmasebi, a Tehran-based campaign member. “Our demands were so basic.”
But the demonstrators pressed on and devised a plan: They would gather a million signatures on a petition asking parliament to grant equal rights to women. The sheer number of names would prove that equality was the will of all Iranians. Geographic and security obstacles have prevented a complete tally of the signatures, but some estimates put the total so far in the hundreds of thousands.
Iran’s religious, conservative government sees the campaign as a real threat. Authorities have arrested more than 50 campaign members, who have been punished with everything from lashings to solitary confinement in prison. The group’s website has been shut down by the government 21 times. Members hold clandestine meetings in living rooms and basements, and activists say they are under constant surveillance and subject to phone taps. Nonetheless “some say that the campaign is a struggle, but I found the campaign is a chance,” Azadeh, a 30-year-old artist and activist from Tehran, e-mailed to Glamour. “It’s a chance for us to care about ourselves and change our situation.”
So members work below government radar, knocking on neighbors’ doors, or chatting to fellow passengers in shared taxis. Welcoming both men and women into its ranks, One Million Signatures draws support from blue-jeaned secular leftists and black-chadored religious conservatives alike. “Sometimes,” muses a 25-year-old male campaigner, “it will be an unlettered, religious old man who quickly agrees to sign.”
The eyes of the Muslim world especially are upon them, which represents both risks and opportunity. Azadeh sees only the latter. “It is a matter of living,” she says. “I would like to live in a free, equal and healthy society. To make such a society, we should take this responsibility. So I said to myself, ‘Come on! The stage is ready. Go and be in the spotlight!’”
Read the Original Article Here.
tasteIRAN: discover the art of Iranian Cuisine!
Us Iranians take pride in a lot of different elements of Iranian culture— in a recent poll on touchIRAN, we asked you why you are proud to be Iranian…amongst all of the choices, Iranian Food was a popular choice. We can’t help but take pride in the art of Iranian Cuisine. It’s no wonder you can walk into a crowded Iranian restaurant during lunch these days and hardly recognize any Iranians there- people of all different cultures are taking interest in the mouthwatering dishes of Iran.
We’ve posted 3 parts of a thorough and interesting look into the art of Iranian Cuisine- from sampling dishes to a tour through an Iranian Bazaar, you’ll love watching this documentary and either be inspired to go home and cook or have an insatiable craving for Iranian food.
Watch and enjoy!
The Truth About Iranian Women
Every so often, I do a little bit of googling on one of my favorite topics- Iranian Women. Maybe I’m partial towards the subject because I, myself, am an Iranian woman.
Is that why I come back to this same search time and time again?
Well, I guess it kind of has something to do with that…it fascinates me that even though I share the same heritage and nationality with the women of Iran, we’re worlds apart– in fact, it’d be unfair to even say I understand what their lives are like.
I, along with many of my friends & countless of other Iranians who live outside of Iran [some haven't ever even set foot in Iran before], live freely and in democratic countries…free from dictatorship. Some of us can’t even begin to relate or imagine what it would be like to live under a dictator and strict regime that would prohibit us from something commonplace like wearing whatever we pleased on a sunny day or going to a pool party with our friends.
Sometimes, however, I understand things a little better when I see youth who have recently moved from Iran– those recently immigrated girls and guys push their freedom a little further than those of us who’ve grown up outside of Iran. Their desire to explore their new found freedom often leads them to making decisions they probably should have avoided, but like a kid who has been deprived of candy on Halloween year after year– the girl who’s been forced to wear a chador in 90 degree weather would rather choose to wear something a little less than modest to the park on a spring day during her first 13bedar in America, the “land of the free”.
All of this leads me to wonder what Iran is really like for women…outside of the public eye. Does the regime lead them to positive or negative behavior? Are they motivated to stand out by rebelling and, in turn, making poor decisions or do they push themselves towards success that lead to groundbreaking acheivements like Zahra Rahnavard?
I stumbled upon this video that was produced in 2007 and aired on NBC about Women in Iran. It made me proud to be an Iranian Women and again, sparked my interest in this google search again.
Are things any different now? How does all of this make you feel as an Iranian or as an Iranian woman?
Human Rights: What are They? Where Were They Created? Why Have They Been Stolen?
What are HUMAN RIGHTS?
What do they mean for you?
What do they mean for the world?
What do they mean for IRAN?
We see it, we hear it- the people of Iran are being deprived of basic human rights?
It’s all over the web, it’s chanted at rallies & solidarity gatherings, Christiane Amanpour & Larry King talk about it and we listen…but we do really understand what “Human Rights” are and why they are important?
HumanRights.com and Youth for Human Rights created an interesting and striking short film presenting the story and history of HUMAN RIGHTS.
HUMAN: A member of the homo sapiens species; a man, woman or child; a person.
RIGHTS: Things to which you are entitled or allowed; freedoms that are guaranteed.
HUMAN RIGHTS: THE RIGHTS YOU HAVE SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU’RE A PERSON.
The right to live, The right to speak your mind, The right to equality…
Easy, right? Everyone should be entitled to these rights…right?
If you’re interested at all about your rights as a human, the rights of others, the well-being of the human race, equality, social justice and seeing the world become a place where joy and peace is promoted…watch this video.
So, now you know the History of Human Rights…
…maybe you learned something new.
…perhaps you’re a little inspired.
…maybe you’re dreaming up a few ways to make a difference in your home, workplace, city, community, nation or world.
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably thinking about Iran and Iranians. What has been stolen from them and what they don’t have the privilege of having freely in their own country. Maybe you’re living in Iran and you are that person…you’re longing to walk out of your home unveiled and showing off your new jeans or the seasons newest trend; maybe you just wanna go see a movie with a girl you’ve had a crush on for the last year, but you can’t because…well, you don’t have that right. A right that almost every other country gives to it’s citizens.
What stood out the most to you when watching this video? I’ll tell you what I found the most striking of all…HUMAN RIGHTS STARTED IN IRAN.
Human Rights didn’t exist back in the day. It took a revolutionary to create human rights and empower people to be FREE and EQUAL.
Who was that person? AN IRANIAN. You may have heard of him before…
Cyrus The Great conquered Babylon and made an executive and daring decision…he declared all slaves free and granted all people the freedom to choose their own religion, regardless of their background.
His words were documented on a Clay Tablet called the Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylinder marked the birth of Human Rights. Soon, they spread to other countries and leaders…
The point is, King Cyrus the Great chose to speak what he believed was just which in turn began a revolutionary movement that is still being fought over today.
Here’s what I find the most interesting…what began in Iran [Human Rights] are now void in Iran. Over time, they have been stripped from the Iranian people. Coincidence?
Realizing this, for me, brings me a glimmer of HOPE. I believe that whatever has been taken from someone, place or thing will be RESTORED…always.
I see that same Revolutionary Spirit that caused Cyrus to do what he did years ago in the faces of the detained, the protesters and the freedom fighters that are in Iran.
The question remains, how can WE support those in IRAN who are DEPRIVED of basic HUMAN RIGHTS?
How can we HELP make a DIFFERENCE?
Share your thoughts here…
Women in Iran: Pushing Through Gender Blocks
Iranian women continue to show the world that they are strong, bold and relentless— their stories and photos speak volumes & show us that they aren’t afraid to oppose the regime that wants to oppress them, strip them of rights and keep them silent.Women in Iran have recently been shown leading the anti-government protests that followed the 2009 election, but Iranian women have been fighting the gender gap for much longer than they have received credit for. Women have been fighting for their rights since the Islamic revolution in 1979. However, there’s something different about the Iranian women today and a few factors could be the cause. There’s a new generation of women in Iran now. In fact, there’s a growing population of young women who have an insatiable hunger for social & religious freedom & women’s rights.
Women in Iran were granted right to vote in 1963. They were first admitted to Iranian universities in 1937. Since then, several women have held high-ranking posts in the government or parliament. Before the 1979 revolution, several women were appointed ministers or ambassadors. Farrokhroo Parsa was the first woman to be appointed Minister of Education in 1968 and Mahnaz Afkhami was appointed Minister for Women’s Affairs in 1976.
Women are increasingly more active in their careers & higher education. Though they are denied many basic rights, they are allowed to own their own businesses. In fact, nearly 70% of Iran’s science and engineering students are women. Regardless of how educated an Iranian woman may be, they are still face discrimination in legal realms such as inheritance, custody and court testimony. However, the women os Iran have been known to have a more prominent and vocal role in society and politics than many other Islamic countries in the Middle East. This could be the reason why Iranian women are able to make a mile out of the inch of freedom they may have.
Saudi Arabian businesswoman and blogger, Khoulod Al Fahed gave a call of action during the political unrest in Iran to all middle eastern women, “This is our time, women’s time. It is the time for women to speak up and demand the rights that have been stolen from us in the name of religion and culture.” The Iranian women have been doing just that. Neda Agha Soltan, Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad and Maryam Rustampoor are testaments of the boldness of the Iranian women.
Iranian girls watching the Iranian soccer team play in Dubai. Women are banned to watch soccer in stadiums in Iran.
The truth is, the Iranian women have no choice but to protest for CHANGE in IRAN. They have the most to gain. For far too long, the Iranian women have been denied basic rights that many women around the world take for granted- things like expressing themselves through fashion, attending sporting events and going on dates publicly.
Isobel Coleman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Paradise Beneath Her Feet: Women and Reform in the Middle East, has said she is “not surprised at all by the level of participation among Iranian women” in the recent protests and election. More women in Iran voted during the 2009 election than ever before.
“The desire for gender equality has grown as satellite dishes, the Internet and other technologies have allowed Iranians easier access to the outside world, he said, especially among the large youthful population in a country where the median age is 27.” -Emily Bazar of USA Today
Watch this dynamic report by WorldFocus.org on Women in Iran who are pushing through gender blocks in their society…
Read more about the history of Iranian Women here.
