Posts tagged : "freedom of speech"

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Iranian Celebrities Who Back the Protest Movement Face the Regime’s Wrath

Iranian Celebrities Who Back the Protest Movement Face the Regime’s Wrath

Kourosh Ziabari - Democracy in Exile: As nationwide protests have gained steam in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called morality police in September, the Islamic Republic has confronted dissent with new levels of severity. As of Sunday, 488 protesters, including 68 minors, have reportedly been killed, and with some 18,000 protesters arrested, detention facilities are overflowing. After several reported executions in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan, some of which haven't been documented, two protesters were hanged to death in a span of four days in Tehran and Mashhad. As the crackdown widens, artists and athletes who express solidarity with the protest...

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Iran’s Protracted Protests Represent a Broad Rejection of the Status Quo

Iran’s Protracted Protests Represent a Broad Rejection of the Status Quo

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Center Washington DC: Over the past four months, the international community has been heaping praise on the Iranian people for their audacious uprising, which has been challenging the country’s clerical establishment despite a heavy-handed crackdown that is now being bolstered by a wave of retaliatory executions. The ongoing protest movement, whose spirit and core message have been captured in its unifying slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” was initially ignited by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” a force that millions of Iranians have decried for its brutality and arbitrary enforcement of the...

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In Iran, the adage ‘it’s all America’s fault’ has lost luster

In Iran, the adage ‘it’s all America’s fault’ has lost luster

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: On December 6, the mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, was the special speaker at the Sharif University of Technology in a ceremony to mark Students Day. He was one of several conservative ideologues deployed to university campuses by the Iranian government to initiate dialogue with students and placate them as the nationwide protests triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in September showed no sign of abating. Universities were particular hotbeds of protest and activism. While the authorities consummated a campaign of mass arrests, sham trials and violence on the streets, they also touted “dialogue.” They made a stab at appealing to young people through speeches like the one...

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Iranian women’s resilient fight for rights inspires hope

Iranian women’s resilient fight for rights inspires hope

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: A month has rolled by since the outburst of nationwide protests over the death of the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini arrested by Iran’s morality police for what the authorities argued was her “inappropriate hijab,” a movement that soon ballooned into a broader social revolt characterized by the centrality of women demanding freedom and equal rights. The core element of the uprising that has convulsed Iran has been the rejection of the grotesque morality police equally loathed by the religious women who wear hijab voluntarily and the more progressive, liberal-minded women who don’t wish to subscribe to the government-prescribed lifestyle. Iranian women have become emboldened...

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‘Sacred versus’: Iranian opposition mirrors regime’s sins

‘Sacred versus’: Iranian opposition mirrors regime’s sins

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The heinous stabbing attack against British-American novelist Salman Rushdie was so inexcusable that even the administration of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi disowned it, contending that the Islamic Republic could not be blamed for that outburst of violence against the persecuted writer, who had just begun to exercise some publicity after keeping a low profile for several years. But as the literary world was rallying around Rushdie to reiterate his right to free speech and denounce aggression to stifle contrarian thought, it transpired that the attack, celebrated by hardliners in Tehran as an act of divine vengeance against an apostate writer, was also silently saluted by members...

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The complex legacy of the Salman Rushdie affair in Iran

The complex legacy of the Salman Rushdie affair in Iran

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: The attack on British-American novelist Salman Rushdie at a literary event at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York on Friday shocked the world. The assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, born in the US to Lebanese parents, leapt onto the stage and stabbed the author 15 times before being arrested by a state trooper. Rushdie, 75, was left with life-changing injuries but his agent has said his “condition is headed in the right direction”, although it will be a long road to recovery. Ever since the attack, headlines have been dominated by reports about Rushdie’s health and speculation about the attacker’s possible motives. Accusations have also swirled about Iran’s potential...

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Iranian government intensifies crackdown on dissidents

Iranian government intensifies crackdown on dissidents

Kourosh Ziabari - Al-Monitor: As the talks to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action continue with uncertainty, the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi is stepping up pressure on activists and dissidents in a bid to ensure at least on the domestic front that it is able to rule the roost. Building on decades of experience in the judiciary where he served as chief justice for nearly three years between 2019-2021, Ebrahim Raisi is working with other branches of the government to stifle critical voices and tighten the noose around the media, political activists, artists and other influencers with unconventional views challenging the status quo, including the forlorn state of the...

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Iranians mourn loss of self-expression as creative oasis Untitled Café shuts down

Iranians mourn loss of self-expression as creative oasis Untitled Café shuts down

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: The administration of hard-line Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is busy unleashing a multi-pronged war on people’s lifestyles and privacy. Police vans are deployed to arrest women on the streets dressing in ways deemed to be insufficiently conservative, musical performances are called off intermittingly, and major cinematic productions are not licensed to be screened. Now, the unscathed unofficial spaces for young people to mingle and have fun away from the stern gaze of the authorities are being encroached on. Untitled Café in Rasht – a city in northern Iran known for its rich food culture, luxury shopping centres, upscale districts subsuming voguish clothing retailers and a...

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Giving Saudi Arabia a free pass undermines universal human rights

Giving Saudi Arabia a free pass undermines universal human rights

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Only a few months have rolled by since Saudi Arabia pulled off its largest campaign of mass execution by beheading 81 people in a single day, and it seems the scandalous misadventure has been clouded by the passage of time. Corporate media’s coverage of the Middle East has barely been affected by that travesty, and human rights advocacy organisations appear to be preoccupied with other things, including their unvarying Iran fixation. Even by the standards of Saudi, one of the most profligate practitioners of capital punishment, such a large-scale execution is rare. In fact, it has been recorded as the largest in the kingdom’s modern history. Of those sent to the gallows, 41 people were Shia...

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Iran’s leaders are scared of the internet: shutting it off is more scary

Iran’s leaders are scared of the internet: shutting it off is more scary

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was running for office, he famously said in a May 2021 televised debate how much he deplored the disruption that Iranian children who play online games experience due to the nation’s poor internet infrastructure and weak signals, arguing that he had plans to boost internet connectivity if elected. He made similar remarks about his displeasure that university students are being sealed off from their peers internationally because of the country’s flawed internet services. As simplistic as his youth outreach may have been, Raisi was trying to portray himself as a politician who related to the young population’s sensitivities around sustainable internet...

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‘ManoFarsi’ not an innocent debate on language education

‘ManoFarsi’ not an innocent debate on language education

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: It is common knowledge that the Iranian government is in an acutely vulnerable position and that a blend of draconian international sanctions, public discontent at home, corruption and unremitting power struggles have drained its resources and resilience, stripping it of political leverage on the world stage. To the constellation of the Islamic Republic’s adversaries and opposition parties in exile, this fragility presents a unique opportunity to prey on and see if a coup de grace can be administered to what appears to be a languishing, heavily wounded antagonist. One day, a terror attack is orchestrated in the restive south of the country and when the suspected mastermind is arrested to stand...

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The folly of targeting foreign embassies in Tehran

The folly of targeting foreign embassies in Tehran

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the world was mesmerized by the spectacle of the presidential race in the United States, attention was diverted from other headline-making issues, at least fleetingly. In particular, it looks as though the dust has settled on the latest civilizational clash between the West and the Islamic world following the reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the brutal murder of Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher who had shown the cartoons in one of his classes. A debate on the appropriateness of republishing the controversial cartoons, the degree to which they caused offense to Muslims worldwide, the sanctity of freedom of speech in a...

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