Posts tagged : "Politics"

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s longest-running and most divisive conflicts. Rooted in a violent quest for territory, it has affected the Middle East landscape for decades since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when the Holy Land was divided into three parts. Efforts by consecutive US governments and other international actors to settle the disputes have so far proved ineffective. The Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, when the Israelis and Palestinians had the opportunity to engage and negotiate directly for the first time after years of confrontation, was a point in time when several sticking points between the two sides, including the actual borders of the two states, the Israeli...

Kourosh Ziabari - Al-Monitor: Harsh verdicts issued against journalists and political activists show that the cost of advocacy for reform and civil liberties is still high in Iran despite pledges by moderate President Hassan Rouhani to change the status quo. Marzieh Amiri, a journalist with the Reformist Shargh, was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison and 147 lashes last month. She was arrested while covering an International Workers Day rally in Tehran. According to Reporters Without Borders, she is now one of 10 female journalists behind bars in Iran. Another Iranian journalist recently handed a heavy sentence is Kioomars Marzban, a filmmaker and satirist who was convicted of security charges including...