Iranian Alert -- DAY 38 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

'May God Make Them Lose Their Child', Kazemi' s Mother Speaks

July 17, 2003
National Post
Graeme Hamilton

MONTREAL - Whenever Zahra Kazemi returned to her native Iran, she would visit her ageing mother in Shiraz, about 900 kilometres south of Tehran. But on her last trip, the Montreal photojournalist never got to Shiraz, and it was her mother who had to make the long voyage to the capital.

Ezzat Kazemi found her daughter comatose in Tehran's Baghiatollah Hospital, where she had been taken after being arrested on June 23 for photographing demonstrators outside the notorious Evin prison. Zahra's eyes never opened, her face appeared swollen, and her head was partly shaved. Restricted to looking into the intensive care unit from behind a window, the mother could not even reach out and caress her only child.

Then last weekend she returned to the hospital, and her daughter's bed was empty. A nurse informed her Zahra was in the morgue.

Iran's Vice-President confirmed yesterday that the death last Friday of Ms. Kazemi, 54, resulted from blows received in custody.

Speaking to the National Post yesterday from Iran, a distraught Ezzat Kazemi cursed those who ended her daughter's life. "These vultures have taken her," she said through an interpreter. "This was my only child. They have done a terrible thing. May God make them lose their child."

The elder Ms. Kazemi, who is in her seventies, said her daughter had phoned before her arrest and said she would soon be visiting Shiraz. When she learned her daughter had been hospitalized, she rushed to Tehran. She asked whether she could bring in a specialist to treat her daughter, but the hospital refused.

So far she has been denied access to her daughter's body, but she said she has been assured there has been no burial.

Her ailing husband remains in Shiraz, and she said she feels powerless to deal with her daughter's death.

The younger Ms. Kazemi held Canadian and Iranian citizenship. Iranian authorities say she entered the country using her Iranian passport, and they refuse to recognize her Canadian citizenship.

Canada's ambassador to Iran said Tuesday that a disagreement between the journalist's son, Stephan Hachemi, and her mother over where burial should take place was complicating efforts to return the body to Canada.

But her mother said yesterday she supports Mr. Hachemi's demand that his mother be buried in Canada.

"Yes, yes. She belongs to her son, and she must go to him," she said. "Her son told me he would like to see his mother's face once more. I told him that we shall do our best, but now Zahra is in the control of the cruel men."

She pleaded with Canadian authorities to do what they can to have her daughter's body sent home. "My grandson is crying and he wants to see the face of his mother for the last time. I cannot do anything. Please do something to help me."

Speaking to reporters yesterday in Montreal, Mr. Hachemi said it would be an affront to his mother, who went by the nickname Ziba, if her final resting place were in Iran.

"It has been clear between us and all the members of the family that Ziba won't be buried in the land of the people who murdered her," he said. "She belongs with me, her only child."

After attending film school in Iran and making more than a dozen films for the official government broadcasting agency, Zahra Kazemi moved to France to pursue her career more freely. In 1993, she and her son moved to Montreal, where she initially worked with the National Film Board before enrolling in a still photography course at a Montreal college.

Her mother recalled that even at a young age, Zahra was determined to succeed. "Everybody praised her," she said. "Everybody said she was a very hard worker. She was very brave."

Anne Danis, a photography instructor at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal, remembers that when Ms. Kazemi arrived in her class about eight years ago, she was the oldest student and had difficulty initially.

"She was the most determined. She asked the most questions," Ms. Danis said. The hard work paid off, Ms. Danis said, and before her death she was taking "extraordinary" pictures during her world travels. The college is now hoping to arrange an exhibition of her photography this fall in Montreal.

Mr. Hachemi said he occasionally talked with his mother about the dangers she faced pursuing her freelance career in journalism.

"She was really confident.... She felt that she had a responsibility to take these risks, and the profession she chose was to go all the way," he said.

ghamilton.nationalpost.com

http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=F12DD015-9794-42F9-B841-8BA60E43C80C

Avert Global Censorship,
Don't let Cuba Hijack U.N. Internet Agenda

July 17, 2003
The Miami Herald
CUBANET

Cuba's repressive regime bans ordinary Cubans from having Internet access. It recently imprisoned 26 independent journalists and other activists for such ''crimes'' as having articles published abroad and lending books. It also is jamming satellite transmissions of the Voice of America and Iranian-American produced TV shows being beamed to Iran, where a fellow repressive regime is a friend of Cuba.

So why does the United Nations seek advice from Cuba and Iran on worldwide Internet use and the promotion of an information society? That's like putting Libya, a notorious human-rights offender, in charge of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Governments that don't play by the democratic rules endorsed by the United Nations shouldn't be allowed to hijack the international agenda.

Unfortunately, the globally renowned censors already are wielding their influence to ensure government control of Internet usage and radio and TV transmissions. That's apparent in the drafts of a ''Declaration of Principles'' being developed for a U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society to be held in Geneva in December.

Ironically, the U.N. goals are lofty. Promoting the summit in a message last month, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: " One of the hallmarks of the information society -- openness -- is a crucial ingredient of democracy and good governance. Information and knowledge are also at the heart of efforts to strengthen tolerance, mutual understanding and respect for diversity.''

Yet what Cuba is promoting is far from free and open speech. In summit principles calling for universal Internet access, Cuba recommended adding the qualifier ''in conformity with the domestic legislation of the country.'' For Cubans that means that no one gets Internet access unless the regime says so -- which effectively bars most Cubans from the World Wide Web and countless sources of information that contradict the propaganda put out by state-controlled media. That censorship is what Cuba would have the United Nations bless in the interest of promoting "democracy and good governance.''

Another Cuban recommendation directly attacks press freedom. It would add a proviso stating that media accountability ''should be enhanced through targeted measures of screening by governments.'' This would encourage governments to ''screen'' any criticism of the head of state.

The United Nations should protect the Internet and the world from dictatorships that gag speech and punish critics rather than allow those dictatorships to promote censorship and state control of media. Democracies such as the United States and the European Union need to stop this nonsense at the United Nations.

http://198.66.22.183/CNews/y03/jul03/17e5.htm

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

Murdered by Mullahs

By ANDREW SULLIVAN

New York Sun 7.17.2003

A Western journalist is taken into custody by an authoritarian regime and suffers a brain hemorrhage that is subsequently described as the result of a police beating. She was covering anti-government demonstrations when she was attacked. She subsequently dies of her injuries and the authorities will not release the body for an autopsy in Canada. Eventually, a government official in Tehran conceded that Zahra Kazemi “died of a brain hemorrhage resulting from blows inflicted on her.” Don’t you think this is big news? No one else seems to. CNN’s coverage of the event led yesterday with Iranian hardliners’ claim that Ms. Kazemi had “fallen” and suffered the blow to the head. The New York Times ran some buried Reuters stories; the Washington Post did better — with an A-Section piece. But government-sponsored murders of journalists seem to me to merit far wider and deeper outrage. Is the lack of interest because such a murder is committed by a regime targeted by the Bush administration? Or is it because news organizations still need to cozy up to the Tehran authorities to keep their correspondents free from harassment?

Blaming the Victims

Why is it important for left-wing columnist, Eric Alterman, that the extraordinary evidence of rising French anti-Semitism should be dismissed, and, if anything, blamed on the Jews? Here’s Mr.Alterman’s take on a bracing piece earlier this week in the Washington Post about anti-Semitism in France:

Memo to Everyone: In discussing “French anti-Semitism,” take a moment to notice that it is almost entirely a phenomenon of that nation’s North African and Arab immigrant community, not of the traditional (mildly anti-Semitic) French. There is no surge in French anti-Semitism at all and it is probably at a historical low ebb among French men and women. It is certainly not a phenomenon of the French Left. This piece points out: “Most of the perpetrators are not the ultra-rightists and neo-Nazis who once were responsible for anti-Semitic acts, but young North African Arabs of the banlieues, the distant blue-collar suburbs where Muslims and Jews live and work in close proximity.” And if it’s a really big concern of yours, by the way, the best way to ameliorate it would be for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. The occupation is obviously its primary source.

Notice the bizarre Pat Buchanan-like refusal to call French citizens French. Notice also the attribution of today’s resurgent anti-Semitism to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank — as if the victims of such hatred are somehow responsible for it. Mr. Alterman seems willfully blind to the growth of anti-Semitism among French elites, who have appeased and explained away anti-Semitic violence and literature. I guess we should be grateful he hasn’t yet blamed this reviving bigotry on President Bush. But give him time.

Mr.Sullivan writes daily for www.andrewsullivan.com.

The humane alternative is for the U.S. to recognize the Iranian people's struggle for democracy and formally declare that it does not recognize the Islamic regime of Iran as the representative of the Iranian people. The U.S. should allow the people of Iran regain their freedom — and change the regime on their own.

We have only the most limited relationship with Iran today. Bush has spoken out on the need for freedom. I think the idea of "formally declaring it does not recognize the Islamic regime" is a little redundant. Don't we still have millions of Iran's money in the bank from the hostage situation. It is clear that Bush in particular, and most of the US have no love for the mullahs. None the less we don't go making declarations about standing governments.

The people of Iran supported the imposition of the theocracy in large numbers 30 years ago. It's up to them to remove them. I think they are foolish if they believe it can be done with student protests. Better to start stockpiling AK-47s and get on with the job at hand. Good luck!

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