Inside Iran

The counter says 661 hours in prison. And Amir is going to be released after a few hours (say 5, so he spent 666 hours in prison!). We are glad, despite the fact that sometimes this is a “game”. They say “we are going to release” him but they dont (mental torturing). But we are going to go the Evin prisons gate and stand there till his release.
I think it is a good strategy to go there and wait there TILL his RELEASE even if this takes days. This way we will be able to make “some” pressure and show that this kind of mental torture, may lead to bad side effects Despite all I said, we are going to the gates of that frightening prison right now and hope to return back at nigh with AMIR YAGOUBALI. I will be able to stop that counter.
p.s. This will be a temporary release on bail. he has to wait for his court. During this, I will work on my legal (law related) vocabulary!

Update: You can stop it ! call the Iranian judiciary system and ask “please stop the Stoning (in farsi: SangSar)”! Take action! call the judge! he can stop it.. I mean YOU can make him to stop it
Some VERY brave people in Iran have started a “Stop Stoning Forvere” campaign in Iran. I say “very brave” because stoning has mentioned in Quran and just for this, it is excluded from “1 million signatures campaign” (When it is in Quran, it is an important part of Iran and denying it can lead to a life sentence!). This brave site (within Iran) is called Women's Field (english version). Its recent article is shocking….

URGENT: A Man and a Woman Schedule To Be Stoned on Thursday, June 21
Urgent Press Release
No. 86-3-a
19 June 2007
URGENT: A Man and a Woman Schedule To Be Stoned on Thursday, June 21
The news about the scheduled stoning of a man and a woman in Takistan, Ghazvin, was spread through mobile phone messages and the Internet. The office of Showraye Tameen of Ghazvin province has issued the order to stone and man and a woman in public.
The judge of Branch 1 of the Criminal Court of Takistan will be present in person to throw the first stone. This was scheduled to be done on Sunday, June 17, but the Office of Showraye Tameen of Ghazvin province postponed it to Thursday, June 21.
Mokarrameh Ebrahimi is a 43 year old woman and mother of an 11 year old who has spent the past 11 years in Choubin prison in Ghazvin after being sentenced to stoning. The father of the child has also been in prison for 11 years and is scheduled to be stoned with her.
According to the Meydaan, the official site of the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign, an informed source has verified the news and added that “the pits are dug and prepared in Behesht Zahra cemetery to implement the sentence.”
This source also added that the sentence has been issued solely based on the judge’s knowledge, and there have been no witnesses to the so called crime of adultery and having a child out of wedlock. It seems that the couple have lived together for a while and shortly after been imprisoned. There are different rumors about the woman’s past. Some say that her husband had thrown her out of the house and she had been living with her mother for two years. Both the man and the woman have children from their previous marriages. Mokarrameh, who is the mother of three children, is very distressed and in sever disarray in prison.
It seems that after the appeal to the Judicial Commission for Amnesty and Clemency had been rejected, it is going to be carried out as the result of the perseverance of one of the judiciary officials in Ghazvin.
The official announcement about the stoning is going to be posted at the site of execution in order to invite the public to participate in the process in Takistan. This is while the Iranian officials continue to deny any stoning sentence.
The Stop Stoning Forever Campaign activists plea to the citizens of the world to take any actions they possibly can in order to stop the stoning of this couple from taking place.
Further detailed information will be provided as campaign activists are trying to obtain more knowledge about the case in Takistan. To contact campaign activists in the US or Iran please email Soheila Vahdati or Shadi Sadr .
By: Stop Stoning Forever Campaign

It asks us to do “anything” we can to stop this. But what can we do? We do not have a right to decide for our own life, let alone another persons life. I can only write here and in my Farsi weblog that I am against Stoning. I am against any kinf of torture. I am against execution and I hate having the second rank in the world about this. I have to say even if this is part of Islam, we have to reconsider about it! Slavery is also part of Islam and is accepted in this religion but nowadays nobody -directly- enslaves anyone. We've reconsidered and we have to do it again and again to have a live religion.

At first I saw it on boingboing.net; Authorities in China blocking Flickr images? and then on the Cnet. San Francisco Chronicle also writes:

Flickr not even flickering in China
Internet photo site says service is being blocked and hopes it's only temporary
The popular Internet photo site Flickr said that its service is being blocked in China, although the Yahoo subsidiary did not directly blame the Beijing government, which aggressively censors the Internet of material it deems subversive.

We had a same problem in Iran for about one year but we had a FireFox based solution: Access Flickr! plugin. This plugin is written by Hamed Saber and after installing it and restarting Firefox, let's you access the flickr once more Good luck.

Two days ago I wrote about the arrest of one of my close friends; Maziyar Samiei. He was released the same day but “he is not allowed to -literally- enter the university anymore”. This new rule, applies to two other friends of mine. They do not have the right of entering from universities door anymore because they participated in an demonstration against hardliners.
When we were chatting about this in an party last night, someone asked me “Do you know that Kian Tajbakhsh was detained some days ago?”. I did not.
Kian Tajbakhsh (his website in English) was my Urban Sociology professor. He returned back from USA around 2 years ago and started teaching us “Urban Sociology” at the university of Allame. He has studied in Columbia University and worked at New School. I remember that during the class somebody asked him about the reasons for coming back to Iran. He said: “I returned back to show others that we can work here. We can promote the situation”.
I think he succeed. I learnt that we have to continue. I don't know why the authorities have detained him. Maybe they are afraid of “colorful revolutions” ?! If this is the case, shame on them. Because colorful revolution is a tool in the hands of Democrats against Dictators. Do these people believe that they are dictators? A colorful revolution uses peoples power against a minority ruling elite. Do they afraid of peoples power? Shame on them if this is the case.
More:
BBC: Another US scholar 'held in Iran'
OSI: OSI Statement on the Detention of Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh

FreeKian Petition.

Our government is brutally attacking Bad-Hijab women. There are special forces all over the city and they arrest girls and women who do not hide all of their hairs or do not conduct in an “islamic manner”. REMEBER: THESE ARE NORMAL PEOPLE WHO WHERE WALKING PEACEFULLY IN THE STREET 5 MINS AGO.

There are beatings all over the city. My heart beats mad writing this. I feel very angry and I am not able to do anything. Many many blogs are publishing these photos and the same but newspapers do not have the right to object.

I feel hopeless. At the morning I've got the news of the arrest of one of my close friends (Maziyar Samiei) was arrested because of his leftist ideas and now he is in prison; nobody know where. And now, these photos. Today I was thinking of leaving this country. Not for studing, not for work. Just for not being here.

I don't want this as my everyday life. I don't want to accept this regime but I am not a revolutionary. I don't know what to do! I know that I have to STAY. I have to do something. WE have to do something… but what? blogging? Writing open letters to the government who does this? I don't know.
Note: Taking this photo can lead to many problems. I have to thank the anonymous photographer who took it and shared it on the Internet.

Zeinab PeyghambarZaded is one of my friends and participated many times in my trainings.This morning she has to wake up at Evin Prison just because she believed that “Man = Woman = Human”.
She was an active part of “1'000'000 signatures campaign”. The are going to collect 1 million signatures from people against discriminatory laws. She was arrested 2 days ago because of being active in this campaign.
I have started this weblog to write about Iran, Iranian life, our culture and … but nowadays I only write about miseries and bad things. Maybe nowadays everything is bad. I don't know. We will do whatever we can for her and for this brave campaign. Talking with people and collecting signature to change a law is the most civil activity I can imagine. She must not be in prison; specially the Evin.

(CBS/AP) Iran's foreign minister walked out of a dinner of diplomats where he was seated directly across from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on the pretext that the female violinist entertaining the gathering was dressed too revealingly.

And I think He (Our Foreign Minister) was the ONLY minister there who was checking violinist's dress and found out it was revealing. Other ministers probably where discussing about world affairs and how to promote their countries situations.

I wanted to download the “Persian Calendar” open source project from http://code.google.com/p/jalali-calendar/ today. When I clicked the “Download” link, it said Forbidden: You are accessing this page from a forbidden country.

It should be because of the embargo but from today on we do not have access to our open source projects on Google Code anymore. This happens while I am reading on boingboing.net that Shareholders ask Google to counteract foreign 'net censorship.
This page also popped up when I wanted to download the Google Earth, two days ago.
p.s. Thanks to TOR (The Onion Router from EFF guys) I downloaded it.

I have been very busy these past few days; not with work but with thinking and ideas. We had a very bad week in the organization. I did not go to the office on Thursday because of some private thinkgs to do at home but found out in the evening that “ICTRC is closed by authorities”. Wow… That is my NGO and I work there. It was also in the news that the authorities have come to our organizations office and closed it. Then they went to our manager's house, and investigated his house and took some books and other stuff.
So right now I am jobless Being jobless is not bad; the bad part is our NGO has been shut down. We were educating other NGOs about their rights and the way to utilize resources.
But let's finish with the good news. Do you remember the arrest of 33 women? All of them are free right now. On heavy bails (Around 200'000'000 Tomans which is aournd 200'000 Euro) but at least they are free for the Iranian new year ceremonies. We were going to celebrate the new year in front of their prison otherwise.
We have to wait for many trials. Our boss, our organization and these brave women. I have to find a job too. Maybe I will do freelance tech support / web design for other NGOs. I also started to translate an English book into Farsi I am an natural born translator I think.

As the previous year, the gathering of 8th of March was finished by the attack of Anti-Revolutionary police to the people and large scale beating. They've also beated an journalist and forced other journalists to erase their photos and films.
Eye witnesses write “At the 14:00 we were going to demonstrate and we were around 300 people. Anti Revolutionary Guard attacked us and violently beat us. There were also a lot of “women polices”.
Some reports say 6 women and 1 man are arrested and others claim that they are released after some hours. I think they should be released fast.
The bad for me is that I've returned back from Afghanistan / Kabul to Tehran yesterday night. In the Kabul everything was ok at 8th of March. Governmental placards was celebrating it. Ads in the TV promotes women's rights but it was difficult to see a woman in the street. In the other hand in Iran women are around 70% of university students and very active in social life but government beats them and arrest them just because they are asking for their rights; their rights as humans.
The photo is Nooshin Ahmadi Khorasani, one of the feminist activists in Iran. And the photographer is Kosoof.com