I’m going to step outside Meandering Passages normal subject material here, but I think this is an important story and issue…

According to a report on Global Voices Online a recent peaceful protest movement by Iranian women activists was violently repressed by police resulting in activists, including several journalist and bloggers, being arrested.

50 of the women’s rights movement activists were arrested in front of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The security police forces attacked a peaceful gathering of women’s rights activists that had taken place at 8:30 am in front of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran in objection to the recent governmental oppressions and the summoning of some of these activists. The police forces who used violence to scatter the crowd, arrested at least 21 of the protesters.

It was reported that one of the arrested women was beaten by police resulting in broken teeth.  The activists were part of two major campaigns, Stop Stoning Forever, and One Million Signatures to Change Discriminatory Law.

It’s hard to imagine living in a society that allows this type of violent repression and discrimination, and it’s scary as hell to think that this is the same Iran that is about to become a nuclear power!

Follow-up:  3/6/2007

There’s a follow-up on the violent arrest of the protesting Iranian women. Some of them have been released but the majority remains in prison.

Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Iran:8 women activists released,24 on hunger strike:
Accordng to Khorshidkhanoum, Eight women’s rights activists who were arrested in the peaceful demonstrations in front of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court Sunday were released today.The 24 women who are still in section 209 of Evin Prison have started a hunger strike in protest to their illegal confinement.

Follow-up: 3/8/2007

Most of the arrested Iranian women have now been released.

Iran:Most jailed women activists were released:
According to Omid Memarian,all jailed women activists are released except three of them.The blogger adds “one of the women released in the second group told Rooz,an online magazine,: “The interrogators were not impolite; however, conditions inside the prison were not good at all. If we needed something, we had to bang on the door a thousand times and scream.”

Technorati Tags: iran, violence, women rights