Iran: Stopping the presses

Troubling, and a reflection on how extremism, in all its forms is dangerous - as Wendy Kristianasen reports in "Stop the presses" in Le Monde diplomatique:

"The closure of the magazine Zanan (Women) on 28 January clearly shows that women’s rights activists in Iran face growing repression. The grounds for closure were that it “endangered the spiritual, mental and intellectual health of its readers” and gave them the idea of “insecurity in society, disturbed public rights, weakened military and revolutionary institutes.” It published articles that “led people to believe that the Islamic Republic is unsafe for women” (1).

This was just a pretext to close the magazine because the women’s rights movement was working, through the Campaign for Equality (mainly but not all female), to get a million Iranians to sign a petition calling for a change to laws that discriminate against women (2). The peaceful gathering of signatures has been under way since 2006, attended by online blogs and YouTube videos."

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