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TEHRAN, March 8 (Reuters) - Iranian police clashed on Thursday with scores of rights activists who gathered in front of parliament to celebrate International Women's Day, one of the activists said."Police attacked a gathering of some 700 women's rights activists and hit them with batons," the activist, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.Police cars and ranks of police blocked the roads to prevent the demonstrators from marching, the activist said. Security forces arrested 33 women's rights activists on Sunday outside a Tehran court, where five other women detained in June had gone on trialSunday's protesters were demanding a fair trial for the five women, charged for "acting against national security" after taking part in an "unauthorized" rally to demand equal legal rights for women in the Islamic Republic. "Despite the pressure on the activists to abandon the protest, many of them took part in today's gathering," said the activist involved in Thursday's gathering. Also on Thursday, a protest of some 4,000 teachers against poor working conditions and low pay in front of parliament ended peacefully, a Reuters witness said.Analysts say demonstrations are likely to be a source of embarrassment for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, which vowed to improve living standards and to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly.Instead, critics say the government's economic policies have fuelled inflation, which mostly hurts the worst off in society.
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The Guardian reported on Sat. that police in Iran arrested trade unionists in an unsuccessful attempt to stop thousands of teachers protesting against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic policies outside Iran's parliament, the Guardian has learned.Officers swooped on the homes of six union leaders on Wednesday. The detention of key figures in teachers' organizations failed to stop the following day's rally, which drew an estimated 7,000 demonstrators. The leaders were later released after interrogation. Their arrests appeared to betray official anxiety that the protest - for teachers' pay to be brought into line with other state workers - could provoke discontent against Mr Ahmadinejad's government, which is being blamed for rising inflation and high unemployment.
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Tehran, Iran, Mar. 07 - Authorities hanged five men in a prison in the Iranian capital on Wednesday, the government-run news agency Fars reported.The men were hanged at dawn inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.They were accused of murder, the report said.Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a maximum security prison to house political dissidents, but it became the Islamic Republic’s most dreaded gulag and the site of thousands of political executions.
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Brussels, Mar. 10 - Thousands of Iranians on Thursday converged on the European capital Brussels to protest the European Union’s “flagrant disregard” for a December ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which annulled the terrorist listing of the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).According to organisers, some 30,000 Iranians from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and several other European countries took part in the rally outside the EU headquarters, as a summit of the 27-nation block’s leaders was underway.More than a dozen parliamentarians from various EU states as well as the former Prime Minister of Algeria addressed the rally.The highlight of the event, however, was a speech given in person by Iranian opposition leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. “We have gathered to protest against the [EU’s] defiance of the Court ruling by refusing to remove the PMOI from the terrorist list”, Rajavi told cheering supporters. “This makes a mockery of the rule of law”.“I call up on EU heads of state to respect the Court’s ruling and remove the PMOI from the terrorist list”, she said.“We offer the world an Iran free of nuclear weapons, seeking peace and security in the region, respecting human rights and democracy, and advocating friendship and cooperation. This is our vision for the future of Iran”. She urged EU leaders to adopt a “firm” policy against Tehran’s clerical establishment and “side with the Iranian people in their quest for freedom and democracy”.On December 12, the European Court of First Instance announced that the EU’s decision to place the PMOI in its terrorist list and impose a freeze on its financial assets was “unlawful”. The EU said in January, however, that it would maintain the group on the list, in a move which was promptly denounced by numerous European Parliamentarians.“Those who are hand in hand with the mullahs are also accountable for the mullahs’ crimes”, chanted protesters, referring to EU states that continue to give precedence to their financial ties with Tehran over Iran’s violation of human rights. The demonstrators called on EU leaders to comply with the court ruling. At a conference before the rally began, the Vice-President of the European Parliament Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca presented a list of signatures of over 1,000 lawmakers from 23 European countries who had condemned the EU’s “defiance” of the ECJ verdict.When the rally ended, a delegation of lawmakers entered the EU building and held talks with officials there on the matter.The rally was swiftly condemned by officials in Tehran.Iranian state television reported that the Foreign Ministry had summoned the envoys of Belgium and Germany, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, to protest the permission given to the group to hold its rally in Brussels. Belgian consul Paul de Vos and German ambassador to Tehran Herbert Honsowitz got an earful from the Foreign Ministry’s Director General for Western European Affairs Ebrahim Rahimpour who issued a stark warning that such events could “adversely affect the much-needed confidence-building measures in Iran-EU ties”.On a trip to Malaysia, Iran’s Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi blasted the EU for allowing the protest to take place.The PMOI was listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union in mid-2002, in what the EU’s then-Spanish leadership called “a goodwill gesture to Tehran”.
