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OutRage!-supports Iran students demo 7 Dec.

pirate | 29.11.2005 16:17 | Gender | Repression | Social Struggles | London | South Coast

gay rights group Outrage! has called on all LGBT people to support the demo on Weds 7 Dec 2005 organized primarilyto support Iranian students.

5 more gay people have been 'executed' in Iran recently.

Iran Student's Day - Freedom Protest - Wednesday 7 December, 12 noon,
Iranian Embassy, London

OutRage! urges our friends to support this protest in solidarity with
the Iranian students' struggle for democracy and human rights. Please
show your solidarity with the people of Iran who are resisting the
fundamentalist clerical rule of the Ayatollahs.

Peter Tatchell and Brett Lock, OutRage!

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Against the dictatorial government of Iran and for freedom
Support the student's struggle in Iran!

Demonstration in London

Where: In front of the Iranian embassy
Prince Gate (Kensington Gore), London, SW7
When: Wed. December 7 , 12:00 – 2:00

Universities in Iran are main battlefields in people's struggle
against religious dictatorship and students are unmistakable forces of
this fight. December 7 is, therefore, a very important day. It is
student's day. In the past few years students' struggle against the
reactionary rule of Islamic regime, has increased intensively.

Every year on December 7, students meetings and demonstrations are met
with the bloody iron fists of the regime, which brutally sheds blood
in the streets, kills and injures protesting students. Many students
have suffered long years of imprisonment and torture for standing up
and demanding a better life. Despite this, the fight goes on and
students
are preparing for an other remarkable students day, by organising
meetings and marches widely in the country.

With the beginning of a new academic year, the Islamic republic has
once again taken up its policy of oppression and terror in the
universities. Intelligence and security forces are operating widely
and restrictions about Islamic veiling and segregation of the sexes
are severely observed and any signs of resistance brutally suppressed.
In the recent weeks two female students have been killed in relation
to the Islamic Hejab. The tragic death of Azade Vazifedoost resulted
in students' outrage and more than three thousands of them took to the
streets in Saveh to protest against the sexual apartheid and
misogynist treatment under the Islamic regime. Another young student
in Kerman has been attacked by the morality squad who cut her using a
sharp blade and killed her on the spot.

These are only two very recent examples of Islamic regimes criminal
behaviour against students and in particular female students.

On either side of this battlefield forces are preparing themselves for
a hard fight. Students are trying to organise protests and meetings
and demonstrations in all corners of the country to show their
opposition and the government is getting ready to crush them as
brutally as usual. University grounds look more like military bases
with special police forces swarming around them.

Students in Iran need your support. Do not leave them alone in their
fight against this anti-humanitarian regime and for freedom. Support
them in any way you can. Send them your solidarity letters. Condemn
the Islamic government for its behaviour against students. Demand the
immediate release of all detained students. Support students' demands
for the withdrawal of all religious laws and regulations from
universities, the immediate end to segregation of women and men and
compulsory veiling.

Show your support!
Let the students know that they are not alone!

Worker-communist party of Iran - Organisation Abroad

ENDS

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pirate

Additions

Religion

29.11.2005 20:52

I think it starts to appear anti-religion or anti-Islam if you say some of these things, like:

"Support students' demands
for the withdrawal of all religious laws and regulations from
universities..."

...When it would be possible to merely demand an end to those particular policies that have relevance to what the students view as human rights (gay rights, womens rights etc) issues.

Brian B


Tatchell's obsession

29.11.2005 22:17

Beware Outrage! on the issue of Iran and their rampant islamophobia.

" Shortly after the London bombings, Tatchell signed the United Against Terror statement, which attacks "those who apologize for the terrorists and who misrepresent terrorist atrocities as 'resistance.'" Explaining his decision to sign the UAT statement, Tatchell wrote, "Today, the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values.... I used to be proud to call myself a leftist. Now I feel shame. Much of the left no longer stands for the values of universal human rights and international socialism."

Perhaps most saliently, Tatchell has used his prominence as a gay activist to place gay issues at the center of the discussion of the conflict between Western secular humanism and Islamic fundamentalism. Most recently, in a statement issued after the London bombings, Outrage! warned that "gay venues could be bombed by Islamic terrorists. All gay bars and clubs should introduce bag and body searches. Muslim fundamentalists have a violent hatred of lesbians and gay men." Tatchell and other members of Outrage! report that they have received death threats from Islamic fundamentalists, but did not offer any other evidence of a looming attack in their release. (In fact, the last time a gay bar was bombed in London, in Soho in 1999, the bomb was set by a white supremacist group.)"

"In 2004, 97 percent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Vietnam and the United States; in the number of juvenile executions since 1990, Iran ranks second (fourteen) to the United States (nineteen) which just this past March categorically banned the death penalty for those under 18."

"It's interesting that this case has suddenly drawn such a rapid and strong response when these abuses have been going on for years without a peep from US-based LGBT groups. Why now? Why just Iran?"

Read the rest of the article to learn how Tatchell and Outrage! misled gay rights campaigners over the Iran issue.

 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050815/kim

Outrage! outed


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