Letter Writers Needed

Esha Momeni, a graduate student in Film and Communications at Cal State Northridge, was arrested in Terhan two weeks ago for a driving offense and is now being held in solitary confienment. She was filming interviews on a project for women's rights. From the L.A. Times article yesterday:

She began participating in the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality, a group that connects activists in Iran with Iranian communities in the West.

Activist organizations, many of which advocate peaceful political and social change, greatly irk authorities in the Islamic Republic. Iran accuses them of being fronts for Western powers seeking to topple the government using the "velvet revolution" tactics that contributed to the downfall of regimes in former Soviet states.

A report issued this month by a United Nations human rights watchdog raised concerns about "an increasing crackdown in the past year on the women's rights movement" in Iran.

"Women's rights activism is sometimes presented by the Iranian government as being connected to external security threats to the country," the report says.

On Sunday, security agents blocked Sussan Tahmasebi, a leader of One Million Signatures, from leaving Iran and seized her passport, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Here are news clippings on the situation from CSU Northridge.

Letter writers are needed to help secure her release. Click here to sign a petition. Click here to sign one via the American Islamic Congress. Click here to get talking points and addresses to help you write your own (individually written letters carry more weight than on-line petitions). You can also join a facebook group for updates and information.

Afghanistan

A new report indicates in addition to war and limited access to resources, uneducated mothers are at the root of soaring child mortality rates:

High child mortality rates in conservative Afghanistan are linked not just to war but to mothers being uneducated and having little or no say when their children need medical help, a study has found.

Child mortality rates in Afghanistan are among the highest in the world, and one out of every five Afghan children (or 191 out of every 1,000 live births) will not survive beyond age five.

Did you catch that? One out of every five children will not live to see their sixth birthday because women are treated like shit in Afghanistan.

What to do? Start with RAWA, move over to the Feminist Majority Foundation, and check out Circle of Women to see what they are doing for Afghani women.

H/T Jezebel


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