Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN - Only 327,000 candidates have signed up to contest Iran's crucial municipal elections in February, far less than expected for the first such elections since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The figure could shrink further after the candidates are vetted by the Interior Ministry to make sure they are qualified, Iranian radio reported.
Voters will choose more than 200,000 candidates for mayors and municipal councils to manage local affairs. The Interior Ministry had earlier estimated that 800,000 candidates would register.
The daily Iran News blamed the low registration on state-run radio and television for not publicizing the elections and urged that the elections be postponed to April or May to ensure wider participation.
[Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance, described the Iranian people's disregard and refusal of their true representatives to take part in the clerical regime's election farce as reflecting the nation's awareness and consciousness about Khatami's demagogic rhetoric and indicating the Iranian people's resolve to change and overthrow the mullahs' regime in its entirety.
[Mr. Rajavi had already called for
the boycott of "Islamic Councils'" election sham. The velayat-e faqih
dictatorship is by nature totally contradictory to a representative government
and a system based on councils, Mr. Rajavi said.]
Iran Holds Backers of Montazeri, Reuters, December 29
TEHRAN - Iranian authorities have arrested several backers of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri for protesting against the senior cleric's house arrest, a weekly magazine reported in its latest issue.
The weekly Aban said another
supporter remained in jail after being detained three months ago for handing
out pro-Montazeri leaflets.
Rushdie Says Still in Danger, Reuters, January 4
MEXICO CITY - Novelist Salman Rushdie said on Monday he still does not lead a normal life and said he worried about writers in Algeria and Iran, where several have been slain or disappeared.
"I was led to believe last September that it was comprehensively over and I looked forward to an early return to normal life. Unfortunately it seems not to be quite as over as that, so I think there is still a period of caution," Rushdie told Reuters.
Rushdie said he was worried most about writers living in Algeria and Iran, where six writers have either disappeared or been murdered in recent months.
"That phase which we believed to be
over in Iran seems to have viciously started up again," he said.
Mullahs' Rejects Outside Probe into Killings, Reuter, January 1
TEHRAN - Iran's top judge on Friday rejected calls for an international investigation into killings of Iranian dissident intellectuals, saying enemies were trying to portray the Islamic republic as an unsafe country.
"The enemy is trying to pave the way for foreigners to enter the country and say there is no security here," judiciary head Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi said in a Friday prayers sermon.
He was referring to calls by Western
human rights groups and exiled Iranian opposition organizations for an
international probe into the recent killings of several dissidents in Iran.
Compulsory Military Training in School, Agence France-Presse, January 4
TEHRAN - Iranian boys in secondary schools are to have compulsory military training, the ministry of education announced Monday.
The ministry issued a circular saying that such training must from now on be included in the weekly timetable, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The ministry said the ruling must be
"strictly applied," but gave no details of what the training would include.
Two Periodicals Banned, BBC World Service, January 4
The press supervisory board in Iran has banned two periodicals.
Government officials said the far-right weekly magazine, Shalamcheh, had had its license withdrawn for accusing a late Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Abolqassam al-Khoei, of having ties to the secret police under the deposed Shah of Iran.
The officials said another magazine, Fakur, had also had its license revoked.