Back to Brief on Iran
The clerical regime's state-run newspapers announced yesterday that the fingers of the right hand of three men were cut off in the city of Tabriz, northwestern Iran. (Salam, July 5, 1999)
The number of persons whose right hand fingers have been cut off over the past two weeks thus reaches 21. State-run Kayhan daily reported on June 22 that four fingers of the right hands of three men were cut off in public in the Fajr Garden of Tabriz. The next day on June 23, the Qods daily reported of 15 men sentenced to have their four fingers of the right hand cut off.
The execution of at least 420 persons
have been announced by the state-run newspapers since Khatami took office.
Ten persons have been stoned in public. Medieval and degrading punishments
are officially carried out in Iran.
Canada's Only Fusion Lab to Be Likely Sold To Iran, Reuters, July 7
OTTAWA - Canada's fledgling nuclear fusion reactor program might be sold lock, stock and barrel to Iran, which U.S. officials have often accused of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Member of Parliament Bob Mills, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Reform Party, urged caution: "(On) fusion technology, I'm not sure you'd get agreement among scientists as to whether it could be used for military purposes."
"The real world out there is one of terrorism, one of a greater instability than ever before," he added.
"It seems before you hand over this
technology you should be sure that whoever you're handing it over to is
a very stable, reliable country."
U.N. Warns of New Population Boom in Iran, Reuters, July 7
TEHRAN - Iran, successful in cutting birthrates in recent years, is facing a renewed threat as a generation of post-revolution babyboomers is reaching reproductive age, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.
"The population growth rate is certainly
alarming. The rate is expected to rise from 1.4 percent in 1996 to 1.7
percent in 2001," Mohammad Mosleh-Uddin, the United Nations Population
Fund's representative in Iran, told a news conferences.
Mullahs' Court Bans Newspaper for Printing Secret Memo, Reuters, July 7
TEHRAN - Iran suspended a newspaper on Wednesday for printing a secret report about an alleged hardline plot to muzzle the country's press, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
A court ordered Salam daily, one of the main newspapers backing Mohammad Khatami, to cease publication after a complaint from the intelligence ministry over the printing of the "highly secret document," IRNA said.
A Salam journalist earlier told reporters that police had arrested the newspaper's night editor, Morad Raisi.
Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi on Wednesday blasted Salam for publishing, on Tuesday, the internal ministry memo about the dangers of widespread press freedoms for the country's security.
Salam had said the memo advocated a plot to limit press freedom, and was linked to the new media controls introduced in parliament by conservatives.
The newspaper also said the memo was
written by Saeed Emami, a former top intelligence ministry official who
had been a main suspect in a series of murders of Iranian dissidents last
year. He reportedly committed suicide in jail last month.
"We All Feel the Danger, Don't We?", Associated Press, July 7
DUBAI - Authorities shut down a newspaper on Wednesday, hours after hard-liners pushed a bill through Iran's parliament aimed at curbing the country's media.
Earlier Wednesday, Iranian hard-liners pushed a bill through Parliament that makes writers, not publishers, liable for what they write. The new legislation is a major setback to allies of Khatami.
The legislation was approved by 125 of the 215 deputies present in the Majlis, or Parliament. The hard-line speaker, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, took the unusual step of calling for an open ballot, which forced more independent deputies to vote for the bill. The number of negative votes and abstentions was not known.
In the run-up to the vote, Nateq-Nouri urged deputies to approve the bill now and debate its details later.
"We all feel the danger, don't we? Let's lock the doors to the enemy and vote for the bill. Then we can among ourselves debate the details," he told the Majlis.