BRIEF ON IRAN
No. 1457
Tuesday, August 15, 2000
Representative Office of
The National  Council of Resistance of Iran
Washington, DC


Antigovernment Demonstration in Southwestern Districts of Tehran, Iran Zamin News Agency, August 14

At about 10:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 12, some 10,000 residents of Tehran's deprived southwestern neighborhoods staged an antigovernment demonstration and clashed extensively with the clerical regime's Revolutionary Guards and intelligence and security forces.

Residents of Nematabad, Gaz Street, and Ahmadieh and Khomeini townships were among those who took part in these clashes, which went on until 2:00 am on Sunday.

Infuriated crowds attacked government buildings, including the district municipality, and inflicted substantial damage to them. The demonstrators overturned and damaged several government-owned vehicles.

The unrest began when officials from District 19 Municipality confiscated the hand-pushed carts of several children who were selling fruit as street vendors. The children's mother protested and was severely beaten up by the municipality officials. As the helpless mother was being beaten up in front of her weeping children, a large crowd in the area got into scuffles with the Municipality agents. The clashes quickly spread to large areas of the densely populated districts of southwest Tehran.

The Iranian Resistance draws the attention of relevant international bodies and human rights organizations and personalities around the world to the brutal suppression in Iran. It calls for their immediate intervention to save the lives of thousands of those arrested during recent popular uprisings in Tehran, Abadan, Piranshahr, Kahnouj, Salmas, Mashad, Ghir and the demonstration in southwest Tehran on Saturday night.
 
 

Mojahedin Units Ambush Military Convoy In Western Iran, Iran Zamin News Agency, August 14

In a third attack in 24 hours on the Iranian regime's military and security forces in western Iran, Mojahedin military units ambushed this morning a military convoy on the road between Saleh-Abad and Sarney in Ilam province, the Mojahedin Command inside Iran reported today.

As the convoy was passing along the road, off-limits to non-military vehicles, a huge explosion rocked the area and destroyed some of the vehicles. Several intelligence and military personnel, including Khosro Tabar, a commander in the State Security Forces, were killed or wounded.
 

Tehran Home To 25,000 Street Children, Agence France Presse, August 10

TEHRAN - Twenty-five thousand child squatters, most of them girls, live on the streets of Tehran, where growing drug use and prostitution are leading to a social crisis, a member of the Iranian parliament said Wednesday.

Tehran's press in recent weeks has been focusing on the plight of runaway girls, which it calls "an appalling reflection of the nation's social and economic situation."

The government-run newspaper Iran charged Tuesday that two decades of incomplete attention to the problem were to blame, warning that the social crisis threatened the very fabric of the Iranian family.
 

Three Hanged In Iran, Reuters, August 12

TEHRAN - Iran has hanged three men convicted of armed robbery, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The three men were hanged for several bank and house robberies in Karaj, a town west of Tehran, after their sentences were confirmed by Iran's supreme court, the daily Jaam-e Jam said. It did not say when the executions were carried out.
 

NEWS BITES

Agence France Presse, August 6 - A young Iranian woman attacked and injured a judge in the southwestern city of Boroujerd for taking too much time looking into a complaint she had lodged, newspapers reported Sunday. According to the Eteleaat paper, the impatient woman, who had filed a complaint against one of her relatives, suddenly attacked the magistrate and was immediately arrested.

Agence France Presse, August 7 - Women reporters marked national journalists' day here Monday by condemning the "inequality of the sexes" in the workplace, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The presence of women is still not tolerated... during interviews, female journalists are mocked by certain officials who still prefer to be interviewed by men," said Maryam Afshari, a staff member at the government-run Iran daily.

"Some female journalists have acquired top professional abilities and long years of experience, but they are still not given high-ranking positions," said Maryam Jahanpanah, another journalist at the paper.


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