I once heard someone utter something rather insightful on human rights that stuck with me, “The only right we have is the right to fight for our rights”. Here we post, outraged at the loss of a ‘fundamental’ right to communicate dissent with government, but at the end of the day it’s not a right we actually have, it’s an earned freedom that we will spend the rest of our lives defending.

We cannot as a society expect our leaders to do the right thing out of respect for human rights, it doesn’t work. We must be ready to take the necessary steps to ensure our freedoms, whether it be Iemma’s continuing security tightening efforts in NSW or the loss of voices in Iran at the hands of Ahmadinejad.

PinkyOz

http://www.opednews.com/articles/This-pathetic-U-S–Congres-by-michael-payne-080703-406.html

The naysayers will increasingly look like fools useful idiots.

Thanks patrickm for a moment of light relief. Personally I believe the Iranians will be more influenced by the fairies at the bottom of the garden. I do have one question though: if ‘revolution is the usual response to increasing repression from tyrants’, why didn’t we just wait for the Iraqi people to rise up and overthrow ol’ Saddam? It would have saved such a lot of argument.

But I guess your theory explains why tyrants like Mugabe, Castro, Stalin, Bjelke-Petersen and the like had such short tenures and were overthrown so dramatically.

Iranians in less than eighteen months time will look across the border and ask themselves why can’t they have meeningful free and fair elections.

Who can deny that the bourgeois democratic revolution is off and running and the corrupt governments in Iran and Egypt won’t be able to stand up to their peoples demands once a Palestinian State is established and Iraq continues to lead the way forward. This is all so reminiscent of the collapse of the police states of Eastern Europe, and we can expect the next decade to speed it all up. Revolution is the usual response to increasing repression from tyrants.

or christian, female and gay.

Article 3- The punishment for persons committing the above crimes, if not determined elsewhere, are to be as enemies of the state (Mohareb) and enemies of God on Earth (Mofsed fe-al-arz) [Punishable by death penalty under Islamic Penal Code]

The bold face is not part of the legislation - the translator implies it is the same thing. Someone seen as both an enemy of State and God would have a short life expectancy.

I’m a little concerned about two other things - the legislation also states the death sentence for “wickedness” (2.6) It’s a term so vague that it could be anything the judge doesn’t like, like playing music too loud upstairs. In practice, I see it applied to people who say bad things about government officials, even if they are true.

Oh and the other bit? Take a squizz at article 7:

Temporary detention of suspects accused of these crimes must be for a minimum of one month.

A lot of thing can happen in one month, especially if you are in an Iranian prison.

I’d like someone like Juan Cole to give his viewpoint. He has no love for the that government - he had some friends killed by Khomeini and crew - but he can be trusted to do a reliable translation.

Still, it definitely a backward step for any hope of reform in Iran.

The place is a shithole as it is for anyone even remotely different to the Shia paradigm. God help you if you’re christian, female or gay. And now, apparently, political bloggers are on the hit-list.

Seriously,
Is there anything we can do to help these fellow-bloggers?