[Source : DIRELAND]
August 06, 2006
FROM INSIDE IRAN, A MESSAGE FROM THE GAY ‘ZINE MAHA
The following message was distributed today (August 6) by the editors of MAHA, the clandestine gay ‘zine in Iran, who ask that it be distributed widely. MAHA means “we” or “us” in Persian. Originally begun in 2004 as a newspaper after a crackdown on Iranian gay websites by the Tehran regime, MAHA is now distributed in PDF format to its subscribers.
FROM THE EDITORS OF MAHA:
We note some differences of opinion in the international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement about how to best support LGBT people in Iran. We would like to express our view, and we believe that a great number of our readers share our opinion. Iranian society has developed despite the oppression. The demand for democracy and human rights is growing in our country.
We believe that the human rights of Iranian women, students, workers and LGBT people are not western phenomenon but aspects of universal human rights and are important for human freedom, dignity and fulfilment in Iran – and everywhere.
Despite all our difficulties and dangers, the Iranian LGBT community is getting more and more informed and is expressing its demand for human rights. We identify as LGBT people and want the same freedoms that LGBT people worldwide want.
Let no one claim there is not homophobic oppression in Iran. Every LGBT Iranian is at potential risk of arrest, imprisonment, flogging and execution. Avoiding such a fate requires leading a double life and hiding one’s sexuality. Even though there are secret gay parties and magazines, we are all at risk. Great discretion is the only thing that keeps many of us from the jails of the authorities – and worse…
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[Source : @-Infos]
August 10, 2006
(en) Israel, Media, Aljazeerah, We shall all lose: A diary report, a day after the Tel Aviv rally : Adam Keller
“Is this the last week?” people asked each other. Since the jets went streaking northwards to rain death over Beirut and the missiles came shrieking back southwards to an ever-widening number of Israeli communities, Israeli activists had been gathering every Saturday evening and marching in protest through the streets of Tel-Aviv.
According to the confident predictions emanating from Condoleezza Rice’s entourage at the beginning of the week, by today a ceasefire should have already been in place. But Saturday was at least as bloody as the preceding days, with the end of the killing seeming an ever-receding horizon. As thousands streamed to the rendezvous at the end of Ben Tzion Boulevard (accustomed place of the weekly Women in Black vigil) the prospects of a ceasefire were a major subject of conversation.
“To us, ‘ceasefire’ and ‘cessation of hostilities’ seem the same, but the diplomats hide a hell of a lot of meaning between nuances of this kind. It could make a life or death difference on the ground afterwards, we have to look very carefully at what the Americans and French are up to, over there in New York” said a white-haired man with a big sign reading “We are not Bush’s puppets!”
To the mother and her two daughters, killed this morning at Arab ell-Aramsheh from the direct hit of a Katyusha missile, it will no longer make any difference. (Like nearly half the Israeli civilian casualties, they were Arabs, in whose community the government never thought of installing air-raid shelters or alarms). And whatever the final formulation of the UN resolution, it will also come far too late for the 33 farm workers (35 in other accounts) killed by a single Israeli bomb near the Lebanese-Syrian border (most of the Israeli media did not even bother to mention it).
Here in the heart of Tel-Aviv we had to contend with a fortunately non-lethal kind of missile: a salvo of eggs suddenly plastered the gathering activists. The police somehow failed to notice the perpetrators, despite being present on the scene in great numbers (there had been extensive and exhausting negotiations on the route of the march, the authorities rejecting the organizers original proposals on various bureaucratic grounds)…
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