ORF III: Anstoss in Teheran – Football under Cover

Montag, 04. Juni 20:15 Uhr

Die iranische Frauenfußball-Nationalmannschaft, die bislang nur in einer Halle geschützt vor den Blicken der Männer spielen durfte, spielt gegen eine Frauenmannschaft aus Berlin-Kreuzberg. Es ist das erste offizielle Frauenfußballspiel im Iran seit der Revolution vor 27 Jahren.

90 Minuten lang erfüllen sich die Frauen ihre Träume von Freiheit, wird Fußball zum Hoffnungsträger für ein Leben ohne religiöse Zwänge. Trotz der anwesenden Sittenwächterinnen singen und tanzen mehr als eintausend Zuschauerinnen, feuern sie die beiden Mannschaften an.
Die Idee zum Spiel entstand in Berlin. Dort traf Marlene Assmann, Rechtsfuß und Linksverteidigerin des Kreuzberger Vereins “BSV AL-Dersimspor”, den iranischen Filmregisseur Ayat Najafi. Er erzählte ihr von der iranischen Frauenfußballmannschaft, die noch nie gegen ein anderes Team gespielt hat. Beide beschlossen, das zu ändern. Und darüber einen Film zu machen.
Ein Jahr dauerten die Vorbereitungen. Immer neue Schwierigkeiten tauchten auf. Es war wie ein Hindernislauf, bei dem man oft nicht wusste, wer einem die Steine in den Weg legt. Doch auch wenn das Spiel von den iranischen Behörden von November auf März verschoben wurde, um dann im April stattzufinden, auch wenn man nicht wie geplant im größten Fußballstadion Asiens, sondern auf einem vertrockneten Rasen und mit kaputten Toren spielte, auch wenn eine der besten iranischen Spielerinnen aus Gründen, die keiner versteht, nicht mehr am Spiel teilnehmen durfte, auch dann gaben die Mädchen nicht auf. Am Ende geht ihr Traum vom gemeinsamen Fußballspiel in Erfüllung und es wird klar: Veränderung ist möglich.

Painted Politics: The Mural in Modern Iran

by BAHAMIN AZADI

Striking contrasts between outdated official styles, an urban milieu reflecting different values, and a new, less politicized generation of paintings.

Bahamin Azadi is a pen name for an independent researcher in sociology.

The history of mural painting returns to the first efforts of human beings to trace their experiences and thoughts in pictorial form in an effort to communicate and adorn their lives. The term comes from the Latin word murus, ”wall.” Urban murals are distinct from other forms of painting in that they bear the feature of “publicity” — in other words, a painting that is created in public for the public.In the modern era, across different societies and cultures, mural painting has generally reflected the political atmosphere of the time. Murals have been used to express protest and a desire for emancipation. Through their use of symbols, murals have the power to express narratives that promote social awareness and a variety of minority and socioeconomic class viewpoints.

Bringing art into the public sphere is one of the most important characteristics of murals. In numerous societies — especially ones, such as postrevolutionary Iran, that are highly politicized — they tend to express the ideological values of the state because they are almost invariably commissioned and sponsored by the government or its affiliated organs. Art, and in this specific case, murals, can perform the role of a vital medium for the expression of ideological, economic, social, and cultural change. This is because they are a “place” where everyday life, publicity, and artistic expression cross paths.

The Mexican muralist art movement, identified with painters such as Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and José Orozco, is perhaps the best-known of this genre. Other countries with important traditions of political mural painting include Northern Ireland, Colombia, and East Germany. In each, murals played an important role in reflecting changes in the political culture through the depiction of subjects ranging from religion to sex.

The Plight of Iran’s Baha’is

by KAMIAR ALAEI

Arash and Kamiar Alaei, physicians specializing in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, were found guilty in 2009 of “cooperating with an enemy government” and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Kamiar was conditionally released after spending two and a half years in prison. Arash was granted final release after more than three years in prison.

I spent two and half years of my life unjustly imprisoned in Iran. I’m fortunate I was released in the fall of 2010. But for my former cellmates, members of Iran’s imprisoned Bahá’í leadership group, freedom has proved elusive.In 2008, my brother, Dr. Arash Alaei, and I were serving sentences in Iran’s notorious Evin prison after being accused of trying to overthrow the government. In reality, we were running a public health program for HIV/AIDS patients and drug addicts. We had been doing this not only with government approval but also government funding. However, the government’s priorities changed, and my brother and I soon found ourselves in prison for doing what had been praised in the past.

Sattareh Farman Farmaian – passed away in L.A.

Sattareh Farman Farmaian was the mother of social work in Iran. Although she came from a Qajar aristocratic family, she was eager to help the needy and underprivileged. After graduating college in the United States she went to work for the United Nations, after which she returned to Iran and founded The School of Social Work. Ms. Farman Farmaian worked selflessly and tirelessly to improve the lot of the less fortunate in Iran until her work was halted by the new Iranian government following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Ms. Farmaian passed away on May 22, 2012 in Los Angeles, California.

More here

With Holocaust book in Farsi, Iranian-American author plugs a historical hole

By Kim Segal, CNN

(CNN) – When he first became interested in learning about the Holocaust in the 1990s, Dr. Ari Babaknia had trouble finding any literature on the subject written in his native tongue, Farsi.

The California-based physician wanted answers to basic questions: Where was the rest of the world as millions were exterminated? And when did the world learn what was happening?

“There’s plenty of books in English on this, and the Farsi-speaking people, I thought– they’re not aware of this,” Babaknia says. “It’s something they should know about.”

So Babaknia, who came to the United States from Iran in 1974, decided to write the book himself, taking time off from his day job as a fertility specialist.

After 15 years of research, four volumes – “Man’s Inhumanity to Man,” “America’s Response to the Holocaust,” “The World’s Response to the Holocaust” and “End of the Holocaust and Liberation of the Nazi Camps and the Genocides of the Last 100 Years” – are available for purchase online.

Iranian film “A Cube of Sugar” hits U.S. movie theaters

Source: Tehran Times

The Iranian family drama “A Cube of Sugar” by Reza Mirkarimi is currently on screen in Los Angeles.

The movie went on screen Sunday and will be on show for one week. It will later go on screen in Orange County, the Persian service of IRNA reported on Wednesday.

In “A Cube of Sugar”, four sisters come home to help with preparations for their youngest sister’s engagement party, however not everything goes as planned.

Negar Javaherian, Rima Raminfar, Saeid Pursamimi, Parivash Nazarieh, Reza Kianian and Hedayat Hashemi are the A-list cast of the film.

Iran Feature: Obama Ordered Cyber-Attacks on Tehran (Sanger)

David Sanger reports for The New York Times:

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

Amnesty: FORDERN SIE DIE FREILASSUNG VON ABDOLFATTAH SOLTANI!

Der Menschenrechtsanwalt Abdolfattah Soltani wurde zu 18 Jahren Haft verurteilt: © Private

Der iranische Menschenrechtsanwalt Abdolfattah Soltani wurde im März zu 18 Jahren Haft verurteilt. Der 58-Jährige ist ein international bekannter und anerkannter Rechtsanwalt, der viele Opfer von Menschenrechtsverletzungen im Iran verteidigt hat und dadurch selbst zum Ziel politischer Verfolgung wurde.

Er ist auch Gründungsmitglied des inzwischen verbotenen Zentrums für Menschenrechtsverteidiger (Centre for Human Rights Defenders – CHRD), zusammen mit Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Shirin Ebadi. Das CHRD hatte sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, über Menschenrechtsverletzungen im Iran zu berichten, die kostenlose rechtliche Vertretung politischer Gefangener zu übernehmen und die Angehörigen von politischen Gefangenen zu unterstützen.

Zuletzt wurde Abdolfattah Soltani am 10. September 2011 festgenommen und wegen “Verbreitung von regimefeindlicher Propaganda”, “Gründung einer illegalen Oppositionspartei” und “Versammlung und Machenschaften, um die nationale Sicherheit zu stören” angeklagt. Ein weiterer Anklagepunkt war, dass er “einen illegalen Preis und illegale Ehrungen” entgegen genommen hat. Dies bezieht sich auf den Internationalen Nürnberger Menschenrechtspreis, der ihm 2009 verliehen wurde.

Am 2. März 2012 wurde das Urteil des Teheraner Revolutionsgerichtes bekannt gegeben: 18 Jahre Haft, die er in einem Gefängnis in der entlegenen Stadt Borazjan verbüßen soll, etwa 1000 km von Teheran entfernt, was Familienbesuche nahezu unmöglich machen würde. Außerdem erhielt er für 20 weitere Jahre Berufsverbot, so dass er seinen Beruf nie mehr ausüben dürfte.