AP,
The Press Supervisory Board, a body controlled by hard-liners, also sent warning notes to 13 other publications and magazines on “observing the provisions of the press law,” the ministry said on its Web site.
It was not clear why the nine magazines were targeted for closure. They do not deal with politics, focusing on light lifestyle features, family advice, and news of celebrities.
They regularly publish photos of Iranian actresses in loose headscarves and stylish clothes, as well as foreign female film stars without head coverings — but nothing more revealing than what is tolerated on some state media.
A recent issue of one of the closed magazines, Sobh-e-Zendegi, or Morning of Life, had photos of Cameron Diaz, Naomi Watts, Mandy Moore and Angelina Jolie — all wearing long sleeves and baggy clothing — and brief stories on some of their current activities.
The ministry said it shut the magazines down for “using photos of artists, especially foreign corrupt film stars, as instruments (to arouse desire), publishing details about their decadent private lives, propagating medicines without authorization, promoting superstitions.”
It did not elaborate. Such magazines often have small adds for vitamins and remedies, including pills to treat impotence.
Mohsen Ahmadi, editor Sobh-e-Zendegi, condemned the order.
“It is deplorable that a family lifestyle magazine is ordered closed. It means 70 people have lost their job,” he told The Associated Press.
Ahmadi said he received the closure order from the Culture Ministry on Sunday, but it was dated March 10. He said he suspected authorities waited to implement the order until after Friday’s parliament elections to avoid raising anger.
The other magazines closed down were Donya-e-Tasvir, Baznegari, Talash, Be Sooy-e-Eftekhar, Neday-e-Iran, Haft, Shooka and Havar, according to the Web site…The judiciary has shut down more than 100 pro-reform newspapers and jailed dozens of editors and writers on vague charges of insulting authorities since 2000.
What we have said here is only a brief listing of academic violations and denial of right to education in Iranian universities today. Students are determined to continue their legal and rightful struggle to promote independence of universities and uphold academic freedoms, although many are sacrificed down this path.
Iran is a state party to both the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (without reservation) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), both of which prohibit the execution of persons under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. In ratifying the CRC, Iran declared an extremely broad reservation, “not to apply any provisions or articles of the Convention that are incompatible with Islamic Laws.”
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
Thousands of university students in an Iranian city have held a protest against the attempted sexual harassment of a female colleague by a top university official, the press reported on Monday. About 3,000 students at the university in the northwestern city of Zanjan staged the sit-in protest over the weekend at a sports hall on campus, the reports said.
