<blockquote>I received the following open letter from Yassamine
Mather, signed by seventeen activists and intellectuals in the Iranian
diaspora including herself, and with her permission, I am publishing
it here. Among activists and intellectuals on the Left committed to
the advancement of women in particular and the working class in
general, as well as to resistance to imperialism, there can be
disagreements as to how best to contribute to them. Such
disagreements must be freely and publicly debated, at length, in good
faith, even while working together on the common ground. -- Ed.
Open Letter to Monthly Review Editors
Dear friends,
In a recent posting on your web site, Rostam Pourzal uses an anonymous
email by a 'witness' in Tehran to deny the extent of the repression of
women demonstrators by vigilante Islamic police on 12 June 2006 ("What
Really Happened in Tehran on June 12? Did Human Rights Watch Get It
Wrong?" MRZine, 18 June 2006). Pourzal tries to portray president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a 'popular', 'radical' figure, and tries to
underestimate, justify and excuse the brutal, repressive nature of the
Islamic regime in Iran; in doing so he makes various assumptions and
claims that we will deal with in a another posting. However as far as
the events of 12 June in Tehran are concerned, contrary to the claims
of the anonymous 'observer', the extent and intensity of the brutal
attack on the peaceful women's demonstration was far worse than that
portrayed by the BBC and the international media.
FULL TEXT:
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/letter070706.html></blockquote>
N.B. In my editorial introduction, I do not comment on any part of
statements made in the open letter, for doing so would be a misuse of
editorship.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
