Friday, June 22nd 2012

Today: Vienna Street Party against the Iranian regime

STOP THE BOMB and Iranian Women's Network call for solidarity with Iranian singer Najafi

A street party and rally organized by the platform STOP THE BOMB and the Iranian Women's network is scheduled to take place today from 4.00 p.m. until 8.00 p.m. (CET) in support of solidarity with the Iranian singer Shahin Najafi, who currently lives in exile in Germany and, in a fatwa issued by the Iranian regime, was sentenced to death. The event will take place on Vienna's Mariahilfer Straße between Schottenfeldgasse and Kaiserstrasse and is being supported by the Vienna chapters of the Women of the Green Party and the Women of the Socialdemocratic Party. 
 
STOP THE BOMB's spokeswoman Simone Dinah Hartmann criticizes the lack of solidarity with Najafi, for whose murder a bounty of $ 100.000 has been offered by the regime: "Up to this day, there has not been a single comment on the death threat by any European government. Instead, we can watch politicians like former minister of defense Werner Fasselabend, current board- member of Austria's Christian Conservative ÖVP-party and president of the Austrian-Iranian Society, travel to Iran offering praise to the Iranian foreign minister."
 
Iranian Women's network's Maryam Farzan expresses her outrage regarding the fact that multiple events by the Iranian embassy's department of culture have been taken place on the premises of buildings owned by the city of Vienna: "The embassies of the holocaust-denying Iranian regime function as a backbone of its terrorist operations abroad and have served as point of origin for fatal attacks on exiled Iranians in the past, even here in Vienna."
 
The street party takes place also in support of women like Golshifteh Farahani. The actress who currently lives in exile in Paris has created a scandal in Iran earlier this year by having had pictures taken that contained nudity. Sogol Ayrom of the Iranian Women's network explains: "The hate of emancipated women is just as much part of the Iranian regime's ideological core as is anti-Semitism and the notion of martyrdom. We want to remind of the slogan that has been used  by tenths of thousands of women in in Teheran in 1979 during the demonstration against forced concealment with a veil: 'Emancipation is neither western nor eastern but universal!'"