Iran: both sides of the stage

Iranian women play rugby.
In 2002 Iran's Rugby Union was formed and has now grown to include over 1,000 players, both men and women.
The Tehran women team was set up in 2003 and a year after it won the national championship. Other teams in the country are from Golestan, Kerman, Kermanshah, Semnan, North Khorasan, Shiraz and Isfahan.
The coach from the female team, a man, says that the team's Islamic dress would make it impossible for them to play against sides from Western nations as "the long sleeves and loose clothes gives the opponents an easy chance to grab them."
In 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution when competitive sports for women were strongly discouraged, it would have been unthinkable for Iranian women to play a sport as physical as rugby.
Initially women mainly participated in stationary sports such as archery and shooting but now they compete in a wider range of physical activities including strength-based disciplines like rowing, martial arts and rugby.
Photo (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)


The in Evinprison 209 detained Ahwazi Arab journalist
Mohammad Hassan Fallahiya wrote a letter to EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana.
With this letter he asks him to review his case and to raise the issues of ethnic and religious persecution in Iran.
The letter was smuggled from Evin Prison and delivered to Solana by the Human Rights Activists in Iran group.
Fallahiya was a correspondent for the Iranian government-owned Al-Alam Arabic language satellite news network and has worked for a number of other news agencies.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl