Iran: paper votes, paper voices?

Today has started in Iran the second round of parliamentary (Majlis) elections in 54 constituencies.
About 21 million Iranians are eligible to vote for 82 parliamentary seats out of 164 candidates.
People in Tehran are to choose 11 out of 22 nominees.
Traditionally, the Majlis speakers are chosen from Tehran MPs. This time could be a tough competition between Tehran's MP and the current Majlis speaker Haddad Adel and former top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani who represents Qom in the parliament.



Global Voices online reports that students at Sahand University in Tehran protest against genderapartheid, male and female students cannot attend classes together.
In the blog of Sahel (fa) is a post about the demonstration, it also says that some female students are victims of sexual and moral harrassment by employees.
The photo's are here.



Tuesday, the president of Iran National Library and Archives (INLA) said that Iran’s per capita book reading is two minutes in every 24 hours.
He said this at a conference in Mashhad, he also said that if students reading their schoolbooks are taken into consideration, book reading increases to six minutes per day.
He lamented that the national literacy rate is only 85 percent.
Iran has over 2000 public libraries and publishes at least 3000 copies of each book published.


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