News in Brief-

Women's action and police forces reaction !

A million signature for changing the discriminatory laws !

This was the title of a seminar which was supposed to be held on Sunday Aug. 27 /2006 in a location in Tehran but the police forces by calling the manager of the place have forced him to cancel the gathering . This seminar was organized by the activists from women movement. The police force's reason for cancelling this seminar was claimed as to be the non existance of permission for gathering, but the women organizers said; according to the law and bylaws of the country for seminars there is no need to get permission.
" A million signature for changing the discriminatory laws " is a campaign with goals , mission and programs to fight back discriminatory laws against women.It was planned that madame Shirin Ebadi The Noble Peace Prize Winner , Dr. Naser Zarafshan Lawyer and a founder of the Association of Human Rights Defenders ,Ms. Moniru Ravanipour( writer ) , Ms. Shala Lahiji the publisher and ..... will speak in the seminar. This seminar was the continuation of women's protest gathering in " Haft Tir Circle " which was attacked by the women police agents and as a result many were arrested and wounded including madame Simin Behbehani the " Lady poet of Iran " .
At around 5:00pm several personalities who were supposed to speak joined the gathering but later Ms. Nushin Ahmadi Khorasani one of the activist from women movement announced that the seminar is being cancelled and told that the campaign is a long term struggle . while in there several women activists started collecting signature for this campaign, this continued for fourty minutes and then they left the place . It is needed to say that the police forces allowed the activists to stay at the location and tell to their colleagues that the seminar has been cancelled.
The organizers at the end of the gathering distributed a statement saying : Iran is a society which women are more educated than men and more than 65% of the university students are girls....... and the existing laws are way behind the culture and situation of the Iranian women. The statement critically looked into the discrimintory laws against women and demanded these laws to be replaced immediately .

Link to this news in Farsi:
http://r0ozonline.com/01newsstory/017341.shtml

The site of campaign for equality :
http://we-change.org