Iranian activist lashed 74 times for 'insult' to President Ahmadinejad

2011-10-10 10:06:47 GMT+7 (ICT)

TEHRAN (BNO NEWS) -- An Iranian student activist was lashed 74 times on Sunday for insulting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The Guardian newspaper reported.

Peyman Aref, a student of political science at Tehran University, was lashed before being released from Tehran's Evin prison on Sunday. The lashing was carried out in the presence of Aref's wife and officials from Iran's judiciary.

Aref was sentenced in March 2010 to a year in jail after being found guilty of propaganda against the regime for speaking to foreign media. He also received the lashing sentence for writing an "insulting" letter to Ahmadinejad and was prohibited for life from working as a journalist, according to the news report.

Speaking to the website Rahesabz, Aref said after his release: "Whenever Ahmadinejad goes to New York [for UN general assembly], he boasts that Iran is the world's freest country but I was brutally flogged in my country for insulting him." He added: "[My crime] was that I wrote an open letter to Ahmadinejad and reminded him of what he did to the universities."

In the letter to the president during his 2009 election campaign, Aref attacked Ahmadinejad for his crackdown on politically active students. Authorities apparently were offended after Aref refused to begin his letter with the formal greeting "Salam" as a sign of protest.

The lashing incident comes only a few weeks after Somayeh Tohidlou, a female Iranian blogger and campaigner for former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, was sentenced to a "symbolic" lashing for the same crime.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-10-10

Your day is coming, Salami...

Extreme insecurity leads to such callous unfair punishments.

All over that part of the world, similar outbursts by authorities - are triggered by them trying (and failing) to bludgeon dissent. Whether it be government or religious authorities, their extreme paranoia and insecurity shows its ugly head often and brutally.

The opposite of that, is someone like me. I have beliefs (science and nature) which I feel good about. Even if 10,000 people form a chorus to put down my belief system, it wouldn't annoy me one bit. In sharp contrast, even the slightest hint of doubting government or the required religion in that region, gets 74 lashes or a lot worse. And, as bad as it is for men, it's worse for women in those parts of the world, who are treated worse than mangy dogs.

An off-topic post has been deleted.

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