The human rights outrage in Iran…and a challenge to Rosie O’Donnell and her ilk

By Michelle Malkin • June 24, 2007 06:30 AM

Today I am joining blogs Gateway Pundit, Ali Eteraz, and Iran Focus in reprinting the latest batch of Iranian repression photos being distributed by the regime’s state-run FARS News agency and ISNA. The innocent young men in the photos were beaten, humiliated, and arrested for wearing Western clothing and hairstyles. It is in the public interest to spread these photos far and wide. The images should be seared onto the global conscience:

Masked Muslim moral police force a man wearing clothes deemed un-Islamic to suck on a plastic container Iranians use to wash their bottoms.

Bloodied, beaten, then taken away.

Whipped for wearing a soccer shirt.

Behead all those who wear their hair too long.

Another public beating.

The Iranian morality police arrest the infidel after forcing him to drink from the toilet watering cans hanging around his neck.

Another head busted open in the name of Allah.

Question: Will these photos be blared across the front pages of the international media with as much disgust and condemnation as the photos of Abu Ghraib or the manufactured Gitmo Koran-flushing riots?

Answer: Fat chance.

Question: What do leftist apologists for the Iranian regime have to say about the brutal, appalling, and escalating crackdown on human rights? Yeah, you, Rosie.

Answer: Nothing.

Question: Will the same moral cowards who sat silently while Mohammad Khatami, former President of Iran, advocated executing gays during a Harvard lecture stand up now against this barbarism?

Answer: Of course not.

The latest wave of repression has been going on for months. No one, not even Khatami himself, has been spared scrutiny. Now, the New York Times finally (a rare note of thanks and praise to them) reports:

Young men wearing T-shirts deemed too tight or haircuts seen as too Western have been paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers who force them to suck on plastic jerrycans, a toilet item Iranians use to wash their bottoms. In case anyone misses the point, it is the official news agency Fars distributing the pictures of what it calls “riffraff.” Far bloodier photographs are circulating on blogs and on the Internet.

The country’s police chief boasted that 150,000 people — a number far larger than usual — were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women’s rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women.

Eight student leaders at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, the site of one of the few public protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, disappeared into Evin Prison starting in early May. Student newspapers had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The National Security Council sent a stern three-page warning to all the country’s newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in gasoline prices or other economic woes like possible new international sanctions, negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq, civil society movements and the Iranian-American arrests.

So what does Amnesty International USA have to say about the Iranian human rights debacle on its homepage today? Nothing. Instead, the site promotes two campaigns for Darfur and a lead story about the campaign to secure habeas corpus rights for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

http://michellemalkincom/2007/06/24/the-human-rights-outrage-in-iranand-a-challenge-to-rosie-odonnell-and-her-ilk/