I will be in meetings in London today for the Journal of American Studies. While I am away, updates on the LiveBlogs --- especially for Iran --- may be limited, although you will be in the safe hands of James Miller from this afternoon for developments in the Middle East and North Africa.
Meanwhile, check out our latest features from Iran to Bahrain to the University of Nottingham and send in your ideas and latest news via Comments on the pages. Remember that if you are not using Disqus, it may be some time before we can post your contribution.
Farid was reportedly beaten severely after her arrest on 3 September in Tabriz in northwestern Iran. She has apparently been accused of “insulting the Supreme Leader”, “propaganda against the system”, and “acting against national security”.
According to activist and opposition media, Farid temporarily lost hearing in her left ear and was left unable to move one of her arms after the beatings. She was interrogated at length before a judge ordered that she be detained for 10 days. Since her jailing, her sister has only been allowed to visit her once for 45 minutes. and her requests to see a doctor have not been allowed.
2048 GMT: It may be nearly midnight in Bahrain, but the struggle between the protesters and the police continues. A source in Sitra reports:
"23:45 At the moment there is a helicopter flying on Sitra with spot light searching for protesters"
2036 GMT: A potentially very important video has been posted in our separate entry. Protesters gathered tonight in AL Hoole, Homs, unfurl a large banner with a clear request, written in both English and Arabic:
2023 GMT: We've posted a separate video feature tonight.
Today was busy, and with so many dramatic pictures, videos, and nuggets of news, the scale of the protests can easily be overlooked. In the liveblog, we have focused on the violence, but what occurred this Friday, like many others, was another mass demonstration of peaceful protesters, in nearly every corner of the country, demanding the resignation of those responsible for the violence.
Among the violence, the peaceful protests are being eclipsed by the media, but they have not gone away.
1952 GMT: WARNING, this video is VERY hard to watch. Bullets snap (which means they were very close) around a cameraman, as unarmed protesters flee back up the street, carrying a man who was apparently shot in the head. The video was reportedly taken today in Homs. It's very graphic:
On Wednesday, Somayeh Tohidlou, a Ph.D. student in sociology at Tehran University, was given 50 lashes for "insulting the President".
The sentence has been hanging over Tohidlou, a supporter of Mir Hossein Mousavi, since the days after the disputed June 2009 Presidential election, when she was arrested for participating in protests. She was lashed in Evin Prison, her hands and feet reportedly chained.
On Thursday, groups inside and Iran condemned the flogging. The Social Science Faculty of Tehran University issued a statement that authorities "were intent on playing the scourge of humanity and humiliating their opponents", lashing "the voice of innocence".
I remember when I read my first article about protests in Bahrain. It was short: in the second paragraph, the author said that the King of Bahrain was going to give the people of his country more than $2650 per family. The conclusion was that it was highly unlikely that protests would catch on.
It's hard to be more wrong.
More than seven months later, and protests are becoming a nightly occurrence. The protest movement has been reinvigorated in recent weeks, partially inspired by Libya, partially inspired by fresh martyrs, entirely dedicated to regain the momentum they had at the start.
On Wednesday, 31 August, 14 year old Ali Jawad was shot through the eye with a tear gas canister that fired directly at civilians by police who were standing less than 30 feet away.
Within a week, protests were growing, specifically in Sitra, the home of young Jawad. On 4 September, we received this video, a man standing in from of a police convoy, refusing to stand down:
2112 GMT: James is taking a break, but he wanted to note that we've receieved dozens of protest videos from Syria, some of which we will put into a separate feature.
2106 GMT: This video claims to show protesters in the Alqarya area of Sitra, Bahrain, tonight, before the protesters are attacked by police:
2051 GMT: Syrian expatriates have founded a 140 member transitional council in Turkey. The goal of the national council is to establish a vision for a post-Assad Syria, and to continue to organize peaceful pro-democracy protests:
At the meeting, 70 names were read out from a list of 140, as at least some of the rest cannot be named, possibly because they are inside Syria, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul.
Others are in exile.
The opposition groups seem to have finally agreed to what is effectively an embryonic Syrian national assembly, says our correspondent.
For the first time, it has the full backing of all opposition groups inside and outside the country, and will now represent the opposition, he (opposition spokesman) adds.
University of NottinghamFor more than three years, EA and its predecessor, Libertas, have followed the case of two men punished by the University of Nottingham and British authorities. The "crime"? Downloading a publicly-available Al Qa'eda training manual, as part of a postgraduate student's research on terrorism, onto a computer.
Hicham Yezza, an administrator at the university, and Rizwaan Sabir were arrested in May 2008. Sabir was released after seven days and eventually completed his Master's degree. He then moved to the University of Strathclyde in Scotland for his Ph.D. research. Yezza was not brought to trial but was held for months in a detention centre under threat of deportation before he was finally freed.
Sam Jones of The Guardian brings the latest development in the case. Readers might note that, in contrast to the compensation given by the police to Sabir, the University of Nottingham, which continued to secretly film Islamic students on campus, has never offered a word of apology to the student or to Yezza.
2040 GMT: The Battle Within. Mehr --- a conservative, not a reformist, website --- has posted in English the news we reported earlier: Ali Saeedi, the Supreme Leader's representative to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, has met President Ahmadinejad and criticised him for not living up to his ideals.
Advising the President to readjust his attitude, Saeedi said Ahmadinejad's sympathisers are displeased with some of his actions and behaviour. He added that the President still has time to make up for his past.
2020 GMT: Claim of the Day. He has been criticised by leading economists, the reformist opposition, by conservative MPs, and by Government officials, but that is not going to stop President Ahmadinejad from loudly repeating an unsupported claim.
In a speech today, Ahmadinejad said, "With the support of the Iranian nation and by mobilizing all capacities, 2.5 million jobs will be created annually for [each of] two years to solve the unemployment problem." He said the challenge would be "no more difficult" than the development of Iran's nuclear programme.
And his critics who say the Government has not even created the 1.6 million new positions it claims, let alone five million new jobs? "When a revolutionary measure is to be taken, some people here and there express pessimistic views that nothing can be done. But I emphasize that creating 2.5 million jobs is not impossible for the Iranian nation."
Whoever takes the time to peer closely at the space enclosed within those bars [of our lives] can see that our country has been altered in fundamental ways. When President Barack Obama in his elegant address accepting the Nobel Peace Prize declares to the world that he has “prohibited torture,” we should pause in our pride to notice that torture violates international and domestic law and that the notion that our new president has the power to prohibit it follows insidiously from the pretense that his predecessor had the power to order it—that during the state of exception, not only because of what President George W. Bush decided to do but also because of what President Obama is every day deciding not to do (not to “look back” but “look forward”), torture in America has metamorphosed. Before the War on Terror, official torture was illegal and anathema; today it is a policy choice.
Friday, September 16, 2011 at 8:37
I will be in meetings in London today for the Journal of American Studies. While I am away, updates on the LiveBlogs --- especially for Iran --- may be limited, although you will be in the safe hands of James Miller from this afternoon for developments in the Middle East and North Africa.
