The Latest from Iran (1 October): Can the "Resistance Economy" Continue to Resist?

See also Iran Snap Analysis: Watching The Currency Crisis
The Latest from Iran (30 September): "The West Is In Economic Crisis"

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2045 GMT: Currency Watch. ILNA reports that students have protested in front of Parliament because the banks are not giving them subsidised currency for study abroad.

2035 GMT: Press Watch. The daily newspaper Maghreb has been raided and its managing editor Mehdi Emami Naseri summoned by the judiciary.

Some reports say the editor was arrested. There is confusion over the cause. Some reports say it was the publication of a photo of former President Mohammad Khatami; others say it was a picture of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.

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The Latest from Iran (5 February): The Coup Within --- The Sequel

See also Iran Opinion: Why Do Thousands of Women Want to Be Ninjas?
The Latest from Iran (4 February): Missing the Story on the Supreme Leader

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Rezaei, Qalibaf, Larijani2225 GMT: Security Watch. Writer and human rights activist Yousef Azizi Banitaraf has said Iranian security forces have arrested 50 people over the past two weeks in Arab neighbourhoods in the southwestern province of Khuseztan.

Banitaraf claimed two of the detainees, Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan and Mohammad Kaabi, were killed while in custody. The arrests, which have taken place in Shoosh, Ahwaz, and Hamidieh, were apparently prompted by youth writing slogans on public walls, calling for a boycott of March's Parliamentary elections.

"The security forces are telling elders of the tribes in the region to bring people to the voting booths, and the young people are opposed to this," Banitaraf said.

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Iran Feature: Activism and Human Rights --- The Story of Fati Masjedi (Bijnen)

Much has been said and written about Iran's hundreds of political prisoners. Some are well-known, others not at all. There are also hundreds if not thousands of ordinary Iranians who live in permanent fear for their future, who have been summoned to court, who have been briefly arrested and then released on bail. Their computers, documents with their life'swork and family stories have been taken away. They are waiting anxiously for another call to present themselves to a court and a judge that can ruin their lives forever. In the meantime they live in limbo and are slowly getting desperate.

Thinking of Qom, I see seminaries, women clad in black chadors, Grand Ayatollahs, pilgrims, shrines, and mosques. The city breathes holiness and piety.

In this holy city lives a brave human rights defender, an ordinary young woman called Fatemeh ("call me Fati") Masjedi with whom I happened to get in touch recently. And she told me her own story.

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