[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

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Kurdish women’s rights activist arrested in Iran

Thu. 4 Aug 2005

Iran Focus
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3160

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 04 – A prominent women’s rights activist in Iranian Kurdistan was arrested during a gathering organised in protest against the murder of a young Kurd by Iran’s State Security Forces, a Persian-language website reported.

The website Rooz reported that Roya Toloui, the editor of Rassan, a monthly based in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, was arrested after being summoned by the intelligence unit of the SSF on several occasions in the past few months on charges of “disturbing the peace” and “acting against national security”. She had also been accused of “inciting ethnic division”.

Toloui’s monthly Rassan had so far published three issues all of which mainly discussed the plight of female Kurds in Iran.

Born in 1966, Toloui holds a postgraduate degree in practical science and, with her husband, owns a medical laboratory in Sanandaj. She is a founding member of the Association of Kurdish Women in Favour of Peace in Kurdistan. She has a daughter and a son.

On several occasions, the authorities had warned Toloui not to carry out interviews with foreign radio stations.

Iran’s restive Kurdish population have been the victims of systematic oppression by the Iran’s clerical leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.