Iran Opposition Leader Mehdi Karoubi Escapes Mob Bullets After Mourning Victims
TIMES ONLINE: Iran’s most outspoken opposition leader has had a narrow escape after his car was hit by bullets as he fled from a mob of government supporters.

Mehdi Karroubi’s armoured car was hit at least twice as it pulled away from the angry crowd, breaking the front and back windows. Mr Karroubi was unhurt.

The shooting was an ominous development in the seven months of internal strife that have engulfed Iran since the hotly disputed presidential election in June that handed victory to President Ahmadinejad.

Mr Karroubi, 72, has been attacked with bricks and teargas before but never with bullets, and in recent days the regime has sharply increased its efforts to crush a resurgent opposition. It has fired on demonstrators and staged rallies that have demanded the execution of Mr Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the other leader of the so-called Green Movement. >>> Martin Fletcher | Friday, January 08, 2010

Iran Dissidents Risk Lives to Escape Regime
THE TELEGRAPH: When she saw the browbeaten features of her younger sister confessing at a show trial on state television, Sepideh Pouraghaie knew she had to flee Iran.

With her passport confiscated by the authorities for political reasons, the quick route out of the country - a flight from Tehran's gleaming new international airport - was impossible.

Instead, she was forced to gamble on a perilous mountain escape to the comparative safety of northern Iraq, escorted by Kurdish guerrillas on horseback.

The rocky byways of the Kurdish mountains that straddle Iran and Iraq have long been used by smugglers, bandits and separatists to evade the watchful eyes of state authority. But over the past four months, the smuggling gangs' regular trade in Afghan opium and bootleg alcohol has expanded to include a steady trickle of Iranian dissidents and journalists desperate to escape a brutal crackdown.

Accompanied by Kurdish tribesmen in traditional baggy trousers and bright floral cummerbunds, would-be escapees are led along secret pathways at the dead of night, negotiating terrain that is as hazardous as it is beautiful.

Sometimes they are forced to skirt the concrete machine gun emplacements of Iranian border guards, at others they have to wade across freezing mountain streams or negotiate sheer precipices. In perhaps the most ingenious smugglers' trick, one fleeing Iranian recently crawled across the border hidden in a flock of sheep, mimicking the manner in which the Greek mythical figure Odysseus escaped from the Cyclops' cave.

Those who have made the hazardous journey include opposition activists, human rights campaigners and reporters, who have been fleeing Iran in such numbers that the press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders has described it as the biggest exodus of journalists since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Hundreds more are believed to have lost their jobs - some for holding the wrong opinions, some because their newspapers were shut down by authorities. >>> Angus McDowall | Sunday, November 08, 2009

German Charity Helps Turkish Women Escape Forced Marriages
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The German charity Hatun and Can, set up in memory of "honor killing" victim Hatun Sürücü, helps Turkish women who are in danger of becoming victims of violence. Two women who fled forced marriages tell their stories.

Aylin (not her real name) had just turned 15 when her parents decided she should get married. She had finished her secondary school education and was studying nursing at a vocational school. Of course, she was still living with her parents, in a small town in the German state of Hesse.

A potential husband was soon found, M. from Frankfurt. He had studied business administration and was 13 years older than Aylin. “My parents met him at a relative’s wedding,” she recalls.

Aylin’s parents, who were both born in Turkey in 1954 but grew up in Germany, never bothered to ask if their daughter agreed with their choice. “I was engaged,” she says. “Or rather, I was sold.”

The fiancé’s parents paid Aylin’s parents €17,000 ($26,750) in cash and additionally gave them jewelry worth around €20,000. “Then we all went shopping in Turkey -- his mother, my mother, him and me.” She needed a wedding dress, he[,] a dark suit.

Four hundred guests came to the engagement celebration at Aylin’s parents’ house. Shortly beforehand, Aylin and her fiancé had come into closer contact for the first time. “He hit me in the face when I told him I didn’t like him,” she says. Nevertheless, the engagement proceeded as planned. “Then life in hell began.” German Charity Helps Turkish Women Escape Forced Marriages >>> By Henryk M. Broder | April 24, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)