The Last Bus to Tehran

Here's a Nick Cohen piece about oppression in Tehran. It's an old article that came out around the time of the Danish Cartoon riots. However it's an interesting look at another news story that got lost in the media storm. I've cut and pasted some highlights but it's worth following the link and reading it in full.

The Last Bus To Tehran

'For three weeks, there have been demonstrations across the planet about a great injustice done to Muslims. After baton-wielding cops inflicted dozens of injuries, the fear of death is in the air. George W Bush’s State Department has warned of ’systematic oppression’, while secularists and fundamentalists have revealed their mutually incompatible values. Since you ask, I am not talking about the global menace of Scandinavian cartoonists that has so terrified our fearless free press, but mass arrests in Iran.'

'Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US State Department and British Foreign Office have all protested. Trade unions, Iranian exiles and gay groups have demonstrated. Yet the media have barely noticed. The failure is due in part to my trade’s perennial inability to walk and chew gum at the same time: we consider stories one by one and today’s story is Muslim anger with cartoonists.'

'I’m not saying it isn’t newsworthy, but you shouldn’t forget that it was manufactured by hard-line Danish imams who hawked the cartoons round the Muslim world for four months (and, somewhat blasphemously, added obscene drawings of their own). The religious right and Syrian Baathists welcomed them and proved yet again that they need to incite frenzies to legitimise arbitrary power.'