The sight of children too young to be working, is sadly too familiar on the streets of Iran. Selling flowers and washing car windscreens at traffic lights are frankly the less disturbing of chores bestowed upon them. (View everyday scenes in Yunes...
State media in China and Iran have both offered their two cents in response to the riots that have swept the UK over the past three days. A commentator at Communist Party mouthpiece, People's Daily, opined that this sort of chaos is precisely the...
The theme of clothing and preoccupation with exterior representation continues to dominate every day Iranian existence. We've seen the sustained crackdown on individual expression for Iranian citizens extending to hairstyle and dyeing, eyebrow...
Earlier this week I was working with the ballet maestro Jean-Pascal Cabardos, who trained Billy for Billy Elliot. Not that Little Black Fish has been dancing en pointe (we were working on texts), though I have indulged in the ballet craze that has...
I've been reflecting over the last ten days on FIFA's ban on the participation of Iran's women's football team in the Olympic games qualifiers, for failing to observe international football dress codes --- Iran's Islamic strip included a...
Eight years ago my colleagues and I set out to see what school life was like for 11-13 year olds around the world. I went to Iran, and spent several days with girls at a Tehran school. The building was a large house, once home to a wealthy Iranian...
You may have seen Superman in action, flying in to join Iranian protesters on the streets of Tehran in the current 900th anniversary issue of Action Comics, its already being reprinted. Disappointingly, the superhero doesn't achieve much in...
I’ve just finished reading a piece on Global Voices about the controversial issue of owning a dog in Iran. With so many more fundamental freedoms curbed, you’d be forgiven for laughing this off. Last year an Iranian cleric issued a fatwa against...
Iranian workers are denied the basic right of assembly but each year they valiantly mark May Day. Iran’s labour movement has a long and courageous history: despite the fact that workers have no right to form unions or express their grievances, many...
Nasrin Sotoudeh, 47, writer, lawyer, and women and children’s rights activist, has been awarded PEN’s Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. The award honours international literary figures who have been persecuted or imprisoned for exercising...