Code Pink Hearts Iran’s Mullahs
They schmoozed in Tehran as the regime was executing its enemies.
On Wednesday, November 26, a 39-year-old woman, Fatemeh Haqiqat-Pajouh, was hanged, together with nine male prisoners, in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison. In 2001, Fatemeh had killed her husband while he was attempting to rape Fatemeh’s then-14-year-old daughter, Zahra, born from a previous marriage. She was given a stay of execution twice in the past by Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the head of the Islamic judicial authority of Iran. Twice she was returned to her cell from the gallows in light of public and international protest.
Mr. Khorram-Shahi, a human rights lawyer who represented Fatemeh and her family, stated in an exclusive phone interview that though Shahroudi’s office is to notify prisoners’ lawyers 48 hours prior to execution, in this case it did not do so. The night before the execution, Fatemeh’s cellmate, Akhtar Mohammadi, contacted Mr. Khorram-Shahi to ask whether Fatemeh had a court date the following day as she had been taken from her cell at Rejaii-Shahr prison and transferred to Evin.
Khorram-Shahi then contacted the head of the Bureau of the Enforcement of Sentences, who was unyielding and vehement about carrying out the sentence. That Wednesday her body was given to the family for burial.
According to Amnesty International, Iran, with 317 recorded executions, was second only to China in the number of executions carried out in 2007; it is important to note that many executions go unrecorded in remote, rural towns across the country, without any involvement from the human rights organizations which rely on locals to report on imprisonments and death sentences. China, whose population is 18 times greater than Iran, executed 470 individuals last year. On a per capita basis, then, Iran is by far the number one country in the world to administer death sentences to its citizens.
A few days before Fatemeh’s execution, Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, two wealthy American women and co-founders of Code Pink, arrived in Tehran on a “citizen diplomacy” trip. Well known for their radical stances and for their continued disruption of political events like the Hillary Clinton event where they protested by exposing their nude upper torso — or as they call it, “breasts for bombs” — until escorted to the exit by security, and the Republican Convention, where they were able to sneak inside the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul using stolen credentials to disrupt Palin and McCain’s acceptance speeches, Benjamin and Evans took their narcissistic roadshow to Iran.
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Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a native of Iran, is an activist and writer. Elio Bonazzi is an Italian-born political scientist. Husband and wife, they are based in New York.
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39 Comments
1. Tony R:“On the other hand, if he does not dance to the tune played by these women at best he will have to face their never-ending rounds of embarrassing public rampages….”
But that is all these clowns are…..an embarrassment to the US. I suspect Obama can cope with a little embarrassment when the alternative is to give these privilaged idiots any sort of political legitimacy.
Only the members themselves and some sections of the media take Code Pink seriously. To everyone else they are a laughing stock.
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:17 am 2. Nick G:I’ve seen videos of these women just walking around the lobbies of various DC conservative think-tanks hasseling people and chanting “Give Peace a Chance” ad nasuem until they pass out from exhaustion.
Don’t they have jobs? Or lives? What is it that they actually do? I can’t figure them out. They’re the weirdest bunch of protestors, that’s for sure.
As for the execution, horrible… absolutely horrible. Is the Mohammadi prisoner you speak of related in any way to the late Akbar Mohammadi?
Dec 23, 2008 - 2:47 am 3. Craig:“Well known for their radical stances and for their continued disruption of political events like the Hillary Clinton event where they protested by exposing their nude upper torso — or as they call it, “breasts for bombs”…”
Somehow I don’t think they would’ve gotten away with
Dec 23, 2008 - 4:23 am 4. Gail S:“breasts for bombs’ in Teheran. That’s just a guess on my part. Hmmm…maybe “Mammaries for Mohammed”…kind of catchy…that might work.
If Iran is so wonderful, why don’t they just stay there? I’m sure they would be very welcome.
Best regards,
Dec 23, 2008 - 6:33 am 5. captcouv:Gail S
Wait, wait, wait! Look at that picture! They can bare their breasts at home, but dare not bare their hair in Iran? Explain to me their courage and support for women’s rights again?
Dec 23, 2008 - 7:30 am 6. ~Paules:The endgame for this group is easy to predict if you consider what happened to Cindy Sheehan after she became a nuisance to the Democrats. She was ignored and shunned by the media once the “useful” was removed from the “idiot.” Code Pink will get the same treatment if they ever have the temerity to turn on Obama. They will be marginalized in a heartbeat and reduced to obscurity. The End.
Dec 23, 2008 - 7:39 am 7. Pat J:If Code Pink is such an advocate for peace and human rights where’s the protest over Iran’s executions. Where’s Code Pink’s outrage over the execution of Fatemeh for what many would consider justifyable homicide?
Dec 23, 2008 - 7:41 am 8. Michelle:What a wonderful mother. To stand up for her daughter in this horrible country. Oh if only there were more women that did this. In Greece ( I think) women refused to have sex with their husbands until they fixed the water system. I realize that Muslim countries make their women feel inferior for a reason, so their men can feel better, but a society that elevates one over another will suffer the consequence.
Dec 23, 2008 - 7:49 am 9. Omar:I suspect that Paules is correct. Now that CP is a liability, they will be disappeared by the media and commentariat sympathetic to the new administration. Frankly they’ve seem to be a deliberate throw-back to the early 70’s – same slogans, gonzo behavior and tactics. More of a novelty than a legitimate political organization.
Dec 23, 2008 - 8:09 am 10. Sohrab:Bonafsheh and Elio,
Thank you for raising awareness of this. As an Iranian-American who’s seen the suffering of the Iranian people at the hands of the Islamic Republic, I am disgusted by Code Pink’s act of so-called “citizen diplomacy.” So-called because the recipient of their diplomatic overture is not the Iranian nation, but rather its monstrous torturers and executioners.
Regardless of their intentions, these naive women — who know nothing of the daily humiliation inflicted on Iranian women by the regime’s “revolutionary guards” and vigilante thugs — have played into the IRI’s international PR strategy by making this silly trip. In other words, they have openly aligned themselves with the oppressors of the Iranian people. Shame on Code Pink!
Sohrab
Dec 23, 2008 - 8:34 am 11. Banafsheh:http://www.iranianfreedom.wordpress.com
Hi Sohrab,
Dec 23, 2008 - 8:50 am 12. Chris Jones:I beg to differ; the ladies of Code Pink know FULL WELL what exactly goes on in Iran and they simply do not care because their first and foremost objective is to coalesce with ANY and EVERY government/dictator who hates the U.S. It’s insane but true. They are people, who like Stalin have no interest on human rights issues otherwise they would have bothered to listen to the hundreds of Iranians who have continued to contact them over the years to explain. In this case ideology is WAY more important that humanity.
I keep hoping those two bitches are gonna get locked up in Iran. I’ll keep praying.
Dec 23, 2008 - 8:54 am 13. Sohrab:Banafsheh,
I wonder, wonder what would happen to these women if they were to expose themselves in the presence of, say, Khamenei to call for “boobs, not bombs!” as they did during the Hillary event? Would His Eminence be as forgiving?
Sohrab
Dec 23, 2008 - 9:02 am 14. Banafsheh:http://www.iranianfreedom.wordpress.com
Hee hee…well Sohrab jaan…see, you have answered your own question
They know full well what the consequences are. We’ve pointed out in the article that Jodi Evans wrote in her travel diary entries that “they have to behave”! Now if that isn’t proof, I don’t know what is : )
Dec 23, 2008 - 10:04 am 15. Jay:They are phonies. Like Obama, they have been funded by parasites and thieves in order to try and change public opinion. I can’t believe they donated money to Ron Paul but anything can happen in politics and most of it doesn’t make any sense. I guess they are under the misguided misconception that because thier husbands have money they must be intelligent people and should be taken seriously.
Dec 23, 2008 - 11:29 am 16. Tonto (USA):Gee whiz! Living proof that stupidity is unisex! Maybe they can get together with the mullahs and come up with a “program”.
Dec 23, 2008 - 12:48 pm 17. J:Hitler was laughed at too at first
Dont underestimate these modern day Jane Fondas who have way more clout than JF did and way way way more money
The left wing has America and believes when they finally topple the powers that made this country great, Obamas a good start for them, that they will be given power on top of power
AND YA KNOW WHAT??
THEY MIGHT BE RIGHT
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:04 pm 18. DavidN:I’ve always suspected that silly far-left loonies like this, in their heads, always assume they’ll be exempt from whatever they’re advocating for the rest of us. I agree that they’re just mindlessly anti-American, to the point that they speak respectfully of a society which overtly discriminates against women pretty profoundly. I’m pretty sure, however, that they imagine that if America were ever to surrender to the Iranian theocrats, there would be a little enclave on Long Island for them and their kind, where they could relax and let their hair down…the rest of us wouldn’t be invited, of course, because we didn’t understand the brilliance of their opinions vis a vis the Bush administration.
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:09 pm 19. Tim:The only thing these attention whores understand is whoring. Hopefully they’ll choke on something and die. Maybe a mullahs cock?
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:44 pm 20. Anonymous:These people are sick freaks, just like The Women in Black are in Israel. Terrorist-loving, athiest, commies. Let them move to a 3rd world cesspool and disappear forever.
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:50 pm 21. Laura:These people are sick freaks, much like The Women in Black are in Israel. Terrorist-loving, athiest Commies. Let them all move to a 3rd world cesspool and disappear forever.
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:52 pm 22. v for victory:Boutique liberals being used by the mullahs, oblivious to the lives that are lost. Code Pink can go back to Cuba. BAH
Dec 23, 2008 - 1:52 pm 23. fred:Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin lack something that Fatemeh Haqiqat-Pajouh has lots of: real courage and a true sense of morality.
Code Pink’s act is tiring. Moreover, they display a shocking lack of knowledge about Islam. I remember reading a story about the Code Pink ladies some years ago: they had staged a demonstration INSIDE Israel against the Jewish State’s defense of itself against the Paleosimian savages. The Code Pink ladies – the entire group of them – were walking their demonstration topless. Breathtakingly stupid, when one considers the fact that had they done this in the Paleosimian territories these ladies would have been stoned to death.
I experience a sense of weariness when I contemplate what this kind of decadence means about our country and the West: we are in a profound spiritual and moral crisis that lays us open to the gradual encirclement by the 7th century savages.
Dec 23, 2008 - 2:14 pm 24. RF:If you build a paradise on earth, the goats will come…straight into ‘Dhimmitude’.
Dec 23, 2008 - 3:14 pm 25. blogengeezer:Watching history as it’s ‘leftist fornicators’ first disarmed it’s patriots, then took prosperous, conservative, self sufficient RHODESIA to it’s knees. They then forced it’s subjects faces into the blood and excrement soaked mud of it’s nation while methodically slaughtering the resistors. Now known as Utopian.. ZIMBABWE. Easily accomplished with the full approval of the world (read USA) media. I can only shudder to think what these Code Pink ‘Temple Prostitutes’ are capable of. Once again with the full condolences of the leftist liberal ‘Media’. History will repeat itself for those that do not know their history.
Dec 23, 2008 - 6:00 pm 26. Donna V.:Sohrab: The writer P.J. O’Rourke said once it is difficult to explain loony left-wing activists to reasonable and intelligent people who have never seen any before.
The great Achilles heel of Western democracy and capitalism is not really corrupt pols and businessmen – every system and age produces crooks, although we’re sure getting a bumper crop this year. It’s that our system inevitably seems to issue forth people who devote themselves to undermining the system which has given them privilege, freedom and comfort beyond the imaginings of the great mass of human beings. Another poster is right – it’s not about the Iranians, just as the Vietnam protests were not about the Vietnamese, no matter what Jane Fonda said. The Vietnamese were forgotten by the left when the draft ended. It’s about tearing down this country . Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, the old Soviet Union – in the American Left’s eyes, those countries and their people are just backdrops and stage scenery. They act out of hatred of their own country, not out of love for others.
Dec 23, 2008 - 6:03 pm 27. winston:Code Pinkies are bunch of disgusting clueless idiots whom I want to see jailed or shot to death in Iran by the very regime they LOVE. Down with Mullahs and Codepinkers.
Dec 23, 2008 - 6:34 pm 28. Angry White Dude:These idiotic tools of the unwashed left are so representative of how liberals feel about the US. There is no dictator too vicious to stop them from saddling up to him just to show how bad they hate Bush…and in essence the USA.
I loathe these women.
Angry White Dude
Dec 23, 2008 - 9:04 pm 29. AZgirl:“Obama’s position is not an enviable one when it comes to having to deal with the Code Pink pest; in accepting these frivolous women’s bundles of campaign contributions and by offering to hold direct and unconditional dialogue with the mullahs, he has put himself in the position of having to deliver.”
The only people who have yet to understand that Obama doesn’t have to deliver on his promises are the people who helped him into office.
Everyone else already understood from the beginning what a back-stabbing liar he is. Amazingly enough, they will be surprised when they or their cause gets thrown under the bus.
It’s getting pretty crowded under that bus.
Dec 23, 2008 - 10:42 pm 30. Banafsheh:Dear AZ Girl,
I agree with what you’re saying but let’s face it…the arrogant pseudo-liberals which the Code Stink belong to and especially those of them who have the dough will demand that he deliver and if he doesn’t for whatever reason, WILL do everything they can to make life as difficult as they can. And you are 1000% right that it is getting crowded under that bus (by the way, I like how you’ve put that) but anyone who was delusional enough to think that under Obama it would not, in fact, be business as usual on Capitol Hill…deserve to live in a fool’s paradise! : )
Dec 24, 2008 - 7:53 am 31. ster:Was it Stalin that called these people “Useful Idiots”?
Useful Idiots for sure.
Dec 24, 2008 - 9:18 am 32. Claude:Why are they so blind?
Go and sign petition “Ban the Quran” on Faithfreedom.org http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?banquran
Dec 24, 2008 - 11:36 am 33. Mike:These people are not idiots and not stupid, their lives are driven by raw unadulterated hate, especially for Jews. These people are turned inside out by hate. They are not atheists either but in fact are New Agers according to many sources. One of the leading members of Code Pink is “Starhawk”, a practicing Wiccan. Interestingly enough Medea Benjamin was born Jewish. Her chosen first name should say a lot about her personality. Their work has nothing to do with peace or justice and everything to do with killing Jews. You would think one Holocaust was enough! Enough said by me anyway. God will judge all the Earth.
Dec 24, 2008 - 5:05 pm 34. Sohrab:———————————————-
You liberals need to pay lots of taxes cause someone needs to pay for all the free stuff Obama promised me!
ster,
I’ve always thought that term (”useful idiots”) is overused. In this case though, it fits perfectly!
Sohrab
Dec 24, 2008 - 6:03 pm 35. Rubicon:http://www.iranianfreedom.wordpress.com
How is it that we have people in this country who so hate America & what she stands for, that they would attack her at both ends? How is it these people would attack America on issues like economic polices that made them rich, but ignore, overlook, or even excuse policies of other nations that oppress their own?
Dec 24, 2008 - 7:06 pm 36. marymcl:America also executes its criminals. However, at least we go the ultra extra mile in most cases to seek out the truth as best we can. We are not always successful as recent commutations have shown. Still, at least we look for the reasons why we should not execute or even incarcerate someone. No matter how often idiots on the left spew this, self defense is NOT a crime.
The real irony in the report from these women is their comments about their head scarf’s. Imagine their response if they were forced to wear a head scarf here in America, just because they are women. Reminds one of the oppressive & prejudicial Nazi tactic of requiring the Star of David be secured to the clothing of Jews doesn’t it?
Jodi Benjamin actually wrote to people saying “She (Benjamin) is so eager to please her hosts that she thinks she will be able to keep her scarf on much more than the last trip,” as, she admits, “we are all on our best behavior.” Imagine how the Mullahs would react to the Code Pink radical interruption’s of events, such as those they imposed on even America’s capital during Congressional hearings? Methinks the Mullahs would use buried to the chin stoning’s rather than hanging since the religious court’s rulings would determine these women deserved no respect.
Hating the very nation that made their comfortable lives possible is as insane as it gets. They cannot be marginalized soon enough for the sake of all Americans! Remember, these folks endorse any & all of the far left radical political, economic, and social solutions that many politicians who benefited from their money endorse! Yet people voted for such nonsense!
A story like this is just infuriating. What idiots.
“we are all on our best behavior”
It’s hard to imagine a more self-serving (and yes, revolting) piece of hypocrisy. This criminally stupid woman actually seems to think she’s making a bold stand of some kind – putting the *cow* in cowardice is more like it.
Dec 25, 2008 - 3:49 am 37. Michael Lonie:Does anybody think that Fatemah would have been convicted by a Texas jury? I think she’d have got off in most American jurisdictions, if the facts about her case are as represented. I doubt if any of us knuckle-dragging rednecks whom the liberal elites so despise would convict a woman of murder for defending her daughter against rape. Justifiable homicide, at worst manslaughter, would be the verdict.
Leftists, and many liberals in the contemporary sense of the word, are ga-ga over totalitarian tyranny, and would like to practice it in America. That’s why they have teenage crushes on Castro and Che Guevara. They see the Mullahs and simialr Islamist jihadists as allies in bringing down the evil, capitalist America. This was exemplified when Carlos the Jackal, that old Commie terrorist, converted to Islam in prison during the 1990s. He gave as his reason for conversion (this olde tyme atheist) that only Islam was left capable of destroying America and capitalism.
Reactionary twits, every one of them, but helping to forward the latest version of totalitariansism, however small their individual contributions may be.
Dec 25, 2008 - 1:13 pm 38. AndrewD:Maybe if we asked really nicely the Iranians would take these two hostage and use them as human shields at their nuclear reprocessing plant. Hey, a guy can dream can’t he? Bombs for boobs – I like it…
Dec 25, 2008 - 11:59 pm 39. SpideyTerry:Hmm, I’m getting the feeling Code Pink is full of terrorist-supporting, anti-American pinheads. Oh, wait, that’s been a given since… uh, what year was Code Pink founded again?
Dec 28, 2008 - 1:27 am