New protest statement builds in Iran -- men in head scarves
CNN
14-Dec-2009

A new anti-government movement has sprung up among protesters in Iran -- and now among their supporters in other countries -- with men posting pictures of themselves on the Internet wearing women's head scarves as a political statement.

The movement began in recent days as an online backlash after the arrest of one anti-government protester, Majid Tavakoli. The day after his arrest, an Iranian news agency published a picture of Tavakoli dressed in a chador, a black head-to-toe garment worn by Iranian women.

The government claimed the man had been caught wearing the garment in an attempt to hide himself and avoid arrest, but opposition bloggers insisted that the photo published by the semi-official Fars news agency had been manipulated.

Within hours of the Fars report on the arrest of the 22-year-old protester, men both inside and outside Iran responded using a what appears to be a new tactic for the opposition -- they began posting pictures of themselves online wearing head coverings that are mandated for women in the Islamic republic.

Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies at New York's Columbia University, told CNN Sunday that the pictures are an attempt at causing the Iranian government's tactics to "humiliate, intimidate or stifle this movement" to backfire.

"They (Iranian government officials) use a standard cli... >>>

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