• I am very impressed by what you've set out to achieve and how you've come about it. Much of my work these days is in vaccination and I work hard to break down the myths and false beliefs people have about vaccines. I find listening to concerns, empathy and responding with good evidence based information has been the most successful manner I've had so far. I also reassure parents that it is always their choice, but I also share that I am a mum too and that I choose to vaccinate my child fully. And funnily enough that's usually the clincher. Respect, good information and empathy can go a long way. I really hope that many people watch your documentary and help absolve the many concerns and myths surrounding vaccination that are out there. You must be proud of your work :) - The Huntress
  • Not everyone has access too or any interest in the internet, you cannot drive a tractor and watch the internet but you can listen to radio, you cannot drive a car and watch the internet but you can listen to radio, you cannot wash the dishes, the clothes, yourself and watch the internet but you can listen to the radio, you can also lie in bed with Phillip Adams, half my University of the Third Age students go to bed with Phillip. Australia's best journalists were trained by the ABC. What I don't understand Gee is your palpable hatred, how can you be so angry all the time, just relax and learn that we are all different and some of us prefer the quiet nature of the ABC compared with the ranting and rage of radio shock jocks and commercial TV. Your phrase 'slash and burn' is shocking to me, no one I know hates anything, no one I know wants to destroy things or institutions, not even the IPA, why such violence of language? - sue Bell
  • [...] Science says vaccinate! [...] - LET'S TALK (NOT SHOUT) VACCINATION
  • Thankyou Emma for your good work and humanistic attitude towards others. I could not do your job and be nice to others at the same time, i'v e realized. The other ABC journo's et al should be taking notes.......all the best in your career! - louise
  • Why censor the pictures, Ro? Don't call them "young men" either. They are "vicious animals" as their act so clearly evidences. They are not human at all. Are you saying it is "justifiable" for ethnic Nigerians, who have never been to either Afghanistan or Iraq but grew up on the teat of the British Welfare State, to run down and then Halal butcher a complete stranger walking along the street and minding his own business? How can you possibly draw any connection between what happened in London and the alleged mistreatment of Aborigines in Australia? What a fine example of the "straw man" argument! Do you think NATO and other allies were "unjustified" in invading Afghanistan and liberating it from the Taliban? That same Taliban that banned girls going to school; regularly indulge in female genital mutilation and the sodomising of "dancing boys"; blew up ancient Buddhist monuments; regularly carried out executions by stoning and beheading as half-time entertainment at football matches in Kabul and Kandahar; undertook ethnic cleansing against Hazara muslims; banned music and dancing on pain of death; and provided a base for the racist extremists of Al Qaeda to operate completely unfettered? Do you think it was wrong to overthrow Saddam Hussein who had used poisonous gas on the Kurds of Iraq? Whose two mongrel sons crawled the streets of Baghdad looking for women to rape; who executed his own son-in-law after promising "forgiveness' if he returned from exile; who gained power in a coup and then personally executed scores of his own "party"? The problems in Iraq today have nothing to do with Saddam's overthrow and everything to do with the seething sectarian and ethnic hatreds that have plagued Mesopotamia since the Babylonian Empire. Why didn't those two vicious animals condemn the latest round of sunni-shia bombings and murders in Iraq? If muslim women are subjected to the regular sight of dismembered bodies, those bodies were provided by other muslims. Why is it that only this week we saw Syrian women asking Bob Carr why it is that the USA and the non-Islamic world is not interfering in their current civil war? The war is yet another essentially religious/sectarian conflict between a Sunni majority and an Alawi-Shia minority. Why should any young Americans, Britons or Australians risk their lives for these benighted, backward bastards who regularly tell us how much they hate us? Have you forgotten the spontaneous eruption of glee and happiness that occurred in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the "Islamic world" when the 9/11 attack was carried out? It seems to me that you, like so many others, have forgotten the lessons of the period from 1919-1939. Appeasement never works. Trying to trivialise this disgraceful crime; saying that ...well, maybe, it was Britain's fault and maybe if Britain hadn't been and Imperial power 200 years ago and ... really, when you look at that and what happened to the Aborigines here, maybe they were justified in running over a total stranger, who'd done nothing to them or any of their family or relatives, and then hacking off his head with a meat cleaver. The white-washing, the diminution, the trivialising, the justifying has already started in media and the blogosphere. The appeasers and the white-hating racists are already talking this whole thing around so that in a few weeks they'll be wanting to give these two mongrels a medal and have them treated as Prisoners of War. I am so glad the British cops didn't shoot them dead. I want them to suffer in HM Prison System for the rest of their lives. But, knowing the way the British EHRC led by that treacherous hater, Trevor Phillips, operate, they'll probably be named and shamed and given 20 hours community service. - Jack Richards
  • Anyway. So long Latin. I know there will be people close to Hazel who will be feeling sad and confused today. Sad for who she was and confused because she is perhaps better off dead now. And then there is everyone else who were touched by Hazel's contribution to our lives. Thank you Hazel and her supporters. - ro.watson
  • Always thought that Hazel H. was too much in the background type of PM's wife.From the information revealed recently about her I've realised how essential and important she was to Australia. This deception was probably due to the limelight on her ex-husband/PM Bob .He might have been successful politically but how he maintained the persona of god's gift to women for so long, baffles me. He is just another ugly aussie male. He should show more atonement towards such an admiring woman as Hazel. Condolences to her children and their families. - louise
  • Perhaps I am projecting, but there really is something very special about the relationship between a regular cartoonist's work and their readers. A sort of mutual getting to know you abandon. - ro.watson
  • Ordinary folk, extraordinary soul. You'll be remembered Hazel Hawke, for the wonderfully decent, down to earth, inclusive woman you were. You connected with your heart and were justly admired. RIP - gogirl
  • What is that expression? Make hay while the sun is shining? Anyway, many Australian stories which belong to the lives of people and animals have remained submerged for many years until journalists within programs like Four Corners bring them to light. Some of us have been privileged enough (eg through our professions) to carry around these stories for several years and done our best to bring such stories to mainstream attention when it is clear there is some emblematic or systematic pattern emerging of eg suffering here in Australia. These stories and lives are not hard to find. - ro.watson
 
2
Categories:  News and Opinion

HOSTAGE TO HER BELIEFS

By Diana Plater
January 10, 2012

I read recently that the daughter of Iran’s former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, had been sentenced to six months in prison for spreading “propaganda against the Islamic system”.

The sentencing of Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former member of parliament turned political activist, was the latest move to stamp out potential dissent ahead of elections in March, the report said.

I remember meeting Ms Hashemi in 2000 several months before the Sydney Olympics. She and a colleague were sitting at the back of the audience of an international sports and human rights conference held in Bondi.

They stood out there because they were covered from head to foot in black chadors.

I waited that whole day to interview her for WIN (Women’s International Net Magazine), for whom I was Australian correspondent, believing she would have an interesting story to tell.

At the time she was the member for Parliament for Tehran, having received 800,000 votes in 1996. She had also founded the women’s newspaper, Zan.

“(My father’s) fame and also his name somehow was influential,” Ms Hashemi told me at the time. “(But) I personally was well known because of my previous social activities, especially for focussing on women’s issues, youth, and also on sport. Most people know me well from this.”

She was then the Vice Chairperson of the Iranian National Olympic Committee and Chairperson of the Council for Female Sports of the Islamic Countries and during our interview I learnt she had spent many years pushing for Muslim women to become more involved in sport, both in her native Iran and outside.

She was here in Sydney partly to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) organisers to allow Islamic dress during competition, in order to pave the way for Muslim women’s participation in the 2000 Olympics.

She believed the role of sport in Muslim women’s lives was not just a matter of personal choice but a fundamental human right.

And for this reason she had been lobbying the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to respect the dress codes of Islamic society.

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2 Responses to this article

  1. gardnerm January 10, 2012 Reply
     
     

    I feel so ignorant when I read pieces like this, I personally don’t watch the Olympics or many other sports, so perhaps this is why it has never come to my attenention that women from Iran do not compete, but every one should have the right to compete in a sport if the have the talent, probably not in beach volley ball though.

     

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Comments

  • The Huntress: I am very impressed by what you've set out to achieve and how you've come about it. Much of my work these days is in vac...

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  • sue Bell: Not everyone has access too or any interest in the internet, you cannot drive a tractor and watch the internet but you c...

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  • louise: Thankyou Emma for your good work and humanistic attitude towards others. I could not do your job and be nice to others a...

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  • Jack Richards: Why censor the pictures, Ro? Don't call them "young men" either. They are "vicious animals" as their act so clearly e...

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