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Show a Ik Suit Iranians Live to Tell of Horrors 3 Take (Tribune Universal Press Syndicate The two women are wearing head scarves that cover all their in a dark suit. hair. The man is dark-eyeThey are young, but not youthful. They speak in Farsi, their escort interprets. They have come to tell about life in the hell of postrevolutionary Iran, which has gone from the dark night of the shah to the dark ages of WASHINGTON Thursday Morning Section January d 19I1G 1G, Page A Pending Utali Seal-Be- 14 Avoids Excessive Policing slate law mandating vehicle use is unavoidable, the version Utah's Legislature is pondering appears a reasonable compromise. The concept remains as offensive as it did in previous attempts at similar laws, but the method suggested is less If a scat-bel- t odious. Making it a crime to ignore restraint devices in a moving vehicle has all the earmarks of permitting authority to inch further toward too far." Its another example of a noble purpose being imposed on people by police power. An essentially free society ought to resist such chipping away at opportunities to make personal decisions. It would seem, however, the Legislature is determined to strengthen highway safety with a tougher seat-bel- t law. At least the Utah House Transportation and Public Safety Committee, in a straw vote Tuesday, gave the proposal full agreement. By most expert accounts, regular reliance on driver and passenger re- straints increases protection against death and injury during vehicle accidents. The logic is so obviously sound that people ought to use, without urging or compulsion, those straps and belts now standard equipment with vehicles sold in the United States. Yet, enough dissent exists to also support the contention that scat-bel- t use should remain purely discretionary. Some argue eloquently that a person strapped in or tethered to a vehicle set afire or hit at certain angles during a collision is actually less likely to survive. In other words, people should be left to decide how much safety they want to accord themselves, without having to wonder if theyll be stopped by a policeman on their way to the convenience store because they neglected to buckle up. The pending new Utah law does try to allay that concern. House Bill 16 defines the crime of e as a "secondary" violation. That is, citations would be issued only when failure to use restraints was revealed in conjunction with another traffic law violation, such as speeding or reckless driving. And the statute would not apply beyond the vehicle's front seat, the driver and passenger. These are sensible modifications. This relentless urge to legislate all risk out of daily life still threatens to shove excessive government into it. Compelled restraint use by vehicle occupants is another such intrusion, based on intentions. The best that can be said for the current attempt in Utah is: It could be worse. and shoulder-harnes- s non-us- high-soundin- jail-hous- e Khomeini. Law ll machete and brought it down hard I felt nothing I looked over and they were playing with an object, throwing it to each other I realized it was rny leg." She was left for dead. A passing car picked her up and took her to the hospital. Seven weeks later, still in a cast, she was taken to the notorious Evin prison. Her trial lasted 15 minutes. Her sentence They solemnly sit down They pass around a large paperbound book pointing out pictures, exclaiming to each other. It might be a high school yearbook. But its title is "List of Names and Particulars of the 10.U00 Victims of the Khomeini Regime's Executions." Their interpreter escort is Ali Safavi. local representative of the People's Mojahedin Organization, a Paris-base- d resistance group The State Department doesn't think much of it, but the politics in this case is not important. What matters are their sickening stories, and their scars. They display them They have been quite matter-of-factlthrough it several times, before the U.N. Human Rights Commission and the European Parliament, both of which have condemned Iran for human rights violations. It seems an understatement. Amnesty International puts the number of executions at 6,108. but estimates thousands more. The Mojahedin says the total is 50,000 and counts no less than 140,000 political prisoners. Mojgan Homayounsar. a math teacher, is in a wheelchair. She paused in her appalling account. She decorously lifts her skirt, pulls down a white cotton stocking to show an artificial leg. It was hacked off, Revolutionshe says, by a machete-wieldinary Guard the night she was seized in September 1981, as she was walking home "They took me to a remote area; they were going to kill me. I recognized one of the guards and called his name lie lifted his g 1 15 months in solitary. 15 years in torture Her crime distributing leaf- lets "The guards are she says "They use the torture techniques of the shah. She found five childhood friends in prison. One was blind, another deaf, a third paralyzed. She had no cast, no cane. She got about by crawling. Homayounsar was released in 1985, when she contracted tuberculosis. The Resistance smuggled her out to the West through Paki- stan. She finds a name and a picture in the book of the dead and passes it to Narges high school physical Shayesteh, a bookstore education teacher and part-tim- e chammanager. "See, this is the Ping-Ponpion of Isfahan. Shayesteh quietly tells of being arrested in Karaj. In her boukstore, she sold books critical of Khomeini. In interrogation, her nose was broken twice. She points to a scar on her lips, to knuckles beaten out of shape. g Gravely, she opens her blouse and shows a ring of livid round scars. They are cigarette burns. Her torturers wanted her to go on television, recant, support Khomeini, deny there was torture in the prisons. "They are living in an ocean of blood," she says. "Khomeini has a mullah in every prison; the mullah rapes women before the others. There is nothing more humiliating Khomeini is from the Dark Ages. He hates women." She was taken to the office one day. Her niece was there, to be tortured in a final attempt to break her down. Momentarily left alone, she seized the child and told a strange guard that she had come to see her sister, got a ride to Tehran, was sheltered for a year by the Resistance and escaped through Beluchistan into Pakistan. Apoplectic over the U.N. condemnation of Iran on Dec. 13. the speaker of the Iranian parliament fulminated against her for baring her chest "before the eyes of perverts and strangers at the U.N. She says bitterly, They took off my clothes when they did this to me." The man, Hossein Dodksah, a electrical engineering student from Isfahan, hud protested the closing of the university. He was seized on Dec. 17, 1982, taken to Evin prison, tortured before his wife and child. His feet were beaten with electric cables. He takes off his socks and shows his mangled toes. Dodksah escaped during a transfer to another prison. He fled through Pakistan. When he told his story, his wife was executed. He shows a snapshot of her and his child, whom he has not seen for 18 months. Amnesty International says that of the world's governments use torture as national policy to suppress dissent. Khomeini is different only in that he does it in God's name. one-thir- g Make King Day Official U.S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett made an especially suitable comment in connection with Martin Luther King Jr.s 57th birthday this week. The civil rights activist worked as much for the moral improvement of white people as he did for improved conditions for blacks, he told students in Atlanta, Ga. State sanction or no, select Utah groups share such sentiments and are joining the nationwide tribute to the black leader, who was assassinated in third-grad- e 1968. For the second consecutive year, the University of Utah sponsored several commemorative activities for Jan. 15, Martin Luther Kings actual birthday; Salt Lake City public schools are conducting an organized Search for Civil Rights throughout the week; area churches are acknowledging the clergymans contributions lo the community and human condition, and Ogden City joined the celebration by declaring Monday, the federal governments designated day off, a city holiday. Such diverse displays should show the 1986 Utah Legislature there is , powerful support for formal recognition of the martyr's lofty ideals and peaceful but powerful deeds. Utahs only black legislator. Sen. Lake City, Terry Williams, again is sponsoring legislation that would establish Martin Luther King lt Day as a state, holiday. Happily, he isn't standing alone for that cause this year. Lake Rep. Robert B. Sykes, City, has proposed a way to incorporate the commemoration into the state calendar. His House bill would swap Abraham Lincolns birthday for Martin Luther Kings, thereby keeping the number of formal state holidays at 11. With George Washington and Abraham Lincoln birthdays occurring so closely together, a combined tribute, in the form of one Presidents Day, should be an acceptable tradeoff for a civil rights celebration. Dr. King, who helped secure federal legislation banning job discrimination and other racist activities, is certainly worthy of the honor. He showed Americans how to achieve major societal changes without violence. It would be particularly appropriate this, the first year for a federal King holiday, for Utah legislators to decide to devote one day in the state calendar to causes symbolized by Dr. Kings birthday. Utahns, as much as any Americans, need to be reminded periodically to replace prejudice and injustice in their hearts and society with love and respect for the lt no-co- st individual. Orbiting Paragraphs You don t appreciate the values of companionship until you get an itch in the middle of your back. liuil lo quit . . il m;i gelling so hard lo get cifiur- - from liimpu ;ui more." "I . Another The reason the guy with a wallet lull of credit cards doesn't carry any money may run deeper than convenience The Write Stuff Sandy Grady D.C.: Highbrow Meets the Lowbrow r Newspapers Once in a while you WASHINGTON imagine Washington is growing into a dull, bland middle age, just another stuffy, gray bureaucratic capitol such as London or Zurich or Brussels Knight-Ridde- Lord enough knows, it takes itself seriously mean, the largest bank in town ran a TV ad showing a montage of federal buildings topped with the arrogant slogan: "Serving the Most Important People ... In The Most Important City in the World." I There are other signs of galloping hubris. Every year there are more limousines, K Street lawyers, Capitol Hill lobbyists, consulting firms, hotels, more politicians riding to do the peoples work. $150-a-nig- To quote pollster Patrick Caddell, it "Washington has become Copernican thinks the world revolves around it." The characters and rogues, the Dan Floods and Adam Clayton Powells and Wayne Hayses, are a vanished breed Yes. sir, the place is becoming rich and respectable as a Brothers suit. $500 banker's-gre- y Brooks Then, just when you figure Washington is a boring, larger version of Harrisburg or Richmond or Albany, something jolts the dullness. Such an event was the weekend party that should be titled, Hollywood Meets the Homeless." Take a cocktail party in which the city's ritziest caterer, Ridgewell's, serves pate sandwiches and French pastries in a shelter for the homeless as movie stars, senators, congressmen and a zillion TV crews mix with hundreds of street derelicts. Throw in tuxedoed waiters and a strawberry cake enscribed "Gimme Shelter" and women in mink and Hollywood groupies and a soul singer blaring hymns and grizzled bums eating marscapone cheese tarts beneath silver candelabras. Add it all up and Washington still deserves its title: The purpose of this Salvador Daliesque nuttiness was to milk publicity for a television movie to be filmed on Washington streets, starring Martin Sheen in the role of Mitch Snyder, an activist for the homeless. Snyder called the daffy party, "Incongru Kookville-on-the-Potoma- ion point Take Steps to Wipe Out Sex Segregation on the Job From The Los Angeles Times Sex segregation on the job has declined in the last decade, thanks to increasing opportunities for women. But it is far from eliminated. according to a major new report from a panel set up by the National Academy of Sciences. It wont be reduced further without more active intervention by the federal government and corporate leaders passing the word that discrimination wastes human resources while it is inherently unfair. Without sex segregation that channels women into job categories in which they predominate, women would earn 75 cents for every dollar that a man earns, 59 cent-- , The gap rather than the would be even smaller if there weren't sex segregation even within job calegoiies, says the report issued by a committee of the No tional Research Council, which IS an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The panel, headed by Alice S llchman well-know- I president of Sarah Lawrence College, found that almost half of all employed women work in occupations that are at least 8U percent female, and that slightly more than half of all men work in jobs that are 80 percent male. The report found less sex segregation among younger workers, with women in their 20s being more likely to work as engineers or administrators. Women have also male fields made gams in like bus driving, selling real estate and delivering mail Those are fields in which they can work more on their own rather than face even unconscious discrimination from men unaccustomed to working with women "who simply may be uncertain about how to behave," the report says Sex segregation has uuny causes, the report says Many cultural traditions place more responsibility for child rearing with women, and have reduced women's employment opportunities Sneietv has kepi men I and women from working together in some jobs, presumably to protect one sex or the other from corruption. F'arents and teachers often educate girls for roles different from those of boys, or hold different expectations. Despite the many factors at play, the committee concluded that legal barriers and discrimination have played the largest role. Women's free choice in the open job market is not the main reason they are concentrated in a few occupations. Restriction, not choice, "plays the more important role, the report says. The restrictions have beer, broken down directly by passing laws against discrimination and enforcing them, and indirectly "by fostering altitude changes among both employers and workers about what kinds of work should be available to women." the report says, "Evidence that enforcement works demonstrates that behavior and beliefs are not immutable " But the committee I expressed concern that the decline in enforcement since 1981 "will make further positive change less likely." The committee's suggestions to try to achieve that change are not new, but they should be heeded. It recommended vigorous federal enforcement of laws that are already on the books, improvement in efforts to reduce sex stereotyping in education and job training, use of more varied referral sources in job recruiting and provision of more abundant and improveJ child care. Without bringing up politically loaded phrases, it also suggested the simple expedient of raising the pay in jobs dominated by women to curb the effects of discrimination. The recommendations are really not as modest as the committee contends. They could end wasteful economic practices, curb financial losses to women and their families, and buoy the spirits of men and women alike That beats rigidly adhering to the status quo ity carried to its logical conclusion. Whatever that meant. Incongruous it was. You had Sen. Arlen Rep. Michael Barnes, d Specter, and Mayor Marion Barry posing with Sheen for TV cameras as shaggy, baggy street folk and Hollywood types gobbled dainty macaroons in a decrepit shelter. Could any other city in the world have hosted such a Theater of the Absurd? Answer: No. No other city has such bitter contrasts as folks shivering on winter grates outside the White House. State De- down-and-o- partment and Justice Department. Nowhere do you find such a mix of poor people, big media and big politics. And nobody so deftly manipulates those ingredients as Mitch Snyder, a York advertising man who has given his life, almost literally, for the downtrodden. Snyder's 1984 hunger strike got him on CBS "60 Minutes" and other national shows. It also won a promise from President Reatwo days before to regan build a local shelter, a vow Reagan later rescinded. "If that promise were made to anybody but homeless people, it would be kept. But it was made to us and it was broken, Snyder told pui tygoers who stopped lapping up apricot tarts to cheer. Snyder has a gift for zinging the Washington establishment. Critics say hes a publicity hound, which is accurate. But hes won some hard victories for the city's drifters The Hollywood company wrote a $150,000 check for his shelter and promised to hire 135 extras. Only in Washington do the homeless get day to play themselves. $45 a So the cause is just. The docudrama on Snyder's life will focus on the nation's 2 million homeless (Reaganauts say the figure is only 350,000). But only in Washington would you have movie celebs and pols d and street hobos mingling around hors d'oeuvres. Ridgewell's know how to use the press here," "They said an awed movie producer. Sheen, to get himself in the mood, spent the day wrapped in blankets on a heal grate He said a passerby gave him 45 cents Only ih Washington, where reality is in short supply, can you not tell the homeless from the actors Yep, it s still I |
