Watchdog

An Iranian women's rights activist, Negin Sheykholeslami, has been detained in Tehran.

The reason for her arrest on October 4 and the charges against her are not clear.

According to unconfirmed reports, she is being held in Section 209 of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison. But one of her relatives tells RFE/RL's Radio Farda that her family have received no word on her whereabouts.

Sheykholeslami is one of the founders of the Azar Mehr Cultural Center, a nongovernmental organization based in Iran's Kurdistan Province that is active in women's rights issues. She is also a member of the One Million Signatures campaign that aims at gathering public support against discriminatory laws.

Sheykholeslami, who has been detained twice in the past, recently published a statement warning against female circumcision in Iran's Kurdistan.

(by Golnaz Esfandiari, editorial director of Radio Farda)

Iraqi authorities have unveiled a new hotline to protect journalists, but reporters in the world's most dangerous country still fear for their lives.

Police say they have thwarted two attempts to assassinate journalists in two weeks since setting up the hotline with a journalists' rights group.

One of the intended victims was Saad Qusay, a correspondent for the U.S.-funded Arabic-language TV channel Alhurra in the southern city of Al-Basrah. The Interior Ministry says it captured a militia member who had threatened to kill him.

Qusay praised the operation, which has also provided him with a round-the-clock police guard near his home, but said he still lives in fear.

The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists says about 135 journalists, including two RFE/RL correspondents, and 53 other media staff have been killed in Iraq since 2003, making it the deadliest conflict for reporters in recent decades. Other tallies are even higher.

Nazar Abd al-Wahid al-Radhi, a correspondent working for RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq was gunned down outside a hotel in Al-Amarah on May 30, 2007.

Radio Free Iraq correspondent Khamail Khalaf was abducted in Baghdad on her way home from work on April 3, 2007. Her body was found two days later.

The new hotline was set up with the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a nongovernmental Iraqi organization that defends reporters.

The organization's head Ziad al-Ajili said the new initiative was a sign the authorities are at last recognizing the importance of protecting the media.

Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim al-Khalaf said that the Interior Ministry has records of 276 journalists killed since 2003.

(by Reuters)