Urgent action is being called to save an Iranian woman from deportation that will put her in extreme danger:

Pegah Emambakhsh is an Iranian national who sought asylum in the UK in 2005. Her claim failed despite appeals and she was arrested in Sheffield on Monday 13th August and taken to Yarlswood detention centre. She is likely to be deported back to Iran in the near future.
If returned to Iran she faces certain imprisonment and possibly stoning to death. Her crime in Iran is her sexual orientation – she was in a relationship with another woman.
Ms Emambakhsh escaped from Iran, claiming asylum after her partner was arrested, tortured and, it is feared, has been sentenced to death by stoning. Her father has also been arrested, tortured and interrogated about Pegah’s whereabouts.

See the Outrage site for details on who to write to.

UPDATE: The Italian government has also taken up Ms Emambaksh’s case.

Even the Daily Mail is showing a touch of shock: a man slashes his wife with a knife, comprehensively beats her up, and then finally brands her with a steam iron.

The punishment? Before you read further, guess… imagine what a working class bloke who did this to a stranger down the pub would get.

The answer to what Colin Read, 25, “Cambridge graduate” and “£90,000-a-year executive” got: a £2,000 fine, and no community service, “because he is too busy”. (Tough – a whole week-and-a-bit’s wages!)

A report recommended a community service order, but Recorder William Featherby questioned how Read would fit it in around his long working hours.
He said he was concerned that Read had denied the offences despite overwhelming evidence and he called the iron attack “appalling”.
But the judge said it was the circumstances of the marriage that had provoked Read and that now those circumstances had gone, sending him to prison would “help no one”.

What’s the bet the “circumstances” of his next relationship will be, to him, equally provoking? About 100% I’d reckon.

And it is not like the state has told him — or lots of others like him — that there’s anything really wrong with this behaviour.

It is good to see these are getting more official attention: now it is surely past time to see something actually being done about the situation.

Yakin Erturk said the situation in South Kivu province was the worst she had seen in four years as special UN investigator on violence against women.
She said women had been tortured, forced to eat human flesh and men had been forced to rape relatives.
She said rebels, soldiers and police were responsible.
Last year’s UN-supervised elections were supposed to end years of conflict in DR Congo but violence continues, especially in the east.