Prominent Iran-based dissidents are urging the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to do more to hold Iranian officials accountable for wide-ranging rights abuses, in order to show Iranians the United States cares about their plight. The former Iranian political prisoners, Abbas Vahedian Shahroudi and Mohammad Nikbakht, made the appeals via video messages from Iran to a conference at Washington’s National Press Club Wednesday organized by Iranian diaspora news site AVA Today.
Iran imprisoned a journalist for reporting on the true extent of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, according to free-press watchdogs. Shahram Safari, a Kurdish freelance reporter, was sentenced to three months in prison on June 16 by a municipal court in Kermanshah, western Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Safari ran the local news Telegram channel, “Rawezh Press,” in which he documented the number of COVID-19 cases in Iran, HRANA said.
… Ejehi also has come under heavy criticism over his role as a prosecutor in the Special Court of Clerics in the 1990s. His opponents accuse him of involvement in a string of killings of activists, dissidents and intellectuals that began in 1998. Many moderates saw the slayings as an assault by hard-liners against the country’s reform movement. The Intelligence Ministry admitted in early 1999 that rogue agents were behind a limited number of killings, and the intelligence minister resigned. Dissidents claim that more than 80 opposition activists were killed by the security services in the 1990s.
Iran is doing its best to bring down the number of executions of child offenders to zero, a senior Iranian official told AFP amid recurrent criticism from the UN and rights groups. “We are going to the zero point,” said Majid Tafreshi of the state-run High Council for Human Rights, insisting that was the “will of the system” of the Islamic republic. The United Nations and human rights groups frequently criticise Iran for executing child offenders, which violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that Tehran has ratified.
Dozens of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have released a statement condemning human rights abuses in Iran, calling for further sanctions and urging the EU to “address the yearning of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy.” The 63 MEPs said they “have deep concerns about the ongoing human rights violations in Iran,” adding: “The failure of the UN and the international community to address the alarming human rights situation, including the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, has emboldened the mullahs and led to further deterioration.”
A UN expert has criticized Iran for placing human rights activists in long-term detention, and called for their release. “It is too easy for human rights defenders in Iran to find themselves condemned to 10 years or more in prison for carrying out work that is legitimate in the eyes of human rights law,” said Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders. “Defenders of women, of children, of prisoner rights, of labor rights, of freedom of expression, of freedom of association, of minorities, of the right to receive a fair trial and of the right not to be tortured — they all run the risk of being detained in dire conditions for long periods of time,” she added.
Iran’s Supreme Court has annulled a death sentence issued against a prisoner, 10 months after the inmate was hanged in Urmia prison in the west of the country, human rights groups said. The prisoner, Khidir Gui Del, was hanged last September, after being convicted of drug dealing charges in 2013. Human rights organisations said the death sentence was carried out while the lawsuit was underway in the Iranian Supreme Court, which did not issue a veto against the death sentence until after its implementation, according to Sky News Arabia.
A human rights monitor documented dozens of violations in Kurdish areas in Iran in the month of June, including honor killings, imprisonment of activists, and targeting of kolbars. “At least 28 civilians, activists, former political prisoners, and former Kurdish party members were detained,” according to the report from the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). Five of the detained were later released. Five women were killed by their family members in “honour killings” in the Darreh Shahr, Ilam Kermanshah, and Saqqez provinces, according to the report.
The daughter of a jailed Kurdish political activist was detained on Tuesday in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, a human rights watchdog said on Wednesday. Nahid Kamangar, a university student, is “not personally involved in politics and her arrest appears to have been in connection with the political activities of her father and husband,” the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) said. Kamangar is the daughter of political activist Hossein Kamangar, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March on charges of “instigating armed uprising against government and the state…”
Two imprisoned brothers one of whom was paralyzed due to being beaten in prison were executed in Iran on Sunday. Iranian authorities executed Davood and Bahaoddin Ghasemzadeh for a crime that took place 12 years ago and, according to amnesty International, following a conviction based on forced “confessions”. In addition to the brothers Davood and Bahauddin Qasemzadeh, another man identified as Anwar Abdollahi was also executed on murder charges in Urmia Prison in northwest Iran. Davood suffered a severed spinal cord injury after being beaten in prison.
In a message from a prison in northern Iran, Iranian jailed activist Golrokh Iraee said that she would refuse phone calls and family visits to protest mistreatment of prisoners. In a brief message from Amol Prison, Ebrahimi, a writer and human rights activist, declared that since the women detainees in Amol Prison are deprived of their minimum rights, she will refuse to make phone calls and go for visitations – which are interrupted every time by the guards’ insults– until the current miserable condition is ended.
An Iranian convert to Christianity who has served over one-third of a 10-year prison sentence for reading the Bible and allegedly taking part in missionary activities was told that his plea for early release has been denied. The Tehran prosecutor’s office informed Nasser Navard Gol-Tapeh through a handwritten letter last month that his request for release wasn’t approved, Article 18 reported, adding that no explanation was given to the convert.
After approving an appeal hearing, Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran upheld an eight year prison sentence for Baha’i citizen and women’s motocross champion Shahrzad Nazifi. According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, Nazifi was previously sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison, 4 hours of community service a day for 3 months, and a 2-year ban on leaving the country. Nazifi was arrested on charges of “managing illegal groups and factions with the aim of disrupting the security of the country” and “bad motives and internal desire to destroy the religious system”.
A UN expert today criticised the Islamic Republic of Iran’s practice of sentencing human rights defenders to long-term detention and called on the Government to release all those detained for their human rights work. “It is too easy for human rights defenders in Iran to find themselves condemned to 10 years or more in prison for carrying out work that is legitimate in the eyes of human rights law,” said Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. “Defenders of women, of children, of prisoner rights, of labour rights, of freedom of expression, of freedom of association, of minorities, of the right to receive a fair trial and of the right not to be tortured — they all run the risk of being detained in dire conditions for long periods of time,” she said.
Fuel prices in Lebanon rose Wednesday to new heights, with a single liter of 95-octane gasoline costing 71,600 pounds ($47) after a 45 percent price hike prompted by the ending of government subsidies. Even the price of donkeys has tripled over the past two weeks, compounding the severity of Lebanon’s economic crisis, which has brought it to the brink of complete collapse. The disaster is seemingly being exacerbated by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group, which is a central part of the government and holds significant power in the absence of a functional leadership. Hezbollah could even be forcing this paralysis in an attempt to subjugate Lebanon to Tehran.
After more unannounced power cuts Sunday evening across Iran, people gathered in many cities to protest the blackouts. In Tehran people in darkness were shouting “Death to the dictator”. The protest gatherings were in most cases outside the local offices of the national electricity company. Protests were reported in several cities and towns in northern Golestan province where people in one town also blocked roads. People also protested in the south-central city of Kazeroun and demanded accountability from officials over repeated and sudden blackouts. In the capital Tehran, while neighborhoods plunged into darkness, people were heard shouting from their windows, “Death to Khamenei” and “Death to the dictator”, referring to the supreme leader who is the ruler of the country, responsible for key decisions and appointments. Others chanted “Death to the Islamic Republic”, reminiscent of slogans during mass protests in 2018 and 2019.
Clashes broke out between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the military wing of a Iranian Kurdish political group in Erbil province over the weekend, a military leader confirmed to Rudaw on Sunday. “The PKK guerillas apparently were not aware of our trainings. They first came here and asked us to move away, and we agreed, but to showcase their power and force, they came back and fired shots in the air over our base, and our Peshmerga answered their shots,” Abdullah Azarbar, head of the military wing of the Komala party, an Iranian Kurdish political group, told Rudaw.
Iranian human rights experts and commentators condemned Swiss President Guy Parmelin this week for delivering a congratulatory message to Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, a revolutionary cleric accused of mass murder. “Congratulating Raisi the butcher on ‘winning’ a sham election boycotted by the Iranian people is not only an insult to the millions who’ve been impacted by his cruel torture and executions,” Mariam Memarsadeghi, an Iranian-American and senior fellow at Macdonald-Laurier Institute, told The Jerusalem Post. “It is an insult to any democratic country’s most basic values. Switzerland’s tradition of political neutrality should not mean it succumbs to legitimizing evil rulers of an evil regime.”
After The Jerusalem Post sent press queries to Human Rights Watch last week and Iranians complained about the lack of action from HRW regarding the Iranian regime’s kidnapping of Jamshid Sharmahd, the New York City-based NGO urged the release of Sharmahd, a legal California resident and German citizen,who faces the death penalty in Iran and whose is health is deteriorating. HRW’s Wenzel Michalski tweeted on July 2, “Free Jamshid Sharmahd,” adding “Almost a year on, Jamshid Sharmahd is still in arbitrary detention in Iran, without public charges or a set trial date. Sharmahd, 66, is an Iranian-German national.” He wrote that Germany’s foreign ministry “should urgently demand to free Jamshid Sharmahd.”
The older couple first came to the public eye on a winter night in Tehran, when their film director son invited them to the stage after a screening. They were frail, and seemingly shy, and the younger man helped his mother up the stairs, then draped his arm around his father’s shoulder. That was five years ago. Now their son is dead, and Akbar Khorramdin, 81, and his wife, Iran Mousavi, 74, are back on the public stage, accused of his murder and, in a twist that has shocked and riveted Iranians, the killings of a daughter and a son-in-law over the course of a decade. The victims were drugged, suffocated, stabbed and then dismembered, the authorities say.
“I was arrested four times by the moral police because of being trans and because of my appearance. They also flogged me.”— A respondent to a 2020 survey by the Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network (6Rang). Each June, LGBTQ Americans celebrate Pride month, notwithstanding the continuing challenges they face due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Unfortunately, for their counterparts in Iran, Pride month—and every month—is Fear Month, a month of hiding who they are and whom they love in order to avoid arrest, imprisonment, flogging, and even execution.
As LGBTQ Pride Month concludes in the free and democratic world, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s totalitarian regime continues to violently oppress and eliminate sexual minorities. The existence of the Iranian regime’s death penalty targeting gays and lesbians should prompt democracies to impose economic and human rights sanctions on the clerical regime for its failure to decriminalize homosexuality. The Biden administration can take the lead.
Widespread demonstrations have swept Iran in recent days, as discontent grows over the government’s mishandling of the country’s energy infrastructure and resources. The discontent is justified; blackouts are affecting millions of citizens. The latest round of public anger raises a recurring question for those who want change in Iran: will protests work? The Green Movement in 2009 inspired thousands to hit the streets, only to be met with a brutal crackdown. Demonstrations in recent years have ended similarly.
مری لالور، گزارشگر ویژه سازمان ملل در امور مدافعین حقوق بشر روز سهشنبه ۱۵ تیرماه از جمهوری اسلامی ایران برای صدور حکمهای طولانی زندان برای مدافعین حقوق بشر انتقاد کرد. خانم لالور با نام بردن از برخی فعالین حقوق بشر از جمله نسرین ستوده وکیل دادگستری، اسماعیل عبدی فعال صنفی معلمان، سهیل عربی زندانی سیاسی و محمد نجفی وکیل دادگستری زندانی گفت، فعالیت مدافعین حقوق بشر از نظر قوانین حقوق بشر مشروع است. این گزارشگر ویژه شورای حقوق بشر در ادامه افزود، این برخورد ایران لکهای بر سوابق این کشور میشود. وی همچنین گفت، با دولت ایران در این زمینه در تماس بوده و تهران تمامی مواردی را که او در مورد وضعیت زندانها، تهدید فعالان و خانوادههای فعالان زندانی شده مطرح نموده، انکار کرده است.
قطعی گسترده و طولانی مدت برق در شهرهای مختلف ایران، یکشنبه شب، ۱۳ تیرماه، با تجمع اعتراضی مردم در چند شهر و شعارهای اعتراضی گروههایی از مردم در نقاط مختلف شهر تهران همراه شد. این درحالی است که سخنگوی صنعت برق ایران از احتمال ادامه خاموشیها بهدلیل گرمای هوا در روزهای آینده خبر میدهد. در هفتههای اخیر، شهروندان در بسیاری از نقاط ایران بهطور روزانه با قطعی برق روبهرو میشدند و شرکت توزیع برق در شهرهای مختلف جدول برنامههای زمانبندی برای قطع برق در مناطق مختلف هر شهر منتشر کرده بودند که براساس آنها برق هر منطقه یکبار در روز، بهمدت دو تا دو و نیم ساعت و در زمان از پیش اعلامشده قطع میشد.
بعضی از زنان زندانی خودزنی میکنند و برای آرامش روان مشت مشت قرص میخورند. این بخشی از نامه دسته جمعی ۲۰۰ زندانی زن در زندان زنان شهر ری یا زندان قرچک ورامین به رئیس سازمان زندانهای تهران است که تصویری تیره و تار از بزرگترین زندان زنان ایران میدهد. زندانی که زمانی مرغداری بود، بعد به مرکز ترک اعتیاد مردان تبدیل شد و دست آخر حدود ده سال پیش به زندان زنان تغییر کاربری داد. زنان زندانی در بند پنچ زندان قرچک ورامین یا همان ندامتگاه شهر ری، در اعتراض به وضعیت اسفناک زندان دست به اعتصاب زدهاند.