Inside a tiny prison cell in Iran, an expert on disaster medicine and a citizen of Sweden named Ahmadreza Djalali is dying. At least, what is left of him is dying. This innocent man has spent four months in solitary confinement on a daily ration of 100 grams of bread. His possessions consist of a thin blanket and a picture of his wife and their two children. A prison photo of Djalali resembles a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Djalali’s jailers have made it clear to his family that he will die unless Belgium agrees to swap him for Assadollah Assadi, a senior officer of Iran’s civilian intelligence service.
Eighteen political prisoners in Iran’s Gohardasht Prison in Karaj condemned in an open letter the exile of political prisoners from their hometowns. These prisoners in their letter explained that this act by the Iranian government’s officials was due to their fear and fury over the prisoners’ resistance and confronting the regime’s pressure to break the prisoner’s dignity. They emphasized that these measures could not force prisoners to back down in pursuing their rights.
British-Iranian workers’ rights campaigner Mehran Raoof, 64, has been held in solitary confinement for five months in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after he was secretly recorded talking about politics in a cafe, human rights campaigners have revealed. Raoof was arrested at his home in Tehran in October and taken to Evin, where Iran keeps political prisoners and dual nationals. There are frequent allegations of torture at the prison. Satar Rahmani, a London-based colleague of Raoof, told the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that the former London teacher was helping to translate English-language news articles into Farsi around the time of his arrest.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has temporarily released the 65-year-old Iranian Jew Nourollah Shemian who was imprisoned for allegedly visiting Israel, according to a Tuesday report on the Persian-language website of the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). “The temporary release of Nourollah Shemian as the third recently identified Jewish individual put behind bars, is not a cause for celebration. It’s an alarm and likely indication of other Jews behind bars for similar reasons.
Iran should free detained journalist Amir Dehbashi and end its “outrageous” practise of censoring media, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned on Tuesday. Iranian authorities arrested the reporter earlier this month. Tehran has faced international criticism over its treatment of journalists and media. On March 14, three newspaper employees were handed lengthy prison sentences on spurious charges of “spreading false news.”
18 Jailed dissidents at Raja’i Shahr Prison of Karaj wrote an open letter on March 21, protesting the exile of political prisoners and opening new cases against them. The letter, a copy of which was sent to Iran Human Rights Monitor, states: “during the last months, despite all the claims by the highest judiciary authorities about complying with the rights of the political prisoner, what is really happening on daily basis, not only is not a bit of improvement but also they have intensified suppression by making the prisoners conditions even more inhumane.
A Kurdish man was killed in a police shooting on March 22 in Saqqez in western Iran. The man identified as Mohammad Sadeghi died after police opened fire on his car under the suspicion that he was smuggling goods. The state security forces opened fire at the Kurdish man’s car on suspicion of transporting smuggled goods. This is while Mohammad Sadeghi’s car was empty and he was not carrying any goods. Security forces and police in the northwestern and western cities of Iran open fire with impunity, injuring and killing innocent locals.
The warden of Urmia Central Prison has refused to authorize hospital transfer for political prisoner Ebrahim Khalil Sedighi Hamedani who has diabetes and urgently needs to be sent to a hospital outside prison. The 62-year-old political prisoner suffers from diabetes and its complications. The necessary insulin is not available to him in prison. His toes are blackened and are on the verge of permanent harm. Prison doctors have emphasized that he should be sent to a hospital outside prison to measure blood sugar and determine the amount of insulin needed.
The state security forces arrested a number of people who attended a gathering in the northern city of Gonbad Kavus Tuesday to protest a decision by a court to clear a guard of rape charges. Hundreds of protesters poured into the streets in the northern Gonbad Kavus region, Golestan province, Tuesday, March 23, after a security guard was only charged with kidnapping two girls despite accusations of rape and sexual abuse. The families of two seven- and eight-year-old girls had filed a judicial complaint and pressed charges of rape against the security guard.
Political prisoner Afshin Baymani has been denied medical treatment despite experiencing heart complications. Vaziri, the Prosecutor’s special assistant for political prisoners’ affairs has refused to authorize his transfer to a hospital against doctors’ advice. On Saturday, March 20, 2021, the political prisoner who is serving a life sentence in Raja’i Shahr Prison of Karaj, was transferred to the prison’s infirmary due to severe pain in the heart and hypotension.
Political prisoners in Iran, long subjected to especially harsh treatment in Iran’s prisons, have been largely left out of the furloughs (temporary leaves from prison) typically granted to many prisoners for Nowruz, the Iranian new year that began on March 20, 2021. With a handful of exceptions, the vast majority of those who went home for the new year holidays were not political prisoners. In addition to being denied temporary releases, political prisoners have also been largely left out of the mass pardons that have been granted over the past year by the judiciary in response to the continuing threat from the COVID-19 virus.
The Islamic Republic of Iran imposes austere laws towards all women. For example, the enforcement of the hijab displeases many women in Iran, as it restricts their freedom to express themselves. One lady said, “I am a Muslim, but I don’t like the way that the government is forcing us to do it and that’s why when we travel, we get rid of it.” Time and time again, Iranian women revolt against the government by publicly stripping the garment off their heads, to the point where the government took extreme measures and implemented prison sentences, fines or flagellation.
The sentences of three Kurds adding up to a total of 15 years in prison have been confirmed by a top court in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province’s city of Piranshahr, a human rights group confirmed on Tuesday. This comes amid calls for a national referendum for the transition to a secular and democratic government. Arrested by security forces in October 2020, Shoresh Abdullah Nejad, Najmaddin Sokhnour, and Salah Ali from the village of Girgolsofli, near the Kurdish city of Piranshahr, were sentenced to five years in prison each in February by Piranshahr’s Revolutionary Court, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRNA).
On March 20, Iranians celebrated Nowruz, the beginning of the new year. Many had long hoped for this year’s Nowruz to be special, as it heralded the solar year 1400. But as Iran enters the fifteenth century, the country is seeing some of its most challenging times in modern history. It’s no surprise that, on March 11, an anti-government campaign was launched with the hashtag #No2IslamicRepublic in English and Persian (نه_به_جمهورى_اسلامی#). The movement was announced via a statement signed by 640 Iranians, including those inside and outside Iran.
One of the wanders of this century in Iran is that happiness and sadness are tied together. The totalitarian rule over Iran brought sadness for many families in that country. So, the families of the victims of the regime’s crimes find themselves celebrating the Persian new year with their deceased family members on their tombs and setting up the traditional ‘Haft-Sin on their graves. The mother of Behnam Mahjouhi a Darvish and political prisoner who died in the prison because of neglect by the regime’s prison officials, is one of these people who celebrated this new year with her son, but at his grave.
In the past few years, Iran has witnessed waves of popular protests involving large parts of the population making economic and political demands. On 28 December 2017, demonstrations erupted in Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. The unrest quickly extended to other cities, and continued into 2018. The protesters’ demands focused on the economy at first, but soon included political slogans against the regime.
This weekend marked the Iranian New Year holiday, Nowruz. Iranians ventured into the year 1400 on the Persian calendar, they will be facing considerable threats, but also considerable opportunities. The preceding year has been fraught with numerous hardships including economic collapse, worsening regime repression, and a coronavirus outbreak that is by far worse than any other in the Middle East. Each of these issues will surely persist well into the forthcoming year, but if recent experience is any indicator, they will also help to fuel an ascendant protest movement that poses an ever-greater challenge to the existing theocratic dictatorship.
The Iranian regime is shutting down the internet yet again this month—this time in response to the desperate protests in the Baluchistan and Sistan provinces. Tehran is methodically implementing a repressive playbook, imported at great expense from Beijing: first, label protesters as criminals; second, shut down the internet to prevent information from getting in or out; third, detain, torture and murder with impunity until the uprising is exhausted.
دهها فعال سیاسی داخل ایران در نامه ای به سازمان ملل، حکومت جمهوری اسلامی را «دزدسالار» نامیده و خواستار پشتیبانی از مردم ایران برای گذار به یک حکومت جدید از مسیر برگزاری همهپرسی شدند. این نامه که نسخهای از آن نیز به صدای آمریکا ارسال شده را بیش از یکصد فعال مدنی و سیاسی از جمله شهلا انتصاری، اکبر امینی، عیسیخان حاتمی، یاسمین حنیفه طباطبایی، هاشم خواستار، زرتشت احمدیراغب، کوروش زعیم، حشمت الله طبرزدی، بهفر لالهزاری، فرنگیس مظلوم، عبدالحمید معصومی تهرانی، و محمد نیکبخت امضا کردهاند.
با گذشت بیش از چهل روز از مرگ بهنام محجوبی، زندانی سیاسی در ایران، یک زندانی سیاسی پیشین میگوید رفتار جمهوری اسلامی با زندانیان سیاسی به گونهای است که میخواهد نشان دهد آنها مشکل روحی و روانی دارند. خانواده بهنام محجوبی، درویش گنابادی زندانی که در روز ۲۸ بهمن در بیمارستان لقمان تهران جان باخت، میگویند که مرگ او عادی نبوده است. آقای محجوبی پیشتر از روند نامناسب درمان در زندان شکایت کرده بود؛ اما پس از چندبار بیتوجهی، ناگهان آقای محجوبی با حالی وخیم به بیمارستان انتقال یافت و در آنجا خبر درگذشت او اعلام شد. اکبر لکستانی، زندانی دوتابعیتی سابق در ایران، در گفتوگوی خود با صدای آمریکا گفت، او نیز در زمان بازداشت به بیمارستان اعصاب و روان رازی در ارومیه منتقل شده بود. این در حالی است که به گفته آقای لکستانی پزشکان بیمارستان نیز اعلام کرده بودند وی مشکلی نداشته است و حضورش در بیمارستان رازی الزامی نیست.
دستکم ۳۴ زندانی سیاسی در زندانهای اوین، فشافویه و عادلآباد شیراز با آغاز سال ۱۴۰۰ خورشیدی، به مدت سه روز دست به اعتصاب غذا زدهاند. به گزارش اخبار منتشر شده در شبکههای اجتماعی و به نقل از فعالان حقوق بشر در ایران، طی روزهای گذشته ۲۸ نفر از زندان سیاسی با انتشار نامهای خطاب به مردم ایران اعلام کردند که «به یاد و احترام رنج بیشمار گرسنگان وطن» دست به اعتصاب غذا زدهاند. امضا کنندگان این نامه از جمله کیوان صمیمی روزنامهنگار و از بازداشتشدگان روز جهانی کارگر سال ۹۸، محمد شریفیمقدم و کسری نوری از دارویش گنابادی زندانی در ایران، اعلام کردهاند «ما به یاد و احترام رنجهای مشترکمان و در اعتراض به ظلمهای ستمگران که شمهای از آن را برخواهیم شمرد و به پاسداشت مبارزه شما برای آزادی، دموکراسی، رفع تبعیض و نابرابری و احقاق حقوق انسان، از بامداد اولین روز قرن پانزدهم به مدت سه روز اعتراض خود را به صورت اعتصاب غذا نشان خواهیم داد.