The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned an alleged spree of 28 executions in Iran, including several prisoners from minority groups, and called on Tehran to halt the hanging of an ethnic Baluchi man. Iran has often faced criticism from world bodies and Western human rights group for its rights record and high number of executions – the world’s highest after China, according to Amnesty International. Tehran has dismissed the criticism as baseless and due to a lack of understanding of its Islamic laws.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, an attorney and human rights activist often called “Iran’s Nelson Mandela,” is back in an overcrowded prison cell, separated from those she loves. Under arrest since 2018, she was granted a brief medical leave this month, but it was abruptly canceled on Jan. 19, the same day the government froze her family’s bank accounts. That afternoon, her husband, Reza Khandan, drove her to Qarchak’s prison for women, accompanied by their daughter Mehraveh and son Nima. Imagine what each of them was thinking and feeling during that hour-long drive — the dread and the heartbreak.
An Iranian resistance group has warned against providing the Iranian regime with the “lifeline” of sanctions relief, amid Iranian anger over the Biden administration’s refusal to lift punitive measures imposed on the country. Ali Safavi, an official of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told Arab News that the lifting of sanctions would be unlikely to achieve anything productive, but would allow Tehran to continue its domestic and regional belligerence.
Iran executed on Saturday an ethnic Baluch militant convicted of killing Revolutionary Guards members, the judiciary’s official website reported, a day after the United Nations urged Iranian authorities to spare his life. The Mizan site said Javid Dehghan, who it said was a leader of the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl, or the Army of Justice, was hanged for shooting dead two Guards five years ago in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province.
Authorities at an Iranian women’s prison have beaten and dragged a jailed dissident to a ward for common criminals, telling her that she did not deserve to remain in the company of other political prisoners in a separate ward, according to a knowledgeable source. In a Wednesday interview from Iran with VOA Persian, the source close to the family of the jailed women’s rights activist, Saba Kord Afshari, said the activist was forcibly transferred between the wards of Qarchak prison on the outskirts of Tehran the day before.
It’s an ordeal that many hundreds of Iranian mothers and fathers have had to endure for decades. Many wander from cemetery to cemetery looking for the unmarked graves of their dead children. If they’re lucky enough to find the burial spots of a relative they crouch over it, hoping their loved ones might be resting in peace. They often decorate the tombs with flowers or pieces of stone. But not long afterwards, even these modest markings are routinely destroyed.
Iran denied the United Nations’ investigation report on the country’s “systematic persecution of Christians.” According to the International Christian Concern, the investigation group of the U.N., which included special rapporteur on freedom of religion of belief, Ahmed Shaheed and special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, released a report that outlines Iran’s persecution of Christians. The report was only made public after the country failed to respond within the given 60-day deadline.
Iran last Thursday continued its execution spree of elite athletes with the killing of champion boxer and prominent sports coach Ali Mutairi. The UN condemned the execution of Mutairi in Sheiban Prison, located in Khuzestan Province. Mutairi, 30, endured severe torture, which led to his false confession that he had killed two Basij militia members in 2018, activists and family members said. “We strongly condemn the series of executions, at least 28, since mid-December, including people from minority groups,” a UN spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.
Iranian authorities hanged two inmates at dawn on Thursday, January 28. The executed prisoners were Anvar Narouei, an Iranian Baluch, and political prisoner Ali Motiri. They were executed in Isfahan’s Dastgerd Prison, central Iran, and Ahvaz’s Sheiban Prison in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, respectively. The Iranian government annually executes dozens of citizens, particularly residents of Sistan and Baluchestan province, on drug-related charges. This is while the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) control all of Iran’s crucial borders.
The appeal, which came a day before Javid Dehghan was due to be put to death, follows a series of “at least 28” executions in December, including people from ethnic minorities, such as the Baluchi minority, to which Mr. Dehghan belongs. OHCHR strongly-condemned the spate of State-sanctioned killings. OHCHR urged the Iranian authorities to review Mr. Dehghan’s case in line with human rights law, citing “serious fair trial violations”.
A Delhi-based human rights organisation has urged Iranian authorities to end all forms of persecution of its Baha’i citizens, according to an official statement issued on Saturday. The Baha”i community in Iran has been the target of a systematic campaign of persecution by the government of Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979, it said. “Since then, over 200 Iranian Bahá”ís have been executed or murdered, thousands have been arrested, detained and interrogated, and tens of thousands more have been deprived of jobs, pensions, and educational opportunities,” said the statement issued by the International Human Rights Organization (IHRO).
Political prisoner Mohammad Ashtiani was about to get suffocated in the absence of medical treatment. Low oxygen levels in the blood of political prisoner Mohammad Ashtiani was leading to his suffocation due to lack of medical treatment. Despite the low oxygen level in his blood, prison authorities refrained from providing him medical care and taking him to the hospital. Construction in ward 7 of the Central Prison of Karaj created a lot of dust in the prison aggravating Mr. Ashtiani’s asthma condition and deteriorating his health.
Political prisoner Mehdi Farahi Shandiz has been moved to the quarantine of the Central Prison of Karaj since more than two months ago. He is under pressure and restrictions there. Political prisoner Mehdi Farahi Shandiz was relocated from ward 6 to the quarantine of the Central Prison of Karaj in late November, for chanting against the clerical regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the religious dictatorship. He was deprived of phone calls and visitations. After more than two months, he has just had an opportunity to call his family.
The health of political prisoner Fatemeh Mosanna, imprisoned for five and a half years, has deteriorated, but authorities in Evin prison are preventing her provisional release for treatment and hospitalization. She suffers from chronic colitis and severe migraines. She has also suffered from severe intestinal bleeding since July 2020 and doctors said she was physically unable to endure the detention. On August 19, 2020, Ms. Mosanna was unconscious due to a hemorrhage.
More than 90 Kurds have been “disappeared” in northern Iran in the past two weeks, the Kurdish Human Rights Association (KMMK) reported today. It said that the arrest of four environmentalists on Thursday had increased the total number of those missing to 92, as families appealed for information on their loved ones’ whereabouts. Human rights campaigners, environmentalists and civil activists have been the main targets of that latest wave of arrests targeting Kurds, which the human rights group said had started on January 9.
The British Committee for Iran Freedom (BCFIF) on January 26 strongly condemned the new sentence against Iranian political prisoner Saeid Sangar, who has been in prison over the past 20 years. British lawmakers called for international intervention since Iran’s regime continues to ignore the international condemnations and shrugs off pleas and recommendations to improve the human rights situation. Saeid Sangar, 47, was arrested in 2000 for supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
وه قضائیه ایران تائید کرده جاوید دهقان، زندانی بلوچ امروز شنبه ۱۱ بهمن اعدام شده است. جاوید دهقان ۳۱ ساله در ماه مه سال ۲۰۱۷ به اتهام “محاربه” به اعدام محکوم شده بود. روز پیش دفتر کمیساریای عالی حقوق بشر سازمان ملل متحد از مقامهای ایرانی خواسته بود تا اعدام جاوید دهقان را متوقف کنند. دادگستری کل استان سیستان و بلوچستان اعلام کرده که حکم اعدام بامداد امروز در محوطه زندان زاهدان به اجرا در آمده است.
آغاز موج جدیدی از اعدام در بلوچستان ایران توسط حکومت جمهوری اسلامی، با نگرانی و واکنش شدید نهادهای ناظر بر وضعیت حقوق بشر در ایران همراه بوده است. در آخرین مورد، جاوید دهقان خلد، زندانی سیاسی بلوچ، روز شنبه ۱۱ بهمن در زندان زاهدان اعدام شد. او هفدهمین شهروند بلوچ است که بر اساس آمار منتشرشده، در دو ماه گذشته توسط حکومت اعدام شده است. حکم اعدام این زندانی در حالی به اجرا درآمد که مصطفی نیلی در صفحه توییتر شخصیاش نوشته است: «سه روز پیش رد اعاده دادرسی برای پرونده دهقان خلد در سیستم ثبت شده و او قصد داشته است شنبه تقاضای اعمال ماده ۴۷۷ را ثبت کند.