He has been dead for a month. On Dec. 12 Iranians woke up to bleak news: Their government had executed Ruhollah Zam, a 42-year-old journalist. The sentencing judge described Mr. Zam as a spy, as someone who incited violence and had “sown corruption on earth,” a vague charge which is often used to describe attempts to overthrow the Iranian government. Mr. Zam, who had been imprisoned in Iran after the disputed presidential election in 2009, fled to France in 2011, where he was granted political asylum.
Iranian authorities held a tight grip on peaceful activism during 2020, jailing lawyers, human rights defenders, and those who protested government corruption, mismanagement, and repression, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021. As the country grapples with controlling the spread of Covid-19, judicial and intelligence authorities have excluded dozens of human rights defenders and political prisoners from temporary release measures to reduce prison overcrowding.
Mounting pressure from British and American officials along with Iranian human rights groups on the International Olympic Committee and United World Wrestling has on Tuesday sparked a reaction from the powerful sports organizations after days of silence about the pending execution of a second decorated Iranian wrestler. “The Iranian regime must be held to account for their vile human rights abuses and their attempt to cling to power through execution,” Ellie Cohanim, the State Department’s deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post.
Iran has sentenced an activist from its Azerbaijani Turk ethnic minority to an effective three-year prison term for joining a public protest last year in support of Azerbaijan while it engaged in a brief conflict with neighboring Armenia, according to a knowledgeable source. In a January 8 interview with VOA Persian from Iran, the source said a Revolutionary Court in the northwestern city of Urmia issued a verbal notification of the sentence to the lawyer of activist Salar Taher Afshar on January 2.
The Iranian regime is set to execute a second wrestler just months after it hanged champion athlete Navid Afkari amid international pleas for clemency. Mehdi Ali Hosseini, 29, was arrested in 2015 and charged with murder following a group brawl. Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper reported that he is expected to be imminently executed because the victim’s family refused to pardon him. Ali Safavi, an official from the foreign affairs committee of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told Arab News that the NCRI and other regime critics “strongly condemn the ruling religious dictatorship for its intention to execute” Hosseini.
Throughout history, autocrats constantly struggle to save their unelected and illegitimate rule. Therefore, they do not want to hear any opposite voice and almost always resort to force and violence to hide their people’s real desire. The Iranian authorities have issued heavy sentences to protesters and dissidents, as well as torturing those arrested, in an attempt to silence dissent and stop protests in their tracks. While this has long been used by authoritarian governments, it became official policy in 2020 under Judiciary head Ebrahim Raisi, who served on the Death Committee during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners.
The arrival of 2021 was celebrated by most of the world as a turning point and a chance to put all the troubles of the previous year behind them, but the Iranian regime has spent the beginning of this year increasing pressure on Iranians, who are already grappling with poverty and the pandemic. On Sunday, they executed Hadi Hosseini Mirak—a 26-year-old auto-mechanic engineering student and expert at the Iran Khodro institution—in Ardebil Central Prison.
January 11 marks the first anniversary of the nationwide Iran protests that erupted after the regime acknowledged it had downed a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 passengers, after three days of an initial cover-up. Two months after the major Iran protests in November 2019 and despite the regime’s heavy crackdown and massacring 1500 protesters, Iranians poured onto the streets in January 2020, once again demanding regime change and righteously identifying the regime as the only source of Iran’s problems.
On November 9, 2019, an Iranian national arrived in Sweden and was arrested by local authorities for his suspected involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in Iran during the summer of 1988. The arrest has the potential to become the first step towards accountability for an event that is often described as one of the darkest chapters in the history of the forty-one-year-old Islamic Republic. Between July and September 1988, thousands of political prisoners from different political affiliations were executed over the course of a few weeks.
On January 11, Iranian citizens once again vented their anger at the plundering and profiteering policies of the regime and its affiliates, which have put the country on the verge of collapse. In this respect, disappointed people from different walks of life held at least six gatherings in various cities across Iran. In their protests, many citizens blamed officials for failing to keep their promises. Also, creditors and customers, who see their long-term investments and savings plundered by the regime-linked apparatuses and companies, took to the streets to express their fury.
“After 35 years of writing musicals, I’m beginning to realize that I am sort of a political writer,” said lyricist Lynn Ahrens, whose work has ranged from the Broadway musicals “Ragtime” and “Once on This Island” to the animated film “Anastasia” and the TV series “Schoolhouse Rock.” “There’s sometimes a subliminal political message in what I write, and songwriting can make a difference even if it’s not what you intended.” She first realized this, Ahrens said, when the climactic song from the 1998 musical “Ragtime,” “Make Them Hear You,” took on a life of its own outside that show, including a spectacular version by Aretha Franklin in honor of Nelson Mandela.
فعالان حقوق بشر در کردستان میگویند در پنج روز گذشته دستکم “۲۷ شهروند و فعال کرد” در نقده، مریوان، سنندج و کرج بازداشت شدهاند
به گزارش شبکه حقوق بشر کردستان امروز چهارشنبه ۲۲ دی ماه سه شهروند کرد در ادامه بازداشتهای گسترده در شهرهای مختلف که از شنبه بیستم دی ماه شروع شده، بازداشت شدهاند. سازمان حقوق بشری ههنگاو هم گفته چهارشنبه نیروهای اداره اطلاعات نقده در آذربایجان غربی به خانه یک شهروند “هجوم” برده و سه نفر از اعضای یک خانواده به نامهای عبدالله حاجیاحمدی و پسرش پیمان حاجیاحمدی و گلاویژ عبداللهی را بازداشت کردهاند.
دا میهندوست خواهر رضا (نوید) میهندوست، نویسنده و کارگردان ایرانی که به تازگی توسط دادگاه انقلاب به سه سال و شش ماه زندان محکوم شده است، میگوید که یکی از مصادیق اتهامات عنوان شده ارتباط دوستی و خانوادگی آقای میهندوست با مسیح علینژاد، مجری و مفسر برنامه تبلت صدای آمریکا، و برادر او علیرضا علینژاد است. خانم ندا میهندوست در گفتگویی با صدای آمریکا گفت، جلسه دادگاه رضا میهندوست روز دوشنبه ۸ دی ماه در شعبه ۲۸ دادگاه انقلاب تهران به ریاست قاضی عموزاده، با حضور وکیل پرونده برگزار شد. وی گفت که دادگاه او را به اتهام «فعالیت تبلیغی علیه نظام از طریق شعارنویسی» و «اقدام علیه امنیت ملی کشور از طریق عضویت در گروههای مخالف نظام به قصد براندازی» به تحمل سه سال و شش ماه زندان محکوم کرد و این حکم روز یکشنبه ۲۱دی ماه به وکیل مدافع پرونده ابلاغ شد.
پس از اعدام نوید افکاری، کشتی گیر ایرانی که در تاریخ ۲۲ شهریور ماه توسط جمهوری اسلامی به خاطر شرکت در اعتراضات اعدام شد، احتمال اجرای حکم اعدام کشتیگیر جوان دیگری در ایران به نام مهدی علیحسینی در ایران مطرح شده است. به گزارش جرزالم پست، الی کوهانیم، دستیار ویژه وزارت امور خارجه آمریکا در مبارزه با یهودیستیزی در واکنش به حکم اعدام صادر شده برای این کشتی گیر جوان ایرانی به جرزالم پست گفته است «رژیم ایران باید پاسخگوی نقض شدید حقوق بشر باشد و استفاده از اهرم اعدام برای ماندن در قدرت را متوقف کند.