In a statement to the 47th session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations on Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said a report presented to the Secretary General found “a disturbing human rights landscape for Iranian women and men of every religious faith, ethnic origin, social class and other status. “Pointing out that in 2020 Iran executed at least 267 people, Bachelet said the Secretary General was still deeply concerned by widespread use of the death penalty, and its imposition for a range of acts other than “most serious crimes” with death sentences frequently based on forced confessions.
A new report by the U.N. secretary-general on the human rights situation in Iran condemns the widespread use of punitive measures and state-sponsored violence to keep the population in line. Michelle Bachelet, the world body’s high commissioner for human rights, presented the report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The report finds Iran’s slumping economy, deteriorating living standards, and increased social and political strains arising from the COVID-19 pandemic are fueling public discontent and protests.
Five Kurdish opposition fighters were killed and three others injured in Western Iran’s Kurdistan Province, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) affiliated media reported on Wednesday. FarsNews stated that the fighters were attempting to infiltrate and sabotage the electoral process in Baneh and Sarvabad when they were killed by Kurdish forces within the IRGC who carried out two special operations in the towns. Farsnews did not specify when the operation took place.
Independent human rights and political experts working on behalf of the UN have urged Tehran to release Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and outspoken defender of human rights in Iran, and decried her recent transfer to another prison under “dire conditions.” Sotoudeh has been detained since June 2018 and faces a total of 38 years behind bars on nine charges, including “encouraging corruption and prostitution.” UN experts — including Dubravka Simonovic, special rapporteur on violence against women; and Javaid Rehman, special rapporteur on human rights in Iran — have called on Tehran to release Sotoudeh “as a matter of urgency.”
UN human rights experts have condemned the continued imprisonment of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, whose health has “seriously deteriorated” since her arrest three years ago. Iranian authorities have failed to release Sotoudeh despite “many calls” to do so, and instead last year transferred the lawyer to another prison, “farther away from her family and under dire conditions,” the experts said in a statement on June 21. Sotoudeh was arrested June 2018 after representing opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory headscarves.
A Baluch prisoner was killed under torture on June 26 in a detention center in Suran, southeastern Iran, the Baloch Campaign website reported. The man was identified as Masoud Kahanki Gongi, according to the report. Masoud Kahanki was arrested with another person the day before on theft charges. He was taken to the police detention center, where he was beaten and tortured, and later passed away. Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners is a common practice in Iran prisons.
Arman Farahmand, a teenager accused of murder, went on a hunger strike and sewed his lips to protest the authorities’ failure to handle his case. A relative of Arman Farahmand, told Kurdpa website that the 17-year-old has been on a hunger strike since Saturday, June 19, in Sanandaj Correctional Center. Arman Farahmand who was only 16 when he committed his alleged crime was arrested along with eight individuals last year following a group fight during which a man was killed. All of the defendants in the case have been acquitted in recent months, but Arman Farahmand remains in custody.
Rights groups have called on Iran to halt the execution of a man for a murder committed while he was still a child. Hossein Shahbazi is due to be hanged on Monday following the death of a teenager during a group fight when he was 17. He would be the first person to be executed this year in Iran after committing a crime as a minor, according to Amnesty International. Several others involved in the fracas were arrested and provided confessions but have not been sentenced to death, say campaigners.
A Kurdish Kolbar was killed and another wounded when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) opened fire on them on Wednesday, west of Iran’s Kurdistan province. Fahmin Rostamzadeh, 40, the father of three children was from the border city of Hawraman Takht (Uraman Takht) of the Kurdistan province of Iran and lived in Mariwan. The group of Kolbars were shot at by IRGC soldiers “from a close range and without prior warning” early Wednesday morning, Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported. The shooting resulted in Rostamzadeh’s death, and another kolbar was injured.
Three Christians are standing trial in Iran after a new amendment to the Iranian penal code was passed through the legislature, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). The Christian defendants of the Church of Iran denomination of Christianity were put on trial in Karaj in northern Iran on Monday after converting to Christianity, being charged with “sectarian” activities. The defendants, Amin Khaki, Milad Goudarzi and Alireza Nourmohammadi, originally stem from Muslim backgrounds.
Some of international cinema’s most revealing, poignant, and provocative films about the lives of children star nonprofessional actors. With rawness and fragility, the young performers of Ken Loach’s Kes, the Dardenne brothers’ La Promesse, and Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s City Of God reflect the often-dire circumstances in which kids are born, embodying the perseverance and tenacity it takes to grow up. Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi has been taking this approach his whole career, and he continues it with his latest, Sun Children, a tidal wave of compassion and empathy that crests into rage and sorrow—all of it provoked by the plight of Iran’s child laborers.
Iranian hackers have used the reputation of one of the administration’s most prominent critics to deceive an online surveillance program that has been running for at least six years without finding dissidents. A cyber-spy activity run by a group known as Ferocious Kitten was designed to steal data from users’ computers and hijack the Telegram app commonly used by opposition to evade regime oversight. It was. “The content of the decoy document suggests that attackers are particularly chasing supporters of domestic protests,” said Kaspersky, a cybersecurity expert who first learned about malware in March.
Africa’s largest wireless carrier MTN Group Ltd. and Chinese technology company ZTE Corp. were accused in a U.S. lawsuit of indirectly supporting an Iranian terrorist campaign that resulted in Americans being injured and killed in Iraq. In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York, more than 50 Americans claim MTN and ZTE did business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, even though they knew the transactions would help finance, arm and support the Iranian group’s terror campaign in neighboring Iraq. As a result, thousands of Americans were injured or killed between 2011 and 2016, according to the suit.
Iran’s newly chosen president, in his first news conference, on Monday rejected the United States’ push for a broader deal with the Islamic Republic that would restrict its ballistic missiles program and curb its regional military policies in addition to containing its nuclear program. President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric, said that Iran’s ballistic missiles and its regional policies were “nonnegotiable” and that he would not meet with President Biden.
… But, as many dissidents have noted, the prospect of reform was always more mirage than truth. The loyal opposition comprising the Islamic Republic’s reform wing was cut from the same cloth as its conservative one. Khatami himself was no democrat, having been minister of culture during the 1980s, an era of suffocating censorship. His cabinet was comprised of people like Ataollah Mohajerani, who had called for the murder of author Salman Rushdie.
سپاه پاسداران با انتشار اعلامیهای از وقوع درگیری سنگین در استان کردستان در روزهای نزدیک به انتخابات ریاستجمهوری نوشت و اعلام کرد که در این درگیریها، پنج تن از نیروهای مقابل کشته شدهاند. رسانههای نزدیک به «کودار» و سازمان حقوق بشری هنگاو، این درگیریها را تایید کردهاند. قرارگاه شهرامفر سپاه پاسداران در بیانیهای در روز چهارشنبه، دوم تیر، گفت که در پی درگیری نیروهای این قرارگاه با آن چه سپاه «نیروهای ضدانقلاب» مینامد، در منطقه عمومی بانه و سروآباد، پنج تن از طرف مقابل کشته شدهاند. در بیانیه سپاه پاسداران به نام گروه درگیر اشارهای نشده است. اما به گزارش منابع دیگر، این درگیری بین «یگانهای مدافع خلق، شاخه نظامی کودار» و سپاه پاسداران رخ داده است.
اگنس کالامار، دبیر کل سازمان عفو بینالملل خواستار آن شده است که ابراهیم رئیسی رئیس جمهور منتخب ایران بابت اقداماتش که وی آن را “جنایات علیه بشریت” خوانده تحت تحقیقات کیفری قرار گیرد. خانم کالامار گفته است “این که ابراهیم رئیسی به مقام ریاست جمهوری دست پیدا کرده است به جای آن که به دلیل ارتکاب جنایات علیه بشریت، از جمله قتل، ناپدیدسازی قهری و شکنجه تحت تحقیقات کیفری قرار بگیرد، نمودی فجیع از سلطه مطلق مصونیت در ایران است. درخواست تعقیب کیفری آقای رئیسی ساعاتی پس از مطرح شد که وزارت کشور ایران وی را پیروز سیزدهمین دوره انتخابات ریاست جمهوری اعلام کرد
میشل باچله، کمیسر حقوق بشر سازمان ملل، وضعیت حقوق بشر را در ایران نگرانکننده توصیف کرد و از حکومت ایران خواست بازداشت خودسرانه روزنامهنگاران، فعالان مدنی، حامیان محیط زیست، وکلا و هنرمندان را پایان دهد و حکم اعدام افراد به خصوص کودکمجرمان را لغو کند. او همچنین از سرکوب معترضان در آبان ۱۳۹۸ و نبود انتخابات آزاد در ایران انتقاد کرد. در عین حال، سفیر ایران در ژنو گزارش باچله را «کاملا سیاسی» همراه با اطلاعات «نادرست» برای «زیر فشار گذاشتن» ایران دانست و گفت: «ایالاتمتحده باید به دلیل اعمال تحریمهای یکجانبه علیه ایران پاسخگوی نقض آشکار حقوق بشر باشد.»