A member of Iran’s persecuted Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer community appealed to US president Joe Biden to confront the Islamic Republic over its severe repression of sexual minorities. “How can President Biden, who claims to be supportive of gay rights and has just nominated a gay man like [Pete] Buttigieg and also nominated a transgender like Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary of HHS, say absolutely nothing about the mullahs’ horrific human rights abuses toward us gay and lesbian in Iran?” a gay Iranian in Iran told Karmel Melamed, an Iranian American internationally published freelance journalist based in Southern California.
Leaders of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) called on the international community at a press conference on Tuesday to re-enforce sanctions on Iran and not surrender to “Tehran’s blackmailing and posturing.” NCRI officials revealed new information on how Iran’s Mullahs are carefully building a nuclear weapon while seeking to remove sanctions on its programs. The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released on Feb. 23 shows anthropogenic uranium particles at two sites in Iran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards unlawfully used lethal force against unarmed fuel porters near the city of Saravan, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, on 22 February, flagrantly violating the absolute prohibition on the arbitrary deprivation of the right to life under international law, said Amnesty International today. Testimony from eyewitnesses and victims’ families, coupled with video footage geolocated and verified by the organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab, confirms that on that day, Revolutionary Guards, stationed at Shamsar military base, used live ammunition against a group of unarmed fuel porters from Iran’s impoverished Baluchi minority causing several deaths and injuries.
Sistan and Balochistan province is among the poorest in Iran and it faces regular sandstorms and droughts. The regime’s environmentally destructive policies and negligence have aggravated the province’s dire conditions and have worsened the living conditions. Desperation and a lack of employment opportunities have forced many Balochis in the Sunni-majority region to engage in cross-border fuel smuggling as a means of earning a living.
An Iranian political prisoner and champion bodybuilder stitched his lips together in protest for being held at an inhumane penitentiary in Tehran where he is denied adequate medical care for severe health problems. “His name is Khaled Pirzadeh and he is the Third World Bodybuilding Champion. He has now been in prison for two years for insulting the supreme leader of Iran. His back has been broken and he is confined to a wheelchair because of the torture he has endured,” tweeted Sardar Pashaei, the renowned Greco-Roman Iranian wrestler world champion, on Saturday.
The Jamestown Foundation recently reported that the Islamic Republic of Iran handed out prison sentences to five Azerbaijani activists for supporting Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War. Simultaneously, they reported that during Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, many Azerbaijani mosques were transformed into Iranian mosques and were thus were made “Persian” in style following repair work, a reality that greatly infuriated Azerbaijan’s president, who viewed the measure to be cultural repression. Around the same period, Hamid Mutashir, the President of the Al Ahwaz Liberal Party, reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards killed six Baloch civilians.
A court in Iran confirmed prison sentences against three residents of a southwestern city who joined the nationwide protests in November 2019. The 102nd Branch of the Behbahan Criminal Court upheld the sentences of three protesters arrested during the November 2019 protests. The three protesters Sattar Afshinpour, Bahman Amini and Mohammad Tayebi were tried in absentia and the three men were sentenced to a total of 13 years of prison and 222 lashes. Sattar Afshinpour was charged with “destruction and torching banks and public facilities” and “disruption of public order” and sentenced to 11 years of prison and 74 lashes.
Iranian authorities on Sunday executed four political prisoners from Iran’s Ahvazi Arab minority. The political prisoners, Naser Khafajian, Ali Khasraji, Hossein Silawi and Jasem Heidary were executed at Sepidar prison of Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan Province. Ahvaz Intelligence Ministry agents contacted the families, instructing them to the Ahvaz’s Chaharshir Square. Intelligence agents blindfolded the families and transferred them to Sepidar Prison, where they visited their loved ones for half an hour. The families of the four Ahvazi Arab political prisoners said that they brought their children to visit with handcuffs and shackles.
Iranian authorities executed a political prisoner from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority. Political prisoners, Jasem Heydari, was executed along with three other prisoners on Sunday February 28. Jasem Heydari was convicted of “armed insurrection” (baghi) by a Revolutionary Court in Ahvaz and sentenced to death in connection with his alleged collaboration with groups opposed to the Iranian regime. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict in November 2020.
The killing by state security forces of some two dozen protesters in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province since unrest broke out in the area on February 22, 2021—and the intermittent shutdown of the internet to conceal news of those killings—continues the trend of excessive and lethal state force used against demonstrators in the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which effectively controls local economic and military operations and which triggered the unrest by killing fuel transporters, should be held accountable for all resulting deaths and injuries.
The more radical sectors of Iran’s embattled Reform movement say past experience has taught them not to “hire a candidate” from outside their tribe for the June presidential election. The concept of “the hired candidate” made its way into Iran’s political discourse with the pro-Reform movement’s endorsement of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and later for his reelection in 2017. To many members of the camp, that was a choice in reluctance between a lesser of two evils. In their view, Rouhani had never expressed allegiance to their fundamental tenets of genuine reform in the Islamic Republic.
The government of Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, and unfortunately its educational curriculum is no exception. Public school teachers in Iran today use textbooks designed by the state to indoctrinate young people to export global revolution using terrorism and other aggressive means. As a result, the content of its textbooks should be a global concern. I recently completed the first comprehensive study of hate and extremism in current Iranian textbooks in nearly half a decade as part of my ongoing work with the Anti-Defamation League, the results of which are accessible in full on the ADL website.
Dozens of ethnic Baluch rights activists have staged a protest in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi to condemn the killing of their ethnic brethren by Iranian border guards last month. The protest comes amid reports of violent unrest and Internet blackouts in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province triggered after security forces killed cross-border fuel smugglers. Human Rights Watch last month said at least 10 people were killed at the Saravan border area near Pakistan on February 22, although the number of dead may be higher.
سازمان عفو بین الملل خواهان انجام تحقیقات مستقل کیفری درباره قتل سوخت برها در سیستان و بلوچستان در ایران شده است. بنا بر بیانیه این سازمان مدافع حقوق بشر، سپاه پاسداران در چهارم اسفند “به شکل غیرقانونی از قوه قهریه مرگبار علیه جمعی از سوخت بران غیر مسلح در نزدیکی شهر سراوان استفاده کرده است و اصل ممنوعیت سلب بی ضابطه حق حیات را نقض کرده است. عفو بین الملل با استناد به تحقیقات فعالان حقوق بشر، تعداد کشته شدگان این حادثه را دست کم ۱۰ نفر عنوان کرده که یکی از آنها یک نوجوان ۱۷ ساله بوده است. در این بیانیه به نقل از دیانا الطحاوی، معاون بخش خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقای دیدبان حقوق بشر نوشته شده است: “توجیهات ارایه شده از سوی مقام های ایران برای کاربرد مرگ بار از سلاح گرم، نشان دهنده بی توجهی کامل آنها به موازین بین المللی در این باره است.
ایران چهار شهروند عرب خود را به اتهام آنچه «فعالیت و عملیات تروریستی» خوانده اعدام کرده است. نهادهای حقوق بشری میگویند اعدام این ۴ نفر روز دهم اسفند – یکشنبه- در حالی صورت گرفته که آنها ساعتی قبل خانوادههای خود را ملاقات کردند اما به اعضای خانوادهها گفته نشده بود که این «آخرین دیدار» آنهاست. خبرگزاری حقوق بشری هرانا، روز دوشنبه، ۱۱ اسفند، نوشت: «حکم اعدام جاسم حیدری، علی خسرجی، حسین سیلاوی و ناصر خفاجیان، چهار زندانی سیاسی در زندان سپیدار اهواز به اجرا درآمد. باوجود این که اعدام این شهروندان دقایقی پس از ملاقات آخر آنان با خانوادهها صورت گرفته است، مسئولان زندان خانواده این شهروندان را از قرار اجرای حکم مطلع نکرده بودند.
وزارت خارجه آمریکا میگوید کشتن سوختبران و معترضان از سوی نیروهای دولتی در سیستان و بلوچستان ایران را «به شدت» محکوم میکند. توییتر فارسی وزارت خارجه آمریکا روز چهارشنبه ۱۳ اسفند نوشت: ما قتل های گزارش شده سوختبران و معترضان توسط نیروهای امنیتی دولتی در استان سیستان و بلوچستان ایران را به شدت محکوم می کنیم. استفاده از نیروی مرگبار علیه تظاهرکنندگان غیر مسلح، نقض آشکار قوانین بین المللی است و بی اعتنایی بی رحمانه به جان انسان ها را نشان می دهد. عفو بین الملل روز سهشنبه ۱۲ اسفند، با صدور بیانیه ای در سایت خود می گوید که سپاه پاسداران ایران علیه سوختبران غیرمسلح در نزدیکی شهر سراوان در استان سیستان و بلوچستان، به طور غیرقانونی به نیروی مرگبار متوسل شده است.