Fourteen dissidents in Iran, some in jail, have issued a statement Sunday demanding the release of all political prisoners in the country. The dissidents, who had issued a statement two years ago demanding the resignation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the abolishment of the Islamic Republic, were arrested in August 2019. At least five are still in Tehran and Mashhad prisons. The new statement published online is signed by the dissidents and their families, saying political prisoners should be released without any precondition.
More than a week into Hamas’ latest offensive of rocket attacks against Israel, which ended early Friday with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, a growing number of non-Jewish Iranian activists, journalists and individuals in Iran and outside the country had become vocal in their support for the people of Israel. Whether via social media messages or by demonstrating alongside pro-Israel supporters in the United States and Canada, non-Jewish Iranians also expressed support for peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians.
A judge in Ontario has ruled that Iran intentionally shot down a passenger airliner in January 2020 causing the deaths of 176 people including dozens of Canadians. The decision adds judicial weight to allegations that the crash of the Ukrainian International Airlines plane, shortly after it departed Tehran for Kiev, was not an accident. A total of 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents of Canada died in the tragedy.
Inhumane treatment and torture of political prisoners to put them under profound psychological pressure is a common practice in Iran’s prisons to extract forced confessions from prisoners against their will. Torture and other inhuman treatment of prisoners cause irreversible psychological and physical harms to their health. Prolonged interrogations, intimidation, sexual harassment, beatings of detainees during interrogation, long-term solitary confinement, and deprivation of access to medical care are some of the tactics the regime’s interrogators deploy to make their victims confess to what they have not done.
Jailed Iranian protester Hossein Hashemi detailed the poor conditions of the Greater Tehran Penitentiary (GTP) in a letter published on May 21. Hossein Hashemi, who has been imprisoned for taking part in the nationwide protests in November 2019, wrote that while adequate drinking water was scarce at the GTP or Fashafuyeh Prison, drugs could easily be acquired in the section where political prisoners were held along with thieves.
According to human rights defenders, authorities in Iran tortured two inmates to death at Urmia Central Prison, in the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan, on Monday, May 17. The opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) identified the victims as Ahad Yektavatan and Amir Rezaei, 35. “On Monday night, the prison’s guards raided a ward and severely beat several prisoners… Then, criminal agents threw down Ahad Yektavatan from the second floor. Afterward, they transferred him to solitary confinement and tortured him.
A political prisoner in the Greater Tehran Penitentiary has published an open letter where he says inmates have to buy their own drinking water as the prison water contains pollutants. Hossein Hashemi who was arrested in the nationwide protests in November 2019 writes that “Young people who protested to paying 30,000 rials for one liter of gasoline, now have to pay 50,000 rials for same amount of water.” Although this would cost prisoners about 50 cents a day, but for many it is a lot of money given minimum wage of $100 monthly.
Reformist activist and journalist Mehdi Mahmoudian wrote on Twitter on Friday that a journalist he referred to only by his last name, Sharifian, had been told to expect repercussions if he continued to criticize chief justice Ebrahim Raeesi, and that two others had been ordered to remove tweets against him. Other Iranian journalists and social-media activists have claimed that judicial bodies have been telling them in recent days not to decry Raeesi, who is likely to be a candidate in the June 18 presidential election.
An Oberlin professor known as the professor of peace has been called out for his past in the Iranian government for concealing information about mass executions in 1988. Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, the Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies at Oberlin College in Oberlin, has been targeted by letter writers for his role in the Iranian government at that time. Amnesty International wrote about the Iranian government’s role in the killings and the cover-up in December of 2018, after then-prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was interviewed on camera.
Iran has hand picked hundreds of trusted fighters from among the cadres of its most powerful militia allies in Iraq, forming smaller, elite and fiercely loyal factions in a shift away from relying on large groups with which it once exerted influence. The new covert groups were trained last year in drone warfare, surveillance and online propaganda and answer directly to officers in Iran’s Quds Force, the arm of its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) that controls its allied militia abroad.
The leadership of Iran, engaged in a long shadow war with Israel on land, air and sea, did not try to conceal the pleasure it took in the most recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Over the 11 days of fighting this month, Tehran praised the damage being done to its enemy, and the state news media and conservative commentators highlighted Iran’s role in providing weaponry and military training to Palestinian militants in Gaza to hammer Israeli communities. Iran has for decades supported Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza and whose own interests in battling Israel align with Iran’s. Experts say that over the years, Iran has provided Hamas with financial and political support, weapons and technology and training to build its own arsenal of advanced rockets that can reach deep into Israeli territory.
It wasn’t only family members but others in his hometown who took pride in Omid Tonekaboni’s acceptance to medical school. Doctors are an exalted group in Iran, where two of the most watched TV shows when Tonekaboni was a boy had physicians for protagonists, and where “Sina” remains one of the most popular names for babies today, after the legendary Ibn Sina, a philosopher and doctor in ancient Persia. Tonekaboni, 44, is now an emergency specialist with more than two decades of experience under his belt. But while he wants to continue practicing his profession, fulfilling both his and his parents’ dreams for him, he no longer sees a future doing so in Iran.
When Iranian director Babak Khorramdin’s dismembered body was found in a rubbish bin this week, police did not have to search far for his killer. Khorramdin’s elderly parents were immediately arrested and within hours his father confessed to the murder. Akbar Khorramdin, 81, an Iraq-Iran war veteran, told Tehran police he was glad to have killed his son. He told Tehran Criminal Court that he had no remorse over the murder and was “relieved… I no longer have any worries in my life”.
Kurds from Iran who are waiting for asylum decisions in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq protested in front of the United Nations headquarters in the capital on Thursday, just days after a man set fire to himself at the building. Mohammad Mahmoudi, a Kurd from the Boukan region of Iran, poured gasoline on himself and set himself alight in front of the UN headquarters in Erbil on Tuesday. Mahmoudi, 27, suffered burns on more than 90 percent of his body and is now being treated at a public hospital in the city, said medics who spoke to Kurdistan 24.
The drone shot down in Israel this week was armed with explosives and launched by Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday. Netanyahu displayed fragments of the aerial weapon during a news conference in Jerusalem with Germany’s foreign minister, according to reports. “Iran sent an armed drone to Israel from Iraq or Syria,” Netanyahu said.
Protests by hard-hit farmers over Iran’s worsening water crisis are being repressed by state security forces as officials increasingly describe the protests as a “national security” issue. Environmental scientist Kaveh Madani explained in an interview with the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) that a major portion of the Iranian population “has become directly dependent on water for its livelihood,” and that protests will increase if the government does not provide alternatives for the losses of water-related jobs.
With the watchdog Guardian Council due to announce May 27 those approved to run in Iran’s June 18 presidential election, almost none of Iran’s would-be candidates has offered plans or roadmaps for their presidency. Some hopefuls have offered only general commitments to improve the economy. None has revealed anything about their likely team of ministers. Some campaigns − including those of Chief Justice Ebrahim Raeesi, vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri, and Saeed Mohammad, former head of the Revolutionary Guards’ construction arm Khatam ol-Anbia − have released posters highlighting supposed weaknesses of their rivals’ teams.
A presidential election in Iran next month could provide the final straw to split an already long-divided conservative political camp, after years of growing divisions. While the list of approved candidates has yet to be released, the June 18 poll is already widely expected to be a showdown between conservative Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker, and ultraconservative judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi.
Ali Larijani, likely to be a leading candidate in Iran’s June 18 presidential election, took questions from 20,000 potential voters in a three-hour-long conversation on the audio-chat application Clubhouse Thursday evening. This was an opportunity to talk face-to-face with a state official who represents Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in transactions with China and until a year ago was speaker of Iran’s parliament, although some barriers hindered full dialogue. Moderators did not allow everyone to ask whatever they wanted to ask, and at times they appeared to shut off Larijani’s microphone, blaming technical glitches.
A decade ago, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared to be the nemesis of Israel. His questioning of the Holocaust and threats against Israel appeared perfectly timed to go along with Iran’s nuclear threats. He was everything that was bad about the Iranian regime. Now, tempered by time, he wants to run for president. But the Iranian regime may not let him. Ahmadinejad has changed his tune from the old days. He now speaks about freedom and poses as an outsider, a “man of the people.” He hosts discussions on Clubhouse, and tens of thousands have tuned in.
A video posted on Telegram in Iran on May 16 shows dozens of men and women openly consuming drugs on a Tehran street. Some inhale amphetamines while others inject heroin, in a scene that shocked many Iranians. According to our Observers, this video illustrates a growing addiction problem that has become more and more visible in the streets of southern Tehran.
During the past weeks of the weather getting warmer, Iranians of various walks of life from densely-populated Tehran to many parts of central and southern Iran have been complaining about water shortages. Despite warnings by experts, year after year the situation has worsened as water supplies have been shrinking and the government has failed to come up with a serious water-management solution.
In Iran, no day goes by without news about an increase in the price of essential goods. In the latest case, the head of the Bakers’ Association in Karaj Hojjatollah Nasiri acknowledged a 50-percent increase in the bread price on May 15. This price increase had gone into effect several days earlier. “Given the holy month of Ramadan, the official notification of the new bread price was postponed to the next few days,” Nasiri said. “Amid the chaos of candidates’ registration, [President Hassan] Rouhani increased the bread price,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported of the same day.
The latest news reports are focused on the explosive results of Iran’s investment in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas—a divisive and distressing confrontation to be sure. But while all eyes are on the Middle East, Iran has not been idle elsewhere. Its persistent and growing influence in Africa has flown under the radar for many observers. Considering the economic sanctions that limit some of Iran’s more ambitious economic intentions, and the many miles that separate the Islamic Republic from the African continent, it may seem unlikely that Iran would have significant interests in Africa.
Within days the all-powerful Council of the guardians of the Constitution is expected to publish the list of “approved candidates” for next month’s presidential election in the Islamic Republic in Iran. According to official reports a total of 592 men and one woman have filled the forms for consideration as a candidate. The council, however, is expected to approve no more than seven to 10 applicants. What is not clear is whether the council will assess the applicants on the basis of existing regulations or in accordance with new rules it published last month.
گروهی از خانوادههای قربانیان نقض حقوق بشر از سوی جمهوری اسلامی در ایران، از جمله خانوادههای اعدامشدگان، خانوادههای جانباختگان اعتراضات آبان ۹۸، و نزدیکان مسافران هواپیمای مسافربری اوکراینی سرنگونشده توسط سپاه پاسداران، خواستار تحریم انتخابات ریاست جمهوری ۱۴۰۰ شدند. این نخستین بار است که خانوادههای قربانیان بیش از چهار دهه نقض حقوق بشر در کنار هم و متحدانه خواستار تحریم انتخابات به خاطر نقض حقوق بشر و نادیده گرفتن حق دادخواهی در جمهوری اسلامی شدهاند.
اتحادیه آزاد کارگران ایران و کانون مدافعان حقوق بشر در بیانیههای جداگانهای خواستار آزادی کارگران و فعالان کارگری شدند و از مقامات ایران خواستند به تعقیب قضایی بازداشتشدگان روز جهانی کارگر پایان دهند. در حالی که اخباری حاکی از عدم برخورداری بسیاری از کارگران ایران از بیمه بیکاری و اخراج و افزایش تاخیر در پرداخت دستمزدهای آنها در دوران شیوع ویروس کرونا منتشر شده است، گروهی از کارگران از جمله هیراد پیربداقی، عسل محمدی، محمود صالحی، و عثمان اسماعیلی، پس از تجمعات روز جهانی کارگر از سوی نهادهای امنیتی احضار و بازداشت شدهاند. همچنین برای برخی از فعالان کارگری پرونده قضایی تشکیل شده است.
شب گذشته در جلسهای در کلابهاوس، شماری از اعضای خانواده کشتهشدگان اعتراضهای آبان ۹۸، سرنگونی هواپیمای اوکراینی و همچنین، نزدیکان و بستگان اعدامشدگان دهه ۶۰ و از جمله تابستان ۶۷ از راهاندازی کارزار «رای بی رای» برای فراخواندن مردم ایران به تحریم انتخابات ریاست جمهوری پیش رو خبر دادند. به گفته آنان، جنبش دادخواهی با پرداختن به مسائل انتخابات پیش رو، بر رای ندادن و عدم مشارکت در انتخاباتی غیر آزاد و نمایشی به عنوان روشی درست و موثر در «نه» گفتن به ظلم حکومت از آغاز تا امروز تاکید میکند.