Year: 2019

Several media activists and bloggers were arrested in various cities in Iran

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Following the severe human rights violations in Iran, four media activists and bloggers critical of the Islamic Republic have been arrested in Tehran and Shiraz in recent days. According to credible sources, following the recent widespread protests against the Islamic Republic authorities and institutions, which began in the third week of November 2019 and spread throughout Iran, a wave of arrests of student and media activists, bloggers, and critics began. On Wednesday, November 19, Hamed Zahraei and Amir Hamzeh Safizadeh were arrested in Shiraz. On Thursday, November 20, Behnam Karimi…

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UN and Amnesty International Condemn the Crackdown on Iran Protests

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On Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that dozens of people have been killed in continuing protests across Iran – mostly by live ammunition. Rupert Colville, the Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “We are deeply concerned by reported violations of international norms and standards on the use of force, including the firing of live ammunition, against demonstrators in Iran during the protests that began on Friday and have continued into this week. We are especially alarmed that…

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Iran Protests: Heavy Punishment for the Regime

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“Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.” These are the words of the famous French author Guy de Maupassant, underlining the right of the people to take their rights. The Iranian regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini claimed victory after killing 120,000 people of Iran and said that the story of resistance in front of this regime is over. Now his successor, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is confessing about the resistance of…

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Iran executes ‘CIA spy’ amid Gulf tensions

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Iran has hanged a CIA informer said to be a former member of the military unit that downed the US drone on Thursday. Iran’s Judiciary Unit for Armed Forces confirmed an earlier report by Iran Human Rights organisation (IRH) that Seyyed Jamal Haji-Zavareh was executed last week on charges of “spying for an enemy state and the CIA”. Hajizavareh was reportedly executed at the Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. The justice department has denied Haji-Zavareh had been a senior member of the military unit and has referred…

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Another Iranian Lawyer Sentenced to 30 Years of Imprisonment

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Iran Human Rights (IHR); June 1, 2019: Amirsalar Davoudi, a detained member of the Iranian Bar Association who had represented some of the Iranian political prisoners, is sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Iranian authorities. He is accused of several charges and under Iranian law, the longest jail-term among the accusation is applicable. In this case, the lawyer should be in jail for 15 years, a sentence issued by the Revolutionary Court for running a channel on Telegram, a social media application. IHR strongly condemns Mr Davoudi’s verdict…

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Iranian Intelligence Shuts Down Church, Removes Cross

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The Assyrian Christian community in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz has been left in a state of shock after intelligence agents forced a Presbyterian church to close earlier this month, Assyrian International News Agency (Aina) reports. Religious freedom charity Article18 said: “Intelligence agents stormed the 100-year-old church, officially recognized as a national heritage site in Iran, on Thursday, May 9, changed all the locks, tore down the cross from the church tower, and ordered the churchwarden to leave.” “They made it clear that the Assyrian people are no longer…

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards raid modelling agencies for ‘promoting vulgarity’

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‘Those who disregard norms … should know that the hands of the law will catch up with them,’ says the commander of the elite force. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards force has raided three modeling agencies, accusing the companies and their aspiring models of breaking strict Islamic dress codes for women. General Mohsen Karimi, a commander in the city of Arak, said staff at the underground agencies had been arrested for “promoting vulgarity”, according to the semi-official Iranian news service Fars. The report said part of the alleged offences had been the sharing…

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Charity Worker Who Assisted Flood Victims Arrested in Tehran

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Charity worker Akram Nasirian was arrested by unidentified security agents in Tehran for unknown reasons, according to the Telegram channel of the Voice of Iranian Women charity organization. Nasirian, who prior to her arrest had worked in flood-impacted areas of the country, made a phone call to her family the following day and said she was being held for interrogations. “My mother Akram Nasirian was arrested on the street on Monday, April 29 [2019] and taken to Evin Prison without anyone informing us,” her son Nima Mehdipour said in a…

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Imprisoned Lawyer’s Husband Rejects Judiciary’s Accusation of “Exaggerating” Her Heavy Sentence

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“The authorities…refuse to accept the fact that they have condemned a woman lawyer to suffer the inhuman act of flogging and a long prison sentence because of activities that were entirely peaceful.” –Reza Khandan, husband of Nasrin Sotoudeh Imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, has rejected Iranian Judiciary Spokesman Gholam-Hossein Esmaili’s claim that the magnitude of the sentence against her has been exaggerated. “They are playing games,” Esmaili said at a press conference in Tehran on April 23, referring to the outcry over the harsh punishment against Sotoudeh for her…

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Prominent Human Rights Defender: Iran is Intensifying Crackdown on Activism to Stifle Dissent

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The Iranian government and judiciary are intensifying a nationwide crackdown on civil society and beyond, as well as most forms of activism, to stifle any form of dissent, Abdolkarim Lahiji, a prominent Iranian human rights attorney now based in France, told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). In a wide-ranging interview conducted by phone on April 5, 2019, Lahiji, who defended political prisoners in Iran before and after the country’s 1979 revolution told CHRI: “Today, it’s not just political opponents and defenders of human rights being imprisoned, but…

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