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

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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Iran Protests: Heavy Punishment for the Regime

“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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Another Iranian Lawyer Sentenced to 30 Years of Imprisonment

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

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’

‘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

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

“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

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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Paris City Council Grants Honorary Citizenship of Paris to Nasrin Sotoudeh

The city council of Paris granted honorary citizenship of the city to Nasrin Sotoudeh, the incarcerated Human rights activist and attorney in Iran. On Monday, April 1st, the Paris city council unanimously granted Nasrin Sotoudeh the citizenship of Paris in honor of her fight for “fundamental freedoms and rights of women”. The council members demanded her immediate release in their statement. The statement released on Monday by the Paris municipality, mentioned her efforts in advocating the rights of minorities and women, opposing the death penalty, and receiving Sakharov prize from…

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Iran: Annual report on the death penalty 2018

The 11th Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, by Iran Human Rights (IHR) and ECPM, coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution of 1979. The Islamic revolution marks the start of an era where the death penalty became a “normal” part of the people’s everyday lives. The first death sentences were carried out only three days after the victory of the revolution, as four of the Shah’s generals were executed by firing squads on the roof of “Rafah School”, which was Ayatollah Khomeini’s headquarters at that…

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