Amnesty – Iranian journalists Sanaz Alahyari and Amirhossein Mohammadifar have been on hunger strike since 4 July. They are protesting their continued detention and the authorities’ ongoing crackdown on labour rights activists and journalists covering the protests at Haft Tappeh sugar cane company in Khuzestan province. Prison doctors have said that Sanaz Alahyari is in poor health and she could …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Four prisoners were hanged for murder charges at Urmia prison this morning. According to IHR sources, on the early morning of Tuesday, July 16, four prisoners were hanged for murder charges at Urmia prison. Two of them were identified by IHR sources as Khaled Royan and Heman Banavand. All four were sentenced to death for …

CHRI – Revolutionary Guards Blocking Outside Contact, Says Free Nazanin Campaign  Imprisoned Iranian-British citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held in the psychiatric ward of the Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran since July 2015, 2019, according to the Free Nazanin campaign. Throughout this time she has been denied contact with her family and guarded by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). …

CHRI – Fariba Adelkhah Among at Least Eight Other Jailed Iranians With Foreign Residencies While confirming reports that Iranian-born French scholar Fariba Adelkhah is currently detained in Iran, the French Ministry noted that it has not received a “satisfactory” response to requests for information about her case or for her to be given consular access. “The French authorities were recently …

CHRI – Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi announced on July 7, 2019, the development of an Iranian-made version of the Android operating system (OS) by a team of students at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. Taking into account the Iranian government’s documented history of monitoring and collecting private online user data, particularly from apps and websites with servers based in …

CHRI – Stigmatization of Disability Perpetuated by Widespread Use of Insulting Language Despite years of effort by disability rights activists and NGOs to change societal biases about disabilities and protect the dignity of this community, governmental authorities in Iran continue to use references to disability as a means of insult. In the latest example, Attorney General Mohammad Ja’far Montazeri described …

Al-Monitor – Iranian Kurdish opposition groups and Iran are conducting talks in Oslo, in what some see as an Iranian bid to safeguard against Kurdish collaboration with the United States. Gail Orenstein/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThe Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan’s (PDKI) armed wing, known as the Iranian peshmerga, train near the Iran-Iraq border, May 13, 2017. Iranian Kurdish opposition groups …

PBS.org — The simple act of walking has become a display of defiance for a young Iranian woman who often moves in Tehran’s streets without a compulsory headscarf, or hijab. With every step, she risks harassment or even arrest by Iran’s morality police whose job is to enforce the strict dress code imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “I have …

What are the consequences of the Iranian government’s massive, systematic campaign to spread disinformation about religious minorities through social and traditional media? Watch an in-depth conversation with leading scholars. On July 16-18, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will host the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, providing a much-needed forum to address the plight of frequently overlooked minorities in Iran, …

HRANA – In the morning of July 15, 2019 four prisoners of Urmia prison were executed on the charge of murder. They were transferred to solidarity confinement cells a day before. These prisoners, Himan Bonavand, Jafar (Iman) Mohammadi, Mohammad Aref (Jahangir) Najafian, and Mahmoud Khaledi were sentenced to death on the charge of murder earlier. Bonavand was in prison since …