Shabtabnews – In an open letter IOPHR requests “Urgent External Action to stop the Imminent Execution of Dr Ahmad Reza Djalali.” The letter draws attention the fact that Dr Djalali, was sentenced to death because he refused to cooperate with the Iranian intelligence services, by refusing to spy on crisis control centres in Europe. As result the letter urges EU …

Shabtabnews – On 19th November 2020, IOPHR held a webinar on the “Legalisation of Child Marriage and the Oppression of Women Under Iran’s Ruling Regime in the Last Four Decades.” This event which was hosted by IOPHR in association with the International Religious Freedom Roundtable and Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s multi-decade oppression of women …

Shabtabnews – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today released the following new report: Issue Update—Promoting Religious Freedom and Countering Violent Extremism in Tajikistan—This update describes Tajikistan’s official campaign to control and restrict Islamic practice, ostensibly an effort to combat the spread of terrorism and violent extremism but, in reality, represents harsh and counterproductive religious freedom restrictions. …

Al-Arabia – Iran registered on Wednesday a daily record high of 13,843 new coronavirus cases, the health ministry said, pushing the national tally to 894,385 in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Ministry’s spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV that the death toll rose by 469 in the past 24 hours to 46,207. For more on coronavirus, visit our dedicated …

RFL/RE – A British-based group monitoring the Syrian conflict says eight pro-Iranian militiamen have been killed in alleged overnight Israeli air strikes. The strikes targeted an arms depot and a position held by Iranian forces and the allied Lebanon-based Shi’ite militant group Hizballah in the southern countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on …

iranwire.com – Following the resignations of two senior health ministry officials, the ministry has admitted that it funded research into “alternative” or “traditional” medicine to treat people with Covid-19. The ministry has also conceded that its strategy to combat the coronavirus crisis has been inefficient and lacked transparency. “There is such a thing as traditional medicine and it even has its own …

iranwire.com – Iran has failed to control the coronavirus pandemic, a new report by the country’s Ministry of Health has revealed. The ministry’s Research and Technology Department has outlined that during clinical trials for drugs to treat Covid-19, hospitals and research centers also focused on traditional and herbal medicine, a controversial move given that most research worldwide focused on conventional medicine. The research …

iranwire.com – In 2015, a joint meeting was held between members of the Iranian Mandaean community and Ali Younesi, Iran’s then Special Assistant to the President for Ethnic and Minority Affairs. It was hoped that through these discussions, the state-sponsored discrimination against one of the most little-understood ethnoreligious minorities in Iran might finally come to an end. Ganzora Najah, head of the …

Iran-HRM – November 25 marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Women in Iran are exposed to the worst forms of physical and psychological violence, and reports of violence against women, according to the regime officials, have increased by 20 to 22 percent compared to previous years. Violence against women in Iran is different from other …

VOA – The daughter of a U.S.-based Iranian-German dissident captured by Iran four months ago as he traveled in the Gulf says Iranian authorities have treated him harshly, denying him access to a family-chosen lawyer and televising new images of him making an apparent forced confession. In a Monday interview with VOA Persian from Los Angeles where her family lives, …