Human rights

RFL/RE – Mehdi Babrinejad would have turned 23 on August 15. His family marked his birthday in silence this year, while his brother, Reza Babrinejad, spent the day in detention after he was hauled off after a raid on the family home last week. Babrinejad was shot dead by Iranian security forces at the height of the antiestablishment protests that …

Iranwire – The sentence handed down to Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roostaei and his producer after they showcased a movie at the Cannes Film Festival without government approval have sparked swift condemnations from inside and outside Iran. Roostaei and producer Javad Norouzbeigi traveled to the southern French city of Cannes last year to show “Leila’s Brothers.” The film didn’t take the …

Iranwire – An August 13 column by Hossein Shariatmadari, managing editor of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, sparked many reactions in Iranian media. Referring to photographs showing startup female employees without the mandatory headscarf, he wrote that these platforms have acted in step with the “enemy.” Shariatmadari, who is also the representative of Supreme Leader Khamenei at Kayhan newspaper, then argued that since …

Iranwire – Iranian security forces have arrested a Baha’i psychologist and translator, Newsha Badie Sabet, in the northern city of Babol, according to information received by IranWire, amid an intensifying clampdown on the religious minority. Agents of the Intelligence Department of Mazandaran province visited on August 15 the residence of a Baha’i woman named Suzan Eid Mohammadzadegan and apprehended Badie Sabet, …

Iranwire – Security agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran have reportedly arrested seven women’s rights activists across the northern province of Gilan, amid an intensifying crackdown on civil society in the country.  The activists were arrested on August 16 at their homes in the cities of Rasht, Foman and Anzali, the feminist Twitter account Bidarzani reported.  They include Mateen …

Iranwire – Iranian security forces have arrested art director Moein Hosseinpour in the northern city of Behshahr on August 15, IranWire reports, amid an escalating state clampdown on critical voices in the country.  The agents presented themselves as officials from the Electricity Department in order to gain entry to Hosseinpour’s residence. They did not present a warrant during the arrest. …

Iranwire – Iranian authorities have arrested Jamaloddin Khanjani, a 90-year-old Baha’i in failing health who already served 10 years in prison for his religious beliefs, in what the Baha’i International Community (BIC) calls a “new wave of repression” targeting the religious minority in the country. In an August 16 statement, the BIC’s United Nations office in Geneva says there have …

Iranwire – Hessam Moradi, a 33-year-old resident of the south-western city of Borazjan, has been held in detention for more than a month. During his captivity, this father to a one-year-old girl has been subjected to physical abuse, prevented from communicating with his family and coerced to confess a crime he didn’t commit. Moradi, a member of the Turkic-speaking Qashqai …

VOA — Iranian authorities have re-arrested a journalist who interviewed the father of the woman whose custody death sparked months of protests, just two days after her release from jail, activists said on Tuesday. Nazila Maroufian walked out of Tehran’s Evin prison on Sunday, posting on social media a picture of herself without a headscarf in defiance of the Islamic republic’s …

CHRI – Religious leaders of the Sunni Muslim communities in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province and in the Kurdish provinces of the country are being increasingly targeted by Islamic Republic authorities for persecution, arrest, and imprisonment because of their peaceful criticism of the state’s violent repression. “Iranian authorities are jailing and defrocking religious leaders of the Sunni communities for speaking …