Human rights

Iranwire – Iranian authorities have arrested three “citizen journalists” accused of receiving “significant amounts of money” from two foreign organizations, local media reported. Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, said the trio were working with Tavaana, a U.S.-based organization that provides free online training to Iranians, and Iran International, a London-based, Saudi-funded news television channel. …

Iranwire – Iranian intelligence agents have arrested a bodybuilding champion who had sustained injuries while participating in an anti-government rally. A source close to Reza Olfati’s family told IranWire that the Kurdish bodybuilder was arrested in the western Kermanshah province on October 30 after security forces stormed the house where he was staying. Olfati, a champion at the provincial level, …

Iranwire – “My twins were born on March 22, 1999. I only had this daughter and this son. They killed Reza,” says Ebtehaj Azizi, who immediately bursts into tears. Twenty-two years old Reza Shahparnia was shot dead during a protest in the western city of Kermanshah. “They killed my son on September 20,” she tells IranWire. “My Reza was the …

Amnesty – More than 760,000 people across 218 countries and territories have added their voices to petitions calling for the establishment of an independent UN mechanism to conduct investigations as a step towards pursuing accountability for the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran, Amnesty International said today. On 2 November, Nazanin Boniadi, a British-Iranian actor and Amnesty …

CHRI – With mass public trials for protesters recently announced in Iran, and charges already beginning to be issued that could carry a death sentence, it is urgent that the international community forcefully warn the Iranian authorities against leveling death sentences against the protesters, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement today. “The international community …

VOA – The United States called Wednesday for Iran to be removed from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the main intergovernmental body dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. “This work is vital. It makes a real difference,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the CSW. “And it deserves our full support, especially when …

Iranwire – The number of children killed in the fierce crackdown by Iranian security forces on nationwide protests has reached at least 48, IranWire reports, as a Norway-based human rights organization raised the overall death toll to at least 277. IranWire used various reliable sources to identify the children killed and publish their names, ages, and places of death. At least 18 …

Iranwire – Iranian authorities have arrested a professor of economics at Tehran University, the Payam-e-Eghtesad news website reports, amid continued strikes in academic institutions across the country. Security forces on Wednesday morning stormed Davood Sori’s house in the capital, confiscated his phone and laptop, and transferred him to the notorious Evin prison, it said. Sori’s reported arrest comes after several …

Iranwire – Over the past six weeks, the Islamic Republic has resorted to both soft and hard tactics to crack down on the nationwide unrest triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police. The Islamic Republic has dispatched riot police, Basij militiamen and plainclothesmen in its brutal crackdown against the protest movement in which …

Iranwire – At least 15 Iranian Kurds and one Iraqi Kurdish citizen were killed in a brutal crackdown by security forces on protests in western Kurdistan province last week, according to a human rights organization. Demonstrators flocked the streets across Iran on October 26 to mark the 40th day since Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Kurdistan province, died …