Human rights

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Three prisoners named Eskandar Zare, Sepehr Abbasnejad and Hamzeh Rezaei who are on death row for drug-related charges, were transferred to solitary confinement in preparation for their executions in Urmia Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, three men were transferred to solitary confinement in preparation for their executions from Ward 4 …

chathamhouse.org – Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian charity worker arrested on holiday in Iran in 2016 and jailed for five years after being found guilty of undisclosed national security charges. At the end of her term, she was sentenced to another year in prison and given a one-year travel ban after being found guilty of ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’. The …

Iranwire – On Friday, July 30, Persepolis football team defeated Paykan to win the Iran Pro League for the fifth time in a row. This time, though, victory celebrations in cities across the country rapidly turned into anti-government protests. Chants including “Death to the dictator”, “Mullahs get lost” and “Death to Velayat-e faqih” –  “guardianship of the Islamic jurist”, the foundational principle of the …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court has reconfirmed the original sentence of 30 years imprisonment and 111 lashes for human rights lawyer Amirsalar Davoudi. The sentence had previously been revoked by the Supreme Court after he was granted a retrial. Mr Davoudi has history of defending political prisoners and ethnic and religious minorities and …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The Biden administration has… not uttered even one word of condemnation. People can and should be wondering how a country that boasts about freedom and civil rights can be silent while other humans are being butchered because they desire that same freedom and those same rights? Iran, with its current regime, is a danger not just to its …

Iranwire – Iranian sprinter Farzaneh Fasihi arrived at the Tokyo Olympics without any official support from the Islamic Republic. The Ministry of Sports, the Iranian sporting federation and Iran’s National Olympic Committee all turned their backs on her. And yet she made history: she became the first Iranian woman runner to compete in the Olympics for 57 years. She wore the hijab as Iranian law …

CHRI – In a bid to sidestep public scrutiny of a contentious new bill that would give Iran’s security agencies near-total control over internet use inside the country, the Iranian Parliament has voted to refer the bill to an internal committee that has the power to pass legislation without full parliamentary review. “This bill is simply another weapon that the Iranian authorities …

Al-Monitor – The highest-ranking and most popular Sunni cleric in Iran, Mawlawi Abdul-Hamid, expressed concern for the overall situation of minorities in Iran under the Islamic Republic, saying the same ethnicities in neighboring countries and the Persian Gulf region “are better off.” “When comparing their lives to people in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf nations, our fellow Arab countrymen clearly find themselves …

RFL/RE – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on Iranian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release those detained during protests against water shortages and economic hardships in Khuzestan and other provinces and to investigate the abusive use of lethal force.Demonstrations than began on July 15 in dozens of towns and cities in Khuzestan, a province with a large ethnic Arab …

Iranwire – On Wednesday, July 28, Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament voted to implement a new law that could further restrict Iranians’ access to the internet and social media. The hugely controversial and surreally-named “Bill for the Protection of Cyberspace Users” allows the Iranian armed forces to more stringently monitor internet traffic into and out of Iran. It also states that foreign …