Human rights

Iranwire – Baha’is in Iran have faced many forms of systematic discrimination and harassment over the past four decades, including deportation, educational restrictions, detention, harassment, torture, imprisonment and even execution. The burial of Baha’i citizens in Baha’i cemeteries is the lated twist; Baha’is are now being prevented from using officially allocated resting places, and families are instead being forced to …

VOA – Iran’s election to the U.N.’s top women’s empowerment body this week despite having a poor record has drawn outrage from rights activists who criticized the Islamic republic’s treatment of women. The result of the secret ballot also has been met with silence from the U.S. In Tuesday’s vote, 43 of the 54 nations in the U.N.’s Economic and …

Iranwire – Mohammad Sharifi-Moghaddam, a student activist and Gonabadi dervish imprisoned in Greater Tehran Prison, has appealed to publishers and translators to send books to prisoners. In a letter seen by IranWire, Sharifi-Moghaddam describes conditions in the prison, which is also known as Fashafuyeh Prison, including the human rights violations that regularly take place there. Given the restrictions in the …

Iranwire – On Tuesday, April 21, several United Nations councils and other bodies were in session at the UN headquarters in New York to manage their internal affairs, which included choosing new members for the various commissions. The Islamic Republic of Iran was chosen to join two commissions, in two separate meetings. One was the United Nations Office on Drugs …

Iran-HRM – The state security forces have paraded 34 young men in the streets to punish them for attending the Iranian fire festival which was heled on March 16, the state-run IRNA news agency reported today. The public degradation was carried out in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad with the presence of Judge Seyed Hadi Shariatyar, Deputy of Crime …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Two prisoners in Arak Central Prison have been informed of being sentenced to death on charges of “insulting the prophet”. The two men were tried and convicted in a joint case. Human rights defender Narges Mohammadi revealed the verdict in the men’s case on her Instagram account. The men who are currently held in Arak …

Al-Monitor – Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based advocacy organization, joined a growing chorus of Iranians to urge the release of veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad. “He is ailing and deprived from the right to treatment. His life is in danger,” read a post on the organization’s official Persian Twitter account. The statement accused Iranian authorities of “arbitrarily” imprisoning the …

RFL/RE – An independent, bipartisan advisory body has reiterated its call for the U.S. State Department to add Russia to its register of the world’s “worst violators” of religious freedom, a blacklist that already includes Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and six other countries.The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), created by Congress to make recommendations about global religious freedom, …

Iranwire – Human rights activist Narges Mohammadi was held as a political prisoner in Iran for more than five years before being released last October. Her book, White Torture, contains interviews with 12 female political prisoners – and 13 in the second edition – about their experiences of solitary confinement. In this guest post for IranWire, she discusses the dynamics …

Iran-HRM – The lives of prisoners in the Central Prison of Karaj are increasingly in danger with the start of a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran. Reports from inside the overcrowded and unhygienic prison indicate that testing, treatment and care are not carried out for sick prisoners and the authorities have failed to take adequate infection prevention …