Human rights

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – More than five prisoners, all of whom appear to have been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for “premeditated murder,” have been transferred to solitary confinement in preparation for their executions in Rajai Shahr Prison. According to Iran Human Rights, on Monday, 1st February, more than five prisoners, all of whom appear to have been sentenced to qisas for “premeditated murder,” …

Iranwire – Touraj Amini, an Iranian writer and researcher of the Qajar era and Constitutional movement who is also a Baha’i, was taken to prison on January 29, to serve a six-month prison sentence on charges of spreading “propaganda against the regime” through his books and research. According to an informed source, for two days, Amini’s family has not known …

CHRI – Blue-collar workers as well as students who’ve been disproportionately impacted by the country’s struggling economy dominated media reports of people taking their own lives. The victims include an 11-year-old boy in Bushehr, located on the Persian Gulf coast, whose family could not afford to buy him a digital device to access online schooling, as well as a poor …

Amnesty – Ministry of Intelligence agents are torturing Iranian Kurdish woman Zeynab Jalalian by deliberately denying her health care to coerce her into providing a videotaped “confession”. This intentional denial of health care is causing her severe pain and suffering, particularly as she has serious medical conditions, including post-Covid-19 breathing difficulty. https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1336052021ENGLISH.pdf

Iranwire – Some 21 Baluch citizens were executed in the cities of Mashhad, Isfahan and Zahedan between December 19, 2020 and January 30, 2021. At least four of these people were charged with political and security-related offences. Despite widespread condemnation of the accelerated executions both inside and outside Iran, the authorities have continued to issue more Baluch Iranians with the …

Iranwire – Jianli Yang, a mathematician and human rights activist, survived China’s Tiananmen massacre in 1989, after which he left China for the United States. He returned in 2002 and was jailed between 2002 and 2007 for supporting the country’s labor movement. He was intermittently held in solitary confinement for a total of 15 months – as detailed in a previous …

RFL/RE – It’s an ordeal that many hundreds of Iranian mothers and fathers have had to endure for decades.Many wander from cemetery to cemetery looking for the unmarked graves of their dead children.If they’re lucky enough to find the burial spots of a relative they crouch over it, hoping their loved ones might be resting in peace. They often decorate …

RFL/RE – Iranian authorities have executed an ethnic Baluchi who was convicted of killing Iranian security forces despite a plea by the United Nations to halt his and other judicial killings after a spate of recent hangings. The Iranian judiciary’s official website reported that Javid Dehghan, 31, was hanged on January 30 for killing two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary …

Iranwire – An Austrian politician has accused Iran of unjustly jailing and torturing Austrian citizens, and has called for European leaders to take a tougher stance on the country. Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, a member of parliament for Austria’s Green Party (Die Grünen), described Iran’s tactic of taking dual Iranian-European citizens hostage as “provocative.” She also accused the Iranian government of not valuing the lives …

Iranwire – The Yarsani Consultative Assembly of Civil Activists has issued a statement protesting against the Islamic Republic’s systematic and widespread discrimination against religious minorities, and has called for a revision of the Constitution to ensure unconditional equality for all citizens. The statement, published on Thursday, January 28, outlines the ways in which people following the Yarsan faith have been deprived of their …