Human rights

Radiofarda – Branch 28 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced a civic activist and a labor activist to five-year prison terms each. Revolutionary courts do not abide by Iran’s civil code and often issue arbitrary decisions. The court is headed by notorious hardliner judge Mohammad Maghiseh who often handles cases related to dissent or activism in Iran’s capital. Rezvaneh Mohammadi …

Radiofarda – Iran’s Judiciary on Thursday summoned another signatory of a 77-signature opposition statement condemning the bloody suppression of November protests for “Propaganda Against the Islamic Republic”. The family of Isa Saharkhiz, a reformist journalist, published an image of the court order today on social media platforms. Saharkhiz who has five days to appear in court has previously been imprisoned …

Radiofarda – Iran’s security chief Ali Shamkhani has claimed that “85 percent of protesters shot to death in the Tehran County during the mid-November anti-government protest had nothing to do with protest gatherings.” Shamkhani, who according to the Iranian administration’s spokesperson Ali Rabiei, has prevented the releasing of the protest casualty toll, however, claimed that the victims have “shot each …

Iran-HRM – The Iranian regime executed a couple in the Central Prison of Mashhad, the state-run media reported on December 11. A woman identified as Maryam, 32, was hanged along with her husband, Mehdi R. in the Central Prison of Mashhad. The executions were reported by several state-run media. (The state-run ROKNA news agency – December 11, 2019) The woman …

RFL/RE – Use of a single word deemed offensive by Iranian religious officials resulted in a six-year jail sentence for journalist Pouyan Khoshhal. In an article published in October 2018 in the daily Ebtekar, Khoshhal used the word “death” instead of “martyrdom” in a reference to Imam Husayn, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who is revered under Iran’s official religion, Shi’ite …

Radiozamaneh – The ninth bimonthly Labor Rights Newsletter of Zamaneh Media has been published in both Persian and English. This issue covers labor news and workers’ issues in the approximate range of October and November 2019. Iran Nov 2019 Protests over gasoline price hike. The focus of this bi-monthly report is the gasoline protests in Iran that started on 14 Nov 2019, contractual …

Amnesty – The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, working in collaboration with Amnesty International, published new investigation on the deadly tear gas grenades used against protesters in Iraq. It traces some of them back to what some at the time called the arms “deal of the century” between Serbia and Iraq in 2009. This directly contradicts Defence Minister Najah al-Shammari’s televised statement that the …

CHRI – Shahnaz Akmali Summoned to Jail After Visiting Fellow Victim’s Family Less than a month after hundreds of people were killed in the Iranian authorities’ crackdown on November’s mass street protests, a court in Tehran summoned the mother of a victim killed in a 2009 crackdown to prison for demanding justice. The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) …

CHRI – Detainees Punished for Complaining That They Were Forced to Make False Statements, Says Lawyer Iranian authorities are refusing to transfer imprisoned conservationist Sam Rajabi to the hospital to treat a serious medical condition, and are continuing to hold three of his colleagues in solitary confinement without legal justification, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has learned. “It appears …

Radiofarda – Iran ranks just below China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eritrea, and Vietnam, at the top of the list of the countries that keep journalists behind bars, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) disclosed on Tuesday, December 10. For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists are kept in jails across the world, CPJ says in …