For Human Rights in Iran: 2016-10-16

Friday, October 21, 2016

Britain sought to shame Russia on Friday for its deadly air strikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo, during a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council called by London to set up a special inquiry into violations.
'Russia, you are making the situation worse, not solving it,' Tobias Ellwood, the British government minister for Africa and the Middle East said in a speech to the Geneva forum.
'This is shameful and it is not the action or leadership that we expect from a P5 nation,' he said, referring to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
Source: Reuters, 21 Oct. 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016

On the World Day against the Death Penalty, I hail all the brave men and women who were executed by Iran's ruling religious dictatorship in the battle for freedom.

More than any other party, the World Day Against the Death Penalty targets the Iranian regime that has so far executed 120,000 of Iran's children, including the 30,000 political prisoners who were serving their prison sentences, but were hanged just for their political beliefs. According to Khomeini's fatwa, any prisoner who continued to adhere to the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, had to be executed.
The number of executions including political executions in Iran over the past one year exceed the number of executions carried out in most of the years of Khamenei's rule.
The mass execution of 25 Sunni Kurds on August 2, 2016, and the executions of three Arab political prisoner on August 17, 2016, are just to name a few examples.
Meanwhile the trend of executions on other charges continues incessantly.
A member of the Legal and Judicial Committee in the regime's parliament revealed in August that, "Presently, there are 4500 undecided prisoners on death row."
According to the report by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Ahmad Shahid, nearly 1,000 people were executed last year in Iran.
While the majority of these executions are carried out under the pretext of combatting drug trafficking, there have been numerous reports indicating that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has had a significant role in the smuggling and distribution of narcotic drugs within Iran. So, those who are executed on this charge, are victimized twice, once by repression and twice by the regime's criminal activities.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2016

FIGHT# OVER THE TRUTH# OF ISLAM#

The crises of terrorism and tyranny under the name of Islam continue to confront both the Muslim and global communities as never before. In addition to the crimes continuously taking place in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the brutal killings in Nice and Normandy, France, in July, the explosion that took place next to the Prophet's Mosque in Medina on the 4th of July, the killing on June 12 in Orlando, U.S., and the March 22 killing in Brussels, capital of Belgium, confirmed the persistence of the threat that befell these and other cities around the world.
A study of these attacks in their real context, which also includes the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, will afford us more profound results: These incidents are the outcomes of a frightening and aggressive world outlook that tramples upon divine values on the pretext of defending religion. It attempts to put a veil of religious legitimacy on actions that by all accounts constitute murder and massacre. And, it portrays these actions as carrying the highest values by revering methods employed during the darkest periods of humanity.
Those who subscribe to this outlook consider themselves to be Muslims, acting as if they are the elite followers of a legitimate faith while all others, including the rest of Muslims, are complete heretics, worthy of either total domination or annihilation.
Steeped in this outlook, they allude to Quranic verses and the traditions of the Prophet of Islam, in a vain attempt to justify their actions. They masquerade as Islam an ideology that is summed up in tyranny, violence, sacrilege, inequality and misogyny. Is this really Islam or a complete perversion of it?

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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Iranian Majles deputies have urged the release of Narges Mohammadi - sentenced to 10 years in prison for her anti-death penalty activities.
These Majles deputies have written an open letter to the head of the judiciary calling for the release of Mrs. Mohammadi, an activist sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Mohammadi, 44, has campaigned against the death penalty and was awarded the City of Paris medal earlier this year for her work on women's rights.

Arrested in May last year, the mother-of-two was sentenced in April to a total of 16 years in prison on various charges, including 'forming and managing an illegal group'.

In the letter published by Iranian media on Sunday, the lawmakers call on Larijani, the head of the judiciary, 'to apply the clemency' and to free her so she can reunite with her children.

They also highlight Mohammadi's medical problems including 'muscular paralysis'.

Among the signatories were parliamentary vice president Ali Motahari and several female MPs.

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Monday, October 17, 2016

CTV News, October 15, 206 - Iran has once again targeted a prominent human rights activist, who lost six family members to state executions and killings in the 1980s.
Mansoureh Behkish, who’s been jailed several times for her past advocacy work, had her passport confiscated indefinitely and without explanation by authorities.
It happened as she was about to board a plane to Ireland, where her daughter lives.

A grave at Khavaran cemetery belonging to Mansoureh Behkish's sister, Zahra, who was arrested Aug. 25, 1983 in Tehran and killed the same day or the day after under torture

Behkish said security agents did not tell her why they stopped her from boarding and took her passport at Tehran International Airport on Sept. 16.
She was told that in order to get her passport back she must report to Evin revolutionary tribunal court, located in the same complex as the notorious Evin Prison where she has several times been incarcerated for her human rights advocacy work.
“It is possible that, during the interrogation, they might arrest me, or threaten me with a heavier sentence, which I would strongly protest,” Behkish wrote in an open letter.
“I am aware that resisting injustice and oppression has a price, and I am prepared for it.”
Behkish said she was looking forward to flying to Ireland to visit her daughter, especially as she was still dealing with the death of her own mother in January.
“I have not [gotten] used to her absence yet,” she said of Nayereh Jalali Mohajer, who was known as “Mother Behkish.”
Mohajer spent much of her life seeking justice for her five children and a son-in-law who were among the thousands of political prisoners executed in 1988 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The state executions of Mother Behkish's children and son-in-law, by all known accounts, are the most suffered by a single family.

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