Spring of freedom

By Mansoureh Galestan The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran has had his mandate extended for another year, after a 22-7 vote in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Friday. Javaid Rehman, 32, a Pakistani-born British legal scholar and professor of Islamic law, was appointed to the position in July 2018 submitted his latest report on Iran to the UNHCR on February 27, when he voiced particular concern over the death penalty in Iran. Rehman asked the Iranian authorities to provide him and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with a list of all child offenders on death row. He also gave special attention to the crackdown on labour rights in Iran. Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, Tehran’s representative to the European headquarters of the UN, called the resolution an unfair, dishonest, and unjustified plan devised by “certain governments” and argued that it would reinforce stereotypes about the Iranian Regime. He said: “It is saddening th...

The students at Khaje Nasiredeen University protesting the ruling regime and campus officials’ neglect of their human rights-March 2019 On Tuesday, March 12, reports emerged from  MEK  sources inside Iran of another series of protests breaking out across the country. Unpaid salaries have mobilized large swathes of the Iranian population. This time, it was clients of the Caspian credit firm, a company closely affiliated with the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), that were demanding their money. People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) @Mojahedineng https:// goo.gl/jM2Jyh   Continued strikes of workers and the working people, and protests of looted people and other deprived people 33 3:10 PM - Mar 7, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy Continued strikes of workers and the working people, and protests of looted people and other... Iran Uprising - No. 102 On Monday, March 5, the strikes and protes...

Ambassador Kenneth Blackwell (Second Left) speaking at NCRI’s news brief on the situation of human rights in Iran-Washington Press Ken Blackwell, the former US ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, wrote an op-ed for conservative news site Townhall. The human rights expert weighed in on the Iranian regime’s appointment of Ebrahim Raisi as the head of the Iranian judiciary.  He called Raisi , “one of the most brutal figures of modern history of Iranian jurisprudence.” https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1104970245515759616 Raisi was involved in the systematic execution of more than 30,000 members of the Iranian opposition in 1988. His ascent to the head of the judiciary illustrates the regime’s intent to further attack, maim, and kill members of the Iranian resistance and  the People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK) .  The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) , the umbrella coalition which includes the MEK, denounced th...

Thousands of women are held in horrible situation in Assad regime’s prisons The Syrian Network for Human Rights on Friday, March 8 th  issued a statement to mark the Women’s Day calling for the release of 7,721 women who have been detained by the Assad regime. The statement reads: “sexual exploitation of female inmates in prisons is continuing. At least half million people including 13,500 women are held in Assad’s notorious prisons.” Syrian Network for Human Rights said many dissidents in Assad prisons have been either killed under torture or have been executed. Syrian Network for Human Rights is an independent, neutral, non-governmental, non-profit human rights organization, which aims to document the ongoing human rights violation in Syria. Read more: Orient News reported on March 9, 2019, that thousands of demonstrators took to the streets on Friday (March 8) in Aleppo countryside, calling for the immediate release of women detainees at the Assad regime’s detenti...

New York — UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, by a recorded vote of 84 in favor to 30 against, with 67 abstentions, condemning Iran’s human rights violations. It expressed grave concern over the high number of executions, especially juveniles, arbitrary and systematic arrests, and atrocious prison conditions. The UN resolution stressed the “alarmingly high frequency” of the use of the death penalty including against minors, “the widespread and systematic use of arbitrary detention,” poor prison conditions, “deliberately denying prisoners access to adequate medical treatment,” and “cases of suspicious deaths in custody.” The resolution “strongly urges” Iran to eliminate discrimination against women in law and practice and expresses “serious concern about ongoing severe limitations and restrictions on the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.” It singles out violations including harassment, intimidation and persecution against religious minorities. Mary...

  Maryam Rajavi , the president-elect of the Iranian Resistance As we have seen time and time again over the course of this year – and to be honest the past 40 years – the Iranian Regime has tried to attack the Iranian Resistance using terrorist groups and shadowy murder plots. This should frighten anyone with a commitment to human rights and especially freedom of expression, but how can the West – or indeed, the world at large – target the Iranian Regime and hold them accountable for their crimes? Well, luckily,  Maryam Rajavi , the president-elect of the Iranian Resistance, has a simple plan; one that she laid out for the world in a video message to the Brussels-based conference “Iran’s New Wave of Terrorism – The EU and US responses” in October. Maryam Rajavi says that the only way to effectively counter the mullahs’ terrorism is to stand firm against the Iranian Regime, rather than being compelled into “silence and surrender”. Maryam Rajavi said: “The mullahs ...

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. (Reuters) The human rights situation has been deteriorating to an unprecedented level in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This highlights the empowerment of the hard-line judiciary system and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) under the so-called moderate administration of President Hassan Rouhani.  Specifically, several groups have become the Iranian regime’s targets. The first category is linked to religious and ethnic minorities, including the Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, Sunnis, Christians and Baha’is. The situation has become so alarming that the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, recently  urged  Tehran to “ensure that all those who reside in the country have equal protection before the law, regardless of ethnicity, religion or belief.” It is important to point out that the Islamic Republic is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This means...

When it comes to human rights violations in Iran, Europe’s stance is often influenced by its economic interests.  Whenever Europe is mentioned outside the continent itself, one key feature associated with it by non-Europeans is human rights. Whenever its leaders come together to discuss global matters, they ostensibly emphasize the importance of upholding human rights around the world. While the recent protests in Iran were still ongoing, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, a prominent and infamous figure in Iran, was receiving advanced medical treatment in Germany. Ayatollah Shahroudi served as Iran’s chief justice from 1999 to 2009, his tenure coinciding with protests by Iranian university students in July 1999 that became known as the Kooye Daneshgah confrontation. The protests started peacefully, provoked by the closure of reformist Salam newspaper and the campaign against dissidents, known as the Chain Murders, that stretched from 1988 and came to light in the fall of 1...