Podcast 62: Persis Karim on Literature of the Iranian Diaspora
In today’s podcast, Persis Karim talks about the literature of the Iranian diaspora and the creative restrictions on writers within Iran. ...
December 3, 2013
Iranian Morality Police Arrest Popular Underground Musician Amir Tataloo
Iran’s Morality Police have arrested popular rapper Amir Tataloo. Colonel Massoud Zahedian, Chief of the Morality Police, told ISNA that his unit is actively identifying and confronting Iranian underground musicians who produce their work inside Iran and distribute it on television satellite channels abroad. Zahedian ...
December 2, 2013
Iranian Judiciary Seeks China Model of State Censorship for Facebook
In a direct warning to cabinet officials in the Rouhani administration who openly use Facebook and other social media sites that are officially forbidden to the Iranian citizenry, Iran’s Police Commander Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghaddam criticized “certain government officials” today, telling a group of reporters that ...
November 26, 2013
Eight Netizens Arrested While Iran Contemplates Unblocking Facebook and Twitter
According to a Kerman Province Judiciary statement, the Prosecutor for the General and Revolutionary Courts of Rafsanjan has said that eight individuals have been arrested for publishing “blasphemous content in cyberspace.” ...
November 25, 2013
Cartoon 68: Chain Murders: 15 Years Later
Fifteen years after the chain murders of Iran, which began with the killings of Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, their daughter Parastou Forouhar hoped to hold a memorial ceremony at her house in Tehran this week. The Iranian authorities, however, prevented people from entering her home, ...
November 22, 2013
Police Commander and Former Detainee Divulge Details About Kahrizak
In a November 18 interview with semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), Iran’s Police Commander Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam shared unprecedented insights into several different human rights issues that over the past few years have faced the Iranian authorities, and specifically the Iranian police. ...
November 22, 2013
Mansour Farhang: Zarif and the Pursuit of Rights and Respect (Commentary)
Mr. Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has produced a YouTube video in which he asks all countries, particularly his negotiating partners in Geneva, to trust the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. To the extent that this appeal is viewed as public diplomacy intended to ...
November 20, 2013
Police Shoot and Kill Two Kurdish Citizens, Injure a Third
In the week between November 8 and November 15, Iranian police killed two Kurdish citizens in the border region areas of Nosood in Kermanshah Province and Baneh in Kurdistan Province, allegedly as part of an effort to fight the smuggling of goods. Some residents of ...
November 19, 2013
UN Shows Strong Support for Human Rights in Iran with 83-to-36 Vote
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran welcomes the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee vote today overwhelmingly supporting human rights in Iran, and urges the Iranian government to comply with UN human rights mechanisms and take concrete steps to address the ongoing violations ...
November 19, 2013
Doctors Call on Rouhani to End House Arrest of Mousavi, Karroubi, Rahnavard
In an open letter addressed to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, 193 faculty members of Iranian medical universities have demanded his serious efforts to end the house arrests of Iranian opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi. ...
November 18, 2013
Evin Prisoners Need Medical Care
After months of effort by imprisoned journalist Saeed Matinpour’s family to obtain medical treatment for him, the Prosecutor’s Office has maintained its silence, his wife told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “The prisoners at Evin face gradual death conditions and the officials ...
November 15, 2013
25 NGOs Urge UN Third Committee to Pass Iran Human Rights Resolution
As the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee prepares to vote on the resolution on the promotion and protection of human rights in Iran, 25 human rights organizations have joined together to urge member states to vote in favor of the resolution. ...
November 14, 2013
New Sanctions Would Sabotage Nuclear Talks and Stymie Human Rights in Iran
The United States Congress should not impose further sanctions on Iran while the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries are ongoing as adopting new sanctions will seriously jeopardize all efforts to end Iran’s nuclear standoff and worsen their impact on ordinary Iranians, the International ...
November 12, 2013
Cartoon 67: House Arrest: 1,000 Days
On November 12, 2013, opposition figures and 2009 presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard, an author and political activist, will have spent 1,000 days under house arrest or detention without charge or trial. No governmental agency or body ...
November 12, 2013
1,000 Days Under House Arrest
Three major opposition figures in Iran have been under house arrest or detention for 1,000 days with no charges against them, notwithstanding President Hassan Rouhani’s promise to release political prisoners, Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. ...
November 11, 2013
Newly Disclosed Medical Examiner Report Confirms Sattar Beheshti Died of Internal Bleeding
The Medical Examiner’s report on the cause of death for Sattar Beheshti, a blogger killed during interrogations in a police detention center in November 2012, states that Beheshti died from internal bleeding, hemorrhaging in his lungs, liver, kidneys, and brain, a source with knowledge of ...
November 8, 2013
Cartoon 66: The Bite of Injustice
The daughters of dissidents Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, who have been under extrajudicial house arrest since February 2013, visited their parents for Eid al-Ghadeer on October 23. As they were leaving, security guards attacked them and demanded that they strip naked, Nargess Mousavi ...
November 6, 2013
Cartoon 65: The More Things Change
Since President Hassan Rouhani took office this August, Iran has executed more than 200 people. ...
November 6, 2013
Political Prisoners Embark on Hunger Strike on Behalf of Sick Prisoners
Abdolfattah Soltani, an imprisoned lawyer and human rights activist, embarked on a hunger strike together with three other political prisoners on November 2, his sixtieth birthday, to protest the conditions of sick prisoners who need medical treatment and have been refused transfers to a hospital, ...
November 6, 2013
Executed Prisoner Did Not Know He Would Be Hanged Until He Saw the Gallows
“Until the moment he was transferred to the enclosed visitation hall, Shirkoo Moarefi did not know that his death sentence was going to be enforced. He only realized he was about to be hanged when he saw the gallows,” a source told the International Campaign ...
November 6, 2013
Iranian Government Official Dismayed at Rise in Executions
Iran has executed more than 200 people in the three months since President Hassan Rouhani took office. According to a former reformist Member of Parliament, Rouhani’s Special Assistant in Ethnic and Minority Affairs Ali Younesi expressed his dismay at the recent executions in Kurdistan and ...
November 4, 2013
Iran Executed Another Kurdish Political Prisoner Without Alerting Family or Lawyers
Ahmad Saeed Sheikhi, one of the lawyers representing Shirkoo Moarefi, a Kurdish prisoner who was executed November 4, confirmed news of his execution and told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “I learned about my client’s execution from news websites. I tried to ...
October 31, 2013
Event in New York – Iran: Silenced, Expelled, & Imprisoned
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran will be joining the Center for Public Scholarship at The New School, Amnesty International, and Scholars at Risk for a panel discussion about the ongoing imprisonment and persecution of students and scholars in Iran from 6pm to ...
October 29, 2013
Father of Two Political Prisoners Says Prison Conditions Made His Son Sick
In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Abdolali Madadzadeh, father of imprisoned university students Farzad and Shabnam Madadzadeh, said that he visited with his son at Rajaee Shahr Prison in Karaj on Wednesday, October 23, and found his son suffering ...
October 29, 2013
Cartoon 64: The Actress and the Vote
On October 28, the mother of prominent actress Pegah Ahangarani told the Iranian Student News Agency that Ahangarani has been under a travel ban since 2011 and that Judge Moghiseh of a Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced her to 18 months in prison. While the details ...