Iran Protests: Voices from Iran
As nationwide protests continue to sweep Iran, there are very few direct voices from inside Iran reaching the international stage. An understanding of the fabric of the society and its rapidly evolving ...
Issues
World Leaders Must Act Now to Avoid Bloodbath in Iran
Threat of Mass Deaths Grows as Government Seeks to Squash Protests September 26, 2022—With the government of Iran signaling it intends to silence the protests across Iran that are now well into their second week, the ...
Iran Protests: Lawyers Call for Fact-Finding Commission, Referendum
A group of prominent Iranian lawyers has called for international action amid nationwide protests that erupted in Iran on September 16, 2022, following the death in state custody of Mahsa ...
Joint Statement: U.S. Treasury’s New General License D2 Advances Internet Freedom in Iran
Now Companies Must Make Tech Products Available and U.S. Government Must Encourage Them September 26, 2022—Today, the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA) and the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) welcomed ...
Iran Protests: Grave Concerns for Extreme State Violence Amid Rising Death Toll
World Leaders Must Call on Iranian Officials to Immediately Cease Use of Lethal Force, Allow Peaceful Protest September 21, 2022 – On the sixth day of protests in Iran that have followed the ...
Mahsa Amini’s Father: “Everything They Have Said and Shown is Lies”
In an interview with Rouydad24 (“Event24”), a semi-independent reformist news site in Iran, the father of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in Iranian state custody, strongly contradicted the authorities’ narrative about ...
Iran’s Raisi to Freely Address UNGA While Crushing Rights and Freedoms at Home
Mahsa Amini’s Death in State Custody Should be Investigated as Murder World Must Condemn Violent Repression of Protests and Civil Society September 19, 2022 – President Ebrahim Raisi will use his platform ...
Mahsa Amini is Another Victim of the Islamic Republic’s War on Women
Protesters in Tehran Call for “Death to the Oppressor” September 16, 2022 – The death of Mahsa Amini, 22, after being declared medically braindead following her arrest by so-called morality police ...
Interview: Mansour Farhang on How a UN Special Rapporteur Was “Deceived on Human Rights” in Iran
A recent trip by a UN special rapporteur to Iran could have been a historic moment—had she responded to an open letter by human rights activists to meet. Instead, Alena ...
Interview: Mansoureh Shojaee on Disillusionment and Fortitude in the Struggle for Women’s Rights
Women's rights activist Mansoureh Shojaee is an author and researcher based in the Netherlands. In 1980, on International Women’s Day, 22-year-old university student Mansoureh Shojaee ...
Political Prisoner Behnam Mousivand’s Life is in Danger
Authorities in Iran Intentionally Deny Critical Medical Attention to Political Prisoners September 7, 2022 – A political prisoner’s precarious health situation is raising fears of another preventable death in Iranian ...
UN, Governments Worldwide Must Speak Out for LGBTQ Activists Sentenced to Death in Iran
The international community should loudly and publicly condemn the blatantly unlawful death sentences issued without due process against two LGBTQ activists in West Azerbaijan Province, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement today ...
Families Appeal to EU’s Borrell to Prioritize Release of Hostages from Iran
As negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program continue to drag, the families of individuals unjustly detained in the Islamic Republic have appealed to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles to prioritize the ...
Prejudiced Courts Aiding Land Grabs of Baha’i Properties in Iran
Bigoted statements against Baha'is (in this photo ...
Statements by Iranian Officials Who’ve Criticized the State’s Forced Hijab Policy
As the government of President Ebrahim Raisi, a devoted soldier of unelected “supreme leader” Ali Khamenei, works to implement stricter enforcement of the compulsory hijab as well as harsher ...
Sepideh Rashnoo: Latest Target of Raisi Government’s Campaign of Repression
*Editor's Note: Sepideh Rashnoo was released on bail on August 30, 2022, while she awaits her trial. August 23, 2022 – Charges filed against a woman in Iran, Sepideh Rashnoo, after she was accosted by ...
UN Experts Alarmed by Escalating Persecution of Baha’i Faith in Iran
The UN has condemned the Iranian government's renewed campaign of persecution against the Baha'i faith minority. Bahai's, including former prisoners of conscience, are being arbitrarily detained while others are seeing the ...
Salman Rushdie is Yet Another Victim of Iran’s Extraterritorial Censorship
Government of Iran Has Long Targeted its Critics Abroad for Assassination August 15, 2022 – The heinous attack in New York on the author Salman Rushdie, in which a knifeman inflicted life-threatening injuries, stems from the ...
More Prisoner Deaths Feared in Iran’s COVID-Infested Jails
Authorities Deny Prisoners Medical Treatment and Safety Measures Despite a renewed wave of COVID-19 infections in Iranian prisons, a growing number of infected political prisoners have been denied proper treatment, raising fears of more unnecessary ...
Human Rights Can and Should be Front and Center in U.S. Foreign Policy on Iran
Prioritizing human rights represents the most effective means for the U.S. to influence Iranian state behavior and address the Islamic Republic’s destabilizing activities, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a new Q&A, “Prioritizing Human Rights in Iran: A ...
Prioritizing Human Rights in Iran: A New U.S. Foreign Policy Approach
The Center for Human Rights in Iran’s (CHRI) new briefing, Human Rights in Iran and U.S. National Security Interests: A Path Forward for U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Islamic Republic, lays out a U.S. foreign policy approach to Iran that ...
UN Should Condemn Renewed Crackdown on Persecuted Baha’i Faith in Iran
August 5, 2022 – Increasing arbitrary arrests of members of the persecuted Baha’i faith in Iran, and an intensifying government-sponsored campaign of destruction and confiscation of their properties should be internationally condemned, said the Center ...
Gharchak Prison in Iran: A Cauldron of Abuse and Violations
Longstanding, Severe Violations of International Standards for Prisoners International Community Should Demand Closure of Facility For more than a decade, the inmates incarcerated at Iran’s Gharchak Prison for women have been desperately protesting inhumane, unsafe and unlawful ...
UN Expert Welcomes Historic Verdict in Universal Jurisdiction Case on Iran
Lauding a landmark universal jurisdiction conviction in Sweden against Hamid Nouri, an Iranian official accused of mass atrocities, the UN special rapporteur on Iran ...
Nouri Conviction by Swedish Court a Triumph for Iran’s “Seeking-Justice” Movement
Conviction Opens Door for More Trials Against Officials Accused of Atrocities July 14, 2022 -- After 92 sessions of a trial that lasted almost a year, a court in Stockholm, Sweden ...