Supreme Leader’s COVID Vaccine Ban Resulted in Thousands of Unnecessary Deaths June 22, 2022 – For trying to sue Iranian leaders for their grossly negligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic, three lawyers and two civil rights activists have been sentenced to prison. “These individuals are being ...
In his latest report presented to the UN Human Rights Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern over the rising number of executions in the Islamic of Iran, as well as "patterns of arbitrary deprivation of life due to excessive force used by the authorities ...
UN human rights experts today expressed serious concerns about a violent crackdown against civil society in Iran, including members of workers’ unions and teachers arrested for protesting against their low salaries and poor working conditions, and urged those responsible for using excessive force to be held to ...
Repression of Civil Society Harms U.S. Security Interests June 14, 2022— President Biden’s silence so far on the killings and mass arrests of protesters in Iran by state security forces over the last month—the latest in a long line of lethal state responses to dissent in ...
Former female cellmates of a group of wildlife conservationists who’ve been unjustly imprisoned in Iran since January 2018 penned the following letter as a tribute to their nature-loving friends on the occasion World Environment Day, June 5, 2022. The letter was initially written in Persian and provided ...
Open Letter Condemns Iran’s “Brutal Repression” of Trade Unions and Labor Activists June 2, 2022—In an open letter to the delegates at the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 110th Session of the International Labour Conference, currently being held in Geneva, Switzerland, the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, ...
May 26, 2022 – While millions of Iranians are struggling to make ends meet, the Iranian government has shut down the country’s oldest and largest independent non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on poverty alleviation, the Imam Ali Popular Student Relief Society (IAPSRS). “The Iranian authorities are so threatened by any independent ...
May 17, 2022 – At least five protesters are dead amid a violent state crackdown on street demonstrations in Iran, while the authorities have blocked internet access in protest hot zones, pressured domestic media not to cover the protests, and arrested growing numbers of protesters and activists. Yet the protesters ...
International Community Must Call on Iranian Officials to Refrain from Deadly Repression May 12, 2022 – Ongoing street protests in Iran could lead to more killings and arbitrary imprisonments by state security forces if the international community remains silent, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) warned in a statement ...
Government’s Refusal to Allow UN Human Rights Experts into Country Condemned May 12, 2022 -- A group of prominent civil rights activists in Iran has called on UN representative Alena Douhan, who will be visiting Iran shortly to assess the negative impact of sanctions on the country, to meet ...
Internet Shutdown, Heavy Security Presence Signal Lethal State Repression May 9, 2022 – Government-enforced internet outages and the increased presence of state security forces throughout the Iranian province of Khuzestan, where street protests erupted on May 6, have raised fears over another deadly crackdown in the Islamic Republic. “Iranian state forces ...
Iranian security forces arrested at least 28 teachers in the four days leading up to international workers’ day, between April 28 and May 1, 2022, according to the Iranian Teachers Trade Unions Coordination Council (ITTUCC). Multiple activists from other labor sectors were also arrested or summoned in Iran ...
The 15 undersigned organizations, including the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), today issued a joint statement calling on the international community to urge the Iranian authorities to immediately cease their reprisals against the Iran Atrocities (Aban) Tribunal’s witnesses and their families, and to quash all convictions and sentences connected to their or their ...
The government of President Ebrahim Raisi should end the state’s campaign of harassment and intimidation against the families of victims of state violence, including those who died during street protests ...
Longtime human rights defender and former prisoner of conscience Narges Mohammadi is peacefully refusing to report to prison in Tehran to serve an eight-year sentence that was issued against her after a five-minute trial ...
Defense attorney Amirsalar Davoudi was imprisoned in Iran for running a social media channel that provided information to lawyers. Human rights lawyers in Iran are a crucial lifeline for individuals accused of crimes against the state—yet they’re few and far ...
Lawyer Unlawfully Imprisoned for His Defense of Basic Civil and Political Liberties March 3, 2022 – The lawyer Mohammad Najafi, who has been unlawfully and unjustly imprisoned in Iran since 2018 on multiple convictions for his defense of basic civil and political liberties and is currently serving ...
UN human rights experts have urged the Iranian government to abandon a proposed bill that would drastically increase the authorities’ ability to censor and surveil activity on the internet. "This bill represents a worrying step towards the consolidation of a digital wall in Iran," the experts ...
Amid an intensifying campaign of political repression in Iran, state authorities have been summoning, detaining, and imprisoning peaceful labor rights activists and a journalist in various cities throughout the country. A lawyer who has represented several labor activists could also soon be sent to prison for ...
Professors “Unjustly Dismissed” from Iranian Institutions for “Political Reasons” Universities Not Escaping Intensifying Repression in Islamic Republic In yet another reflection of intensifying repression in the Islamic Republic, a large group of prominent scholars and academics from around the globe have written a letter in protest against the ...
Political Dissident Jamshid Sharmahd Is Unable to Defend Himself in Iranian Judicial System World Must Speak Out against Iran’s Abductions and Attacks on Dissidents Abroad February 8, 2022 – An Iranian-born German citizen, U.S. resident and political dissident, Jamshid Sharmahd, who was abducted by Iranian agents in ...
High-Level Intelligence Official: “Social Discontent Has Increased About 300 Percent” A top-secret Iranian state document leaked to RFE/RL’s Radio Farda has revealed senior intelligence and military officials’ internal assessment of the country’s severe social and economic malaise, and their expectations of bigger and more frequent ...
Sattar Rahmani, a former teacher and political prisoner in Iran, is an expert on the country's burgeoning teachers' rights movement. A grassroots teachers’ rights movement is gaining steam in Iran, where large street protests by teachers are increasingly sprouting ...
IRGC Commanders Appointed as Governor-Generals to 10 of Iran’s 31 Provinces “People’s tolerance level has decreased in recent years, given the increasing economic pressures,” said Iran’s deputy interior minister in charge of the Social Services Organization, Taghi Rostamvandi, at a conference focused on tackling social ...
Abtin, Jailed for Dissent, is Second Political Prisoner to Die in Iran in First Week of 2022 January 8, 2022 – The death of Iranian poet Baktash Abtin today in Tehran after contracting COVID-19 in Evin Prison is the result of the Iranian judiciary chief’s ...