Iranian Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has expressed opposition to “discrimination and inequality” against Iranian ...
Local MP Calls for Investigation A protest was met with tear gas in the city of Baneh in northwestern Iran on September 5, 2017, after people gathered in front of the local governor’s ...
Thirteen Sunni Arabs have been beaten by security and plainclothes agents and arrested for publicly praying in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan Province, the Center for Human Rights ...
Former MP Urges Rouhani to “Expose” Human Rights Violators Iran’s Sunni Muslim community is “disappointed” by President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to exclude members of the minority religious group from his cabinet, two former Sunni members ...
Facing prison time for his peaceful advocacy of Azeri ethnic rights, Asgar Akbarzadeh has been summoned to the Revolutionary Court in Ahar, 307 miles northwest of Tehran in East Azerbaijan ...
Despite worsening heart disease, Mohammad Ali Shamshirzan, an imprisoned dervish of Iran’s Sufi Gonabadi Order in Hormozgan Province, is being denied specialized treatment outside prison. “Prisoners are ...
Dissident Sunni cleric Hassan Amini is the secretary general of the Sunni Theologians ...
Children without state-issued identification documents mostly from Iran’s underdeveloped border provinces are being denied education in Iran, attorney Osman Mozayan told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). Iran ...
Iranian police units arrested several ethnic Azerbaijani rights activists at a peaceful protest gathering in Ghaleh Babak in East Azerbaijan Province on June 30, 2017, the Center for Human Rights (CHRI) in Iran has learned. An eyewitness, who ...
Three Azeri men from the Republic of Azerbaijan, and one Iranian man--all Protestant Christian converts--have been sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Revolutionary Court in Iran, according to Mansour Borji, the ...
After being detained for more than one year on unsubstantiated espionage charges, Azeri political activist Habib Sasanian began a hunger strike on June 13, 2017, according to his wife. “They ...
Thirteen people, including Arab ethnic rights activists and poets, were arrested in Ahwaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan Province, on June 25, 2017, local activist Karim Dahimi ...
The killing, by border guards, of another kulbar—the Persian word for the border-crossing couriers who transport illegally imported goods into Iran—has prompted 250 Iranian civil rights ...
While his family waited for him outside Rajaee Shahr Prison the day he was supposed to be released, on June 6, 2017, Navid Khanjani was told he would ...
Farzad Safaei was one semester away from a bachelor’s degree in industrial metallurgy at the Islamic Azad University when he was expelled on May 20, 2017 by the security office for being a member of the Baha’i faith ...
The leader of Iran’s Sunni population told CHRI that Sunnis should be invited to participate in the second-term government of newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani ...
Hassan Rouhani was re-elected as president of Iran in May 2017 largely on the basis of his support for human rights and Iranians’ perceptions that he would do more to improve civil and political rights in the country than his rivals. He should now deliver on his pledges. ...
Mostafa Daneshjou, a formerly imprisoned lawyer and member of a Sufi religious order known as the Gonabadi Dervishes, has been ...
Find out the latest news about Iran’s May 2017 elections by following CHRI’s live updates ...
Prominent Kurdish rights activist Mohammad Sadiq Kaboudvand was freed from Evin Prison in Tehran on May 12, 2017 after serving 10 years for his peaceful activism. ...
Items of Note Khatami Endorses Rouhani Influential reformist leader Mohammad Khatami has thrown his weight behind incumbent President Hassan Rouhani for Iran's May 19 presidential election. “We started on a path with Mr. Rouhani and we are at the halfway point,” he said in a ...
Ahead of Iran’s elections on May 19 for president and local councils, 29 members of the European Parliament have written a letter to Federica Mogherini, the representative of the European Union ...
The Guardian Council’s attempt to ban religious minorities from running in Iran’s nationwide local council elections on May 19, 2017 is unlawful and infringes on their constitutional rights, a former reformist member ...