Over 100 human rights advocates from 40 countries are convening in São Paulo, Brazi, from October 12 to 19, to discuss “A New Global Order in Human Rights? Actors, Challenges and Opportunities” at the 13th International Human Rights Colloquium organized by Conectas Human Rights. This post will be updated regularly throughout the conference. ...
In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the wife of Iranian-American pastor Saeed Abedini who has been sentenced to eight years in prison, said that during the September 27 telephone conversation between Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, the release of her husband was discussed. “Although a few weeks have passed ...
In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Fakhrolsadat Mohtashamipour, wife of Mostafa Tajzadeh, prisoner of conscience and political activist, said that a new case has been opened and a new indictment issued for her husband, the content of which is as yet unknown to them. Fakhrolsadat Mohtashamipour said that the ...
Mohammad Sharif, lawyer and professor of law at Allameh Tabatabaee University who was dismissed from his academic job in April 2011, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that after recent statements by Jafar Tofighi, the Acting Minister of Science, about the return of academic staff dismissed during recent years, he submitted his ...
Sattar Beheshti’s mother told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the indictment issued for her son’s prison death case for “quasi-intentional murder” was unexpected. “We’re really disappointed with the indictment. Up until the time the indictment was issued, every time we saw Mr. Shahriari, the case’s Investigative Judge, in the meetings he ...
Just a few hours after the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported that Iran’s Minister of Communications Mahmoud Vaezi told reporters today that Facebook and Twitter will remain blocked in Iran, his ministry released an official statement saying that the unblocking of social networks is still under review and no final decisions have been made. ...
Massoumeh Dehghan, who has never had any political activities, was arrested and detained for six days in July 2011 on charges of traveling to Germany and receiving the Nuremberg Human Rights Award on behalf of her ...
Journalist and blogger Arash Sigarchi, who works as a reporter for Voice of America’s Persian Service, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that his family has been summoned and threatened by Gilan Province Intelligence Office forces. “On Monday, September 9, they contacted my mother from the Gilan Intelligence Office and asked her ...
Imprisoned Iranian journalist, Issa Saharkhiz, was released on Thursday, October 3, only two months short of completing his prison sentence. “I was informed by my family that my father received his release letter sy the hospital. They will now have to complete his paperwork in order to take him home from the hospital,” his son, ...
Imprisoned lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh appeared in court to defend himself against charges of “collusion and assembly against national security,” he wrote in a letter published September 29 on Kaleme website. Though judicial officials had told his family they planned on closing the case against him if he appeared in court, Seifzadeh wrote, the court appearance ...
An hour after her release from prison, human rights lawyer and prisoner of conscience Nasrin Sotoudeh told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “When they took me out of the prison, they told me, ‘You are free.’ Last night they told four others. They told me that my furlough was approved, but when ...
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran welcomes the release today of several prisoners of conscience in Iran, including lawyer and human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani should continue to take concrete steps towards improving the urgent human rights situation in his country as he prepares to address the United Nations, ...
Iran’s Ministry of Science announced yesterday that Iran’s most recent “starred students” can enroll in universities. “Starred students” are university students who, over the past eight years, were banned from continuing their higher education as a result of their student and/or political activities, or their religion. According to Shargh Newspaper, the Ministry of Science has ...
Dissident cleric Arash Honarvar Shojaee told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran the Judiciary has issued new charges of “insulting Imam Khomeini” against him after he expressed his personal opinions in an interview. Furthermore, despite confirmation from the Medical Examiner about his health and his inability to endure a prison sentence, he said ...
Human rights activist Mansoureh Behkish, several of whose family members were executed by the Islamic Republic in the 1980s, was summoned to Intelligence Ministry again on Wednesday, August 26, a source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. She has been summoned to the Intelligence Ministry several times in the past. ...
In an interview with Kambiz Hosseini, host of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran’s “Five in the Afternoon” weekly podcast, Reza Moini, the head of Reporters Without Borders’ Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan desk, said that his brother lost his life during the 1988 mass executions of dissidents in Iranian prisons. ...
Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, a prisoner of conscience on hunger strike in protest of his prison conditions since August 9, was transferred to Shahid Modarres Hospital on Wednesday, August 28, after his health deteriorated. The prisoner’s father told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that he did not accept intravenous feeding nor breaking his ...
Saeed Malekpour, a web developer who had previously been sentenced to death for blasphemy, was sentenced to life in prison after he repented at the Supreme Court. Malekpour’s lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaee, told ISNA News Agency on Monday, August 26, that after his death sentence was upheld at the Supreme Court, he repented and showed ...
Throughout the 35 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have been numerous accounts of phone tapping and surveillance of dissident, opposition, civil society, and public figures, journalists and activists and even celebrities, by Iranian officials who have used the information to coerce, pressure, and intimidate citizens to conform, to become ...
“When people tell you that nothing will ever really change, just remember that however clever and intelligent they sound, they have kind of been proved wrong on many occasions in the past,” Steve Crawshaw, co-author of Small Acts of Resistance, tells us. ...
During his 2013 presidential campaign, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani promised to uphold the “rights of the people” enumerated in the country’s constitution. Millions of his supporters demanded social and political rights, including the release of political prisoners from prison and house arrest. In ...
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani should take concrete steps to curb widespread human rights abuses by the government of Iran and reinstate the rule of law in the country, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. ...
A group of Iranian political and human rights activists, academics, and students inside and outside Iran wrote a letter this week to US President Barack Obama asking him to engage with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to “work towards the elimination of sanctions and the lowering of tensions between Iran and the United States.” The letter ...
Prisoner of conscience Hossein Ronaghi Maleki has been on a hunger strike since Sunday, August 11, to protest the prison authorities’ lack of attention to his and other sick prisoners’ conditions, and to support Abolfazl Abedini, a prisoner on hunger strike since July 28. Ronaghi’s mother expressed concern about her son’s hunger strike and told ...
Eighteen months since imprisoned journalist Issa Saharkhiz was transferred to a hospital for severe health issues, Iranian officials have yet to excuse him from serving his sentence or to release him on furlough, causing him to remain a prisoner in the hospital, his son told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. ...