On August 21, 2013, chemical weapons were deployed against civilians outside Syria’s capital city of Damascus. As the international community seeks confirmation that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was behind the attack and debates the possibility of a punitive military strike, ...
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 ...
“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, ...
On August 11, President Hassan Rouhani appointed Elham Aminzadeh to the post of Vice President for Legal Affairs, touting her “scientific, legal, and legislative qualifications and credentials.” Though some activists have welcomed her appointment after much criticism of Rouhani’s all-male ...
Children of the Jacaranda Tree, by Sahar Delijani, is a stunning debut novel set in post-Revolutionary Iran. Told in interconnected, alternating perspectives, the book follows three generations of men and women, some linked by family, others brought together by the ...
Iran's new president Hassan Rouhani nominated Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi for the post of justice minister on August 4, 2013. Rights groups ...
President-elect Hassan Rouhani ran on a platform of “Prudence and Hope,” and held up a large golden key at his campaign rallies to signify the doors he would unlock as president and the challenges facing Iran that he could solve ...
Three young men died. Dozens of others were abused psychologically, physically, and sexually in Kahrizak Detention Center, where they ...
In recent years, many Iranian musicians have left Iran in search of the freedom to create without censorship or fear of punishment for their work. Some have ended up in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, which is known for its relative ...
On May 21, Iran’s Guardian Council, responsible for vetting candidates for the upcoming June 14 presidential election, announced a list of eight approved candidates from the pool of 686 individuals who had registered. All eight candidates are considered to be ...
Our guest today is Dr. Nayareh Tohidi, Professor of Gender & Women Studies at California State University, Northridge, talking about Iranian government restrictions on women in higher education. ...
On May 8, 2013, world-famous political satirist Jon Stewart of The Daily Show held a discussion about censorship and power in Iran, followed by a lively Q&A, at an event hosted by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, ...
Since the Iranian authorities won’t allow us to report from within Iran, this month we speak to several Iranian refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan who were imprisoned in Iran for their human rights activities. Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan has become ...
On May 8, 2013, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran hosted a screening in New York of Iranian-Canadian director Maziar Bahari’s film Forced Confessions in a joint event with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the PEN ...
In an interview at the 2013 National Meeting of Foreign Relations Students (ENERI) conference in Brasilia, Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, speaks about solidarity and the role of Brazilian civil society in ...
With Iran’s presidential approaching in June 2013, Iranian security forces are engaging in a severe crackdown on journalists and publications, which began in January on a day now referred to as “Black Sunday.” ...
In the lead-up to the June 2013 presidential elections, restrictions on journalists have intensified over the last few months. Kaleme Website reported that the Intelligence Ministry recently summoned a meeting with newspaper editors. ...
“In late February of 2012, Iran announced that ‘We reformed the penal code, and there is a ban on death penalty by stoning and execution of minors.’ But . . . during the course of [the] last three decades, stoning ...
Unidentified security forces have been threatening Sahar Beheshti with imprisonment or death if she speaks out about the case of her brother Sattar, a blogger who died while undergoing interrogation in a police detention center in November 2012. Sahar Beheshti ...
On April 9, 2013, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Iran’s Bushehr Province, killing at least 37 people and injuring several hundred more. The earthquake reportedly leveled at least two villages in southwestern Iran and caused damage in at least 50 ...
Referencing “key opposition leaders in detention” and “quite serious webs of arrests of journalists,” Dr. Ahmed Shaheed says, “In ...
On Sizdah Bedar, the 13th and final day of Nowruz, the Persian new year, Iranians celebrate outdoors in nature. They take with them the green sprouts from the Haft Sin table, tie the sprouts to symbolically prevent any evil from ...
As Iranians around the world prepare to celebrate the new year, hundreds of prisoners of conscience remain behind bars in Iran. The Persian New Year, Nowruz, is the most important holiday in Iran, beginning at the moment of the vernal ...
As the world celebrates International Women’s Day today, Iranian women are seeing their rights challenged and their advances curtailed. In his most recent report on human rights in Iran, UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed explored several of the recent attacks ...
Continuing the latest crackdown on journalists that began on January 26, Iranian officials banned three publications in Tehran today and arrested three more journalists this week. Since January 26, twenty journalists have been arrested in Iran. “Our aim is to ...