Political prisoners Mohammad Haj and Jafar Kazemi were executed by the Iranian regime on January 24, 2011.
(via obliquecity)
Today marks what would have been Neda Agha-Soltan’s 29th birthday.
She was shot and killed by a member of the Basij during a peaceful protest in the streets of Tehran following the Iranian Presidential election of 2009.
Multiple videos which captured her death were uploaded to Youtube and subsequently viewed by millions, sparking outrage not only within Iran but around the world.
January 23, 1983 - June 20, 2009
Iran: Authorities Defiant on Rights Record
Iranian authorities in 2011 carried out more than 600 executions and imprisoned more journalists and bloggers than any other country, Human Rights Watch said today in issuing its World Report 2012 Iran chapter. Iran’s judiciary works hand-in-hand with security and intelligence forces to harass, imprison and convict opposition and rights activists, despite increasing international condemnation of the country’s rights record.
Iran reissues death sentence for Canada resident: lawyer
MONTREAL — Iran’s Supreme Court has reinstated a death sentence against an Iranian resident of Canada who had been accused of running a pornographic website, a lawyer working on the case said Thursday.
The death sentence meted out to Saeed Malekpour was reinstated by the court, after it had reportedly been annulled in June, said Shadi Sadr, a lawyer with the advocacy group Justice for Iran, citing the accused’s sister.
“I talked to his sister two days ago and she told me that according to one of the branches of the Supreme Court the death penalty was confirmed. It could be executed at any time from now on,” Sadr said by phone from Britain.
LOVE AND FREEDOM: THE LIFE OF REZA FANI YAZDI
A story of love, courage, and belief in freedom with Reza Fani Yazdi and his wife Soheila Vahdati. Reza never gave in to brutal torture, or years in prison. It’s all about your identity, about your dignity, about your existence. He says, “Basically, you think, ‘If I break, if I give up, I have lost my dignity. I have lost my existence. Who am I going to be after that?’”
The connected “Education Under Fire” campaign is encouraging concerned citizens of the world to TAKE ACTION and join the Drive to 25– a petition calling for an end to education discrimination in Iran. The Education Under Fire campaign also showcases a 30-minute documentary, co-sponsored by Amnesty, that profiles the growth, struggle, and inspiring spirit of the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education. The film connects a diverse audience to a grave human rights issue, a powerful story of resilience against oppression, and the need to respect human rights everywhere. Learn more about how to take part in this effort here!
EU's foreign policy chief demands Iran halt executions of woman, pastor
The Europe Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton demanded Friday that Iran halt the pending executions of a woman sentenced to die by stoning and a Christian pastor convicted of apostasy.
Ashton also called on Iran to impose an immediate moratorium on the death penalty, saying the country leads the world in the number of executions per inhabitant.
“Thousands of individuals remain at risk of execution, including Ms Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani. The EU reiterates its call on Iran not to execute them,” Ashton said in a written statement.
“Hundreds of individuals were executed in 2011 after grossly unfair trials, without the right of appeal and for offenses, which according to international standards should not result in capital punishment.”
TAKE ACTION: Demand Iran Reject Anti-Human Rights Bill
Send an e-letter through United4Iran.
Your Excellency:
I write to express concern about a new bill before the Iranian Parliament that contravenes Iran’s international human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I am especially concerned about provisions within the new penal code that violate the rights of Iranian citizens through:
• Continued harsh penalties for minors with girls expected to assume adult responsibilities for criminal actions from the age of nine, and boys from the age of fifteen;
• Continued use of corporal punishment such as stoning and lashing considered cruel, inhuman, and degrading;
• Increased penalties for the charge of “action against national security,” which is routinely used to silence and imprison dissidents; and
• Continued discriminatory laws against women and religious minorities.
The Iranian government should immediately start the long overdue process of revising its laws to meet international human rights standards, as called for by the UN Secretary General, the UN Special Rapporteur, the UN General Assembly, and the UN Human Rights Council. This new penal code ignores the recommendations made by the international community to Iran during its Universal Periodic Review in February 2010. This includes recommendations accepted by the government to ensure its laws were in conformity with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Iran is a state party.
I strongly urge you to reject this bill and to send it back for revisions that ensure Iran’s laws are in accordance with its international legal obligations and commitments.
Sincerely,
“Amir Mirza Hekmati was sentenced to death…for cooperating with the hostile country America and spying for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency),” ISNA news agency quoted judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei on Monday as saying.
“The court found him Corrupt on the Earth and Mohareb (one who wages war on God). Hekmati can appeal to the Supreme Court.”Iran’s highest court must confirm all death sentences. When it will rule in Hekmati’s case was not known.
Hekmati, a 28-year-old of Iranian descent born in the southwestern U.S. state of Arizona, was arrested in December and Iran’s Intelligence Ministry accused him of receiving training at U.S. bases in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq.Iran’s judiciary said Hekmati admitted to having links with the CIA but denied any intention of harming Iran, which has had no relations with the United States since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Mutual antagonism has reigned since.
Hekmati’s family said earlier this month in a statement that the former U.S. military translator was visiting his grandmothers in Iran when he was arrested.“We have struggled to provide Amir with an attorney in Iran. We have sought to hire at least 10 different attorneys to no avail,” the family’s statement said. It said Hekmati’s “only advocate in Iran was a government-appointed lawyer who he met on the first day of his trial.”
The U.S. government has demanded Hekmati’s release, saying he has been “falsely” accused. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last month that Iran had not permitted diplomats from the Swiss Embassy, which represents American interests in Iran, to see him before or during his trial.
Hekmati graduated from a Michigan high school. His father Ali is a professor at a community college in Flint, Michigan.
Hekmati, whose trial ended on January 2, was shown on Iranian state television in December saying he was a CIA operative sent to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry.
Iran also said on Monday it had broken up an alleged U.S.-linked spy network that planned to “fuel unrest” ahead of the March parliamentary election, the first nationwide vote since the country’s 2009 disputed presidential vote.
“The detained spies were in contact with foreign countries through cyberspace,” Intelligence Minister Haydar Moslehi was quoted by state television as saying. He gave no information about the nationalities and the number of those detained.
“
Amir Mirza Hekmati was sentenced to death … for cooperating with the hostile country (the United States) and spying for the CIA.
The court found him Corrupt on Earth and Mohareb (waging war on God).
”—
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency [the voice of the Revolutionary Guards], as quoted by Reuters, regarding the sentencing by Iran’s Revolutionary Court of an American man for spying. (via breakingnews)
(via seaofgreen)
(via seaofgreen)
Iranians have lost the right to surf the Web anonymously at Internet cafes as the government reportedly moves closer to its ultimate goal of replacing the global network with a censored national intranet.
The Iranian Cyber Police published new rules on Wednesday designed to allow officials to know exactly who is visiting what Web sites. Before they can log on, Iranians are required to provide their name, father’s name, address, telephone number and national ID, according to an Iranian media report cited by Radio Free Europe. Cafe owners will be required to install security cameras and to keep all data on Web surfers, including browsing history, for six months.
The rules, which come as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in March, are a deterrent to activists who might want to use the Internet cafes to organize protests. Calls to boycott elections distributed via social networks or e-mail will be treated as national security crimes, the Iranian judiciary announced last week, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. Government officials claim they need to control access to the Internet to counter what they say is a “soft” cultural war being waged by Western countries to influence the morals of Iranians.
Monitoring Web surfers is an interim measure until the government is done building out its own domestic intranet that is “halal,” or pure. Initially, the Iran intranet will run in tandem with the Internet before the global Web is shut off to the 23 million Internet users in Iran, according to reports. Payam Karbasi, spokesman for Iran professional union Corporate Computer Systems, told Iranian media that the domestic network, which was announced last March, would be launched in coming weeks, the WSJ reported.
Iranians have reported that during the intranet tests this week, Internet connections have slowed down and Web sites have been blocked. Access to VPNs (virtual private networks) Iranians use to access sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have also been affected, reports said.
Widespread protests over purported fraud in the 2009 election, which brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to office, prompted the Iranian government to cut off access to opposition Web sites and mobile telephone networks. But protesters flocked to Twitter and Facebook to skirt the communications crackdown, to spread videos and news and to organize demonstrations. Tor and other tools were then used to get around government shutdowns of those sites.
Some of the extreme censorship measures adopted by Iran have also been used in Libya and in China, which deploys the “Great Firewall” to keep objectionable content out of the country. China also requires identification to use Internet cafes in Beijing, and has a history of shutting down blogs as well as allegedly meddling with Gmail and targeting activists with cyber attacks.
(via mohandasgandhi)
What's happening in the Persian Gulf explained.
Iran is talking tough, America is scrambling the aircraft carriers, and the world economy’s bobbing like a drunken sailor. Here’s everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask - from what it means to you, to how it relates to some mysterious explosions in Iran.
(via chos)
Supreme Loser: Why Iran’s ayatollah-in-chief always gets it wrong.
Khamenei’s nuclear gamble has been painful for the Iranian people. Corralled by sanctions and plagued with mismanagement, the country’s economy is ruined, its financial sector is paralyzed, and its energy sector is in shambles. This month, an ill-considered threat to halt trade with the United Arab Emirates caused the Iranian rial to go into a free-fall, hitting its lowest-ever mark against the U.S. dollar.
International developments have also not been kind to Tehran’s ruling cabal. After marginalizing the reformists, the conservative factions of the Islamic regime are now engaged in a political fratricide. In the wake of uprisings in the Arab world, Iran’s popularity in the region has plummeted. The Syrian regime, Tehran’s sole regional ally, increasingly appears unable to resist the calls for change shaking the entire region. Even Iran’s former allies in the Non-Aligned Movement have repeatedly voted against Iran at the IAEA and the Security Council, perceiving Tehran’s nuclear quest as too controversial for the country to serve as the developing world’s standard-bearer. Nearly a decade since the advent of the nuclear crisis, Iran is internally divided, regionally diminished, and internationally isolated.
Not only have Khamenei’s strategic goals proved elusive, but his atomic dreams remain unfulfilled. Despite Iran’s bragging that it will eventually install 50,000 centrifuges, the number of machines that it can keep spinning still hovers around 8,000, and their output continues to wane. Development and mass production of the more sophisticated machines has also stagnated.
Notwithstanding these setbacks, Khamenei remains steadfast. Preserving the ideological order of the Islamic Republic is more important for the supreme leader than crossing the nuclear Rubicon. For a leader who, in the words of John Milton, prefers “to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” surrender is political suicide. In the eyes of this custodian of political Islam, surrounded by a culture of complacency and mendacity, a Pyrrhic victory is divine providence.
Against this backdrop, Washington’s belief in the ability of sanctions to curtail Tehran’s atomic ambitions proves credulous. Iran’s nuclear defiance is ideological and thus cannot be resolved by coercion. Rather than repeating the failed policy of pushing the supreme leader into a corner, the Obama administration should aim for piecemeal solutions that would allow for a face-saving compromise. The goal should be to decelerate Iran’s perilous nuclear activities and put it under rigorous international monitoring until cooler heads prevail in Tehran.
There are a number of problematic elements in this article but I’m too amused by the title not to post it.
Daughter of former Iranian leader gets prison time
Tehran, Iran (CNN) — Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former Iranian president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was sentenced to six months in prison for making anti-government statements, semi-official Mehr News Agency reported Tuesday.
Hashemi was arrested last year for taking part in anti-government protests, and the announcement of her sentence comes as parliamentary elections near.
Her father, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is a powerful cleric and former parliament speaker. In the past, Rafsanjani has been one of the government’s most vocal critics.
Iran’s deadly war on drugs
Amnesty International says executions in Iran have skyrocketed this year, nearly tripling last year’s figures, reports the National Post’s Ian Vandaelle.
