Iran Focus
Tehran, 21 Jun – Iranian police shut down opposition newspaper, the Ghanoon, after it criticized the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
This news was announced on Monday via a statement on the newspaper’s website which said it had been shut down following complaints by the IRGC’s Department of Intelligence.
Iran Focus
Tehran, 21 Jun – Sholeh Pakravan, the mother of Reyhaneh Jabbari, has written a letter of support to Mr. Azimzadeh, the political prisoner who has been on hunger strike for the past 51 days.
Ms. Pakravan has been outspoken about the human rights abuses in Iran since her daughter was executed in 2014 for killing an Intelligence Ministry Agent in self-defence after he attempted to rape her.
Iran Focus
London, 19 Jun – Addressing members of Iran’s parliament last week, Ali Rabiee, Minister of Labour in Hassan Rouhani’s government warned about the government’s inability to solve the problems of unemployment and large deficit in retirement funds.
Iran Focus
Tehran, 18 Jun – The inmates in Iran’s Gohardasht Prison, north-west of Tehran in a collective action on Tuesday refused to go to the prison’s clinic despite their physical problems and the need to see a doctor. Their boycott of the infirmary was in protest to the insult by the prison officials who conditioned their going to clinic on wearing slippers.
Washington, 18 Jun – Two US House of Representative Republicans are expressing concern over Boeing’s tentative agreement to sell about 100 commercial planes to Iran, warning that the deal could have serious national security implications.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who holds a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, said that US businesses should not take part in “weaponizing” Iran’s regime, according to a report on Friday in The Hill.
London, 18 Jun – British Parliamentarian Mark Williams has written his take on the human rights situation in Iran during the time of President Hassan Rouhani. His commentary was published on Friday on The Hill’s Congress Blog:
There is never much time that goes by between vivid reminders of the human rights record of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the radical, theocratic ideology that justifies those abuses. Under the system of clerical leadership, virtually anything can be criminalised if it is deemed to be out of step with the regime’s perspective on what it means to be authentically Muslim or Iranian.
By Hamid Yazdan Panah
The dissident movement within Iran is alive and well, though little attention is being paid to it in the international community. Iranian dissidents, both inside the country and abroad have continued their struggle to bring attention to human rights and the lack of civil and political liberties within the country. These campaigns include organized hunger strikes by political prisoners within Iran, with growing concerns for the health and well-being of those who on hunger strike. The Iranian diaspora has also refused to remain silent, with the National Council of Resistance of Iran set to hold a major rally in support of democratic change in Iran on July 9th in Paris.
Iran Focus
London, 16 Jun – The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps accused a British-Iranian aid worker of attempting to overthrow the government.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, has been held in prison since April 3, when she attempted to fly back to the UK with her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella.
Iran Focus
London, 15 Jun – Iranian opposition forces say that the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries is based on false evidence that the Iranian regime is moderate.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran said that the human rights situation in the country has only deteriorated since Rouhani took office.
Iran Focus
London, 15 Jun – The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has obtained video footage of a man being flogged by the regime.
The clip, filmed at Kouhpayeh Park in Shiraz, southern Iran, shows a man being flogged in public by the fundamentalist authorities.
