NEWS))))))

UN Rights Chief Warns Of New ‘Crackdown’ In Iran

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay highlighted the case of lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who staged a hunger strike for several weeks after her arrest on September 4. A spokesman for Pillay, Rupert Colville, said other cases included a defense lawyer for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, whose pending death sentence by stoning sparked international protests. Lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei has been granted political asylum in Norway after fleeing Iran.

In Iran, new Bassij unit set up to control cyber space

According to National Council of Resistance of Iran’s statement, the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is using 1,500 of its paramilitary Bassij forces to control Internet use in Tehran. According to the IRGC’s commander in Tehran, Hossein Hamedani, the group will be named “cyber warriors.” He added that they will increase their activities in the near future. According to reports, the Irainian regime has faced a multitude of severe roadblocks in its attempts to confront the activities of Iranian youths over the Internet. The IRGC’s commander in Tehran said, “Defense in the context of soft war is doomed to fail. So, one must attack instead.” He also revealed that the regime intends to set up a new division of Bassij to control religious minorities. The new group will be called “Bassij of Minorities.” According to this statement at the same time, Mullah Naser Makarem Shirazi has expressed worries about low morale among Bassij units, saying, “We must be aware of the damages to Bassij. Otherwise, the current Bassij will be different from the one in the past.”

Iran: People in ZarrinShahr set ablaze Bassij force motorcycles

On November 20, a motorcycle from the Bassij (paramilitary forces) office of the Amir al-Momenin Mosque in ZarrinShahr was stolen. According to witnesses, during the past week a number of brand new motorcycles were handed out to Bassij members of the mosque, and by traveling back and forth with these new vehicles, the Bassij members intended to show off and create an atmosphere of fear among the people. The locals took one of the motorcycles and set it ablaze a few blocks down the road.

NEWS))))))

UN committee condemns ‘serious human rights violations’ in Iran

A key United Nations committee has approved a draft resolution expressing “deep concern at serious human rights violations in Iran,” including torture, persecution of ethnic minorities and violence against women. The General Assembly’s Third Committee, which handles humanitarian issues, passed the resolution 80-44 Thursday in New York, with 80 yes votes. The resolution could be adopted by the General Assembly next month. Canadian representative John McNee sponsored the measure, arguing that there has been a “very regrettable” deterioration in Iran’s human rights situation in the past year. Iranian regime’s representative, Mohammad Javad Larijani, criticized the move, saying the United States was “the mastermind and main provocateur behind a text that had nothing to do with human rights”. The draft resolution approved Thursday also includes the high incidence in carrying out the death penalty and increased persecution against members of the Baha’i faith in its list of human rights concerns in Iran. It also notes “particular concern” about what it calls a failure of Iran’s government “to investigate or launch an accountability process for alleged violations following the presidential elections” in June 2009. Canada on the other hand welcomed the UN resolution condemning the deplorable human rights situation in Iran on Thursday, calling the resolution a strong signal of support for the Iranian people while holding the Iranian regime accountable for its actions.

Ahmadinejad urges girls to marry at 16

According to Associated Press the Iranian regime’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged young girls to marry at age of 16 in his latest rejection of the country’s once effective family planning program, local newspapers reported on Sunday. Following record birth rates in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran implemented an internationally praised family planning program in the 1990s that dramatically reduced the growth rate. Ahmadinejad has criticized the program as an ungodly and a Western import. “We should take the age of marriage for boys to 20 and for girls to about 16 and 17,” he said, according to the state-owned Jam-e Jam daily. “The marriage age for boys has reached 26 and for girls to 24, and there is no reason for this.” Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has sought to increase of the country’s population, which is already at 75 million, with a third between the ages of 15 and 30. In July, he inaugurated a new policy to encourage population growth with financial incentives for every new child born, having previously said the country could feed a population of 150 million. Critics said the policy will only exacerbate unemployment, currently set 9 percent officially. There are an estimated 3 million unemployed people of working age in the country.

IRAN, NIGERIA: Heroin and hand grenades sour Abuja-Tehran relations

Iran may have sought to cast the recent Nigerian arms smuggling scandal as a “misunderstanding,” but it will be difficult to make the same case for at least 286 pounds of high-grade heroin found hidden inside a shipment of Iranian auto parts at a Lagos port. “The goods originated from Iran and the last destination port of the vessel is Nigeria, so the question of the container being [in] transit is ruled out” the port’s area comptroller of customs, Austin Warikoru, told the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard, which appears to have broke the story on Friday. This latest bust comes just a week after Nigeria reported Iran to the United Nations for allegedly smuggling high-caliber weapons into Nigeria despite U.N. sanctions banning Iranian arms exports. In October, 13 shipping containers originating in Iran and labeled as construction materials were found to contain rocket launchers, grenades, guns and ammunition. The same French shipping company, CMA-CGM, has been connected to both the shipments of weapons and smack.

NEWS))))))

SSF official announces creation of commission to confront popular uprisings

The deputy commander of the Iranian regime’s State Security Forces (SSF) has announced the creation of a commission for “psychological operations” in order to confront protests and uprisings against the regime’s plans to cut subsidies. Bahman Kargar, whose comments were published by the state-run Fars news agency this week, said, “The psychological operations commission is mandated to analyze and review the day-to-day social issues and challenges, as well as the social wounds that the enemies seek to exploit.” “This includes the law of targeted subsidies and such instances, which will be reviewed regularly in this commission in the presence of its members and experts,” he added. Describing the Iranian people’s protests against the clerical regime as “psychological warfare,” Kargar said, “Psychological warfare is a lot more challenging and difficult to deal with than a military conflict.” Meanwhile, the deputy commander of the paramilitary Bassij Force, Fazeli, used the analogy of “flames burning under the ashes” to describe the situation of the Iranian society. He said, “Such an extensive sedition was unprecedented in the revolution’s history.” “In order to prevent further seditions, awareness must be continuously raised, because the enemies of the establishment are not sitting idly and are actively seeking ways to harm the establishment. The sedition is analogous to flames still burning under the ashes.”

Group hanging of five prisoners in Gonbad-e Kavouss

According to National Council of Resistanc of Iran, on Tuesday, November 9, in yet another criminal measure, the Iranian regime hanged five prisoners in the city of Gonbad-e Kavouss. On November 5^th, another prisoner was hanged in Esfahan’s central prison. On that same day, in two different locations in the city of Tabass, four prisoners were lashed in public.

German official condemns regime for systematic abuses

A human rights official in Germany has strongly criticized the Iranian regime’s abysmal and systematic human rights violations, saying that the German government considers such abuses to be unacceptable, Germany’s official radio station reported on Thursday. Markus Löning, Germany’s Federal Government Human Rights Commissioner, specifically pointed to a hunger strike by an Iranian female rights activist and lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been imprisoned by the Iranian regime for more than two months. He called for Ms. Sotoudeh’s immediate release.

Norwegian minister criticizes regime for exporting terror

Norway’s Minister of Justice has accused the Iranian regime of exporting terrorism abroad and said his country will not issue visas to mullahs who are sent by the Iranian regime to incite terrorism and violent acts in Norway, according to al-Arabiya TV’s website on Thursday. In an interview with Norway’s official TV channel, Knut Storberget voiced deep frustration over the Iranian regime’s destructive influence in Norway and added, “Mullahs who come from Iran and who train others in terrorist operations can be denied visas.” The Norwegian justice minister added, “The fact that these individuals encourage others to perpetrate violent acts is definitely unlawful and warrants prosecution.” Last week, Norway’s NRK TV station aired a report about the activities of Majma’ Ahl-e Beyt, an organ tasked with exporting the Iranian regime’s terrorism. The report accused the clerical regime of sending reactionary clerics to Norway to encourage violence and hate propaganda.

Unfortunately Canada has not reacted in the same manners. The agents of the Iranian regime and the Iranian Mullahs come to this country easily in the aim of exporting terrorist activities and spying on dissidents.

NEWS))))))

Two union activists kidnapped by regime agents in Iran

The Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) agents have kidnapped two activists of the Tehran Bus Syndicate, according to Activists for Democracy and Human Rights on Thursday. According to the report, the agents kidnapped Gholamreza Gholamhosseini and Saeed Torabian at a street in the city of Karaj, and proceeded to beat the detainees. The two have reportedly been transferred to Karaj's Gohardasht Prison.

Four prisoners were publicly flogged in Iranian city

The Iranian regime has flogged four prisoners in the Iranian city of Tabas, according to the state-run Aftab website on Friday. Aftab reported that three of the victims were sentenced to imprisonment, financial payments, and flogging. Another person received an imprisonment and flogging sentence.

Rape in Iran’s prisons: the cruelest torture

Kate Allen’s letter published in Daily Telegraph. Kate Allen is the UK Director of Amnesty International.

She writes: “…rape is not just a blow to one person; it is a blow to the whole family. A victim of rape is never healed with the passing of time. With every look given by a father, the wounds open again.” - Bahareh Maghami, a victim of rape in Iran April 2010

Echoing earlier reports by human rights groups, the British media has recently highlighted the case of a young woman from Iran, ’Leyla’, who was allegedly abducted, detained and raped by that country’s security forces because her fiance was involved in the demonstrations that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election last year.

It’s a terrible story and sadly not a unique one. Following the post-election demonstrations, the Iranian authorities cracked down with astonishing severity on anyone perceived to be involved in criticism of the status quo. Thousands of people were arrested: students, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists and human rights campaigners were all targeted. Hundreds of people were subsequently tried unfairly in mass ’show trials’, some of which led to executions. But as more people were released from detention, the details of abuse, including rape of both men and women, were repeated again and again.

Kate Allen adds: The Iranian authorities acknowledged that some abuse took place in the Kahrizak detention center - where former detainees emerged with stories of rape, torture and appalling conditions leading to at least three deaths - but that example aside, the Iranian government’s reaction has been to dismiss and repress all other allegations of abuse.

Ebrahim Sharifi, a 24-year-old student from Tehran, was seized by plainclothes security officials in June 2009 and held incommunicado for a week before being released. He told Amnesty that he was bound, blindfolded and beaten prior to being raped. He also endured severe beatings and mock executions.

When he tried to file a judicial complaint, intelligence agents allegedly threatened him and his family. The case judge said: “Maybe you took money [to say this]… [and] if you go through with this, you will surely pay for it in Hell.” The investigating Judicial Committee announced that his allegations of rape were fabricated and politically motivated.

Two members of the government-supported Basij militia, now in the UK, have also told the British media that they witnessed systematic rape on men and boys in a park in the southern city of Shiraz. Other Basij members had forced young men and possibly boys into a series of shipping containers in the park, where the rapes took place. The two complained, including to their superiors, which led to them having to leave Iran.

Women in detention have also frequently reported sexual insults and threats of rape being used against them. Zahra Kamali, a student arrested in July 2009, told Amnesty International that her interrogators taunted her with wanting to sleep with other men, and touched her breasts. She said that her then cellmate, a women’s rights activist held with her was treated the worst: ’She told us that her interrogators had attached cables to her nipples and given her electric shocks. She was so ill she would sometimes faint in the cell.”

It is women who remain discriminated against more generally in Iranian law - a woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man’s, for example. Women’s rights campaigners continue to be harassed, intimidated and arrested. Amnesty is campaigning for Ronak Safazadeh, a women's rights campaigner jailed in 2009 for five years on what appear to be trumped-up charges.

All acts of rape are grave abuses of human rights. But the abuse takes on an added significance when the rapist is a public official. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture states that rape constitutes torture when it is carried out by public officials or happens at their instigation. International and regional human rights bodies have ruled that rape by officials always amounts to torture, and cannot be considered to be simply a common criminal act.

The use of rape as a form of torture (or as a weapon of war) is certainly not unique to Iran. But that does not mean these reports can be ignored. Greater international scrutiny of Iran’s human rights has been rebuffed by the government: it has not allowed some eight UN human rights rapporteurs to visit the country and has used UN meetings to deny reports of human rights violations.

The human rights situation in Iran has become so dire that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organizations last week called on the UN Secretary General to appoint his own special envoy to investigate and report on the situation in the country, and to issue a more comprehensive report on human rights in Iran.

All this will be of little comfort to those like Leyla, Ebrahim and Zahra mentioned above. But the international community must ensure, for their sake and for those of countless other Iranians, that the focus on Iran is not restricted solely to its nuclear plans but also to the human rights of its people.