NEWS))))))

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According to WASHINGTON, Daily Caller, April 22, an Iranian resistance group claimed Friday that the Iranian regime has expanded its efforts to build nuclear weapons. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said at press conference that the Iranian government has covered up research activities so that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can’t examine it. Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI, said the information was obtained by the People’s’ Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), which procured it from onsite observations and sources inside the Iranian government. NCRI is the parent organization of MEK. Jararzadeh said that the information his group has obtained indicates that METFAZ the unit responsible for building a trigger for a nuclear weapon has moved its main activities within Parchin, a key military complex. A press release by NCRI stated: “The reason for the move was based on the conclusion reached by regime officials that the probability for the IAEA to get access to Parchin in the future is extremely low, which means that the site is the optimal location for shielding the regime’s activities in this regard.”
In a related news and according to France 24 April 20, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson branded the Iran nuclear deal a failure, Wednesday as President Donald Trump ordered a review of how Washington is countering the threat from Tehran.

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Nurses in Iran have embarked on a campaign in the social media to express their protest and demand their basic rights. Lack of sufficient accommodations in hospitals, large gap between salaries of nurses and doctors, setting a price list on the nursing services, and implementation of the law on hard and harmful labor are among the main issues raised by nurses. (The state-run ILNA news agency – April 19, 2017)


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Amnesty International issued an Urgent Action statement on April
20, for political prisoner Atena Daemi held in Evin Prison in Iran. The statement reads in part: Iranian human rights defender Atena Daemi has  been on hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison since April 8. She is protesting the suspended prison sentences imposed on two of her sisters, Hanieh and Ensieh, for “insulting public officers on duty”. She has accused Iran’s security bodies of harassing family members as a way to inflict further pain and suffering on political prisoners. Her mother Massoumeh Nemati, also wrote a letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Ms. Asma Jahangir, urging her to take appropriate measures to improve the situation of political prisoners in Iran.


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Four Baha'i women were arrested by security forces in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas and in the island of Qeshm on April 18. They are Mahnaz Jonnesar, Maral Rasti, Mehraleh Afshar and Nassim Ghanavatian. Security forces confiscated the women's personal belongings and equipment during inspection of their residences.



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Massoud Ghaderi Pasha, director general of the Coroner's Office in Tehran Province in Iran, announced Sunday, April 17, that six female workers had died in 2016 due to lack of safety measures at the work place.

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A large number of Iranian women among some 100 retired teachers staged a protest in front of the Budget and Planning Organization in Tehran on Tuesday morning, April 18. One of the protesters said, "We demand to receive our termination-of-service reward, proper balancing of pensions, and improvement of medical services provided by insurance." (The state-run ILNA news agency – April 18, 2017) Earlier on March 12, 2017, over 10,000 working and retired teachers staged protest demonstrations in Tehran and other cities to express their demands.

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Prison officials have once again refused to grant medical leave to political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian jailed in Khoy Prison, West Azerbaijan Province in Iran. Ms. Jalalian suffers from pterygium تیر جیوم and risks losing her eye-sight. In an international campaign in December 2016, Amnesty International circulated a petition for freedom of a number of human rights activists including Zeinab Jalalian who is deprived of needed medical treatment.
Zeinab Jalalian was arrested 10 years a go in 2007 in Kermanshah on the charges of contacts with Kurdish parties. The Revolutionary Court sentenced her to death but her sentence was later commuted to life in prison.

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Political prisoner Zahra Zehtabchi has been deprived of any leaves from prison.
Ms. Zehtabchi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for supporting the opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). She has been in prison since 2013. Zahra is a social researcher and mother of two daughters. She has lost some of her family members, including her father, during the mass executions of the 1980s in Iran.

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A Tehran gathering entitled, "violence against women in shanty towns", discussed the deplorable conditions of women living in slums on April 19 in Iran. A volunteer for the Imam Ali Charity Society, Taravat Mozaffarian, addressed forced marriage of young women in these slums and said, "5 per cent of these women marry men who are 15 to 40 years older, 10 per cent marry men between 10 to 15 years older, and 85 per cent marry men less than ten years older than themselves." Ms. Mozaffarian also provided some figures on domestic violence against women. "47 per cent of these women experience contusions, 53 per cent suffer broken bones, 21 per cent are injured and three per cent are disabled," she said. (The state-run ISNA news agency, April 19, 2017)    

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Women teachers applying for housing in Zanjan-Iran held a protest rally in front of the Governor’s Office on Thursday April 20. Dozens of people participated in the rally. They protested the government’s failure to attend to their housing problems despite passage of 11 years.

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Just after a few days, that media company Telegram launched its voice phone service for the people inside Iran, the Iranian regime shut it down. Telegram voice phone would make it possible for people to get easier access to the outside world. The Iranian regime had asked Telegram to give them access to people's conversations online, but the company has refused.