NEWS))))))

Hundreds of distinguished political personalities and lawmakers from the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, joined the annual Free Iran gathering in Paris on Saturday July 1, 2017. This gathering which was organized by Iranian communities outside Iran, came as the Tehran regime is engulfed in domestic and international crises, and as the activities of the organized opposition have expanded in Iran and abroad. This gathering was especially important as in the past months, Iran has become a source of escalating tension with the United States and the countries of the Middle East region. In the Free Iran rally, in addition to tens of thousands of Iranians from across the world, hundreds of politicians and parliamentarians from dozens of countries representing a wide range of

political perspectives participated and many delivered speeches. Honorable John Baird Canada's former foreign minister headed the Canadian delegation in the gathering. Baird said: “The people of Iran demand and deserve better than the religious fascism ruling Iran...The money spent by the regime on nuclear weapons and terrorism is being stolen from the Iranian people... The policies of appeasement let the people of Iran down.” This was Baird's second time joining the Iranian's rally. Canada severed ties with the Iranian regime and closed its embassy in Iran and expelled Iranian regime's diplomats from Canada in 2012. Canada considers Iranian regime as the State Sponsored Terrorism.
Maryam Rajavi the president elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran as the key note speaker said: "Regime change in Iran is necessary and within reach". The IRGC -Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-must be placed on the blacklist, the mullahs must be isolated by the international community, Iran’s seats must be handed over to the Iranian Resistance. She added: “The only solution to free the people of Iran and establish peace and tranquility in the region, is the overthrow of the Iranian regime". A wide range of news agencies around the world covered the Free Iran gathering in Paris either live or as reportage.

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According to State-run Aftab News website June 26, Alam-ol-Hoda Khamenei's representative in Mashhad-Iran said: Those who are indifferent to improper veiling and non-veiling in society, both ordinary people and officials, are actually indifferent to insults to the Prophet.
He added: “One should not expect that only the State Security Force deal with the issue of improper veiling… All the people, clerics and officials are responsible in combating improper veiling.”


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Different groups of protesters including large numbers of women staged protest rallies in different cities, including Mashhad, Zahedan, Sorkhrood (in Mazandaran Province), Rasht, Ahwaz and Nahavand on Thursday, June 29 in Iran.
The protesters’ deposits have been plundered by credit institutes such as Caspian. They demanded their deposits back. In Mashhad, women protesters sat in Sajjad Street and blocked the way. They chanted, “Iran has become the house of thieves.”

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The State-run Aftab News reported on June 30 that the sixth branch of Tehran's Penal Court sentenced a woman and her husband to death. They are charged with promoting superstition. The identities of the couple have not been disclosed.




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Ismael Akbari, a director of the Justice Department of Fars Province Southwest Iran, announced that the women who get arrested on the charge of improper veiling will have to attend an eight-hour mandatory educational class. Earlier, the Prosecutor of Mazandaran Province had declared that the Judiciary files cases against women who drop their veils in their vehicles, and they will have to stand trial by the Judiciary.

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The US State Department on Tuesday, June 27, released its report on Human Trafficking. According to this report, "Some Iranian women, who seek employment to support their families in Iran, are vulnerable to sex trafficking. Iranian girls between the ages of 13 and 17 are targeted by traffickers for sale abroad." The annual TiP report ranks countries in a three-tier system on their effectiveness in tackling human trafficking and other forms of slavery. It placed Iran on its global list of worst offenders in human trafficking and forced labor. The report said the Government of Iran "does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so; therefore, Iran remained on Tier 3." TIP report added, "Public information from NGOs, the media, and international organizations indicate the government did not take significant steps to address its extensive trafficking problem. Trafficking victims remained highly vulnerable to punishment, including death, for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being subjected to trafficking. Allegations continued that Iranian officials coerced Afghan men into combat roles in Syria, and the Iranian government provided financial support to militias fighting in Iraq that recruited and used child soldiers."
The report highlights Iranian officials' involvement in human trafficking. "The government did not report anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts and officials continued to be complicit in trafficking crimes."
On the women who are victims of human trafficking in Iran, the TIP wrote, "Some Iranian women, who seek employment to support their families in Iran, are vulnerable to sex trafficking. Iranian girls between the ages of 13 and 17 are targeted by traffickers for sale abroad; younger girls may be forced into domestic service until their traffickers consider them old enough to be subjected to child sex trafficking. In 2016, there was a reported increase in young Iranian women in prostitution in Dubai; some of these women may be trafficking victims. From 2009-2015, the transport of girls from and through Iran en route to other Persian Gulf states for sexual exploitation reportedly increased. Iranian girls were subjected to sex trafficking in brothels in the IKR, especially Sulaimaniya; in some cases this exploitation was facilitated by Iranian trafficking networks. In 2015, the media reported Kurdistan Regional Government officials were among the clients of these brothels. In Tehran, Tabriz, and Astara, the number of teenage girls exploited in sex trafficking reportedly continues to increase. “Temporary” or “short-term” marriages lasting from one hour to one week—for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation—are reportedly increasing in Iran. Trafficking rings reportedly use Shiraz, Iran, as a transit point to bring ethnic Azeri girls from Azerbaijan to the UAE for commercial sexual exploitation. Street children in Iran are highly vulnerable to trafficking. Organized criminal groups kidnap or purchase and force Iranian and migrant children, especially Afghan refugee children, to work as beggars and street vendors in cities, including Tehran. These children, who may be as young as three years old, are coerced through physical and sexual abuse and drug addiction."

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According to state-run ILNA news agency June 27, a number of women working at the Behesht Zahra mortuary in Tehran objected to the Tehran Criminal Court's verdict. The court had convicted a young woman in April for a relationship with a strange man to 74 lashes and to work for two years in a mortuary. “Our job is an honorable job and a symbol of serving people; such approaches discredit us and our job… We endure eight hours of hard work and numerous problems at work, as well as various pains and injuries, but such approaches are intolerable,” the Iranian women workers said.

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Iran Judiciary's State-run Mizan website reported on June 27, that the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Mazandaran’s capital announced the Judiciary will tackle, seriously and legally, the problem of women dropping their veils. Jaafari said, “In light of the arrival of the hot season, seasonal holidays, and rise in the number of people travelling and going to beaches, legal cases will be filed for people who attempt to remove their veils.” “Any personal or public vehicle, motorcycle, motor boat, jet ski and other motor vehicles that are used by unveiled women will be also impounded.”

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The State Security Force (SSF) is going to launch a plan in Karaj-Chaloos Road  central Iran to clampdown on women under the pretext of improper veiling.
Bakhsh-Ali Kamrani, commander of SSF in Alborz Province said, “The plan aims to reduce the social harms and instances of improper veiling currently observed in this road.” Earlier in May, it was announced that “the Interior Ministry’s central headquarters in charge of protecting public security and citizens’ rights” will start inspecting government institutions and departments in late June 2017 to oversee the staff’s observation of "veil and chastity."

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With more than one million widowed women, Iran presently ranks first among 40 countries with regards to the number of widows.
This figure was announced by Roozbeh Kordoni, director general of the office of social harms in the Ministry of Welfare. He added, “The reality is that widows face numerous challenges in different societies. Poverty is one of the most significant issues that affects the lives of these women and consequently afflicts them with other forms of violence… There are many cases where men look at widows in immoral ways. Unfortunately, such approaches concern them a lot… so much that in Iranian society widows often have to conceal the fact that they are widows.”

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The State-run Rokna website reported on June 24, that a 12-year-old girl has committed a fatal suicide by taking pills after she was raped by a 30-year-old man. The incident took place in Gorgan of Golestan province, northern Iran. The names of the child and the assailant have not been announced.





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According to Mashreq News website June 25, Aria Hejazi, Director General of Khorasan Razavi’s Coroner’s Office, Northeast of Iran announced that in the period spanning from March 2016 to March 2017 (Iranian year 1395), some 7,385 cases of abuse of spouses have been registered by the Coroner’s Office, where 6,923 of which were women. The figure shows an increase of 821 cases compared to last year.


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Simone Veil, French politician and Holocaust survivor, who secured the legalization of abortion in France in the 1970's, died at her home in Paris on Friday, her family said. She was 89 years old.
A Jewish survivor of a Nazi death camp at Ravensbruck with the prisoner number 78651 tattooed on her arm, she was a fervent European and fighter for civil liberties, becoming the first directly elected president of the European parliament in 1979.
She commanded wide respect across the political spectrum and remained among the most popular politicians in opinion polls.
She was health minister in 1974 under then President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.