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The Iranian-Canadians gathered in Dorchester Square in Montreal-Quebec on Sat. Jan. 27, in support of Iranian people uprising for Regime Change and in hard weather condition. Mr. Beryl Wajsman the chief editor of The Suburban ٍEnglish newspaper in Montreal also spoke after Zina Mesbah representative of the Iran Democratic Association-Quebec at this gathering saying: "Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. If there were more like you in the 1930`s in Germany, we would not have to live with this atrocity today. You are fighting a government who has committed Cultural, Physical and Intellectual genocide. This is a catastrophe. And struggle against a regime which is the biggest threat against freedom that all people want, the biggest threat against the change that all human need, and that you are here, is a daring action. No one will forget. We`ll come back next week and weeks after that and as the UN has said about the International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Never forgive, Never forget, Never again.
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Mrs. Shamiram Essavi, a Christian woman is sentenced to five years in prison for acting against national security in Iran. The Asyrian-Iranian woman has been accused of espionage and acting against national security for launching home churches, participating in Christian seminars abroad, and educating Christian leaders.
Her court was held on January 6, 2018, but she objected to the verdict and is now awaiting an appeals court. Mrs. Essavi’s husband, pastor Victor Bet Temrz also has been sentenced to 10 years in jail. Pastor Victor, his wife and son along with 12 other Christian converts were arrested simultaneous with Christmas celebrations on December 26, 2014.
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A young woman, Noushin Mohammadi, 17, died on Thursday, January 25, due to infection and swelling of her body after a severe chilblain. Noushin was from one of the villages in Sarpol-e Zahab, the epicenter of an earthquake of 7.3 magnitude on November 12, 2017 which caused massive destruction in this area.
The state-run news agencies also reported on January 26, the death of a 4 month-old baby boy, Mohammad Seifouri who lost his life on January 13 due to savage cold. On January 24, the state-run news agencies also reported the death of a 2-year-old girl, Sarina Zahabi, who had caught a severe cold and lost her life because of a lack of the most basic medical facilities and care in the quake stricken areas.
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The female teachers of Yazd continued their protest on Tuesday, January 23, for the second consecutive day outside the Governorate in the capital of this central Iranian province. They demanded receiving ten months of their unpaid salaries. On the same day, the women and men cheated by the state-backed Caspian Credit Institute in Rasht, northern Iran, staged a protest on Tuesday, January 23, demanding reimbursement of their money and property plundered by the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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According to state-run Mehr news Jan. 23, Iranian men have five times more access to wage-earning jobs than women. This is the finding of a survey by the Labor Ministry’s Center for Statistics and Strategic Information, published in the state-run media on January 23, 2018, revealing unequal access to wage-earning jobs for men and women. According to this study done for the period spanning from March 2016 to March 2017, men’s share of wage-earning jobs was 82.7 per cent compared to women’s 17.3 per cent share.
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The car transporting students of a girls’ school turned over and the five girls riding in the car were wounded, some seriously. The accident happened on Monday, January 22, 2018, on the road in northern Fars Province, south of Iran. Head of the public relations office of the Department of Education in Fars said a Paykan was carrying five teenage girls from Simkan village to their school in Kheirabad village, when it turned over on the road. One of the students suffered a broken ankle in the right foot, another suffered dislocation of her shoulder blade, and the three others less serious injuries. (The official IRNA news agency – January 22, 2018)
This is not the first time that school transportation vehicles have road accidents in southern Iran. Earlier, in September, the bus carrying elite girl studetns overturned in Hormozgan, leaving 44 killed and wounded.
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A young woman, member of Iran’s national Ping Pong team, Mahshid Ashtari, says the Education Department told her to concentrate on her studies instead of doing sports. In an interview with state-run ISNA news agency on Jan. 21, Ms. Ashtari said, “Both the Education Department and the Department of Sports and Youths in Razavi Khorassan refused to give me any support. They did not give me any technical or financial assistance.” On the state of her education, she said, “I had to travel to Germany in June during my final exams to take part in the international Ping Pong tournaments. I had expected to be rewarded in some form after winning medals for my country.” “Unfortunately, I had to drop one of my courses and because of it, I did not go to school for three months. She added. When I followed up on my case, I was told to quit sports and study. They told me, a national team player, ‘You are a girl. You should study instead engaging in sports.’
The national team player, Mahshid Ashtari, said, “After these problems and three months of being deprived of going to school, I needed an affidavit from the school where I studied, so that I could get a viza to travel to Portugal. But they did not help even this much.”
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At least seven Kurdish women have been arrested in the first two weeks of January in the cities of Orumiyeh, Kermanshah, and Ilam in western Iran. They are: Sara Jamshidi, Laleh Aghaii a nd Nazdar Amir Mohammadi from Ilam; Shahla Vahdatpour and Touran Mehraban from Orumiyeh; Nastaran Akasheh and Ashraf Akbarpour from Kermanshah. In another development in Tehran, the family of Sepideh Farhan (Farahabadi) have not been able to secure her release despite persistent follow up. They have been told that their daughter will not be released for the time being since her interrogations have not been completed, yet. Sepideh was arrested along with several of her friends on January 2, 2018, in Tehran’s Enghelab Square and transferred to the Intelligence Ministry’s solitary confinement and placed under interrogation. Some 8,000 protesters have been arrested in the first two weeks of January during the Iran uprising, at least eight of whom have been killed under torture.
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Matin Mo’azezi, Iran’s speed skating champion, was attacked by an unknown motorcyclist who rode next to her and kicked her off her bike. The news on this attack was published on January 20. This is the second such attack in the month of January targeting woman cyclist. On January 8, a young woman was attacked in the city of Qom and hurt in the face and head. According to eyewitnesses, her bike was deliberately hit from behind by an unknown motorcyclist. As a result, she lost her balance and was thrown off to the ground. It's worth mentioning that two months ago, the Iranian regime's supreme leader Ali Khamenei stressed again that women were not allowed to ride bicycle in public.
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23 high school girls in Mashhad were poisoned in school, when the heater in their classroom gave off Carbon Monoxide. This was announced by Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of the National Emergency Room. He said the tube leading the gas out of the room had been blocked and the gas spread in the classroom. (The state-run ROKNA news agency – January 21, 2018)
This is not the first time that girl students become victimized in unsafe classrooms. Iranian schools are not attended to. The classrooms are not safe and everyday students suffer from some kind of accident.
One of the most catastrophic accidents in Iranian schools took place in December 2012 in a girls’ school in Shinabad, in West Azerbaijan. The classroom caught on fire, two little girls died and the rest of the girls in this classroom suffered serious burns without the government offering them any effective support for treatment of these young girls.
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The coach of an Iranian women’s football team complained about her team having to play in a badly polluted weather condition. Rahyab-e Melal women’s football team comes from Sanandaj, capital of the western Iranian province of Kurdistan. They played with the Esteghlal of Khuzistan Province on Friday, January 19, in Ahwaz, capital of the oil-rich province of Khuzistan while air pollution had reached levels 66 times the permissible limit. All men’s games were cancelled due to bad polluted weather. (The state-run ISNA news agency – January 20, 2018) The coach of Rahyab-e Melal said, “The pollution was so much that my players’ faces were covered with dust, their eyes burnt and our scope of vision was very limited. It was as if women had stronger lungs compared to men. Do we have to go blind, before they cancel the games?”
