The World Medical Association has condemned
state-affiliated doctors in Iran for their complicity in the facilitation of child
executions in the country. This
follows the execution of Abolfazl Chezani Sharahi, 19, in June, who was
sentenced to death in 2014 after the Legal Medicine Organisation in Iran gave
their official medical opinion that he was mentally “mature” at 14, when the
alleged crime took place.
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Azade University's new management is concentrating on
so-called "moral" issues in many of the university programs and
affairs to suppress and impose further restrictions on female students. A ceremony was held on Wednesday,
July 18, 2018, to award the decrees of members of Azad University's Council on
Promoting Virtue and Forbidding from Evil. Officials addressing the gathering
stressed on all-out efforts by Azad University's new management to
institutionalize the task of "promoting virtue and forbidding from
evil", gender segregation and harsher enforcement of the compulsory veil
in Azad universities. Azad University is a private entity affiliated with the
highest regime officials with numerous branches all across the country. Based on
2012 data at least 1.5 million Iranian students study in these universities.
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Shinabad girls held a protest in Tehran on Tuesday and
Wednesday, July 17 and 18, 2018, across from the office of the regime’s president,
Hassan Rouhani, on Pastor Avenue. Shinabad girls criticized officials for not
responding to their needs, by refusing to issue them passports and to pay for
their travel abroad and medical expenses.
Their lawyer, Hossein Ahmadi Niaz, said the
Shinabad girls had been waiting for a week in Tehran to meet the ministers of
Education and Health but received no answers. Finally, they were forced to
stage a protest. “These girls did this to pursue their treatment and obtain their
rights when they did not receive any response from relevant authorities,” he
told the state-run news agency, ISNA. (The state-run Entekhab website - July
18, 2018)
Twenty-seven Shinabad girls suffered serious burns and
two died in a 2012 fire accident at an elementary school in Shinabad village in
Piranshahr, northwestern Iran. The fire was caused by a worn-out oil-heater in
their classroom.
In Tehran-Iran on Tuesday, July 17, defrauded men and
women investors of Caspian institute, affiliated with the IRGC, gathered in
protest in front of the institute’s branch on Sohrevardi Avenue. On the same
day, another protest gathering was held in front of the Golsar branch of this
institute in Rasht, north of Iran. This protest was an all-women protest and
they chanted against the government, the parliament, the three heads of
branches, and other state agencies for stealing their money. They demanded
their plundered properties.
Hundreds of retired employees of Tehran banks gathered
on Tuesday, July 17, , outside the Bank Employees’ Retirement Fund to protest
against the government’s failure to balance their pensions. A number of retired
women also participated in this protest. They demanded the Fund’s CEO to either
meet their demands or resign.
On Monday, July 16, , plundered stock holders of
Pardisban Enterprise in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, staged a protest gathering
across from the Justice Department in Kohsangi. Women actively participated in
this protest gathering.
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Azizollah Maleki announced the arrest of 46 members of a
modeling network. He stated, “38 delinquent businesses (photographers, hair
dressers, and bridal maisons) and eight female models were arrested and turned
in to judicial authorities to go through the legal process.”
Citing articles 637 and 638 of the Islamic Punishment
Code, Maleki claimed that these people have “upset public chastity and
disseminated anti-culture” in the guise of modeling profession. (The state-run
Donyay-e Eghtesad website - July 16, 2018)
This time, eight women were among the arrested members
of a modeling network in Hormozgan. More women working in the modeling
profession have been previously arrested by security forces in other cities,
including Mashhad, Shiraz, Tehran and Zahedan. In 2017, for example, eight
women working with a modeling network were arrested in Mashhad, capital of the
northeastern Iranian province of Razavi Khorasan. (The state-run ROKNA news
agency – November 23, 2017)
Three women were also arrested for modeling activities
in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, southeastern Iran. They included a woman
owning a hairdresser who had employed two other women as models for ads in the
social networks to invite customers to her shop; all three were arrested and
the business was sealed. (The state-run ISNA news agency- October 25, 2017)
Two women were also arrested last June in Mashhad for
tattoo training.
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Sufi woman Sepideh Moradi refused to appear before the Sharia
court on Saturday, July 14.
Imprisoned in Qarchak Prison (a.k.a. Shahr-e Ray) in
Varamin, Sufi woman Sepideh Moradi Sarvestani is protesting denial of access to
defense lawyers for Sufi prisoners and the prison authorities’ failure to
observe the due process of law.
Sepideh Moradi was arrested after being badly brutalized
during the bloody crackdown on the protest gathering of Gonabadi Dervishes in
Tehran’s Golestan-e Haftom Ave. on February 19-20, 2018. She was beaten by
batons and seriously injured in the arm, elbow and fingers. She also suffered
burns in her legs as a result of being hit by teargas canisters used by
security forces. The burn scars have remained on her body after five months
since the incident. She has been denied medical treatment and care.
Like other Sufi women, Sepideh Moradi has endured
insults, beatings and violence under interrogation and during detention in
Qarchak Prison in Varamin.
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Baha’i student Sogol Zabihi was deprived of continuing
her education. She was a sophomore undergraduate student of graphics at Rasam
University of Karaj who was dismissed from school for her faith.
Earlier, Soha Izadi, a student of Information Technology
at the University of Zanjan, had been dismissed from school for being a Baha'i.
Last year, at least 23 girls of Baha'i faith were dismissed from Iranian
universities and deprived of continuing their education. Baha'i's are deprived
of education in Iranian universities based on paragraph 3 of the regime’s bill
ratified by the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution in March 1991 which has
also been endorsed by the mullahs’ supreme leader Ali Khamenei “Once it is
confirmed that a student adheres to Bahaiism, whether at the time admission or
during their studies, she/he must be deprived of education.”
