UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle
Bachelet, condemned the execution of Zeinab Sokaanvand Lokran, a young woman in
Iran accused of killing her husband in 2012 at the age of 17. Bachelet added in
her statement that “her claims that she was coerced into confessing to the
killing, and that she had been a victim of domestic violence, were reportedly
not adequately examined during her trial.” “The sheer injustice in the case of
Zeinab Sokaanvand Lokran is deeply distressing. “The serious question marks
over her conviction appear not to have been adequately addressed before she was
executed. The bottom line is that she was a juvenile at the time the offence
was committed and international law clearly prohibits the execution of juvenile
offenders.” Said Bachelet. Despite a number of appeals from UN Special
Rapporteurs and the UN Secretary-General since her conviction in October 2014,
Zeinab Sokaanvand, was hanged on October 2, 2018 in Iran’s Urmia Prison along
with four other prisoners.
Forced into marriage at the age of 15, Zeinab
Sekaanvand lived two painful years, being battered everyday by her husband. The
24-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman was convicted of killing her abusive husband
at the age of 17. She told the judge that her husband’s brother, who had raped
her several times, had actually committed the murder. Zeinab
Sokaanvand is the 84th woman executed under Rouhani.
******
President of the World Federation of Football Federation
(FIFA) sent a letter to the Iranian regime, demanding an answer for lifting the
ban on women entering sports stadiums in Iran. This is the third letter sent to
the clerical regime on the basis of the promise made by Hassan Rouhani on
lifting the ban on female fans to attend matches in stadiums.
The Women’s committee of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran –NCRI says, preventing women’s entry to sports stadiums and
volleyball matches has been formally imposed by law enforcement officers since
2013, and since then, this problem has never been resolved for football
stadiums and even women's sports venues. A number of government officials and
religious scholars, including Makarem Shirazi and Nouri Hamedani, have
emphasized on the ban on women’s entry into sports stadiums in Iran.
******
Farangis Mazloumi, mother of political prisoner Soheil
Arabi, sent out an audio message on October 3, seeking assistance from all
international human rights organizations to save her son’s life. In her
message, Farangis Mazloumi explains about her son’s imprisonment and the new
verdicts issued for him.
Soheil Arabi, a blogger arrested for insulting the Iranian
regime’s leader and defying the regime’s oppression, via
Facebook spent 4.5 years in Evin Prison and was subsequently transferred to the
Greater Tehran’s Penitentiary (a.k.a. Fashafouyeh Prison) in February 2018,
where he is being detained incommunicado and under harsh conditions. Soheil
Arabi, 32 and married with a daughter, has been subjected to various forms of
mental and physical tortures over these years.
Political prisoner Soheil Arabi went on a 56-day hunger
strike beginning on January 24, 2018, in protest to the beating of women
political prisoners, Atena Daemi and Golrokh Iraee, and their illegal transfer
from Evin Prison to the notorious Qarchak Prison in Varamin. Earlier, he had
staged another 52-day hunger strike in protest to harassment of his family and
fabrication of charges against himself. Now, he faces a new verdict, sentencing
him to a total of 9 years in prison, 4 million toumans of fine, and exile to
Borazjan Prison, in southern Iran. His mother, Farangis Mazloumi has staged
numerous acts of protest to save her son’s life. For the past four years, Farangis Mazloumi has
been observing the New Year ceremonies in front of prisons. This year, she
spent the turn of the New Iranian Year outside the Greater Tehran’s
Penitentiary and declared that so long as her son is in prison, she will not
celebrate Nowrouz.
Farangis Mazloumi announced on July 28, 2018, that her
son was under tremendous pressure. He is constantly being harassed and
mistreated by prison guards at the behest of the Judiciary. They intend to
force him into taking deranging medications so that they could transfer him as
a mental patient to Aminabad mental hospital.
