The Iranian regime executed 2
teenage boys on Thrusday April 25, in Adesabad prison in Shiraz in secret. The
two 17 year old boys were Mehdi Sohrabi far and Amin Sedaghat. They were
arrested when they were only 15 years old and received lashes before execution.
According to Amnesty International the 2 young boys did not know of their
execution verdict. Even their families and their lawyers were not informed of
this verdict. Michel Bashleh the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the
European Union have condemned this barbaric act by the Iranian regime.
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Parvaneh Hossein Panahi the sister
of Kurdish political prisoner Ramin Hossein Panahi who was executed last year,
was summoned by the Iranian regime’s Intelligence Department of Sanandaj and
interrogated on April 29. She has been apparently summoned because she was
trying to find out the place of burial of her brother. Agents of the
Intelligence Department have threatened her to stop looking for the grave of
her brother.
Parvaneh Hossein Panahi has already
received a suspended sentence of five years in prison for giving interviews to
the foreign media and “propaganda against the State.”
The 25-year-old daughter of
Parvaneh Hossein Panahi, Nishtman, committed suicide on May 1, 2018, due to
pressures by the Intelligence Department of Sanandaj and upon learning of her
uncle’s imminent execution.
The Department of
Intelligence had pressured Nishtman to cooperate with them against her own
family. They summoned her husband and pressured him to divorce Nishtman. But
the couple refused to cooperate with the Department of Intelligence. Nishtman’s
husband, Ahmad Hossein Panahi, is serving his five-year prison sentence.
The Department of
Intelligence of Sanandaj also pressured the Hossein Panahi family to refrain
from disseminating this information and hold Nishtman’s funeral in silence.
Ms. Sharifeh Zarrini
(Dayeh Sahrifeh), mother of death-row political prisoner Ramin Hossein Panahi,
wrote an open letter on May 24, 2018, to Federica Mogerini, EU Foreign Policy
Chief, urging her to demand revocation of her son’s death penalty in her
negotiations with the Iranian regime. But the pleas by mothers of Kurdish
political prisoners and repeated calls by the Iranian public opinion and
international human rights advocates and organizations fell on deaf ears, and
the clerical regime hanged Ramin Hossein Panahi, 24, Zaniar Moradi,30, and
Loghman Moradi, 32, on September 8, 2018. The three political prisoners had
been on dry hunger strike for several days before their execution.
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A group of families of those
arrested on the International Labor Day protests, gathered outside the Evin
Prison in Tehran-Iran on Thursday, May 2, demanding unconditional release of those
incarcerated. Further reports on the International Labor Day
protests indicate that at least 15 women are among those arrested. Their names are as the following:- Nahid Khodajoo, 2. Nasrin Javadi, 3.
Marzieh Amiri, 4. Samira Amiri, 5. Hosna Vijeh, 6. Neda Naji, 7. Zahra
Tehranizadeh, 8. Azam Khezri, 9. Leila Nasservandi, 10. Samaneh Amiri, 11.
Narges Shoja, 12. Atefeh Rangriz, 13. Elham Salehi, 14. Anisha
Assadollahi, 15. Farahnaz Shiri.
Security forces
brutalized those arrested. Three of the arrested women – Samaneh Taheri, Nahid
Khodajoo, and Marzieh Amiri – have been taken to the Intelligence Ministry’s
ward in Evin, Ward 209. The rest of the arrested women have been taken to the
Qarchak Prison in Varamin.
On Wednesday, May 1, the NCRI
President-elect Maryam Rajavi called for urgent action to secure
the release of those arrested in the International Labor Day protests. She
urged international organizations defending human rights and workers’ rights to
condemn the policies of the mullahs’ regime against workers.
Amnesty International also urged
the Iranian officials to release those arrested unconditionally. The AI
statement said based on the International Law, these arrests are considered
illegal and arbitrary.
Also on Thursday, May 2, the
gathering of a group of defrauded investors of Padideh Shandiz was attacked by
agents of the State Security Force (SSF). The Padideh Shandiz defrauded
investors have been protesting for several days but have not met any of their
demands.
Based on supplementary reports from
the Teachers’ Day protests, Ms. Monireh Abdi, wife of imprisoned activist
teacher, Ismail Abdi, was brutalized by the State Security forces and hurt in
the left arm and knee.
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The Teachers Day in Iran on May 2
was marked by widespread protests and demonstrations by working and retired
teachers and educators across Iran. On this day, Iranian teachers held
protests and demonstrations in a number of cities upon the call by “the
Coordinating Council of Educators Guild.”
In Tehran, teachers and
educators held a protest in front of the Education Department. Their gathering
was attacked by security forces and a number of protesting teachers were
arrested. The participants, however, continued their protest. Women
teachers played an active role in this protest.
The protesting teachers
chanted, “Our suffering is yours, people join us”, “neither the parliament, nor
the government, think of the nation.”
Other gatherings on the Teachers
Day were held in the provinces of Razavi Khorasan, Qazvin, West Azerbaijan,
East Azerbaijan, Alborz, Kermanshah, Hamedan, Kurdistan, Lorestan, Fars,
Markazi, Mazandaran and Isfahan. The cities where the gatherings were held
outside the departments of education were Ardebil, Tabriz, Mashhad, Sanandaj, Malard,
Karaj, Javanrood, Torbat-Heydarieh, Khorramabad, Sari, Khomeini-Shahr, Rasht,
Divandarreh, Homayoun Shahr, Marivan and Mahabad.
Iranian teachers and
educators protested against their dire living and job conditions and blasted
the regime’s wrong policies on education on the Teachers Day.
Some of their placards
read, “Imprisoned teachers must be freed”, “stop turning education to an
enterprise”, “free, high quality, and fair education is the right of all
children,” and demanded that the bank in charge of handling the salaries of
educators be changed.
These protest gatherings
are the first of their kind in the new Iranian year which began on March 21,
2019, which was extensively accompanied by the active role played by women.
Throughout the last year,
women actively participated in at least 581 acts of protest by
teachers and retirees. Teachers held five nationwide protests and sit-ins
during the past year.
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Six school girls who suffered burns
in a fire incident at a school in Doroodzan, in the southern Iranian Fars
Province, travelled to Tehran to hold a sit-in protest and receive
assistance for their treatment and its high costs. The burn victims travelled
to the Capital Tehran on Monday, April 29, to hold a sit-in outside the office
of Minister of Education but the State Security forces (SSF) drove them out of
the building.
Each of the six girls, now 20 years
old, suffered more than 50% injuries in a fire incident 13 years ago at their
school in Doroodzan. Thirteen years on, none of the promises for their
treatment has been delivered. Now, they are determined not to return to their
town unless their demands are met.
