On Saturday, June 29, the defrauded clients of Azin-Khodro car company held a protest gathering in the big mosque of Karaj, demanding their money back from the Alborz Organization of Industry, Mines and Commerce.
Doctors working at a medical clinic in Gachsaran, in the southwestern province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyerahmad, went on strike for three days from June 25 to 27, protesting the clinic’s failure to pay their fees and salaries.
The laid-off employees and staff of the University of Bonab, held a protest at the campus of this university in protest to their dismissals. Security forces of the university attacked one of the dismissed employees who was gathering signatures for a petition. The laid-off employees of the University of Bonab have begun their protest gathering since June 22.
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British-Iranian dual-national, Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliff, is on her third week of hunger strike. She is a victim of the Iranian regime’s policy of hostage-taking and is being used as a bargaining chip in Tehran’s deals with the UK After three years, she is still in prison.Nazanin Zaghari began her hunger strike on June 15, 2019, on her daughter’s birthday, in protest to her unjust detention, demanding her unconditional release. Her illnesses and physical conditions have deteriorated. Her husband, Mr. Richard Ratcliffe, also started his hunger strike on the same day in solidarity with his wife outside the Iranian Embassy in London. After speaking to his wife on the phone, Mr. Ratcliffe said she had reiterated that her demand for ending her hunger strike is “unconditional freedom.”
He said it was Nazanin Zaghari who called the hunger strike, he followed suit in solidarity. He said the Iranian regime had stepped up the pressure on her since.
She was able to call him over the weekend. “She was pretty traumatized,” Ratcliffe pointed out. “She was being pressured by the Revolutionary Guard at that point to end the hunger strike. Their job is to be scary. They certainly are. This is day 12 of our hunger strike. It’s tough for me and I’m sure it’s much tougher for her.”
Nazanin Zaghari had previously vowed to do anything to remind both governments that enough is enough.
Nazanin Zaghari was a project manager with the Thompson Reuters Foundation, when she traveled to Iran along with her two-year-old daughter Gabriella in March 2016 to pay a visit to her parents. She was detained at the airport on April 3, 2016, as she and her daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK. After months of imprisonment without trial, she was sentenced to five years in prison. The women committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran said in a statment on June 28, that Hostage-taking and kidnapping have been a systematic tool for the Iranian regime’s diplomacy and called once again on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council, and other defenders of human rights and women’s rights to decisively condemn the Iranian regime’s abduction and hostage-taking. It further calls for urgent action to free Mrs. Nazanin Zaghari.
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Omid Badri, husband of Soghra Khalili, said in this regard, “The death verdict was issued in 2015, but the murder my wife committed was in defense of her dignity. There was a man who disturbed my wife and harassed her. The residents of our village know that the victim had harassed several other families in same way and put pressure on other married women. Ali (the victim) did not leave my wife alone, while she was a married woman. Finally, my wife got tired and stabbed him to death.”
Mr. Badri said, “My wife has been seven years in jail. She has a 4-year-old son who lives with her in prison…. We have another son who is now 14 years old. Two months left to the implementation of the verdict, if we do not pay the blood money, Soghra will be executed. We need to receive help from benevolent people.”
International laws discourage issuing prison sentences for women due to their roles as mothers and caregivers. Rule 61 of the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules) reads, “When sentencing women offenders, courts shall have the power to consider mitigating factors such as lack of criminal history and relative non-severity and nature of the criminal conduct, in the light of women’s caretaking responsibilities and typical backgrounds.”
Eighty-nine women have so far been hanged during Rouhani’s term in office. Fatemeh Nassiri was the last woman who was hanged along with a man on June 19, 2019, in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj.
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According to eye witnesses, the youths were playing water guns in the park.
violent arrest of a young woman in Tehranpars park
Monday, June 24, 2019, Chief of Tehran’s Police (SSF) Hossein Rahimi told reporters on the arrests of five young women and men, “They are charged with refusing to comply with the orders of police, breaking the social norms, clashing with police agents, and also removing the veil. They are still in the custody of police.”
The violent arrest by plainclothes agents of the State Security Force aroused much outrage in society. Even a state-run news agency cited a social pathologist as saying, “This type of behavior, is neither punitive, nor humanitarian or Islamic. We have laws. The law does not allow anyone to act in any way they want. At the same time, we have policewomen. In such cases, where women are involved, policewomen have to take action and speak.”
In reaction to the public outcry against this violent arrest, the commander of the State Security Force of Tehran ordered for the dismissal and detention of the two police agents directly involved a few hours after the news broke out. However, on Tuesday, June 25, 2019, he withdrew his order and postponed it to the “conclusion of investigations.”
girl beaten up in metro station
In related news, another video clip published in social media showed a young woman who had been beaten up by the State Security Force in a metro station in Tehran for improper veiling. The young woman sobs and says that SSF agents had beaten and pushed her to the ground.
It has also been reported that the regime seeks to have patrols stationed in recreational areas in upcoming days to monitor women’s observance of the compulsory veil and give them verbal warnings. (The state-run ISNA news agency – June 24, 2019)
