NEWS))))))

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) announced on Sunday May 31, that Coronavirus has taken the lives of more than 48,200 in 323 cities across Iran. 3665 in Khuzestan, 2745 in Mazandaran, 1485 in Sistan and Baluchistan, 1485 in Lorestan, 1310 in West Azerbaijan, 920 in Kurdestan, 302 in Ilam. This is in addition to reports obtained from other provinces.

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In an inhumane act on Saturday, May 30, Torbat-e-Jameh Municipality blocked the entrance of a house a blind elderly woman who has a disabled child with concrete. It's written on the cement: "This property was sealed due to construction violations - Torbat Heydariyeh Municipality!"

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News from Women committee of the NCRI

A man killed his 14-year-old daughter while asleep. The 20-year-old mother of a toddler was tortured and murdered by her husband in Iran. Honor killings are institutionalized by the laws of the clerical regime in Iran. Romina Ashrafi, 14, was arrested after she ran away with the boy she fell in love and wanted to marry. Despite her insistence, the judge presiding the Court of Talesh (northern Iran) ruled that she be returned home to her family and father. On the night of May 21, when Romina was asleep, her father took a sickle and cut her head from the back of her neck.

In yet another shocking example of honor killings, Hajareh Hossein-bor was murdered on May 4, by her husband.

Hajareh who lived in the town of Gasht, 65 km from the city of Saravan in Sistan and Baluchistan Province (southeastern Iran) got married when she was 16. Hajareh was regularly battered at home by her husband, Esmael Gomshadzehi. In the evening of May 4, just after the sunset, Esmael dragged Hajareh out of their home and returned a few hours later, and left her semi-dead body outside a hospital and ran away.

A hospital nurse said when Hajareh was taken inside, her digestive tract had been burned by the acid forced down her throat. She was virtually unconscious and could hardly breathe. Her head was full of thorns and both of her arms and hands had been pounded by stone. According to this nurse, because of the acid poured into her mouth, Hajareh had no tooth remaining and many of her bones had been broken. (The state-run didarnews.com – May 23, 2020)

According to the clerical regime’s Penal Code, Romina’s father will not face the common punishment of “retribution” (Qesas) which is regularly handed down for those convicted of murder. Article 220 of the Iranian regime’s Islamic Punishment Law states, “the father or the paternal grandfather who kill their own children are not punished” because they “own” their children’s blood.

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Saba Kord Afshari informed her lawyer, Hossein Taj, of the verdict in a telephone call on May 26. The 15-year sentence, issued by the Branch 36 of the Court of Appeals, was reinstated in full. Anti-mandatory veil activist Saba Kord Afshari was arrested on June 1. She was sentenced to 24 years in prison on August 19, 2019. Authorities sentenced Ms. Afshari to 15 years on charges of “promoting corruption and prostitution through appearing without a headscarf in public;” 1.5 years on charges of “propaganda against the state;” and 7.5 years on charges of “gathering and colluding against national security.” In November 2019, the appeals court reduced the sentence by 15 years. Ms. Kord Afshari was first arrested in August 2018, during street protests in Tehran. She was taken to Qarchak Prison and detained indefinitely. She was eventually sentenced to 1 year in prison for “disruption of public order” and transferred to the women’s ward of Evin Prison. Saba Kord Afshari was released in February 2019. Saba Kord Afshari was re-arrested and taken to Qarchak Prison in Varamin in June 2019. On July 2, she was taken to Ward 2A in Evin Prison, which falls under the purview of the Intelligence Department of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and pressured to provide a forced confession. She was subsequently returned to Qarchak and was eventually transferred to the women’s ward of Evin on August 13, 2019. Saba Kord Afshari was repeatedly pressured to make video confessions, something that she strongly resisted and refused to do. The Intelligence Ministry even arrested her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi, as a means of applying additional pressure to force her into making false confessions.

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Sakineh Parvaneh’s hunger strike began on Monday, May 25, in protest of her five-year prison sentence and the authorities’ failure to comply with the principle of separation of crimes. The Revolutionary Court of Tehran has sentenced the Kurdish political prisoner to five years in prison and a two-year ban on membership in political groups. Sakineh Parvaneh comes from a Kurdish family in Khorasan Province of northeast Iran. She was transferred to the women’s ward of Evin Prison after the interrogation period. In March 2020, the political prisoner was transferred to the women’s ward at Evin, where she scrawled anti-regime slogans on the walls and for which she was punished. She was later sent into exile in Qarchak Prison. From solitary confinement to psychiatric hospital. Sakineh Parvaneh was placed in quarantine at Qarchak Prison after 25 days at Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Shahr-e-Rey. She had been beaten several times during her quarantine, as evidenced by the swelling and bruising on her face. She was held in the prison’s quarantine ward for several weeks after her transfer. She was later taken to the Ward 3, where drug and financial crimes offenders are held. Reports indicate that other inmates in the ward have been harassing her. Political prisoner Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee sent a letter from Qarchak Prison in which she revealed that the regime is putting greater pressure on two Kurdish political prisoners by transferring them to this notorious facility. The regime beats and harasses political prisoners and sends them to psychiatric hospitals under the pretext of mental illness. This is a common method of repressing female prisoners.

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Female prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in Iran go through vicious tortures and interrogations. Following are the cases of Sahba Hemadi and Fahimeh Esmaili Badvi, a small part of the atrocities done to female prisoners of conscience in Iran.

Sahba Hemadi

Sahba (Lamya) Hemadi (Abyat), daughter of Zaidan, born in 1998 in Susangerd, Khuzestan Province, is married and a student of Agricultural Engineering. She was arrested in 2018 after she published an article against ethnic discrimination, economic problems, and rampant poverty in Iran. She was 7 months pregnant at the time of arrest. Two female prisoners of conscience in Iran viciously tortured

Sahba Hemadi

Sahba Hemadi was accused of collaborating with Daesh (ISIS), a charge which was never proven until the day she was released from prison. Among others, she was given electric shocks which left deep burn scars on her arms. Then, she was transferred to an Intelligence Ministry detention center in Tehran where she was interrogated under vicious tortures. After six months, she was transferred to the Sepidar Prison of Ahvaz in March 2019. In May 2019, Sahba Hemadi was sentenced to death. In November, her sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison on charges of acting against national security. She was temporarily released on a 4-billion-toman bail on April 27, 2020 following her family’s persistent requests.

Fahimeh Esmaili Badvi was an elementary school teacher. 26 years old and 8 months pregnant, Fahimeh was arrested with her husband, Ali Motiri, on November 28, 2005. Two female prisoners of conscience in Iran viciously tortured Fahimeh

Esmaili Badvi

Ali Motiri was executed on December 19, 2006 on the charge of Moharebeh (waging war on God). Fahimeh received a 15-year sentence and was sent to exile in Yasouj, capital of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province. When she was going through labor pain to give birth to her daughter, Selmi, the so-called doctor who was delivering her baby told her: “I have killed you and your daughter, not helping to give her birth.” Throughout her labor and delivery, agents of the Intelligence Department were standing above her head. Fahimeh Esmaili Badvi was finally released in 2017 after 12 years of imprisonment.

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Human rights lawyer Soheila Hejab was violently taken to the notorious Qarchak Prison after an appeals court session on Sunday, May 23. Soheila was summoned to the Court of Appeals on May 23, 2020. She was arrested and beaten by IRGC intelligence agents after the court session, as she was leaving the justice department building. Agents of the Sarallah base, a division of the intelligence unit of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) punched and kicked Ms. Soheila Hejab in the head, face, and sides. Her former interrogator dragged her on street by the hair, forced her into a car, and took her to Qarchak Prison. The IRGC agents threatened to open additional criminal cases against her. After being taken to Qarchak Prison, Ms. Hejab said: “According to Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” She continued, “The new case they opened against me has nothing to do with my confirmed case. This is my interrogator’s request. He has repeatedly threatened me with death through inmates who have been convicted of violent crimes and are serving time in Qarchak Prison.” “They will definitely take me to the safe houses of the IRGC’s Sarallah for long-term interrogation and solitary confinement,” Ms. Hejab predicted in a telephone call. Soheila Hejab, a human rights lawyer, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on March 18, 2020, by the 28th Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Mohammad Moghisseh. On May 23, 2020, the court of appeals upheld the charges of “propaganda against the state,” “assembly and collusion,” “disrupting public order to create chaos,” “forming a group to defend women’s rights,” and “demanding a referendum and changing the constitution.”

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Asieh Panahi, a 58-year-old woman in Kermanshan, died after municipal agents viciously beat her. The housewife, a mother of seven – four daughters and three sons – suffered a fatal heart attack after the agents assaulted her with pepper spray. The municipal agents had come to Asieh Panahi’s house in in Kermanshah’s District 3 on May 19, 2020, to demolish her house. The municipality razed the newly built house with a loader under the pretext that Asieh Panahi’s house was built without a construction permit. However, city officials did not have the proper documentation to authorize the demolition. According to eyewitnesses, Asieh Panahi was beaten by municipal agents in the presence of the State Security Forces (SSF). Although she cried out, “I have heart disease – don’t spray me,” the municipal agents dragged Asieh to the ground and sprayed her in the face. The SSF also beat Asieh’s daughter and granddaughter; the daughter’s legs were visibly bruised. Officers removed Asieh from the scene even though she was injured. They wanted to take her to a camp for drug addicts. The defenseless woman died 40 minutes after being beaten by officers. Kermanshah Municipality refused to accept responsibility for Asieh’s death. They falsely claimed that they had arrested her outside the city for being an addict. Earlier on April 2020, Basij agents in Khorramabad attacked the low-income neighborhood of Falak al-Din, destroying 11 residential properties. The Iranian regime’s repressive forces attacked and destroyed impoverished peoples’ houses in Khorramabad province in western Iran. This took place amid the Coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed thousands of lives. The Khorramabad prosecutor attacked the low-income district of Falak-e-din and began destroying houses built by impoverished and flood-stricken people with their own means. During the demolition, an elderly woman was left under the rubble, which worsened her physical condition. At a time when 80 percent of the country’s population lives below the poverty line, and despite the fact that the Coronavirus pandemic disproportionately affects the poor, security forces in Iran are demolishing low-income homes, ruthlessly leaving the poor homeless.