NEWS))))))

Over 282,900 people have died of the novel Coronavirus in 541 cities across Iran, according to reports tallied daily by the Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) as of Thursday May 9. 

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Thousands of Iranian students held

protests in Tehran and 15 other cities against the Education Ministry’s decision to have students take their tests in person during the pandemic. The student protesters demanded that the examinations be held virtually. The protests went on for two consecutive days on Tuesday and Wednesday, May 4 and 5, 2021. The Iranian regime sent threatening text messages to students and their parents to prevent the protests. The students chanted: “With Coronavirus, in-person exams not possible”; “don’t want in-person exams”; “don’t be afraid we are all together.” In some cities, security forces used batons and pepper spray against the student protesters and confiscated their mobile phones. They arrested several students in the cities of Yazd and Shahr-e Kurd as well. Also educator retiaries took to the streets on Sunday one more time. 

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Saba Kord Afshari has started a hunger strike since Saturday, May 8, to protest increasing pressure on her family and the families of other political prisoners. She demands that her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi, be released from Evin Prison. Saba has several times suffered stomach ulcer bleeding. So, her hunger strike has caused serious concern for her family. She was transferred out of the women’s ward of Evin Prison and banished to Qarchak Prison on December 9, 2020. Ms. Kord Afshari is sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for protesting the mandatory veil. Raheleh Ahmadi, Saba's mother has been imprisoned since February 15, 2020. She was arrested to put pressure on her daughter and is sentenced to 31 months in prison. https://tinyurl.com/3zk7udty

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Two women from Behbahan-Iran were summoned to the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office on April 25. They were instructed to report to the Prosecutor within five days. Behbahan, in the southwestern Khuzestan Province in Iran, was one of the highly active cities during the November 2019 nationwide uprising. The two women from Behbahan have been identified as Farzaneh Ansarifar and Zeinab Alipour. The two women had been previously summoned to the interrogation’s office of the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Behbahan in November 2020. Both are charged with insulting the mullahs’ supreme leader, participation in disruption of public order and national security, and assembly and collusion to commit a crime against internal and external security. Ms. Ansari’s brother, Farzad, was shot and killed by security forces during the protests in November 2019 in Behbahan.

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Recent reports from various Iranian prisons reveal the inhuman treatment of prisoners in the women’s wards. The authorities of the Central Prison of Tabriz called back 32-year-old Ameneh Rahimi to prison after the expiration of her leave despite her becoming paralyzed due to a stroke during her prison leave. She is very ill, not able to speak or eat. In 2017, Ameneh Rahimi was sentenced to 4 years in prison on the charge of collaboration in murder while no complainant filed any complaints against her. Last month, prison authorities sent her on leave, but she suffered a stroke for unknown reasons and became paralyzed. Nevertheless, she was returned to prison despite her disability to eat, walk or talk. She needs the help of other inmates for doing her very basic things. The horrible conditions in the women’s ward of the Central Prison of Tabriz are tough to endure for all inmates, let alone the sick prisoners. Female prisoners detained in Qarchak Prison are being starved in this prison. Starving prisoners is tantamount to torture. The meals are small, and the quality is terrible, so much that the food is inedible. Some 2,000 women are detained in Qarchak Prison. The political prisoners in Qarchak are not allowed to talk to other prisoners and are accompanied by a guard in every movement to other wards, the library, or when they go for fresh air. The new warden or Qarchak, Soghra Khodadadi, has instructed her agents to “make conditions difficult for political prisoners so that they would feel that they are in solitary confinement.”  A woman received 100 lashes before being released after serving 15 years in prison. The flogging was reported on April 29, 2021, by Ensiyeh Daemi, sister of Atena Daemi, who was sent to exile to Lakan Prison on March 16.