Iran: images

According to a report in the newspaper Etemad, April 25, Delara Darabi's death sentence has been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Nazanin Afshin Jam and Stop Child Executions Campaign have made a video .
Of course the petition also can still be signed .







In Iran police has warned men to watch their hairstyle.
ISNA said that a police statement said that In an official order to barber shops is stated that they have been warned to avoid using Western hair styles and doing men’s eyebrows.
In recent years especially in Tehran young men developed their own hairstyles.
Spiked up hair, by using gel, is known as the Khorusi (Rooster) style and hairdressers for men in Tehran offer cuts in the style of Hollywood movie stars and other Western celebrities.
The head of the barbers’ union, Mohamed Eftekharifard, said police had instructed barbershops to exercise the specific religious regulations and barbers who do not follow these rules might be closed down for a month and even lose their permits to operate.
Photo IRNA



Heavy rainfall resulted in floodwaters in Kalak near the city of Karaj, Tehran province, late Saturday, causing 2 people to die and injured 18 others.
The devastating flood also destroyed eight houses in the village.
The flood forced some families to leave their homes and settle in Karaj’s Kargaran Stadium.




In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: immoral cell(phone)

ISNA reported Saturday that a man, Amir A. was hanged in Bandar Abbas prison.
The man was accused of murder.






The Iranian television announced that the Ministry of Telecommunications will start filtering "immoral" video and audio messages sent via mobile phones.
The Supreme Council has instructed the ministry to buy the equipment needed to filter the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: arrange

Wednesday, two men were hanged in Evin Prison, Tehran.
They were accused of drugs trafficking.





Iran is deporting around 5,000 refugees a day back to Afghanistan, which lacks the capacity to feed and accommodate them, an Afghan official said.
According to a spokesman of the Afghan Foreign Ministry Iran's actions violate previous arrangements between the two countries.
Nearly 2 million illegal Afghans are believed to be living in Iran.





Students at the university of Lorestan are also protesting, following the example of the students in the capital Tehran, in Babol and Shiraz, against new government measures imposing strict new dress codes and opening hours on campus as well as restrictions on political activity.
For the past three days about 1,000 students have been occupying the campus.
The deputy dean of the university of Lorestan, Abedin Darvishpour backs the protests. He said that it is not possible to transform university in military barracks and demand blind obedience from the students.



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

iran: million

April 24, sentenced the Sixth Branch of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani, Shahla Entesari and Parvin Ardalan to three years imprisonment for collusion and assembly to endanger the national security, under article 610 of the Islamic Penal Code.
The court ordered Khorasani, Entesari, and Ardalan to serve six months in prison, but suspended the remaining two-and-half years of their sentences.

The same court sentenced two other womens rights advocates to prison terms on April 18. It sentenced Fariba Davoodi Mohajer to four years imprisonment, three of which are suspended, also for collusion and assembly to endanger the national security.

The court sentenced Sussan Tahmassebi to two years imprisonment, with one-and-a half years suspended, for acting against national security.

A week earlier, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced Azadeh Forghani, also a womens rights activist, to a suspended sentence of two years for acting against national security by participating in an illegal gathering.

In all of these cases the judge can implement the suspended sentences if he determines that the defendants have broken any law during the next five years.



All six women supported the recently launched campaign,'Change for Equality', to collect 1 million signatures demanding an end to discriminatory laws against women in the Iranian law.
The past year the Iranian government has substantially increased its persecution and prosecution of women's rights activists.
April 18, the Iranian minister of information, Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei, alleged that the enemies of the government are pursuing their plans through the women�s rights movement.




In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: pattern

Yesterday and today, medium strenght quakes jolted Hormuzgan province in South-Iran. The first was 5,2 Richter-scale, the others were 4,2 Richter-scale.
So far no damage reports are known.



Brigadier General Eskandar Momeni told IRNA that in the last 24 hrs over a ton of drugs were seized in Tehran, Yazd en Khorasan Razavi province.
67 drugstraffickers are arrested and 21 guns and 76,000 liters of fuel were also confiscated.
Not only Iran is a mayor drug transitroute between Afghanistan and Pakistan, also there are at least two mln drug addicts in the country.

According to the statistics of the Health Ministry, 80 percent of Iranians suffer from malnutrition. Seyyed Ziaeddin Mazhari, the head of Iran’s Food and Nutrition Institute told this at a conference named “Health and Its Role in Workforce Productivity“.
He also told IRNA that 30% of Iranians are suffering from anemia.
He said that healthy food and nutrition are major human needs. Nevertheless, people are only thinking of satisfying their hunger and not meeting the needs of their body.
500 babies are born annually with neural disorders, 50 percent of which can be prevented by feeding nutrients.
Elaborating on the consequences of malnutrition, Mazhari said a child’s physical and mental growth will diminish while the risk of diseases and treatment costs will increase.


Wednesday, Babak Zamanian, spokesman of the Muslim Students Association at Amir Kabir Polytechnic university is arrested, reportedly because he gave interviews to Farsi language radio stations that broadcast outside Iran. In December Amir Kabir university made headline news because of the many protests against president Ahmadinejad by the students.



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: pressure

The crackdown by the government in Iran on women, students and teachers has intensified over the last weeks, reports Rado Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
In recent weeks women's rights activists have been summoned to court. Four have been sentenced to prison while others were charged with "gathering and colluding to disturb the national security" and "disturbing public order".
State pressure on student activists has also increased.
A number of them have been banned from university classes and many have been summoned to court and disciplinary committees over their political and press activities.
Last week, 15 students at Mazandaran University were detained following protests of the sentences handed out by disciplinary committees to student activists at the university. Most of them have since been released.
Dozens of teachers have also been detained in recent weeks in connection with several demonstrations over low wages and poor working conditions.
Ali Afshari is a political activist and former student leader currently residing in the United States.He was jailed in Iran a number of times because of his political activities and believes the government's repressive measures are failing.
He says that the governmental measurements have had the opposite effect.
human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah told Radio Farda from Teheran that the tough measures used by the government will not succeed in silencing critics and activists.
Meanwhile the women, students and teachers keep on protesting.


The Iranian Television reported that a schoolbus crashed in an accident, leaving 6 dead and 36 wounded. The accident happened on the highway to Isfahan.
Yearly more then tens of thousand roadaccidents occur in Iran, leaving thousands of deaths.



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: sound

Two million people in Iran work over 44 hours a week.
This said Alireza Mahjoub, secretary general of Workers House in Tehran.
According to him , the eight-hour day rule has officially been recognized in the country in 1923.But at present, working hours of over two mln laborers are unregulated and they are working more than eight hours a day and 44 hours a week.
Mahjoub, who is also a Majlis deputy, criticised the Ministry of Labor that has failed to control the performance of employers in this regard.
Turning to May Day rallies, Mahjoub stated that the Interior Ministry has agreed only with a gathering and not a demonstration. He added that the place of gathering has not yet been determined.


This year for the first time, criticism came about the way the yearly crackdown on women who do not strictly observe rules on Islamic dress is done.
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi warned police against heavy-handed actions with women found to have broken the country's dress code.
In the newspaper Etemad Melli he said that hauling women and young people to the police station will have no use except to cause damage to society.Tough measures on social problems will backfire and have counter-productive effects.
He said that Of course, we need to act against organised crime and thugs but when there is no necessity to take someone to a police station, there is no need to do it.
This year the crackdown is more rigid then previous years.




Authorities in Iran have reportedly detained at least six members of underground music bands during the past week and shut down their studios.
At least two detainees taken into custody on April 19 have been freed on bail after pledging not to distribute illegal compact discs of underground music.
Western music is widely banned in Iran and censors watch the art-scene closely.
Many Iranian bands have developed their own undergroudstyles of rock, rap, hiphop, r&b and other forbidden western music.
Photo rferl.org



More than 2,000 university students are protesting in Shiraz against the tightening of rules on student's behavior and dress. There is a ban on shorts and tank tops for boys in the dormitories and the curfewrules are limited. One of the students told Radio Farda that under the new rules dormitory guards have the right to enter the dormitories whenever they want and violate the privacy of students.
ISNA reported that the dean of the university said that the protest is the result of a "misunderstanding." He said the rules are not new, but have only been announced to the students recently.
Photo ISNA


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: (il)legal

Iranian Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ezhehee Sunday said that there is no indication of the presence or the arrest of Robert Levinson, the American who dissappeared on Kish island last month.

He denied that the missing American was arrested to trade against former Minister Askari, who disappered in Turkey, a couple of months ago.



Since Saturday the crackdown on women whose dress is deemed inappropriate to adhere to Islamic dress rules, are, according to Mehdi Ahmadi head of information at Tehran city's police force,
1,347 women warned.
There were 170 arrests. Of these, 58 were released after making a written commitment and rectifying their appearance. The cases of the rest, who already had a record, were handed over to the judiciary.
Twenty shops selling inappropriate clothing were also closed down.
The duration depends on when society feels that there is no more need for such action, he said.




Illegal diggers plundered the Sassanid cemetery which is located in the vicinity of the reservoir of the Salman-e-Farsi dam.
According to Hassan Fazeli Nashli, director of Archeology Research Center, illegal diggers rushed directly after the news about the temporarily stop on the Salman-e-Farsi dam got released, to the cemetary and looted it, and a number of burial gifts such as clay vessels and small earthen statuettes were destroyed.
The flooding of the dam has been stopped and archeological excavations in a Sassanian city located in the vicinity of dam’s reservoir have been started.
Dam officials announced that they have stopped the inundation in order to undertake some technical tests on the dam.
Photo Chnpress.com



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: seriously

In Iran are 5 men hanged to death for drugstrafficking.
Saturday are Einollah G., 55, Abdolrahman N., 33, en Abolhasan Sh., 38, hanged publicly in Bandar Abbas, Hormuzgan province.
In Zahedan, Sistan-e-Baluchestan province is Ghader Radsar hanged in prison.
In Manjil, Gilan province, is April 14 a man named Habib hanged.




Excessive fishing and poaching threatens the population of the sturgeon in the Caspian Sea. Therefore in 2006 Iran was the only nation permitted to catch sturgeons from the Caspian Sea. In recent years Iran was the biggest exporter of caviar.
The rare fish migrate to rivers in the southern part of the sea in late winter and early spring for the reproduction season.
Fishers bring sturgeons out of reproduction cycle due to their unbridled catch in rivers which lack proper monitoring.
The Deputy head of International Sturgeon Research Institute Mahmoud Bahmani told ISNA that related state organizations should pool resources to implement conservation schemes in such rivers, especially in Sefidroud, Gilan province.



Although American Republican politician Senator John McCain, who is probably thriving for presidency looks at his answer at a question from the audience as 'fun,fun', it isn't funny at all.
At a campaignstop in South Carolina he 'sung' bomb,bomb,Iran as an answer.

Here the YouTube film.This happened Wednesday April 18 2007.

But

April 10, 2006 there was this already on the internet.

Sometimes one can question the responsability and brain function of 'politicians'.



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: spreading

According to his wife the writer Yaghub Yidali is jailed for some 40 days in the city of Yasuj, Kohkiluyeh and Buyer Ahmad province.
He has been charged with spreading lies in connection with two of his books that were published several years ago with the approval of Iran's Culture Ministry.
Emad Baghi from Iranian human rights group Society Defending The Rights Of Prisoners, says that Yadali has been charged with insulting one of Iran's minority groups in the two books.
Photo rferl.org


The Guardian of April 18 has published an article by Peter Tatchel titled "A progressive perspective" about the speech (pdf), made March 20 by Sheik Mohammed Kazem al-Khaqani at the House of Commons.



Preparations for flooding of the Sivand dam have started which will cause in the near future the inundation of more then 130 historical and archeological sites in Bolaghi Gorge.
The closing of the discharge tunnel of Sivand Dam has been started. This way the reservoir of Sivand Dam will be filled with water.
From various sites are protests made against the flooding.
Archeologists from different countries tried to save as much as they could from the historical places.
Also Pasargadae, an ancient capital built by Cyrus the Great sometime after 550BC that holds his tomb and Persepolis with a grand double stairway rising to a wide, terraced audience hall with 72 columns are in danger of being damaged by the increased humidity.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: quarantine

In Saravan and Khash, Sistan-e-Baluchestan province, seven people have died of a mysterious disease while 15 others have been quarantined at Zahedan Medical University’s hospital.
The signs of this unknown disease include fever, sore-throat, inflammation in the neck and body pain.
People having similar signs will be immediately quarantined in hospital.
Specialists have not yet diagnosed the disease.
The signs can represent many diseases, but the unknown disease is neither bird flu nor choler, Mohammad Mehdi Gouya, the head of Tehran’s Disease Management Center affiliated to the Health Ministry said.


Iranian authorities said they have brought the Jundallah militant group led by Abdolmalek Rigi under control and disbanded it. Also they claim to have killed Rigi.
In Hamedan Mojtaba Mir-Abdollahi, director general of the Interior Ministry’s Public Relations Office, said that the heads of the main branches of AbdulMalek Rigi's terrorist group were arrested or killed and the group's activity is under full control.

Last year the media also announced the dead of Rigi and disband of Jundallah, lateron this appeared to be not true.




The police will arrest illegal Afghans as of April 21. In the first phase, illegal Afghans will be gathered from 11 provinces.
The first phase of operations will include the provinces of Sistan-Baluchestan, Khorasan Razavi, South Khorasan, Isfahan, Kerman, Qom, Fars, Yazd, Semnan and Hormuzgan.
The plan for collecting illegal nationals will gradually be implemented until the end of the current Iranian year.
There are 1.5 million illegal Afghans residing in Iran.






In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran:judiciary

The Iranian Supreme Court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in Kerman in 2002.
The court found that the men were not guilty because 'their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities'.The killers said they believed Islam let them spill the blood of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims.
The men are all members of the paramilitary group of Bassiji.
Lower courts rulings found all the men guilty of murder.
The ruling may still not be final, however, because a lower court in Kerman can appeal the decision to the full membership of the Supreme Court. More than 50 Supreme Court judges would then take part in the final decision.


A 17 year old boy Kamal (last name unknown) has voluntarily turned himself to police and confessed to the murder of a 25 year man.
The man entered the barbershop where Kamal works and somehow got in a fight with the owner.
After the man left, he returned with a knife. During the following fight Kamal stabbed the man.

At this moment the case is under investigation.




After the father of Sina Paymand gathered the 'bloodmoney', money to pay the relatives of the victim, in order to avoid execution, an amount of $56,000, the relatives refused to take the money.

On this site is further information.

This means Sina Paymand is in imminent danger of execution.






Faramarz , is accused of killing another boy with a knife in july 2006, in a fight in the city of Karaj.
Faramarz's last court session was held on Wednesday March 14, 2007.
He is now awaiting the final verdict by 5 judges.
Faramarz is 16 years old.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: basic

Ghazal Omid wrote an article in Global Politician about 31 political prisoners on hungerstrike.
On April 7, 2007 they started a hungerstrike protesting the brutal conditions in which they are being held.
Prisoners in these nine prisons (Evin and Raji Shahr prisons in greater Tehran; Bandar Abbas; Isfahan; Birjan; Semnan; Ahwaz, Oromieh in Tabriz; and Khorasan in Mashhad) have vowed to continue their hunger strike to expose these intolerable conditions.
Omid writes that this hungerstrike is necessary because the United Nations, Amnesty International, and the International Red Cross/Red Crescent have obviously ignored their official obligations to frequently inspect prisons to ensure basic human rights including medical treatment and visitation rights.

A petition to support the action is here



Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi says that Iranian authorities were acting against the law when they took the passport of Parnaz Azima.
Azima told she had turned down a suggestion that she should work with the intelligence services.This is the second time her ability to travel has been restricted, last year authorities prevented her for three weeks from leaving the country.



Saturday, the yearly crackdown starts on women and men whose dress is deemed to be out of line with the Islamic laws.
The deputy head of Tehran's police Hossein Sadjedi-Nia warned that women "dressed up like models" with overly short mantos (coats), tight outergarments and inadequate headscarves would face being apprehended.
He said that the crackdown is not different from the campaigns of previous years. The women will be taken to four centres. They will have to give a written engagement not to repeat the offence and can then leave when their family brings the appropriate clothing.
He said that the crackdown will also target men "who wear clothes with offensive slogans and chains with certain insignia".

In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl