Iran:Disabled Mother of Iranian Prisoner of Faith Begs for the Release of Her Son

Disabled Mother of Iranian Prisoner of Faith Begs for the Release of Her Son

In an article by Stoyan Zaimov, in the August 24 Christian Post, he writes about the plight of a disabled mother of a Christian prisoner in Iran.  Her son is held in Rajaei-Shahr prison, and she has been unable to visit him because she is visually impaired.

As reported by Mohabat News on Tuesday, Ebrahim Firouzi, is one of several people imprisoned because of their Christian faith. Because he was not allowed access to his defense documents, he refused to attend his appeals court hearing. His appointed judge was not present, so the hearing has been postponed for four months.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Firouzi was arrested in August 2013, and sentenced to five years in prison in 2015. he was charged with "acting against national security," a charge often given to prisoners of faith in Iran.

Firouzi's mother pled with officials to handle her son's case fairly and to release him.  "Crying as she delivered the message to the authorities, Mr. Firouzi's elderly mother said that she is visually impaired and there is nothing she can do and has no one to help her. She said she doesn't have the ability to go from court to court and follow up on her son's case," Mohabat News reports.  "She added that she misses her son and because of her disability she has not been able to visit her son in prison. She pleaded with the authorities to release her son so he can come home.”

Iran:More Arrests of Iranian Youths for Mixed Gender Partying.

 Authorities in Iran have arrested at least 50 young men and women who attended a mixed-gender party.

"Families must be more vigilant regarding their children to make sure they do not end up in such circumstances”, says Mojtaba Vahedi, the head of the judiciary in Damavand, east of Tehran.

A report on Friday, July 22, by the state-run Tasnim news agency said more than 50 young men and women were arrested at a party that was organized via social networking.

Security forces monitoring social media obtained a warrant after ‘carrying out the necessary investigations’, and judicial files have been opened against those arrested at the party, Tasnim quoted Vahedi as saying.

Iran:More Arrests of Iranian Youths for Mixed Gender Partying.

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Iran: Iranian Artist Talks About Oppression and Art

Atena Farghadani drew a cartoon mocking Iran’s parliament in protest of her country’s anti-birth control policies. For this, she was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard in the summer of 2014.

In her July 15 interview with Michael Cavna of the Washington Post, after she was released from prison, the Iranian artist says: “I’m stuck in a limbo.” referring to the mental weariness and the physical problems caused by her imprisonment. “At the moment,” she continues, “since I’ve arrived at the certainty that there is miracle lying in the art of drawing and painting, I’m more determined to continue doing it than ever.”

Atena is an inspiration to many. Her creative and political resistance has influenced the community of artists and their supporters around the world. Paintings, drawings and cartoons have flooded in from her fellow artists for the #Draw4Atena call to arms.

While imprisoned at in the gruesome Gharchak prison she went on a hunger strike. She says, “What bothered me the most was to see inmates — many of whom were victims of the economic and cultural poverty in the Iranian system — who were not treated like human beings; their most basic rights were violated. I consider Gharchak prison as a graveyard of time …”                               

Atena Farghadani

IRAN:44th anniversary of execution of Iranian MEK founders

IRAN:44th anniversary of execution of Iranian MEK founders

 

بنیانگذار کبیر محمد حنیف نژاد ودو یار قهرمانش  شهیدان بنیانگذار سعید محسن  وعلی اصغر بدیع ذادگان 

 This week marks the 44th anniversary of the execution of the founders of Iran’s main opposition group.

On 25 May 1972, the founders and leaders of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), were executed by death squads after months of imprisonment and torture from the regime of the Shah.

The MEK, a group which sought, and still seeks, a secular Iranian government, was considered one of the main threats to the regime of the Shah.

The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, arrested all MEK leaders and most of its members in a series of raids in 1971.

The founders, Mohammad Hanifnejad, Said Mohsen, and Ali-Asghar Badizadegan along with two other leaders, Mahmoud Askarizadeh, and Rasoul Meshkinfam stood firm in the face of the Shah’s regime and paid with their lives.

The origins of the MEK

The MEK was founded on September 6, 1965, by engineers; Hanifnejad, Mohsen, and Badizadegan. All three were once members of the Liberation Movement; created by Medhi Bazargan in 1961 and outlawed, along with other pro-democracy groups, in 1963 following the June Uprising in which opponents to the Shah’s regime were gunned down in the streets.

The men wanted to create a new path to democracy and began by meeting with like-minded friends for a twice-weekly discussion group focusing on religion, history, philosophy, and revolutionary theory.

They sought to discover the true interpretation of Islam which, they have shown, is incredibly democratic and compatible with modern ideals. The MEK views freedom, human rights and the equality of people regardless of gender, race or religion as commitments that were set out in the Quran, in teachings from the Prophet Muhammad and by other senior members of the faith.

Iran: Negar Haeri, former political prisoner is deliberately ran over

Iran: Negar Haeri, former political prisoner is deliberately ran over

The news has just got out that Negar Haeri, a lawyer and former political prisoner, was deliberately ran over by unidentified persons on December 17, 2015.

She had previously been threatened time and again and finally on December 17, she was chased by a black Peugeot 405 with dark windows and hit after she got out of her car in Shahrara district. The Peugeot then sped away and disappeared.

Ms. Haeri was subsequently transferred to hospital. She suffered a broken right arm and a broken left leg and bruises all over her body.

Ms. Haeri had been summoned on phone to Evin’s Prosecutor’s Office on May 18, 2015, where she was insulted and arrested in front of her mother. She was held in the Evin’s women’s ward for one day and transferred to solitary confinement for another nine days where she was interrogated under torture. She was ultimately released on May 27, 2015.

Before this, she spent eight months in Varamin’s Qarchak prison and was released only after much efforts and on a 2billion-touman bail.

Ms. Haeri’s license for law practice was annulled and she was not banned from giving legal advice to her clients. Security and intelligence officers have instructed her not to leave Tehran in any circumstances.

Iran regime refusing to hold my daughter’s court hearings, mother says

Atena Daemi

The mother of civil activist Atena Daemi, sentenced to 14 years behind bars, said nearly 8 months have passed since this ruling was issued for her daughter yet the appeals court hearings have not been held.

In response to their follow-ups, regime officials have been postponing the court hearing date one week at a time.

“Atena has suffered severe headaches and serious vision loss since she was detained in solitary confinement. Despite the fact that she was sent to a brain-nerve-eye specialist the reason behind her illness was not revealed. However, physicians have said stressful conditions in prison are very dangerous for Atena. Her lawyer and us have time and again requested her release on bail but every time they turn down our request,” said Masoume Ne’mati.

Atena Daemi is a civil and children’s rights activist arrested on October 21, 2014 by the Revolutionary Guards intelligence organization and transferred to Evin Prisonon

Iran: Courageous mother stands for her son’s cause

Ms. Gohar Eshghi is the mother of dissident blogger, Sattar Beheshti

Ms.Gohar Eshghi is the mother of dissident blogger, Sattar Beheshti, who was arrested by the Iranian regime’s internet police and killed after a few days under torture on November 3, 2012.

Her daughter, Sahar Beheshti, was stopped on the way from her son’s kindergarten on December 28th and threatened at gun point to go with the police for posting her brother’s photo on her car’s window shield. She refused to go with the police but was stopped on the street for a few hours.

Her mother subsequently declared, “As long as I am alive, I will be the voice of Sattar. After me, it is Sahar who is his voice. If anything happens to Sahar, I will hold the government responsible. Sattar was a worker. They killed him and did not give me any answers why but I will not allow them to kill Sahar. We are not afraid of anything. We are not afraid of their guns.”

She added, “This is not the first time they are threatening Sahar. They have done so several times but even if they take Sahar from me, I will not stop and will not remain silent. Sattar told me: ‘What we are doing is not living. This is humiliation. Dying is better than the life we have.’ Now I say the same thing. This life is nothing but humiliation and death.”

Iran a major prison for journalists - RSF

RSF-logo

Iran is the world's third biggest prison for journalists, the press freedoms group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a report published on Tuesday.

At least 18 journalists are confirmed to be in detention in Iran, RSF said in its annual "Round-up of journalists killed worldwide 2015."

Earlier this month RSF published a separate annual Round-up of journalists detained, held hostage or disappeared in 2015," in which it wrote: "Those held in Iran include several arrested in November, the latest of many journalists to be accused of membership of 'espionage networks.'”

That report added that in Iran under the mullahs' rule "the judicial system is controlled by the Supreme Leader and is manipulated by the Revolutionary Guards in order to gag reporting critical of the regime."

RSF's website lists the Iranian regime's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as a Predator of Freedom of Information.

Iran’s regime arrests Christians on Christmas day

#Iran’s regime arrests #Christians on Christmas day

Iran's fundamentalist regime arrested a group of practicing Iranian Christians onChristmas Day at an in-house church in the city of Shiraz, southern Iran.

The group of Iranian Christians had gathered together last Friday, December 25, to celebrate Christmas when plain-clothes agents of the Iranian regime's notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) raided the in-house church.

Armed MOIS agents ransacked much of the place and confiscated personal items and satellite dishes, according to eye-witness reports, which also said that the agents behaved 'offensively' towards those detained.

Among those arrested were:

Mohsen Javadi,

Elaheh Izadi,

Ahmad Golshani-Nia,

Reza Mohammadi,

Mahmoud Salehi,

Moussa Sari-Pour,

Alireza Ali-Qanbari,

Mohammad-Reza Soltanian,

And a ninth person whose identity was not established.

Separately on Wednesday, December 23, MOIS agents in the central city of Isfahan arrested Iranian Christian Mr. Meysam Hojjati in a raid on his home.

Mr. Hojjati was beaten and handcuffed while his home was searched and ransacked by four plain-clothes MOIS agents. His books, computer, mobile phone and even his decorated Christmas tree were confiscated. Mr. Hojjati was previously arrested by agents of the intelligence ministry in March 2012.

On the news of the Christians’ arrests, Shahin Gobadi of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on Tuesday said: “There has been a steady deterioration of human rights abuses in Iran during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as president including executions and suppression of religious and ethnic minorities. This is just another case in point. Actually the clerical regime is one of the top violators of rights of religious minorities including Christians in the world. The regime has institutionalized repression of the Iranian people as the main tool of its survival.”

In her New Year and Christmas greetings to Christians in Iran and around the world on December 24, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said: "I wish that 2016 would be a year of unity and victory over Islamic extremism and especially the religious fascism ruling Iran and its evil allies in the Middle East who sow the seeds of enmity in the world."

"Muslims and Christians can rely on their common values to stand up to those who pervert their religions."

"Let us hope for the relief of converted Christians in Iran from the oppression of ruling mullahs and for freedom of the whole Iranian nation from this religious dictatorship."

"On this occasion, I call on the world community to form an international front against the religious dictatorship in Iran and its proxies and militia in Syria and Iraq and to fight Islamic extremism, the enemy of true Muslims, Christians and all followers of other divine religions," Mrs. Rajavi added.

Iran - Inhuman treatment of Christian prisoner in Iran’s notorious gulag

Ebrahim Firouzi, an Iranian Christian prisoner

EbrahimFirouzi, an Iranian Christian prisoner in the notorious Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) Prison in Karaj, north-west of the Iranian capital Tehran, is being deprived of medical treatment by the mullahs’ regime although he suffers from acute diseases, according to local reports.

It is over a year now that he is suffering of acute pain in the left side of his chest and his condition has deteriorated in the past three months.

Mr. Firouzi was arrested on August 25, 2013 and condemned by a court in Robat Karim, south-west of Tehran, to one year in prison and two years exile in Sarbaz County. Although his prison term ended on January 13, 2015, he is still being kept in prison. New bogus charges were raised against him on March 8, 2015 for ‘acting against national security’ through community means, and he was subsequently condemned to five years in prison by the henchman-judge Moqiseh in Branch 28 of the regime’s courts.

He is currently in detention in Ward 10 of Gohardasht.

Women in History - 22 December

Mukhopadhyaya

Mukhopadhyaya was the wife and spiritual counterpart of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a nineteenth century mystic of Bengal. Sarad Devi is also reverentially addressed as the Holy Mother. Sarada Devi played an important role in the growth of the Ramakrishna Movement.

Lucy Burns

American suffragist and women’s rights advocate, formed the National Woman’s Party with Alice Paul

LucyBurns (July 28, 1879 – December 22, 1966) was born in New York to an Irish Catholic family. She was so inspired by their activism and charisma that she dropped her graduate studies to stay with them and work in the Women's Social and Political Union, an organization dedicated to fighting for women's rights in the United Kingdom. While working with the WSPU, Lucy Burns met Alice Paul at a London police station. Both women had been arrested for demonstrating, and Alice Paul introduced herself when she noticed that Lucy Burns was wearing an American flag pin on her lapel.

Burns was the first woman to speak before the Congressional delegates in 1914 when the Anthony amendment finally made it out of committee and into the House. Burns and other suffragists had been told by the chairman of the House Committee on Suffrage that the House would not pass a suffrage amendment before 1920. To their surprise, it was announced in late 1917 that the House would make a decision on January 10, 1918. She died on December 22, 1966 in Brooklyn, New York.

IRAN - Forozan Abdipour, member of Iran national volleyball team

Forozan Abdipour, member of Iran national volleyball team

to all volleyball fans: In memory of Forozan Abdipour, member of national volleyball  team who was executed in 1988 by the Iranian regime

Ms. Abdi was born in Tehran in 1957. She was the captain of the National Volleyball team and a sympathizer of the PMOI. According to her cellmate, Ms. Abdi was very popular among other inmates.

Her cellmates remember her for her open-mindedness and tolerant attitude towards other political prisoners. In one instance, her cellmate recalls, when a repenting prisoner who was in charge of the cell ordered another prisoner to separate her dishes from the others (because prison authorities treated prisoners who did not believe in God as “unclean”), Ms. Abdi had intervened and stressed that “no one considers the prisoner as ‘unclean’ and whoever does, should separate her own dishes from others”. Ms. Abdi had also kept her athletic spirits during her years of imprisonment and organized volleyball games during the short period when female prisoners had access to a volleyball court at Qezelhesar prison.

Arrest and detention

She was arrested in 1981.

One of her cellmates saying: "I saw her in section 8 of Qezelhesar in 1982. It was a section for special punishment and sometimes there were 25 to 30 people in a cell [that was meant to fit 3]... They placed Foruzan and some others in a restroom in early 1983. The place was so dirty that all of them contracted skin diseases. Then, they were transferred to solitary confinement at both Gohardasht and Qezelhesar prisons where they stayed until early 1986."

Ms. Abdi was protesting against the inhuman rules and behaviour of prison guards. As a result, for almost a year and half (fall 1983 - winter 1984), she was held in solitary confinement and was deprived from recreation time outside, from having contacts with others, reading newspapers, and having regular visits from her family.

Sometime in 1986, Ms. Abdi was transferred from Gohardasht to Evin prison where she was detained until her execution. During this period, she also spent most of her imprisonment in the closed section of the ward that prison authorities used for punishing prisoners. Those held in this section were held in closed cells and were allowed to leave their cells 3 times a day (for 30 minutes), during which time they could use the bathroom, wash their dishes and their clothes.

Forozan Abdipour was executed along with 30 000 other prisoners, mostly PMOI, when the Iranian regime carried out the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988.

Today, women are fighting to enter volleyball stadiums to watch games. Forozan Abdipour, member of national volleyball volleyball team was executed in 1988 by the Iranian regime for wanted all women to live in freedom and democracy.

16 executed in Iran in three days after UN General Assembly resolution

16 executed in Iran in three days

The Iranian regime has hanged 16 prisoners in Qazvin, Zahedan, Shiraz and Amol within the past three days.

Eight prisoners were hanged en masse on Tuesday, December 22, in Qazvin Prison. Five prisoners were also hanged en masse in the Central Prison of Bandar Abbas on December 20. Another two prisoners aged 26 and 30 were hanged in public in Kouzegari Square of Shiraz on the charge of Moharebeh, or waging war on God. On December 21, a 31-year-old man was hanged in Amol Prison (northern Iran).

In addition to the above, recorded data show more executions in the past two weeks: Three prisoners were executed in Gohardasht Prison of Karaj and a prisoner in Kerman Prison who had killed a State Security Forces commander (Dec. 16), a 20-year-old prisoner was executed in Noshahr (Dec. 14), a 21-year-old prisoner was hanged in public in Noorabad, Mamasani (Dec. 9), a prisoner was executed in the Central Prison of Bandar Abbas (Dec. 7), a woman was hanged in Qazvin Prison, a group of four prisoners aged between 23 and 35 (including two brothers called Ataollah and Mohammad Gomshad Zehi) were executed in the Central Prison of Zahedan on the charge of clashing with security forces, and another 36-year-old prisoner was executed in Gorgan (Dec. 6).

The Iranian regime executes dissidents and political prisoners using common charges or the charge of waging war on God. Many executions are carried out secretly and the news is never leaked out of prisons and other repressive dungeons.

In the meantime, dozens of prisoners, including Barzan Nasrollahzadeh, Sajjad Sanjari and Hamid Ahmadi who were under 18 years old at the time of their alleged crimes are presently on death row.

Barzan is a Sunni prisoner who was arrested in 2010 when he was a high school student. He was held in solitary confinement for months and ultimately sentenced to death on the charge of Moharebeh. According to Barzan's relatives, "he has not killed anybody, is not affiliated with any group and did not possess any arms."

On December 8, Amnesty International issued a call demanding abolition of death sentences for minors: “Iran cemented its shameful status as the world’s top official executioner of juvenile offenders… Iran’s continued use of the death penalty against persons convicted of crimes committed while they were under 18 years of age is cruel, inhumane and blatantly unlawful.”

Following the December 17th adoption of the 62nd UN General Assembly resolution censuring human rights abuses in Iran, the Iranian Resistance's President-elect Maryam Rajavi called on the UN Security Council to hold the murderers of the people of Iran accountable and prosecute them for their crimes against humanity. She underlined that this is a necessary step towards respecting the international community's vote that condemned the systematic and flagrant violations of human rights in Iran.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

December 22, 2015

Iran: Swedish woman arrested in Gorgan

Sanya Bobnevich

A Swedish national was arrested along with a friend by the Revolutionary Guards Corps Intelligence in Gorgan on December 13.

Her residence was thoroughly searched and some of her personal belongings confiscated.

Ms. Sanya Bobnevich, 48, is originally from Croatia but has Swedish citizenship. She moved to Iran in 2004 because she suffered from MS and needed exposure to sun light as part of her treatment. She was on special diet and took medicine that were sent to her from Sweden.