Iran regime arrests 11 Christians in raid on house church

Iran regime arrests 11 Christians in raid on house church

Iran's fundamentalist regime arrested a group of practicing Iranian Christians last week at an in-house church in the city of Isfahan, central Iran.

In total 11 Christians were arrested during the raid on their congregation last Friday, August 12. The raid was carried out by armed plain clothes intelligence agents, according to eye-witnesses.

Ten of those arrested have been identified as Amin Ahanin, Mohammad Alyasi, Fatemeh Amini, Edmund Khachaturian, Mohammad Malek Khatai, Mohsen Khoobyari, Arash Qodsi, Hamed Sepidkar, Samaneh Shahbazi-Far and Maryam Zonubi. An eleventh person arrested at the mass has not yet been identified.

Appeasing Iran’s mullahs emboldens regime - Ken Blackwell

shahqayeq

A recent series of arrests of dissidents and a wave of executions in Iran show that the regime's President Hassan Rouhani is anything but a 'moderate,' said Amb. Ken Blackwell, a former Cincinnati mayor and U.S. ambassador to the UN human rights commission.

Amb. Blackwell writing on Monday in Townhall described the case of a young activist of the main opposition group People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, or Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK) whose parents were arrested last week by the fundamentalist regime in Iran.

Shaqayeq Azimi is an aspiring, joyful girl of 22 with a full life ahead of her. She is also an Iranian dissident, committed to challenging the repressive theocracy that rules her home country.

Recently she learnt that both her father Mahmoud and her mother Fatemeh Ziae were arrested on October 11 by the Iranian secret police in a raid on their home in Tehran. The regime has been characteristically secretive about the arrests, so Shaqayeq has been unable to obtain any information about where her parents have been taken, or what their current condition is.

This is not the first time that her parents have been arrested, but given the nature of the regime, each such incident poses grave dangers.

Fatemeh endured five years’ imprisonment and torture in the 1980s for supporting the principal Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). She was arrested again in February 2009 for visiting her relatives in Camp Ashraf, then the place of residence for thousands of Iranian dissidents in Iraq. This so-called crime landed her in jail for two years, where poor conditions and mistreatment contributed to acute health afflictions. She was arrested for yet a third time in June 2013, again on political charges.

Shaqayeq’s father was a political prisoner during the Shah’s regime and has been arrested several times since the 1980s including in 2011 and 2013 for supporting the MEK.

Wave of arrests of social and labor activists in Iran

Mr. Mahmoud Salehi

Following the suspicious death of labor activist Mr. Shahrokh Zamani in Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) Prison in Karaj (north-west of the Iranian capital Tehran), there are now reports by human rights organizations of a wave of arrests of union andsocial activists.

Iran - the repression of Iranian Youth

There has been a surge in the level of arrests of youths attending parties in Iran in recent months. Humiliating punishments and executions are among other violations of human rights in Iran since Hassan Rouhani took office at President in 2013. These rights abuses are aimed at spreading fear and intimidating the public, particularly the youth, to prevent social unrest.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran has said that the general human rights situation, and in particular the repression of Iranian women and activists, has worsened since Rouhani became President.

More than 1,800 men and women have been executed in Iran during Rouhani’s tenure.

'The international community’s silence and inaction over the systematic brutalities and abuses in Iran with the excuse of nuclear negotiations or else, tramples upon humanitarian values and human rights and further emboldens Iran’s religious fascist regime in slaughtering the populace and continuing its efforts to acquire the nuclear bomb and export fundamentalism and terrorism.'

Iranian Youth

Youth around the world can make a difference the fight for freedom in Iran

A panel of young people on August 12, International Youth Day, participated in an online conference on the subject of the problems in Iran and the region. They participated from Canada, Sweden, UK, France and Holland and spoke about the suppression in Iran and how the youth deal with this.

Nikou Kalbali Iranian student in Canada, highlighted the situation in Iran in general. She said there is no gender equality, no freedom of speech and the youth are particularly repressed (they don’t have the freedom to choose what to wear, for example).

According to one of the ratified articles of this legislation, if the driver or passenger of a vehicle takes off her veil… she will be fined one million rials and the driving license of the driver will get 10 negative points.