Sunday, October 08, 2017

NEWS))))))

According to the Iranian resistance-NCRI - Mohammad Nazari political prisoner in Gohardasht prison in Karaj is on his seventy day of hunger strike. Mohammad Nazari, by hunger strike is protesting his legal status and Iran regime’s failure to address his situation. One of his requests is to be transferred to a prison in Iranian Kurdistan province such as Mahabad or Orumiyeh. He has fallen unconscious several times during the hunger strike and the prison officials have not done anything about the prisoner's requests. Mohammad Nazari, was arrested in 1993 on the charges of having contact with Kurdish parties and was sentenced to death after false confession taken under torture. However, due to the pressure of human rights organizations, his death penalty was reduced to life imprisonment in 2007 and he was then transferred from Orumiyeh to Rajaei-Shahr prison.

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According to state-run Rokna news agency Oct. 7, Zohreh Ghasemi from Isfahan a 9th term medical student, suffocated by gas while taking shower in the dormitory of the Medical Sciences University of Shahr-e Kord, south central Iran. She died on the way to hospital.
Female students have time and again protested their living conditions in the dormitories.



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Women staged protests across from the Governor’s Office in Khorassan, northeast Iran, and the Headquarters of the Medical Sciences University of Lorestan, western Iran, on Saturday morning, October 7. In Khorassan Province, protesting women and stock owners of the Padideh Shandiz financial institute, wore white shrouds and staged a protest outside the Governor’s Office in Mashhad.
In Lorestan, Nurse’s aides held a protest outside the HQ of the Medical Sciences University in this province. The Ministry of Health has received 3.699.000 toumans ($113) tuition fee from the nurse’s aides, promising to recruit and employ them which never happened.

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According to state-run ILNA news agency an estimated 500 teachers participated in Tehran's gathering on "World Teachers's Day" on Oct. 5. Female teachers actively and extensively participated in nationwide gatherings in cities such as Tehran, Yazd, Ahwaz, Shiraz, Mashhad, Tabriz and Gilan to name a few. They demanded not only their own legitimate rights but also the release of imprisoned teachers and political prisoners. Teachers changed, “Free imprisoned teachers, workers, and students”, “a teacher’s place is not in prison”, “we want a salary of at least 4 million toumans, over the poverty line”, and “we will persevere until our demands are met.”
Mrs. Farangis Mazloum, Soheil Arabis' mother also participated in the gathering in Tehran. Soheil Arabi, is a political prisoner who has been on hunger strike for more than 40 days.

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 A number of contract teachers working in the town of Kangaver staged a protest gathering outside the Education Department on Wednesday, October 4, to protest against their unsuitable job conditions and low wages.
The majority of protesters were women.



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Three Iranian Baha'i' women were sentenced to five years  in prison each for their religious beliefs. They have been identified as Helia Moshtagh, Nava Monjazeb Ghamsari and Negar Bagheri Taregh.
They had been free on bail since 2016, but were tried on October 4, 2017, in a Revolutionary Court and sentenced to 5 years in prison each on the charge of “acting against national security.”


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Iranian civil rights activist Leila Mir-Ghaffari, who had been arrested on September 26, is being kept in inhuman conditions in a mental hospital in Tehran. The reason for her admssion to the mental hospital and under which intelligence agency and authority and under what charges is not clear.
Leila has been chained by the hands and feet to her bed. The only time the chains are off is when she needs to get out of the room to get fresh air.
Ms. MirGhaffari’s health and psychological conditions have been reported as grim and she is not able to speak due to the medications she is forced to take.
Leila Mir-Ghaffari had been previously arrested in June 2017 and released on bail after a week. She was also arrested following a gathering in front of Evin Prison in November 2015 and released on bail a month later. Leila Mir-Ghaffari was also summoned and interrogated in October 2016 for participating in Reyhaneh Jabbari’s memorial ceremony.

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According to state-run ensaf news website Oct. 3rd, Afghan girls studying in Kerman’s Zeinabiyeh primary school were collectively expelled on Monday, October 2, ten days after the beginning of the school year, without offering any explanation to the parents.
It is not clear why these children have been deprived of education, but under  Iranian regime’s laws, children who are borne in Iran from marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men, are not entitled to birth certificates and citizen rights until the child reaches 18. Afghan women and children who live in Iran are also subject to discrimination in medical treatment and other civil services. Recently Human Rights Watch released a report on the use of Afghan children for the Syrian war by the Iranian regime's Revolutionary Guards- IRGC.

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The Iranian regime's parliament or Majlis in Iran is stonewalling a bill seeking to raise the minimum age of women’s marriage. According to state-run ILNA news agency Oct. 2, Parvaneh Salahshouri the Majlis had not paid any attention to the demands of the women’s faction for one year and added, “It would be a great step, if we could place the bill on the agenda and at least, raise the age of girls’ marriage with their father’s permission from 9 to 15 years.
The agreement with (the French Oil Company) Total is quickly taken to the floor but the issues of children have to wait for a long time.”
“According to the laws of Iran, women are deprived of the right to divorce; they need their husband or father’s approval to travel. The custody of children over seven years of age is granted to the father. Altogether, these rules which give open hand to men and fathers to decide about every aspect of their children’s lives end up in phenomena such as child marriages.”

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The State-run Tasnim news agency affiliated with the Quds force belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC reported on Oct. 5 that Heydar Asiabi the Secretary of Semnan Province’s Staff in charge of Promoting Virtue and Forbidding Vice announced that 2400 agents are tasked in this province, alone, with cracking down on women to impose the compulsory veil. He added that they had increased the number of their female agents to 2000 who act on different levels. They also include teenage girls of 14-15 years of age. “Promoting virtue and forbidding vice should spread in society and turn into a general culture institutionalized among people,” Heydar Asiabi stressed. It's worth mentioning that 26 state agencies are already tasked with enforcing the compulsory veil on Iranian women in every private and public place.