Reporters sans frontires - Iran:Tehran seeking new ways to censor the Internet and track dissidents

More sites banned, overhaul of filtering system planned

Reporters Without Borders today accused the Iranian government of seeking to increase its control of the Internet in recent measures that have included contracting an Iranian company, Delta Global, to set up a new online censorship system.

While developing a woefully oppressive model of Internet management, Iran is participating actively in international talks about Internet governance that are being held as part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the press organisation said.


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Reporters sans frontires - Iran:Editor of Kurdish-language weekly sentenced to 18 months in prison

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the 18-month prison sentence that was passed on Mohammad Sedigh Kabovand, the editor of Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan, a weekly published in Kurdish and Farsi, for “upsetting public opinion and spreading separatist ideas.” The sentence has only now come to light although handed down on 18 August.
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World | Reuters.co.in: Iran courts wade through backlog of media cases

Iran News - Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning

Iran News - Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning

Iran rights record worsens - Persian Journal Latest Iran news & Iranian Newspaper

IranPressNews (English): Iranian adultress sentenced to death by stoning

List of the victims of human rights violation in Iran

List of the victims of human rights violation in Iran- by Irantestimony.com

List of victims (Last updated October 2005)
The list of victims is dated from 1979 and is based on comparison of various lists of massacres and executions published on Internet by different political and human rights organizations and contribution of victims families.

Our hope and desire is together with families and friends of these victims to gather as much information evidences and testimonies as possible in order to document Islamic Republic of Iran's continuous violation of human. List is ongoing and being completed and updated continousely.


"Human Righst Actvists- Irantestimony"

EU says Iran human rights record deteriorating

Khaleej Times Online:Iran dissident Ganji barred from seeing visitors

Khaleej Times Online: "Iran dissident Ganji barred from seeing visitors"

PM - Iran journalist disappears after second arrest

PM - Iran journalist disappears after second arrest

SITUATION OF THE DEATH PENALITY IN IRAN :Annual Report 2004

Evidence of the widespread, planned and systematic violation of Human Rights in Iran
SITUATION OF THE DEATH PENALITY IN IRAN
Annual Report 2004
(September 2004- October 2005)
First Edition
By:
Iranian Human Rights Activists Groups
in EU and North America

World | Reuters.co.in: Get home by dusk, Iran tells female civil servants

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Female civil servants at Iran's Culture Ministry and female journalists at the state newspaper and news agency must be out of the office by dusk to be with their families, a directive said on Tuesday.

The directive was issued by Culture Minister Mohammad Hossein Saffar-Harandi, one of a batch of hardline cabinet ministers brought in by President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad who won a landslide election in June.

"Owing to the sensitive role of women in the family and in raising children, women employees are banned from staying at the office after 6 p.m.," the Tosea newspaper quoted the directive as saying.

The order to get home early also covers the official IRNA news agency and the state-run Iran daily newspaper.

The directive did not specify what punishments women would face if they disobeyed the decree.

Shirin Ebadi, Iran's 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said the decree was blatantly discriminatory.

"Women should be free to adjust their working hours based on their pace of life," the human rights lawyer told Reuters.

One woman reporter believed it was part of a plan by Ahmadinejad's government to turn the clock back on the tentative progress made under moderate former President Mohammad Khatami.

Under eight years of Khatami's presidency, enforcement of social restrictions such as Islamic dress codes for women were relaxed. Women entered previously male-only domains such as taxi driving and the police.

"It is just a start. They will put more limitations on women. They do not want us to be socially active," said a female journalist, who asked not to be named. She works night shifts at the Iran newspaper. "What about me? I start working at 3 p.m. This decree means that I will be jobless soon."

SITUATION OF THE DEATH PENALITY IN IRAN :Annual Report 2004

Evidence of the widespread, planned and systematic violation of Human Rights in Iran
SITUATION OF THE DEATH PENALITY IN IRAN
Annual Report 2004
(September 2004- October 2005)
First Edition
By:
Iranian Human Rights Activists Groups
in EU and North America

Canada to approach UN on Iran's human rights record .:. NewKerala

Canada to approach UN on Iran's human rights record .:. NewKerala - India's Top Online Newspaper

IranPressNews (English): Tabrizi journalist, Massoumeh Babapour has disappeared

Tabriz News - Public Service: Massoumeh Babapour, a woman journalist and reporter for local Tabriz newspapers has disappeared.

Hasan Baqerzadeh, Ms. Babapour's husband, in a telephone conversation with the public service department of Tabriz news reports: "My wife left the house on Monday, Oct. 3rd, 2005 at 10 AM for work and has not been seen or heard from since. Her cellular phone was disconnected a few hours after leaving the house as well. She had been receiving death threats from either an individual or a group; she would receive the threat calls either on her cellular phone or at her office. We have informed the police in Tabriz and with their help, we have been doing everything we can to find her."

Tabriz News reporters as well as other members of the media from the north western Iran have also focused their efforts in following all leads in order to find their missing colleague.

New York Blade Online:Gay Iranian seeks help from U.N. after torture

New York Blade Online

Canada to put forward UN resolution on Iran rights

Wed Oct 5, 4:23 PM ET

OTTAWA - Canada will put forward a resolution at the United Nations for the third year in a row accusing Iran of human rights violations, Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew said on Wednesday.

"Iran has not lived up to its international human rights obligations and has not conformed with past U.N. resolutions on this matter. We believe this must change," Pettigrew said.

Canada presented similar resolutions to the United Nations in both 2003 and 2004. The U.N.‘s General Assembly adopted the 2004 resolution with 71 votes in favor, 54 against and 55 abstentions.

The previous resolutions accused Iran of human rights abuses, including torture, suppression of free speech and discrimination against women and minorities.

"We have to maintain the pressure. I can tell you one thing -- Iran has not enjoyed the last two resolutions we tabled," Pettigrew told reporters.

"It is very important that the international community ... keeps the pressure on Iran at this stage for them to really, really acknowledge the situation of human rights abuses in the country and really try to change the situation."

Pettigrew said Canada was still discussing with its allies the text of the resolution, which officials said was likely to be presented at the end of October.

Canada and Iran are at loggerheads over the case of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian reporter who died of head injuries in 2003 after being arrested in Tehran. Canada has twice withdrawn its ambassador over the affair and accuses Iranian authorities of failing to investigate the death properly.

Iran‘s conservative judiciary initially said Kazemi had died of a stroke but an investigation by the government revealed she had received a heavy blow during questioning which caused a brain hemorrhage.

OMCT - - Lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani detained incommunicado since two months

Press release


Iran : Lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani detained incommunicado since two months

Geneva-Paris, September 30, 2005. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), and the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran (LDDHI) reiterate their deepest concern about the situation of Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani, lawyer at the Bar of Tehran and a founding member of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC), who has been detained in solitary confinement since July 30, 2005, at the prison of Evin, Tehran.

Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani was arrested while he was taking part in a sit-in at the Bar of Tehran in order to protest against an arrest warrant issued against him by Mr. Saïd Mortazavi, Tehran Prosecutor, three days before, as well as against the search and seizure of his personal and professional belongings*.
Mr. Soltani was accused of “espionage”, without any other precisions. Since the beginning of his detention, he has been denied the right to have access to a lawyer and to receive the visit of his family.

The Observatory and the LDDHI believe that his arrest is linked to the role played by Mr. Soltani in Ms. Zahra Kazemi’s trial, an Iranian-Canadian photographer who died in July 2003 from torture and ill-treatment during her detention in Iranian custody, and brought before Tehran Court of Appeal to establish the circumstances of her death and the responsible parties. On July 25, 2005, during a hearing in camera of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Soltani, lawyer of Ms. Zahra Kazemi’s family, put into question the independence and fairness of the trial, pointing out that the main officials allegedly involved in the case had not been indicted by the court, including Mr. Saïd Mortazavi.
The Observatory and the LDDHI recall that in October 2003, the Article 90 Commission of the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) released its report of enquiry into Mrs Kazemi's death, which concluded that Prosecutor Mortazavi and other members of the judiciary were directly involved in her death, as a result of violent interrogation in Evin prison.
The Observatory and the LDDHI are deeply concerned about Mr. Soltani’s arbitrary detention, which is part of a general repressive movement against human rights lawyers by Iranian authorities. In this regard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, after his visit in Iran in November 2003, expressed concern regarding the fact that “lawyers do not benefit from immunity from prosecution with regard to what they say in court in defence of their clients or for statements they make on a case”.

Moreover, in July 2002, Mr. Soltani had already been convicted for having underlined in his defence pleadings the fact that his clients had been subjected to ill-treatment during their interrogation. He was sentenced to four months in jail by the Court of Tehran and released in June 2003 (See Observatory Annual Report 2003).

The Observatory and the LDDHI consider that the detention of Mr. Soltani blatantly violates the provisions of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998, in particular article 1 which stipulates that “everyone has the right, individually or in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection an realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international level”, and article 9.3(c), which provides that everyone has the right “to offer and provide professionally qualified legal assistance or other relevant advice and assistance in defending human rights and fundamental freedoms”.
Because detained in solitary confinement, the Observatory and the LDDHI fear that Mr. Soltani faces increased risks of being subject to ill-treatment and acts of torture.
The Observatory and the LDDHI therefore urge the Iranian authorities to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani.

The Observatory and the LDDHI also urge them to conform with the provisions of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, and more generally, with the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other regional and international human rights instruments to which Iran is a party .


*See Observatory Urgent Appeals IRN 002/0705/OBS 055, dated July 28, 2005 and IRN 002/0705/OBS 055.1, dated August 4, 2005.



For more information, please contact:
FIDH: 00 33 1 43 55 25 18
OMCT: 00 41 22 809 49 39
LDDHI : 00 33 1 40 94 14 50

Iran Focus-News - Special Wire - Men flogged in public in Iran capital

Iran Focus-News - Special Wire - Men flogged in public in Iran capital

Iranian Paper calls for major judicial sentencing reforms

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