Heidi Hautala, Vice President in charge of Democracy, Human Rights and the Sakharov Community, and Maria Arena, Chair of the Sub-Committee on Human Rights issued the following statement on Nasrin Sotoudeh's renewed hunger strike and increased pressure on her family:
In 2019, the Islamic Republic of Iran marked its fortieth anniversary in power. It proudly staged ceremonies to commemorate this milestone, but before the year was out it would face widespread, bitter protests of a sort that have become familiar, denying its legitimacy and demanding an end to undemocratic rule by Shia Muslim clerics. The early months of 2020 brought the regime more high-profile troubles. These included the accidental shootdown of a civilian airliner and now encompass Iranian society's suffering as part of the covid-19 pandemic—a suffering that has grown worse even as top officials have refused to acknowledge the true extent and severity of what the disease has wrought for the people of Iran.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran has continued to threaten the health and safety of imprisoned human rights defenders, like Nasrin Sotoudeh and Yasaman Aryani, in the country’s overcrowded and unhygienic prisons.
His tone was frantic. He was scared and paranoid, deleting his WhatsApp messages as soon as I had read them. Masoud Molavi Vardanjani wanted to speak to someone “in Washington”. I was cautious, too. I am just a journalist, I insisted. Who would I know “in Washington”? And how can I even be sure it’s you, I asked, and not some Iranian regime operative up to some trickery?
The hidden role of a British secret service officer who led the coup that permanently altered the Middle East is to be revealed for the first time since an Observer news story was suppressed in 1985.
Salt storms are an emerging threat for millions of people in north-western Iran, thanks to the catastrophe of Lake Urmia. Once one of the world’s largest salt lakes, and still the country’s largest lake, Urmia is now barely a tenth of its former size.
Leaked official letters newly obtained by Amnesty International reveal that the Iranian government has ignored repeated pleas by senior officials responsible for managing Iran’s prisons for additional resources to control the spread of COVID-19 and treat infected prisoners.
Iranian WHRD Narges Mohammadi who has been sentenced to over 10 years in prison, because of her human rights activities, has been denied telephone contact with her teenage children for almost a year. Narges' children, Kiana and Ali, who live in Exile in France with their father, released a video lamenting the fact that they have not spoken to their mother for 11 months. They asked Iranians to be their voice, so Narges is allowed to call her children.
The supreme leader’s youth-washing strategy could keep detente with the United States off the table for years. In just under a year, Iran will elect a new president. Coming after the U.S. election this November, there is some hope that the occasion could usher in improved U.S.-Iranian relations. Yet, given the way Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been narrowing the field of candidates, that seems unlikely.
