Saving Iran’s Children From Death Row

Shadows of an Iranian policeman and a noose are seen on the ground before an execution in Pakdasht, south of Tehran, March 2005.

The mass execution of more than 20 people in Iran’s Rajai Shahr prison was not the only grim news from that country this past week, the Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, August 9, 2016.
On August 1, Alireza Tajiki, who was sentenced to death at age 15 following a trial that fell short of international standards, was saved from execution thanks to the last-minute efforts of his family and his lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh. Unfortunately, the postponement is only temporary.
Alireza, now 19 is set to be executed on August 3.
Amin Tajiki, Alireza’s brother, told Human Rights Watch that their family had requested a retrial based on new evidence, but the court rejected their request.
Scores of children are believed to be on death row in Iran, despite denials by the head of Iran’s judiciary, Sadegh Amoli Larijani. Amnesty International has identified the names and locations of 49 such children, and the UN believes the number could be as high as 160. The majority of children on death row in Iran were convicted in trials that fell far short of international standards. In many cases, they reported torture and mistreatment in detention.
On July 18, Amnesty International reported that Iranian authorities hanged Hassan Afshar, who was arrested at 17. He had no access to a lawyer.
As a party to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on Rights of the Child, Iran is obliged to end child executions. The country has taken some small, positive steps. Since 2013, judges may use their discretion to not sentence a child offender to death if they do not understand the nature of the crime. Judges may now seek the opinion of the government’s Forensic Medical Department to assess the child’s mental state. Also, all children sentenced to death under Iran’s old penal code are eligible to be retried under the new one, passed in 2013, although they have to file for a retrial.
But, not only do these narrow reforms fail to meet Iran’s obligation to end all executions of children, but in practice, they are negated by ongoing abuses. Iranian authorities frequently deny children in pretrial detention access to a lawyer. Many children spend up to a decade on death row based primarily on confessions made under credible allegations of torture.
Now the Iranian judiciary should save all child offenders from the cruel fate of execution by granting them retrials in accordance with international human rights law standards. Child offenders like Alireza should never have been on death row in the first place.

Iran; 600,000 new imprisonments each year, basis for social unrest

 
During an open-door session of the Iranian regime parliament on Monday, where the interior minister of Rouhani’s administration was also present, lawmakers warned the administration of the boiling unrest and its consequences in the country due to the colossal and unimaginable plundering and corruption, and on the other hand, the arrests and the most brutal and widespread suppression against ordinary people. They warned that this combination would add up to disaster and earthquake for the entire regime.
The interior minister revealed that “there are more than 600,000 new arrests and imprisonments each year where at least 200,000 of them remain in prison for long terms.”
He warned of the social consequences of such phenomenon and said: “If you want to learn of the social cost of this policy, you must multiply this number by the number of people in a family.  Each of those arrested have a family that becomes concern. And then you must add the government’s economic, social and political programs to that outcome too. Because the lack of ability to satisfy the society would in some point tie to the social apathy and the extent of the repression. Then if we add up all those numbers together, we would have boiling pot which would cook up some catastrophe for the entire regime.
Lahouti, another Majlis (Iran regime parliament) lawmaker warned “we have some 11 million people living in slums. These people lack every social services that is provided to regular inbound city residents. This has really created a problem for us. These people live in dangerous places such as in trash lands where their health would be in grave danger. They illegally use the city’s water and electric systems.”

U.S. rejects EU bid to trade with Iran without the threat of US financial sanctions

Int.companies interested in doing business with Iran are holding back for fear of ...

European Union governments have hit a wall with the U.S. in attempts to shield banks and companies that do business with Iran from the threat of financial sanctions.
EU finance ministers pressed U.S. officials to provide more explicit guidance on the administration’s sanctions regime during talks in Brussels in late May, without success, two people familiar with the meeting said. Spokeswomen for the U.S. Treasury and the European Commission declined to comment on the talks.
With an estimated $24 billion in additional EU trade at stake over the next two years, Europe, Russia and the U.S. lifted economic sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear program in January. Yet restrictions on dollar-denominated trades related to Iran were among the penalties left in place, crimping Europe’s expansion of business ties with the Islamic republic.
“Banks evidently view the risk of violating U.S. sanctions as too great,” Arnold Wallraff, head of the German government’s Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, said in an interview. “Additional measures to limit liability would be helpful. Politicians need to address that.”
With oil and aviation deals usually financed in dollars with large banks sharing the risks, the ban on dollar transactions remains a hurdle for deals such as Iran’s agreement to buy 118 Airbus planes worth $27 billion, announced shortly after sanctions were lifted in January.
EU finance ministers and officials pressed the U.S. to give assurances to banks about the reach and application of the remaining sanctions, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. In its response, the U.S. declined to go beyond its publicly announced policy, the people said.
Past Penalties
The push by EU governments reflects pressure by banks after the nuclear deal with world powers sparked optimism that Iran would rejoin the global financial system. More than half of international companies interested in doing business with Iran are holding back for fear of running afoul of sanctions, according to a report by global law firm Clyde & Co.
EU-Iran trade is expected to quadruple in the next two years from an annual level of some $8 billion, according to the U.K. Foreign Office. Yet U.S. politics mean the window for expanding trade with Iran may be closing, with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump signaling he’d tear up the Iran accord that he says led to U.S. “humiliation.”
Nuclear-related sanctions, including a ban on Iran’s use of the SWIFT system for international financial transactions, were lifted in January following the nuclear deal. Other international sanctions related to terrorism and ballistic-missile development remained in place, as does a U.S. ban on American commerce with Iran.
Past U.S. penalties loom large, including the record $9 billion fine that BNP Paribas SA agreed to pay in 2014 in part for dealings with Iran. France’s Societe Generale SA, Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group AG, ING Groep NV in the Netherlands and the U.K.’s Standard Chartered Plc are among the big European banks that have said they’re generally not prepared to do business in Iran yet.
‘Lack of Clarity’
France’s government, worried that companies may lose exports, is said to be in talks with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, to seek a commitment that banks can do business without incurring legal woes.
The U.S. administration says Treasury and State Department officials have held meetings with companies, government officials and financial institutions in more than a dozen countries to discuss the sanctions relief for Iran. Guidance on OFAC’s website is regularly updated in response to questions about the scope of the sanctions, the Treasury spokeswoman said by e-mail.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met European bankers including Deutsche Bank AG Co-Chief Executive Officer John Cryan in London in May, telling them “that legitimate business, which is clear under the definition of the agreement, is available to banks.”
That doesn’t satisfy the Europeans. Several EU companies have asked the European Commission to take their individual cases to the Treasury so they can gain legal clearance or permissions before trading with Iran, Francesco Fini, an official in the office of EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini, told Bloomberg BNA on May 25.
“Lack of clarity from the U.S. is causing a lack of certainty for companies like Airbus,” Franck Proust, a French member of the European Parliament, said during a committee meeting in May. “There are no banks at this point that will support investments.”
Source: Bloomberg, 7 June 2016

UN: More than 80% of Syrians live below poverty line

A mother and her children react after two rockets hit the Turkish town of Kilis near the Syrian border,

The number of Syrians living below the poverty line has almost tripled after five years of conflict, according to a report published this week.

Around 83.4 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line compared with 28 percent in 2010, the report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the University of St Andrews said.

An estimated 13.5 million people in Syria needed humanitarian aid by late 2015, and more than 4 million of these were in Damascus and Aleppo provinces.

“According to one estimate, life expectancy dropped from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2014,” the report said.

Around half of Syria’s 493 hospitals in 2010 have been seriously damaged in the war, it added.

“The deliberate targeting of doctors and pharmacists has forced many to flee the country, at a higher rate than that of the average population.

“As a result, the number of persons per doctor in the country rose from 661 in 2010 to 1,442 in 2015.”

Around 12.1 million Syrians lack adequate access to water, sanitation and waste disposal, the report said.

Destruction of housing and infrastructure was estimated at around $90 billion.

Damaged pumps and pipelines led to the loss of almost half of potential drinking water supply in 2015, the Syrian General Establishment for Drinking Water and Waste Disposal was cited as saying.

Drinking water per capita dropped from 72 cubic meters to 48 cubic meters between 2011 and 2015.

The numbers were just as bleak in education, with around 2.7 million children of school-age out of school both inside and outside Syria, the report said.
The economy contracted by 55 percent between 2010 and 2015, when it had been expected to grow by 32 percent.

Tehran: Clashes at Sharif University during Rouhani’s speech

Clashes at Sharif University in Tehran

Eyewitness report from Sharif University in Tehran indicate that clashes erupted between the two factions of the government, the hardline clergies and the so called moderates, attending President Rouhani’s speech. 

The hardliners being backed by the Supreme leader, Khamenei chanted slogans against the other side, the supporters of Rafsanjani and Rouhani. While the Rouhani supporters shout back at the rival faction by chanting slogans in support of the powerless president. 

These clashes happened while the people in the audience where vetted carefully. The Rouhani faction had brought as many number of people to the event as possible to avoid embarrassment.   

Horrific scene of public execution in Iran continue

More women committing suicide in Iran under Rouhani

This is the bitter fact in my innocent country Iran.Farhad Paederithani, head of the Hygiene Administration in the city of Gorgan in northern Iran admitted to the rising number of suicides in this city. 

“From March to September of this year 25 people have committed suicide, of which 16 were women and 9 were men,” he said.
Referring to the many social problems people face under the mullahs’ regime he admitted that drug addiction, divorce and suicides are the main reasons behind social damages that is seriously threatening Iran’s society.
Suicide numbers in Iran under the mullahs’ regime have increased to 11 cases each day due to massive plundering and growing poverty. This means over 4,000 cases of suicides each year. Even regime officials say these numbers are less than the actual status quo. (State-run Tabnak website – April 12th, 2014)
Last year, Salehi Nassab, a member of the regime’s so-called parliament said over 100 people had committed suicide in the town of Dasht-e Azadegan in 2014 alone.

In addition to wast range misery in  Iran , brutal executions  has become a daily task for the rulling Mullahs  in Iran. they just want to horrify our people .

The brutal and inhumane regime of Iran has once again resorted to one of its 

most barbaric and vicious means of intimidation in response to the ever increasing dissent among the public. Hanging in public which ordinary people including children and vulnerable people can watch has been condemned by both Iranians and the civilized world. But yet the clerical regime continues to exercise this inhuman act to prolong its disgusting and horrifying rule.
Just this last Monday a 30-year-old prisoner, only identified by his initials E.S., was hanged in a public square in the city of Khoy, north-west Iran.
The mullahs’ regime also on Tuesday hanged three prisoners in the town of Baft, southern Iran.
The three prisoners were identified only by their initials H.M., A.E. and N.H.

 The mullahs’ regime in Iran continues to execute more of its citizens per capita than any other U.N. member state. Some 2000 people have been executed within past 2 years since Hassan Rouhani has taken the presidential desk.

A statement by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on August 5 said: 'Iran has reportedly executed more than 600 individuals so far this year. Last year, at least 753 people were executed in the country.'
Amnesty International said on September 7 that “the Iranian authorities must end their unprecedented killing spree – more than 700 people have been executed so far this year.'

Planting the seeds of hope

By   Iran reporter

June 1sth 2015

As Mullahs’ regime in utter 

weakness is driving the region towards unprecedented crisis.

As the oppression, torture, hanging, medieval dooms are implemented across the country, despite the claims of moderation by Rohani cabinet,

As the officials of this regime plunder all Iranian assets, and the situation of the people life has deteriorated,

A huge gathering of Iranians in resistance meeting in Paris gives a response and plants the seeds of hope in Iran and entire region. A response to all cries that seeks freedom and rescue,

• a great gathering in Paris, thousands of Iranians, while being supported by a number of prominent European and American dignitaries, reminded that a major development is on the way in Iran and a democratic change, as a solution to avoid an unprecedented regional and international crisis, is at hand.

the President of the Maryam Rajavi , President-elect of the Iranian Resistance will symbolize millions of oppressed Iranians who seek for liberty and democracy in Iran more than Four decades but the International community has ignored them unfortunately!.

In this assembling Iran rises with all his great stature to say: I resist against tyrannical fundamental regime of fascist mullahs.

So, it is a national and international obligation for all compatriots and all who respect human values  to participate in this action and announce his presence!