Repressive components inside the safety and intelligence forces, in addition to the judiciary, held broad powers and remained the first perpetrators of rights violations. In specific, the variety of executions for drug-related crimes elevated sharply in comparison with the earlier yr. Security and intelligence forces arrested journalists, bloggers, and social media activists, and revolutionary courts handed down heavy sentences towards them.
loss of life penalty and torture
Iranian legislation punishes the loss of life penalty for a lot of crimes, together with non-violent offenses equivalent to “insulting the Prophet,” apostasy, homosexuality, adultery and drug-related crimes. The majority of prisoners executed in 2015 had been drug offenders convicted after flawed trials in revolutionary courts.
On August 1, Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Mohammad Ali Taheri, chief of the New Era Spiritual Healing Group, to loss of life for “spreading corruption on earth.” Judicial authorities beforehand sentenced him to 5 years in jail, 74 lashes and a high-quality for related conduct in 2011. On December 20, a department of the Supreme Court overturned Taheri’s loss of life sentence and despatched his case again to the Revolutionary Court for retrial.
According to unofficial sources, no less than 4 inmates executed in 2015 might have been youngster offenders who had been underneath the age of 18 on the time for capital homicide and rape crimes. Dozens of kid offenders, together with Saman Naseem and Salar Shadizadi, reportedly stay on loss of life row and prone to execution. Iranian legislation permits for the loss of life penalty for anybody who has reached the official age of puberty, 9 for women and 15 for boys.
On August 26, authorities executed Behruz al-Khani, an Iranian-Kurdish man convicted in Mohalebe by a revolutionary courtroom of involvement within the assassination of a prosecutor for the armed insurgent group PJAK. The Supreme Court additionally needed to resolve on an enchantment on the time of Alhani’s execution.
freedom of expression and data
freedom of meeting and affiliation
Numerous individuals detained for membership in banned opposition events, commerce unions, and pupil organizations had been in jail. Judicial authorities focused unbiased and unregistered labor unions, and safety and intelligence forces continued to spherical up labor activists and leaders.
Police arrested unbiased labor activist Reza Amjadi within the Kurdish-majority metropolis of Sanandaj on April 25, and Mahmoud Salehi and Osman Esmaili in Saqqes on April 28, in addition to the Tehran Suburban Bus Company. Two members of the commerce union, Ebrahim Maddadi and Daboud, had been arrested. Razavi, April twenty ninth at dwelling.
Political prisoners and human rights activists
On May 10, the Revolutionary Court sentenced youngster and civil rights activist Athena Daemi to 14 years in jail for crimes together with “meeting, collusion, and propaganda towards the state” and “insulting the Supreme Leader and spiritual figures.” It was introduced that the choice had been made. He praised her “sanctity” for her peaceable actions.
On August 19, a courtroom discovered a former Tehran prosecutor on expenses associated to the torture and loss of life of three protesters held within the Khalizak detention middle after their arrest in the course of the 2009 post-election protests. Said Mortazavi was acquitted. Mortazavi has up to now escaped felony punishment regardless of being suspected of getting been concerned in varied critical rights violations throughout his time in public workplace.
Prominent opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi stay underneath home arrest, having been detained with out cost or trial since February 2011.
girls’s rights
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In August, Iranian judicial authorities blocked the discharge of ladies’s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat, regardless of an order from an appeals courtroom. In January 2010, the Revolutionary Court sentenced Hedayat to seven and a half years in jail for “acts towards nationwide safety” and contempt of public servants for his peaceable actions.
remedy of minorities
The authorities denies spiritual freedom and discriminates towards Baha’is, Iran’s largest non-Muslim spiritual minority. As of November 20, 2015, no less than 74 Baha’is had been held in Iranian prisons. Security forces and intelligence forces additionally proceed to focus on converts from Islam, Farsi-speaking Protestant and evangelical congregations, and members of the Mother Church motion. Some had been charged with “acts towards nationwide safety” and “propaganda towards the state.”
On July 29, metropolis officers destroyed a Sunni shrine in Tehran’s Poonak district, claiming it was working with out the mandatory permits. The authorities continued to focus on members of Sufi mystical orders, significantly members of the Nematrahi Gonabadi order.
The authorities restricted the cultural and political actions of the nation’s Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Arab, and Baluch ethnic minorities. In April police and safety authorities rounded up and detained numerous Awazi Arabs, together with a number of kids, in Khuzestan province. In July, Kurdistan University introduced the opening of a brand new division of Kurdish language and literary research, which is able to settle for college students for the 2015-16 educational yr.
sexual orientation and gender id
Same-sex acts between males are punishable by flogging or loss of life in Iran. Same-sex acts between girls are punishable by flogging. Lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender persons are topic to official harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, prosecution, abuse, and torture. Iran permits and subsidizes gender reassignment surgical procedure for transgender individuals, however there are not any legal guidelines prohibiting discrimination towards transgender individuals.
refugees
main worldwide actors
On July 14, the 5 everlasting members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and Iran introduced that they’d reached a complete settlement to observe Iran’s nuclear program. The settlement paves the way in which for the gradual lifting of monetary and financial sanctions towards Iran. On July 28, throughout EU Foreign Secretary Mogherini’s go to to Tehran, Iran’s international minister mentioned that Iran and the European Union had agreed to carry talks “on quite a lot of points, together with human rights.”
The authorities continued to dam entry to Iran by UN Special Rapporteur on the scenario of human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shahid, and different UN human rights consultants.