The Iranian authorities’s continued crackdown on non-governmental charities has dealt an additional blow, ensuing within the closure of the NGO safehouse Mehre Shams Afrid.
The NGO, which strives to alleviate the social and household challenges confronted by ladies and kids in Urmia, Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, is a vital group for supporting and empowering susceptible ladies, however it’s the newest sufferer of presidency repression. It grew to become.
The closure is harking back to earlier closures of Iranian NGOs reminiscent of Imam Ali’s Popular Student Relief Society (IAPSRS), Qarneh Khurshid, and Omid-e-Meer Foundation, and is a humiliation of presidency interference in impartial philanthropy. displays the tendency to
NGO CEO Fatemeh Babahani introduced the closure on Sunday, April twenty eighth by means of the The home was closed within the worst doable method!” he lamented. .
In an interview with Tehran’s Sharg newspaper on Saturday, Babakhani warned that Iran’s State Welfare Organization (SWO) in West Azerbaijan province was making an attempt to close down Mehre Shams Afarid. The closure got here after a tense assembly on Saturday that Babahani described as “like an interrogation,” throughout which SWO officers scrutinized the group’s monetary sources. At the identical time, SWO’s social emergency providers intervened within the NGO secure home and transferred all the ladies to a social emergency facility, which she likened to a “cage”, with out issuing any formal judgment or written order, she added. .
View from contained in the secure home
SWO officers cited monetary inadequacies as the explanation for the closure, however Mr Babakani refuted these claims, arguing that this was a part of a wider sample of stress on the group. “These phrases are excuses,” the Director General of the State SWO stated. [West Azerbaijan] He threatened to close down NGOs and secure homes,” Babakani retorted.
Furthermore, she revealed that the Director-General had put stress on her, saying, “You do not put on a very good hijab, you’re a dissident, and also you act towards Sharia customs and towards the regime on social media.” The query raised was why she used the hashtag “Women, Life, Freedom.”
The closure of Mere Shams Afrid will not be an remoted incident.
In 2020, Iranian safety forces arrested Sharmin Meimandinejad, founder and director of Imam Ali People’s Student Relief Society (IAPSRS), the nation’s largest anti-poverty NGO, and subsequently closed its headquarters.
Meimandinejad and his colleagues Morteza Kaymanesh and Katayoun Afraze had been arrested on June 21, 2020 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) on costs of “insulting” the Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini and the Supreme Leader. IRGC) was arrested by intelligence companies. Ali Khamenei additionally known as it “an act that violates nationwide safety.”
Subsequently, the twenty eighth Branch of the Tehran Court of Appeals upheld the choice to dissolve the IAPSRS introduced by the Iranian Ministry of Interior. The Interior Ministry accused the NGO of “making political statements in a time of nationwide disaster, defamation, anti-religious actions and lack of monetary transparency.”
The closure of IAPSRS confronted a lot criticism from Iranians and human rights teams who condemned the ruling.
The founders of Kaneh Khurshid, Leiri Arshad and Shavar Monshizadeh, introduced that they had been dealing with stress from the Iranian authorities and had been subsequently pressured to droop their actions. In an interview with Hamshahari, Arshad stated:
“They don’t need NGOs to be as energetic as they was.”
Furthermore, in August 2022, one other NGO, Noor Sepid Hedayat Social Harm Reduction Institute, which helps ladies and susceptible youngsters with drug abuse issues in Shush, a district in southern Tehran, closed its doorways. Announced. Although he didn’t present additional particulars, Sepideh Alizadeh, the director of Noor Sepid, stated in an Instagram submit that “the operations of this heart have been taken over” and that providers “can be supplied by one other operator. ” introduced.
The closure of those organizations underscores the diminishing house for impartial civil society initiatives in Iran, because the Iranian authorities continues its crackdown on non-governmental organizations. This development in the end deprives society’s most marginalized folks, notably ladies, from receiving the important help they want.