We the undersigned, representing international women’s groups and activists, human rights organizations and activists, university and academic centers, and social justice initiatives, would like to express our support for Iranian women in their effort to reform laws and achieve equal status within the Iranian legal system.
(Change for Equality: Student and women’s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat’s nine and half year prison sentence has been upheld in appeal. The sentence was submitted to her lawyer on Saturday July 24.
According to reports by Rahana, Bahareh Hedayat faced a variety of charges after her arrest, including spreading of propaganda against the state through interviews with foreign media, insulting the Leader of IRI, insulting the President of the IRI, disruption of public order through (...))
According to reports by Kalameh News Site and other independent human rights investigators, at least seventeen prisoners of conscience imprisoned in the aftermath of the protests to the disputed results of the Presidential elections have been transferred to solitary confinement and are on hunger strike. The seventeen prisoners were being held at Evin’s Public Ward 350, but were transferred to solitary confinement in Ward 240, after they objected to prison conditions, including poor (...)
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Change for Equality: Nasim Sarabandi, women’s and student rights activist has been summoned to investigative branch 4 of the Revolutionary Courts. According to StudentNews website, in October 2009 Nasim Sarabandi had been arrested and transferred to one of the offices of the Ministry of Intelligence along with 17 other members of the Tehran Council of the student organization the Office to Foster Unity. In the past months, including in February 2010 and June 2010, officers of the Ministry (...)
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Change for Equality: Narges Mohammadi, human and women’s right activist, was hospitalised on July 3rd due to her poor physical condition.
On 3rd of July, Narges Mohammadi was released from prison after paying the bail. At the time she was suffering from very severe physical conditions which lead her to hospital. Since her release she gets muscle paralysis once in a few hours so that she is not able to do her daily work and even she cannot talk.
According to her husband, Taghi Rahmani, her (...)
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Change for Equality: Iran’s Supreme Court approved the death sentence by execution of Zeynab Jalalian in November 2009. The sentence has been submitted to the implementation office and is scheduled to be carried out. The exact date and time when the sentence will be implemented is unclear, but it may take place in a matter of hours or days. Khalil Bahramian, a prominent lawyer, who has represented others sentenced to death, and who efforts to represent Zeynab by the courts was rejected, (...)
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RAHANA: The 28th branch of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran has sentenced Bahareh Hedayat to 9 ½ years in prison. Hedayat was tried on charges of anti-state propaganda through interviews with foreign media, insulting the Leader, insulting the president, disrupting public order by participating in illegal gatherings and illegal entry to the Amir Kabir University campus during a visit by Mehdi Karroubi.
According to a RAHANA reporter, Hedayat was given 6 months for insulting the president, 2 (...)
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Iranian authorities should end their efforts to arrest Mohammad Mostafaee, a human rights lawyer whose work came into international focus with his defense of Sakineh Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today.
In what is being interpreted as a pressure tactic to force Mostafaee to turn himself in, his wife, Fereshteh Halimi, and brother-in-law, Farhad Halimi, neither of whom is involved in human rights (...)
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The Iranian judiciary should halt plans to execute a woman convicted of adultery, Human Rights Watch said today. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43 year-old mother of two who was previously punished with flogging for having an “illicit relationship,” faces imminent death by stoning after a second court convicted her of adultery during marriage.
On May 15, 2006, a criminal court in East Azerbaijan province found Ashtiani guilty of having an “illicit relationship” with two men following the death (...)
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The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran appealed to the Iranian Judiciary to halt the execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year old mother of two children convicted of adultery, who faces death by stoning, and for her case be reviewed or her request for a pardon be granted.
The Campaign also called on the Iranian parliament to immediately abolish the punishment of death by stoning.
The terms of the sentence under Iranian law call for Ashtiani to be killed with medium (...)
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Kalameh: Shiva Nazarahari’s family is gravely concerned about the fact that her court date has not yet been scheduled despite the fact that she has been in temporary detention for nearly a year. Shiva Nazarahari, is a journalist, human rights defender and women’s rights activist. A court hearing had been scheduled in June but was postponed for unknown reasons. During that time, Judge PirAbassi, the judge overseeing the case, had promised Shiva and her family that after combining the cases (...)read more
Change for Equality: We have been looking through websites. Since the moment we heard the news we’ve been looking on the Web for your name, for a sign of you. But the signs are scarce, just like your footprints in the snow the day you ran away from home.
You were 10 and perhaps your footprints are lost in the snow, perhaps on the rocks or under the sunlight of the meadow. I don’t know which season it was; yet now it seems they have decided that the season when you leave should be summer.
We (...)read more
Change for Equality: In their nearly four years of activism, the activists of the One Million Signatures Campaign have regularly attempted to use different methods to make their message of equality heard by the public. In addition to presence in the streets and face to face engagement with passers by, they have used different symbolic objects to express their opposition to legal discrimination against women. Among these symbols, are stickers related to women’s rights that were affixed to (...)read more
Change for Equality: Mahboubeh Karami, a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign to Change Discriminatory Laws, was allowed a visitation with her brother on May 25th. Mahboubeh has spent 85 days in solitary confinement so far, and most of this duration has been spent in ward 2-alef. In letters addressed to her father and brother, she has written of her sorrow as well as her resistance. You can read the letters below:
Letter to my dear father: These disgraceful men have taken my (...)read more
Change for Equality: Shirin Alam Houli was born in 1981 in a small village on the outskirts of the city of Makou in Kurdistan Province, Iran. After spending tow years in Evin prison she was sentenced to death on the charge of "moharebeh" or enmity with god. She was executed on Sunday May 9, 2010, without prior notice and while the Supreme Court was still in the process of ruling on her sentence. Neither, Shirin, her family or her lawyers were informed about the planned execution.
While (...)read more
Change for Equality: Some of the activists in the One Million Signatures Campaign paid the family of Mahboubeh Karami a visit on Friday April 9, 2010. Mahboubeh was arrested on March 2. Since her arrest she has only been allowed a visit with her family. She has been in solitary confinement the entire time of her detention.
Last year, on her way to visit the family of the late Dr. Zahra Baniyaghoub, along with several other women’s rights activists on the occasion of the New Year, (...)read more
Change for Equality: Jafar Panahi is a well known filmmaker famous for films such as the White Baloon, the Circle, and Crimson Gold. In recent years he has received international recognition and international awards for his film Offside, including at Film Festivals in Venice, Montreal and Berlin. All his awards are being housed voluntarily at the Tehran Cinema Museum. But this renowned filmmaker has been in prison for over a month now and during this time he has only been allowed one (...)read more
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