Category: Features

Rouhani’s “Open-Door” Economic Policy for Iran: Recipe for Indebtedness, Deindustrialization and Dependence

by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH A number of commentators have compared President Rouhani’s policies of opening Iran’s markets to Western business with those of China’s Deng Xiaoping following the death of Mao Zedong some four decades ago [1]. A closer look at […]

Iranian film-maker Mania Akbari: ‘Cinema threatens the government’

theguardian.com Tom Seymour Among the laptops and the lattes in the foyer of London’s BFI Southbank sits a dissident and exile. Film-maker Mania Akbari fled her native Tehran last summer. She is determined to examine marriage, abortion, infidelity and lesbianism […]

Amnesty International – URGENT ACTION – IRAN: ELDERLY PROFESSOR’S SIX-YEAR JAIL TERM UPHELD

URGENT ACTION ELDERLY PROFESSOR’S SIX-YEAR JAIL TERM UPHELD Elderly prisoner of conscience Hossein Rafiee, a retired university professor, has had his six-year prison sentence, imposed for his peaceful political activism, upheld by an appeal court. The authorities have rejected his […]

Amnesty International – Iran: Joint letter to Member States of the UN Human Rights Council

The joint letter that Amnesty International and 33 other human rights and civil society groups have written to Member States of the UN Human Rights Council, calling on them to support the resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur […]

Smoke and mirrors in Iranian elections

11th March 2016 Jane Green reports. Media coverage of the Parliamentary elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran last week were remarkable for their absence of criticism of the theocratic regime, its human rights record and its role as one […]

CODIR Calls for the immediate release of trade union leader, Reza Shahabi, from prison!

Reza Shahabi, board member of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Workers’ Syndicate, sentenced to one year imprisonment and the Court of Appeal confirmed the sentence Background information: In December 2014 Reza Shahabi was summoned to Evin prison’s prosecutor office, while he […]

Iran: what does ending sanctions mean for workers?

22 Feb 2016, By Owen Tudor UPDATE – 23 February: Almost immediately this post went live, we heard the depressing news that teachers’ union leader Ismail Abdi (see earlier posts about his case and about Amnesty International designating him a […]

Iran’s Nobel Peace Laureate Speaks From Exile

“Human rights activists do not have the right to lose hope,” says Iran human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi. —By Bryan Schatz Mon Feb. 29, 2016 6:00 AM EST Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi Domenech […]

International unions condemn arrests in Iran

25th Febuary 2016 Press Release For Immediate Use The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has this week protested against a new wave of arrests by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which further undermine its human rights record, […]

Parliamentary elections in Iran: an interview with FIDH President Karim Lahidji

On 26 February 2016, parliamentary elections are to be held in Iran. Karim Lahidji, President of FIDH and of the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, answers questions about these elections and their possible impact in Iran. […]