El-Yasin Human Rights and International Affaris

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Widespread arrests in southwestern Iran

(radiozamaneh) Iranian security forces have arrested 50 people over the past two weeks in the Arab neighbourhoods of the southwestern province of Khuseztan.

Two of the detainees were killed while in custody, writer and human rights activist Yousef Azizi Banitaraf told Zamaneh.

“The security forces are telling elders of the tribes in the region to bring people to the voting booths,” Banitaraf reports; “and the young people are opposed to this.”

The arrests, which have taken place in Shoosh, Ahvaz and Hamidieh, were apparently triggered by a number of youth writing slogans on public walls calling for a boycott of the coming parliamentary elections. The reports indicate that Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan and Mohammad Kaabi were killed while in custody.

Last March another detainee, Reza Moghamessi also reportedly died in Dezfool Prison under torture.

Inhumane acts for defenseless prisoners

According to reports by “Human Rights and Democracy in Iran” the defenseless prisoners of Ghezalhesar prison are kept outside during heavy snowfalls and storms in temperatures below zero.During daily hours, these prisoners of Ghezalhesar are forced to go out from their cells to the prison yards from 7:30am till lunch time and once again after the lunch hours.The ill, elderly and those incapable of walking are not allowed to stay in their cells and are forced to be outside during extreme weather conditions where many suffer frostbite.Those prisoners who are incapable of leaving their cells are forced out and later transferred to the section 8 where they are being brutally beaten up by prison guards

Iran increasingly controls its Internet

TEHRAN — Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switches on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.

But recently the software, which allowed him and millions of other Iranians to go online through portals elsewhere in the world, stopped working. When it sporadically returns, speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook and Balatarin.com – which evaluates unofficial news and rumors in Farsi — become unusable.

“There has been a change,” said Maysam, who spoke on the condition his last name not to be used out of fear of being summoned by Iran’s cyber police. “It seems that the authorities are increasingly getting the upper hand online.”

Javad Lari’s lawyer Manijeh Mohmmadi said in an interview with Human Rights House of Iran that the Supreme Court recently overturned the death sentence and sent it back to the lower court, resulting in the new sentence of 2 years in prison.Mr. Lari’s lawyer who has been representing him for over 2 years while he has been behind bars with a death sentence, said that her client could be released within the next 24 hours.On September 16, 2009, agents from the Intelligence Ministry arrested Javad Lari at his workplace. On July 2010, Judge Salavati presiding over Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Mr. Lari to death.After Branch 32 of the Supreme Court overturned the ruling, Judge Salavati presiding over Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court re-issued Javad Lari’s death sentence and the case went back to the Supreme Court a second time for further review. The Supreme Court struck down the death penalty again and a lower court reduced the sentence to 2 years behind bars.The charges against Javad Lari stemmed from a visit he made to Iraq in 2008 in an unsuccessful attempt to visit some of his old friends. This trip prompted the authorities to accuse him of being connected with the Mujahedin-e Khalq party (MEK), which Mr. Lari and his lawyers have vehemently denied.

Filtering, denial of service attacks, withdrawal of content – censors use many different methods to silence news websites. In addition to drawing attention to these acts of censorship and providing the victims with legal, material and financial help, Reporters Without Borders has now decided to provide them with technical assistance as well.

So that independent news websites that are targeted by cyber-attacks and government blocking can continue posting information online, Reporters Without Borders is going to start mirroring sites. The first sites to be mirrored are those of the Chechen magazine Dosh and the Sri Lankan online newspaper Lanka-e News. We urge Internet users all over the world to create more mirrors of these sites in an act of solidarity.

Iran: Innovations in Cyber Dictatorship

In the latest examples creative repression over the internet, the Islamic regime has used Skype as a long-distance interrogation tool, and wrested control over a Facebook group for photos of hot guys and girls from its administrators.

Skype interrogation

In order to increase the pressure on one foreign-based Iranian journalist for the BBC, a relative in Iran was arbitrarily detained for nearly two weeks, and the journalist was interrogated over the internet on Skype video.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them.

OTTAWA — Twenty-five senators called Tuesday for the immediate release of 25 political prisoners in Iran, including a computer programmer and Canadian resident who is now on death row.Sen. Linda Frum, who rallied her colleagues, said that Iran’s unlawful detention and execution of political prisoners — in particular, Canadian residents — is unacceptable.“As a member of the Senate of Canada I condemn the Iranian regime’s deplorable abuse of human rights and call for the immediate release of unlawfully held prisoners” Frum said in the Red Chamber. “Canada will not stay silent on these issues.Each of the 25 senators delivered a speech detailing the case of one jailed Iranian. Among them was Saeed Malekpour, a 35-year-old website designer and Canadian resident who has been condemned to death. He was convicted of “desecrating and insulting Islam” after software he developed was used on pornographic websites, without his knowledge.

Eunice Soleimani, a student activist who was expelled from Bu-Ali Sina University and has been detained since December 2011 in Ardabil Prison, was once again beaten by prison agents.

According to reports, Mr. Soleimani who was severely tortured before this in the Tabriz Intelligence Agency, was beaten and tortured this time for going on a hunger strike.

The former secretary of the Turkish Center at Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamedan went on a hunger strike from some time ago in protest to his condition and transgressions by prison officials.

During his August 2010 temporary incarceration in the Tabriz Intelligence Agency, this Azari activist was abused and tortured by intelligence agents and according to his family, suffered three heart attacks after being subjected to electric shocks and being injected with mood and mind altering drugs by his interrogators.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Targeting Iran’s economy, the U.S. ordered tough new penalties Monday to further pinch the country’s financial system and encourage Israel to give sanctions more time before any military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

The new, stricter sanctions, authorized in legislation that President Barack Obama signed in December, will be enforced under an order he signed only now. They give U.S. banks new powers to freeze assets linked to the Iranian government and close loopholes that officials say Iran has used to move money despite earlier restrictions imposed by the U.S. and Europe.

The action against the Central Bank of Iran is more significant for its timing than its immediate effect. It comes as the United States and its allies are arguing that tough sanctions can still persuade Iran to back off what the West contends is a drive to build a nuclear bomb.

BERLIN (AP) — A German reporter says he was beaten by guards during his nearly five months of imprisonment in Iran and that he heard constant, “horrible cries” of other inmates being tortured.

In the first public comment since being freed a year ago, Marcus Hellwig told the Sunday mass-circulation tabloid Bild am Sonntag he was regularly beaten and constantly interrogated during the first 10 “brutal” days in captivity until a German diplomat intervened.

“Sometimes they claimed that I was a spy, then allegedly a terrorist,” he was quoted as saying. “They wanted to unsettle me with their never-ending questioning, wanted to put me under psychological pressure and create an ambiance of fear,” he said.

Hellwig and German photographer Jens Koch — both working for Bild am Sonntag — had entered Iran on tourist visas and were detained in October 2010 after interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.

While the Iranian standoff continues with European oil sanctions and American vessels crossing the Straits of Hormuz, time is left in Iran to deal with more significant threats.

Just last week, Iranian officials sentenced Aria Aramnejad, a singer, to 10 months in prison. His crime was a song, “Ali Barkhiz” (“Rise up Ali”), written following the Ashura uprising of 2009 — a series of civic protests that turned into one of the bloodiest crackdowns following the rigged elections that year. The song protests the exploitation of God and the Koran and asks the Imams to act so that the name of Ali, the Shi’a prophet, will not be carried in vain. “Imam Hussein was martyred for good to triumph against evil,” he said is his court hearing “so should we not expect the same from his followers? Is it not strange that in these days to ask the Imams for help in battling against evil is considered a crime in our country?” This interpretation, however, was apparently not accepted, at the least by the Islamic justice system. For them, asking the Imams to fight evil means “endangering the national security of the country.”

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