At midnight on Nov. 15, Iran’s government announced a precipitous 300 percent hike in fuel prices. Immediate public outcries quickly escalated into nationwide protests that spread to more than 100 cities and gripped the country for 6 straight days, before the authorities effectively crushed them.
IN SEPTEMBER 2017, a group of Iranian environmentalists working on Asiatic cheetah preservation with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation felt a pang of alarm. Thomas S. Kaplan, a billionaire precious metals investor then best known for his fine art collection, had just made a surprise public appearance in New York at the annual conference of United Against Nuclear Iran. The Iranian environmentalists were concerned because their group had gotten aid from one of Kaplan’s nonpolitical charities. Now, he was speaking before a group that was extremely hostile to their country.
Iranian authorities are deliberately covering up the scale of the mass crackdown against protesters, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should immediately announce the number of deaths, arrests, and detentions from the recent protests and permit an independent inquiry into alleged abuses.
The international community must denounce the intentional lethal use of force by Iranian security forces that has resulted in the killings of at least 143 protesters since demonstrations broke out on 15 November, Amnesty International said today.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Iranian intelligence agency harassment and threats against Iranian journalists based abroad, especially in Britain, and against their families still in Iran, and the role played by the Iranian ambassador in London in relaying these threats.
UN human rights experts have expressed grave concerns about the situation in Iran as protests spread across the country over the past week.
On Saturday, November 16, in response to growing popular unrest and protests over the tripling of gas prices, the Iranian government pulled a “North Korea,” cutting internet access to deny protesters the ability to communicate with each other and as an attempt to prevent news from getting out of Iran.
Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is among only four UN member states who have not signed the resolution for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
When the 2011 Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, Iran’s leadership embraced the revolutions as an Islamic Awakening, with the notable exception of Syria where Tehran saw the demonstrations as a grave threat to its security and relationship with its sole regional ally.
For more than forty years Iran has billed itself as a revolutionary, radical force, vowing to upend the staid and corrupt order of the Middle East. Its pillars—including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—adopted not only the rhetoric of political Islam, but also the slogans of the leftist liberation movements that were fervent in the 1970s, railing against conservative fatcats.
