A Daily Overview of Human Rights Violations in Iran for December 21, 2018

The following is an overview of human rights violations in Iran on December 21th, 2018 based on the information compiled and verified by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

(1) A school bus driver in Bandar-e Mahshahr is facing charges after being accused of sexually assaulting a girl while transporting students. Two other school bus drivers were arrested yesterday.

(2) Two Sunni clerics, Molavi Khodabakhsh Eslamdoust and Molavi Esmail Eslamdoust were summoned to the Revolutionary Court in Chabahar.

(3) An 11-year-old hanged himself in Izeh due to poverty. More than 7% of suicides in Iran are committed by teenagers. Iranian news agencies reported that he committed suicide due to a family conflict, but some news in cyber space noted it happened because of poverty. Izeh is a city in Khuzestan province.

(4) Iranian border patrol shot three Kurdish couriers also known as kulbars, Rahman Shovaneh, Nader Nabizadeh, and AliMamand in Oshnavieh, Piranshahr, and Sardasht. Another kulbar, Salar Tanhaei, was found dead from hypothermia in Javanrud.

(5) Water crisis will cause 20 million people to migrate from the south of Iran. Ali Asadi Karam, a member of the parliament added that this migration which is due to the water scarcity will have so many social consequences.

(6) A prisoner in Nowshahr who was arrested on charge of murder and was sentenced to death, was saved from execution after 10 years in jail with forgiveness and consent of the next of kin. His execution was scheduled the next week.

(7) Three firefighters were injured in an unsafe workplace-related incident in a warehouse in Mashhad.

(8) A Sunni prisoner, Moloud Shaier, was released on parole from Urmia prison. She was arrested in January 2016 and was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment on charges of “collaborating with Salafi groups”.

(9) Sam Nasir Moghadam is a political prisoner who was sentenced to two years imprisonment on charge of ‘propaganda against the State’ and ‘insulting the Supreme Leader’.

(10) Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, about the conditions of detained journalists in Iran, which is one of the world’s five biggest jailers of journalist. According to the worldwide round-up on deadly violence and abusive treatment of media personnel that RSF published yesterday. “Imprisoning journalists, denying them medical care while they are detained and denying them the right to a fair trial constitute a flagrant violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is party,” RSF points out.