Flogging, Electric Shocks, and Sexual Violence for Iran’s Detained Minors

UPDATES: Iran Protests — A Women’s Bill of Rights

UPDATE 1151 GMT:

Young women in Qom dance, without hijab, in solidarity with five teenagers in a Tehran suburb being sought by security forces.

Last week the teenagers, in the town of Ekbatan, filmed themselves — without hijab and wearing loose clothing — dancing to Calm Down by Rema and Selena Gomez. After the video went viral, Iranian officers tried to identify and track down the women.

UPDATE, MAR 18:

More than 30 doctors and human rights lawyers in Iran and France have called on Iranian authorities to release human rights attorney Mohammad Najafi, detained since 2018.

The 31 signatories note that Najafi has been in solitary confinement since September 21 because he condemned prison conditions and the murder of a detainee in police custody. Suffering from heart and kidney ailments and diabtes, he has been deprived of medical care and is on the 44th day of a hunger strike.

Despite enduring terrible physical and psychological torture, including within the four walls of his cell, Mohammad Najafi never failed to help all those who needed his assistance in defending themselves.

His inspiring struggle obliges us to come together around the world in solidarity. The whole world must know that in Iran, lawyers are imprisoned, the right to defense is prohibited, and medical staff are prevented from providing assistance.

The Iranian regime has systematically imprisoned human rights lawyers, including those who have represented detained protesters since the mass demonstrations in 2009 over the disputed Presidential election.

See also Iran’s Latest Crackdown on Lawyers and Labor Activists

UPDATE, MAR 17:

Protesters have taken to the streets in Zahedan for the 25th Friday in a row.

Demonstrators chanted,”Freedom, Freedom, Freedom”, “We don’t want the Islamic Republic”, and “Political prisoners must be released.”

Friday Prayer leader Molavi Abdolhamid repeated his call for fundamental change in the governance of Iran: “One ethnic group and one religion cannot rule the country.”

UPDATE, MAR 16:

Labor activist Sepideh Qolian has been rearrested, five hours after she was released from her latest detention of five months.

Qolian was seized after she and her family, traveling in three cars to their hometown of Dezful, were stopped on a motorway about 1 a.m. in Khuzestan Province in southwest Iran.

A source close to the family said:

Plainclothes officers and armed policemen…surrounded them.

There were many cars and a large number of people, so it’s unclear how many people were there to arrest Sepideh. All I know is that, as far as my eyes could see, there were plainclothes officers surrounding the family.

The security forces told Qoliyan’s relatives that she would be taken to Tehran and advised them to seek information about the case at the prosecutor’s office in Evin Prison. They did not reveal which intelligence agency they belonged to and did not show an arrest warrant.

Qolian has been periodically imprisoned since November 2018 when she reported on strikes at a sugar factory.

She was on furlough, recovering from Coronavirus, when she was again put behind bars on charges of “spreading lies and propaganda”.

She has said that female detainees face the “most savage forms of torture, and are kept in the most inhuman conditions, and their crime is simply that they are women and inmates.”

Marking her brief release from prison on Wednesday, Qolian shouted — linking the Supreme Leader to an evil figure in Persian mythology — “Khamenei Zahhak, we’ll push you under the earth.”

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Demonstrators revived Iran’s six-month protests on Tuesday during Chaharshanbeh Suri, the Persian festival of fire.

Protesters rallied again for rights, justice, and gender equality in cities across the country, including several areas of the capital Tehran.

In Ebtekan, west of Tehran, youths set fire to a banner of the Supreme Leader and to the post-1979 national flag while chanting “We don’t want the Islamic Republic.” Women burnt their headscarves in protest against compulsory hijab.

Ebtekan has become a center of dissent after a viral video of five teenage women joyously dancing, without hijab, earlier this month. Security forces have been trying to identify and track down the quintet, but have only succeeded in prompting videos of women dancing in solidarity inside and outside Iran.

In the Kurdish cities of Sanandaj and Saqqez — the hometown of Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody spurred the protests last September — protesters chanted “Woman, Life, Freedom”; “Death to Khamenei”; and “Kurdistan, Kurdistan, Fascist Graveyard”. Security forces fired teargas in Saqqez in response.

Rallies were also reported in Zanjan, Piranshahr, Shahrari, Baneh, Kamiyaran, Marivan, Zahedan, Chabahar, and Rasht.

Iranians mark Chaharshanbeh Suri on the last Tuesday night of the Persian calendar year, lighting small fires and jumping over them while making wishes for the next 12 months.

Dancing in the rain in Tehran until late into the night: