Detained Hijab Protester Beaten Into ‘Forced Confessions’

Usually when Kayhan Daily attacks an individual or entity it signals a policy or attitude by hardliners. The paper is linked to and supported by the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Its front-page story on Wednesday, August 4, accusing the ‘reformists’ who are loyal to the Islamic Republic, can be a signal of an impending campaign by hardliner followers of Khamenei.

The Kayhan has gone farther, charging that reformist media outlets publish lies and censor positive news daily to instil despair in society and suggest that Iran is entangled in a deadlock and that there is a wide rift between the nation and the government.

The accusation is characteristic of Kayhan's behavior in fabricating incriminating cases against intellectuals, journalists and political activists.

The paper claimed that the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington DC has suggested to the US government "to exert psychological pressure on the people of Iran and use the accumulated anxiety and anger among Iranians to instil hatred toward the government, while “beautifying” its enemies.

Kayhan charged that reformist media in Iran constantly portray ordinary problems as crises to accomplish that objective and further Cato's agenda to reinforce the West's “minions” and collaborators. The effort, said Kayhan, is aimed at discrediting the government, erode the people's trust, having the idea of a regime change on its agenda.

Kayhan presented no evidence to support its wild accusations and it was not clear why it singled out the Cato Institute or how the US government could influence government-controlled media in Iran.

Like similar cases in the past, the Kayhan quoted Khamenei’s past warnings about a media onslaught on the Islamic Republic. In this way Kayhan accused the reformist media and journalists of working against Khamenei's will as accomplices of the United States.

The Kayhan said that Shargh newspaper's coverage of recent flash floods in Iran was an example of the kind of articles that have a destructive role. Shargh had written mostly objective reports about lack of government warnings about the impending floods and lack of preparedness to deal with its aftermath.

The Kayhan also mentioned another report in the same newspaper last year about child marriage in Iran and characterized it as portraying a disparaging image of the country.

Kayhan made the same accusation about a similar report in Ebtekar newspaper and went on to quote a report in Etemad newspaper about the suicide attempts by 8 desperate workers, calling it mud-slinging against the government.

The hardliner daily also accused Iran's reformist press of featuring articles by Iranian expat journalists and criticized them for interviewing former deputy chief of the Iranian Environmental Agency Kaveh Madani, charging him as always of being a fugitive spy, while Madani has never been officially charged with any offense.

The Kayhan also accused the Jomhouri Eslami, a newspaper founded by Khamenei in 1979, of spreading lies by writing about drought in Iran quoting Madani, who happens to be an expert on water resources.

Meanwhile, the Kayhan claimed that some reformist journalists work for foreign-based media from Iran and get paid in dollars. Although some of these accusations are hard to prove, or in fact do not constitute an offense under Iranian laws, the hardliner Judiciary can use Kayhan’s claims to prosecute journalists in the future.

The Kayhan quoted Khamenei as saying in a meeting with Judiciary officials in June: "Some people tell a lie, or they spread a rumor… One of the duties of the Judiciary is to deal with these instances…If you do not have a law [for a certain situation], quickly make a law."

The US State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom tweeted on Wednesday that “Amid a continued rise in arrests, sentences, and imprisonments, the US urges Iran to halt its ongoing oppression of the Baha'i community and honor its international obligations to respect the right of all Iranians to freedom of religion or belief.”

Earlier in the day, Democrat lawmaker Ted Deutch said he is “horrified that Iran arrested several members of the Baha'i faith, including religious leaders, on charges of spying for Israel without offering evidence of illegal activity.”

Noting that these “unjust detentions are part of Iran's state-sponsored persecution of religious minorities, including the Baha'i, Florida's representative urged “the House to swiftly pass my resolution, H.Res 744, which condemns Iran’s persecution of Baha’is and urges the President and Secretary of State to impose sanctions on Iranians directly responsible for serious human rights abuses, including abuses committed against Baha'is.”

Iran’s security forces this week arrested several members of the Baha’i religious community regarded by the clerical government as heretics, and raided more than 20 households. 

Security forces also laid siege to a village in northern Iran on August 2 and started demolishing houses and farms belonging to members of the persecuted Baha’i faith.

Iran’s intelligence ministry claimed that the arrested Baha’is were linked to the Baha’i center in Israel, where the religious group’s international headquarters are located, and had collected and transferred information there.

According to a National Security Council statement on Wednesday, Sullivan, who spoke with the Iranian-American journalist, said that US President Joe Biden will continue to receive updates on her situation, and added that the administration will continue to protect its citizens and dissidents from threats from the Islamic Republic.

The statement added that “the US Government will use all tools at its disposal to disrupt and deter threats from Iran, including those which target US citizens and dissidents living in the United States."

A man armed with a loaded AK-47, identified as Khalid Mehdiyev, spent two days last week outside the home of Alinejad, and at one point attempted to open the door. 

Alinejad, who was also the target of an international kidnapping plot orchestrated by Iran’s intelligence network last year, has promoted videos of women protesting Iran's compulsory Islamic dress code to her millions of social media followers. 

Several former and current US officials have decried the Islamic Republic’s harassment of the New York-based journalist and praised her steadfast fight. 

Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) said on August 2, “We cannot sit idly by and continue to allow US persons to be victims of transnational repression. It's why we introduced the Masih Alinejad HUNT Act of 2021.”

In a new briefing entitled “They are shooting brazenly”: Iran’s militarized response to May 2022 protests released on Wednesday, the global rights watchdog reiterated the urgent need for the UN Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative and accountability mechanism to hold Iranian authorities accountable for serious crimes under international law.

“The Iranian authorities’ unlawful use of force during the crackdown on the May 2022 protests reflects increasing militarization of the policing of protests in recent years, which has left hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including children, dead and thousands of others injured since December 2017,” Amnesty International said.

In May, southwestern parts of Iran witnessed two waves of protests. In the first half of May a government decision that resulted in a sudden rise of food prices led to largely peaceful demonstrations. Protesters chanted slogans against clerics including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi as the overnight price hike was due to the government’s decision to remove subsidies for food imports.

Iran has systematically used military force against peaceful protesters on several occasions since 2017. In November 2019 security forces armed with military weapons killed at least 1,500 people.

Amnesty International reiterated that with avenues for justice completely closed domestically, there is urgent need for the UN Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative and accountability mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyze evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran to enable future prosecutions.

The organization’s new research documents how Iran’s security forces unlawfully fired live ammunition and birdshot in May 2022 to crush largely peaceful protests over soaring food prices and a deadly building collapse.

The organization has verified that Iran’s security forces killed four people in connection with the protests and documented a pattern of birdshot injuries amounting to torture amongst protesters and bystanders, including children.

The next round of multiple anti-government protests took place in several cities in late May after the deadly collapse of a newly built ten-story building in the southwestern city of Abadan which according to the authorities left at least 43 people dead.

The incident instantly became an example of government corruption and insider dealings by Islamic Republic officials and led to days of large anti-government protests in Khuzestan and elsewhere.

The government deployed thousands of anti-riot police to Abadan and other cities in the province and arrested an unknown number of people, stopping the protests. Some officials later admitted that "corruption" was the underlying reason for the tragedy of the building’s collapse.

The authorities also shutdown the Internet and disrupted mobile networks in the affected areas to prevent people from communicating with each other and posting videos and photos of the violence against protesters on social media.

“Rightful outrage among people in Iran about state corruption, inflation, unemployment, low or unpaid wages, food insecurity, as well as political repression is likely to lead to more protests, and Iran’s security forces will continue to feel emboldened to kill and injure protesters if they are not held accountable,” Amnesty said Tuesday.

Earlier this week, an Iranian spokesman said that Raisi (Raeesi) is preparing to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the first time. Last year after he toook office he did not travel to New York and send a video address to the General Assembly.

Senators Tom Cotton, March Rubio, Joni Ernst and Ted Cruz are among the eight Senators who told Biden, “Raisi’s involvement in mass murder and the Iranian regime’s campaign to assassinate U.S. officials on American soil make allowing Raisi and his henchmen to enter our country an inexcusable threat to national security.”

Raisi is accused of being a member of a death commission that ordered the summary execution of thousands of political prisoner sin Iran in 1988.

Moreover, US law enforcement arrested a man armed with an AK-47 assault rifle in Brooklyn last week near the house of a well-known Iranian journalist and women’s rights defender Masih Alinejad, believed to be a target of the Iranian regime. Last year, the US uncovered a plot by Iranian intelligence to kidnap the activist.

The Senators in their letter cited precedence of US denying visas to Iranian and other leaders and diplomats for visiting the UN, urging President Biden to also deny entry to Raisi and his aides.