'Women, Life, Freedom' Movement Wins 2023 Freedom House Award

The Coordinating Council of Teachers' Union Organizations had called for further protests last week just hours after the Supreme Leader failed to address nationwide school poisonings.

The rallies were scheduled as a tribute to Jabbar Baghcheban, also known as Mirza Jabbar Asgarzadeh, an Iranian inventor and educator born on May 9, 1886, who established the first Iranian kindergarten and the first deaf school.

The council stressed the necessity of ending the "dominance of the ruling totalitarian ideology" in Iranian schools, claiming the current incompetent managers of the educational system should be replaced by those educated under more modern, secular pedagogy.

In addition to their usual demands such as better salaries and working conditions, the teachers’ council reiterated that Iran’s education system will not improve without a fundamental change.

In response, teachers in the cities of Kermanshah, Arak, Shush, Ahvaz, Torbat Heydarieh, Hamedan, Sanandaj, Eslamabad-e Gharb, Qazvin, Esfahan and Harsin gathered in front of the Education Departments on Tuesday.

Gatherings were held peacefully in some cities, but in Sanandaj west of Iran and Esfahan in the center the police force attacked protesters.

Hengaw Human Rights Organization, a Kurdish rights group, reported that the security forces have kidnapped two teachers in the city.

In its final statement, The Coordinating Council of Teachers' Union Organizations slammed the ideological indoctrination in textbooks, creating psychological insecurity and threatening the female students, and urged attention to the livelihood of the teachers.

“The goal of the education system is not to train citizens, but to train soldiers aligned with the narrow-minded indoctrination of totalitarian ideology," reads the statement.

Referring to the nationwide uprising following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the statement added what was seen in the schools and streets was the failure of a model that ignores the deep changes in society which wants to achieve its unrealistic ideals in the educational system.

Hundreds of schools in the Iranian provinces have been attacked by unidentified gases since November 30 when the first case of poisoning among schoolgirls was reported in the religious city of Qom. However, the government has not taken any tangible measures to identify and pursue the perpetrators, nor to explain to terrified parents and students what was happening, other than a few staged arrests. It is impossible such wide scale attacks could happen without regime approval.

Thousands of students have been affected, mostly girls, with hundreds hospitalized with symptoms including respiratory distress, numbness in their limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.

Critics of the regime say the attacks are part of a crackdown on protests, a claim denied by government officials who have claimed the symptoms are the result of mass hysteria.

Families of students have staged protest rallies urging officials to hold classes virtually rather than in school to protect children from further attacks.

The hacktivist group ‘Uprising till Overthrow', affiliated with the Albania-based opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) group, released hundreds of identification documents, minutes of meetings, the ministry’s correspondence, phone numbers of ministry officials, and the names of 11,000 employees of the foreign ministry, among others. 

According to the telegram channel of the hackers, all the sites related to the ministry such as the Islamic Republic’s embassies, and affiliated organizations were targeted, showing a landing page with photos of the leaders of MEK as well as photos of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Raisi with red crosses over them. 

Also on the page, there were slogans of “Death to Khamenei” and “Hail to Rajavi”, the current leader of the opposition group. “There is a great revolution underway in Iran. The uprising will continue until the palace of oppression is demolished. Iran’s democratic revolution will be victorious,” read the message on the pages. Most of the pages were down midday on Sunday. 

The ‘Uprising till Overthrow' had already hacked and deactivated several regime’s websites and services. In June 2022, it hacked over 5,000 security cameras of state bodies and 150 websites belonging to Tehran Municipality, displaying similar slogans on the websites and releasing internal data. 

The hack comes after another cyberassault in March on the portal of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Ershad) and its affiliated websites showing the photos of the Rajavis and calling for the death of the country’s supreme leader. 

Since the beginning of the current wave of protests in mid-September, several hacking groups have targeted state websites and online services. They have released numerous documents and have disrupted hundreds of surveillance cameras. 

The documents leaked on Sunday also revealed the Islamic Republic’s continuous efforts and correspondence with European officials to finalize a prisoner swap deal with Belgium, which would see jailed Iranian diplomat Asadollah Assadi released in exchange for the detained Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele. 

The Belgian Constitutional Court upheld a prisoner exchange treaty with Iran in March that could result in Assadi being swapped for Vandecasteele. The MEK mounted a fierce campaign against the deal, challenging the extradition. 

Former Iranian embassy attaché, Asadollah Asadi, 51, is currently serving a 20-year sentence in Belgium for alleged attempted murder and involvement in terrorism for his role in plotting a bomb attack during an MEK event near Paris in 2018. Asadi, the only Iranian diplomat ever brought to trial in Europe for direct involvement in terrorism was arrested in Germany, where he did not enjoy diplomatic immunity while he was on holiday. German authorities later extradited Assadi to Belgium. He was a diplomat in Iran’s embassy in Austria.

Security forces in Iran arrested aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, 41, who has worked in a variety of humanitarian agencies since at least 2006. In January, the Islamic Republic’s judiciary sentenced Vandecasteele, who was detained in 2022, to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes for alleged “spying and cooperation with the United States, money laundering and smuggling $500,000 out of Iran.” 

Iran has been accused of wrongfully detaining at least a dozen foreign and dual nationals on trumped up charges, effectively as hostages to extract concessions from Western governments. Most of them are held on spurious spying charges. 

The Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers' Trade Associations said teachers should gather in protest in front of the parliament in Tehran and education ministry departments in other cities.

In recent weeks, Iran's security forces have violently attacked teachers’ protests in Tehran and other cities detaining several demonstrators.

While calling for better salaries and working conditions, the teachers’ council also stated that Iran’s education system will not improve without a fundamental change. The union urged an end to the "dominance of the ruling totalitarian ideology" in Iranian schools.

Earlier, the union had called for further protests just hours after the Supreme Leader failed to address nationwide school poisonings in his speech on Wednesday.

Khamenei had been speaking at an event for the Islamic Republic’s National Teachers’ Day with a cherry-picked group of teachers. During the meeting, Khamenei discussed the country’s education system but failed to even mention the months of gas attacks against the schools across Iran which have left thousands of schoolgirls sick and hospitalized.

Scores of schools in many of the country’s provinces have been attacked by unidentified chemicals since November 30 when the first case of poisoning among schoolgirls was reported in the religious city of Qom.

The union also voiced support for the recent wave of protests by teachers and families of students who have been victims of the mysterious chemical attacks on schools.

The labor force at Pars Paper company in Hafttapeh, Khuzestan Province, and the railway maintenance workers in Kerman province were the latest to join the countrywide industrial action on Thursday, when truck drivers said they will stageastrike beginning May 22.

The Union of Truck-Owners and Truck Drivers issued a statement on Thursday, saying their complaints and short-term strikes have not resulted in any change in their situation therefore they plan a long and nationwide action.

Referring to rising prices and rampant inflation, they demanded fares on par with the increasing prices for fuel and spare parts. Since their previous nationwide strike that took place in over 160 cities about five years ago, their demands have not been met and their lives have become harder.

Their demands include better transport fares based on the weight of the cargo per kilometer, lower prices for spare parts, lower fuel prices through subsidies, removing customs tariffs and road tolls, as well as welfare and health facilities at terminals.

"We have said many times that our patience has a limit and such cruelty and oppression that is imposed on this hardworking group can no longer be tolerated,” read their statement, adding that “the government should take this warning seriously.”

People on social media describe the strike by the truckers as a significant blow to the Islamic Republic since it has the potential to cripple the economy.

The strike would be so costly for the regime that it is expected to lure them back into work by giving the extra fuel subsidies.

The statement came as workers in more than 100 oil, gas, petrochemical and other plants across the country have been staging strikes since April 22, protesting poor working conditions, low wages and rising cost of living. Almost all the striking workers in oil, gas, steel, petrochemicals and other industries are not officially hired and are working on temporary contracts, risking their only means of livelihood by joining the strikes.

Authorities claim that the strikes are being organized by anti-regime groups, a charge the Islamic Republic often makes to de-legitimize the demands of the workers who earn less than $200 a month. An official at South Pars gas field on the Persian Gulf stated last week that 4,000 protesting workers will be replaced by new ones.

Earlier in the week, the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers' Trade Associations also announced nationwide demonstrations, calling on teachers and educators to protest outside Education Ministry branches across the country and outside the parliament in Tehran on May 9.

The council stressed the necessity of ending the "dominance of the ruling totalitarian ideology" in Iranian schools, claiming the current incompetent managers of the educational system should be replaced by those educated under more modern, secular pedagogy.

After weeks of relative calm with sporadic bouts of unrest on streets, it seems that nighttime protests are gaining a new momentum. There are also calls by grassroot groups in a couple of neighborhoods in Tehran to hold rallies on Saturday.

Right groups have described the promptness of the regime’s executions of Baluch prisoners in recent weeks as “an official policy to intimidate protesters in Sistan and Baluchistan province,” where anti-regime rallies have been held weekly since the "Women, Life, Freedom” protests began in September.

The Thursday execution was carried out at Mashhad Central Prison and there are unconfirmed reports that several other people from the minority group have been transferred to death rows.

As Sunni Muslims, Baluch citizens are both an ethnic and religious minority. Estimates of the Iranian Baluch population range from 1.5 to 2 million people.

The Baluch community – along with the Kurds -- has always been among the most persecuted minorities of Iran, and has the largest number of people executed in the country. Most of the Baluchs are executed over drug-related charges, but activists say their cases do not receive due process through a fair trial and that the regime uses drug charges as a pretext to avenge 30 consecutive weeks of widespread protests after their Friday prayers.

The region is among the most impoverished ones across Iran and given the high rate of unemployment and no proper infrastructure, smuggling fuel, goods and in some cases drugs are their only lifeline.

More than 110 people from the community have been reportedly executed during the past four months, with activists voicing worries that the number is higher and there are cases that have not been reported in the media.

Journalist and activist Mehdi Nakhl-Ahmadi told Iran International that one of the common characteristics of these recent cases is the “unfair trials” and a “lack of due judicial process,” highlighting that a large number of these people do not have access to lawyers. “We are witnessing a rise in the number of executions in Sistan-Baluchestan, which, people believe, are meant to affect the public opinion of the residents of the province... particularly to put pressure on Sunni Leader Mowlavi Abdolhamid, several of whose aides as well other Sunni clerics have been arrested,” he said.

The Baloch campaign website, run by a group of ethnic rights activists, described “the new wave” of executions as a strategy by the regime to warn the people of the Sistan-Baluchestan province against holding further anti-government demonstrations, claiming that such measures have been taken by the regime before to crack down on earlier bouts of protests. Condemning the mass executions, the group also expressed concern about the violation of human rights as a form of "political game to put pressure on and create fear among the people."

Haalvsh website, a local news outlet that monitors rights violations in Iran's Baluchestan region, cited remarks by family members of the executed people, claiming that they confessed to crimes they had not committed under duress and that there were flaws and ambiguities in their cases, but the judiciary ignored them and carried out the death sentence anyway.

To raise awareness about the executions, Iranian social media users have launched a twitter campaign, denouncing the killings as a “Baluch genocide.”

Masih Alinejad, well-known journalist and political activist, warned Thursday that three Baluch citizens, all of them about 30 years of age, are in imminent danger of being executed, urging people to “be the voice of people of Baluchestan.” "They are the ones who chant death to the dictator on the streets after seven months of torture, imprisonment and bullets," she said.

According to a report released by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) in December, the number of the regime’s executions increased by over 88 percent in 2022. A glance at the rights group’s recent report clearly shows a sharp rise in reported human rights violations since mid-September when the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in the custody of the so-called “morality police” following which protests swept across the country.

Amnesty International also published a report early in March, revealing a “chilling execution spree with escalating use of the death penalty against persecuted ethnic minorities” by the regime. “The Iranian authorities have executed at least one Ahwazi Arab, 14 Kurds and 13 Baluchis following grossly unfair trials, and sentenced at least a dozen others to death since the start of the year,” the right group said, adding that the Islamic Republic “executed at least 94 people in January and February alone.”

Earlier in the day, 23 human rights organizations and four activists, along with the "Keep It On" coalition condemned the frequent internet disruptions in Sistan-Baluchestan province. Keep It On is a coalition of more than 300 organizations from 105 countries around the world that has been fighting internet shutdowns.

Every Friday when people of the province are set to begin their rallies, the regime shuts down the internet to stop people from uploading footage from the protests and communicating with each other.

A bid to "cover up human rights violations," the signatories said the repeated disruption of the Internet has led to "significant challenges for local communities that rely heavily on online communications for their daily activities".