Expat Iranians Call For Demos To Halt Political Prisoners' Executions

It follows the raid on Saturday on the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts on the pretext of women not complying with the mandatory hijab.

Students and teaching staff were beaten up and some had their instruments broken.

On Monday, the board members of Iran House of Music slammed the violent behavior of security guards at the Tehran University faculty.

The Telegram channel of the Students' Union Councils reported that the security officers clashed with some female students. Demonstrators chanted slogans “Woman, Life, Freedom”, “Student Will Die, But Will Not Be Humiliated”, and “Death to the Leader”.

Iran's universities have been one of the main centers of protests during the nationwide uprising against the regime following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody last year. In an attempt to suppress the demonstrations, the security forces of the Islamic Republic have repeatedly attacked the universities and arrested over 700 students.

The repression of the protesting students in recent months has provoked widespread criticism by human rights organisations and governments around the world.

The decision in Vienna was announced by representatives of the governing Austrian parties SPÖ and Neos on Monday at a solidarity campaign.

This is the first street in the world to be named after Amini, the 22-year-old who died after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for defying hijab rules.

The SPÖ and Neos will introduce a resolution at the upcoming municipal council meeting on May 24that calls for the nomination.

The two parties also demanded an immediate stop to executions in Iran and the abolition of the death penalty, along with the immediate release of political prisoners, an end to violence against the population and compliance with freedom of assembly and freedom of the press.

SPÖ municipal councilor Marina Hanke said: "Pictures have been going around the world for months, pictures of women in Iran who are taking their freedom, their rights and their space."

Dolores Bakos, spokeswoman for Neos in Vienna, said: "We must ensure that the cry of these courageous people for freedom, for democracy and respect for human rights does not go unheeded.”

In Frankfurt, mayor Narges Eskandari announced the city will change the name of the street where the Iranian consulate is located to Mahsa Amini.

Eskandari said from now on all correspondence to the consulate can bear Amini’s name, and even the consulate staff will have to write her name on their documents.

Ramin Pashaei, deputy chief of FATA, said Monday Cyber Police aims at “clearing the [Persian language] cyberspace of immoral content” and warned that any social media content considered “outside norms and against moral standards” would bring about prosecution. 

Authorities accuse boutiques, beauty salons, modelling agencies, gyms and plastic surgery establishments of encouraging women not to wear the hijab by their “immoral” content. FATA on some occasions in the past has prosecuted them or forced them to shut down their accounts. 

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Last week an official of the “Basij-Militia of Retailers”, Gholamreza Hasanpour, told the semi-official Mehr News Agency that female sales staff should wear uniforms to work but have been given a “choice” of one hundred different designs to choose from. 

Unveiled girl protesting against compulsory hijab by performing gymnastics on the streets of Boukan in western Iran. 

Women’s defiance of hijab rules has a history as long as the Islamic Republic itself, but it has escalated to new levels since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in custody of morality police for “improper hijab” sparked nationwide protests. 

Protests gradually subsided after several months but defiance of hijab rules as a form of civil disobedience has forced the government to try to stop the anti-compulsory hijab movement by taking various measures. 

Such measures include preventing defiant women from using public transportation, entering government offices and boarding planes, shutting down shops and shopping malls as well as various plans to “encourage and convince” them to wear the hijab such as billboards and banners extolling “hijab and chastity”. 

One such banner put up by the ministry of Islamic Guidance and Tehran International Bookfair last week quoted the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy as saying that corruption, sexual derangement, and lack of hijab caused profusion of divorces in Europe. Another banner they have put up quoted 19th century French author Victor Hugo praising modesty of women and its allure for men.

“It's hilarious when you have to fake quotes from Tolstoy and Hugo about hijab because half of your own population is ignoring you,” London-based journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh tweeted. 

Pressure on activists and prosecution of celebrity artists for defiance of hijab in public and through social media are among the other measures the regime has been employing to scare women into wearing the hijab. 

Sepideh Rashno, a 28-year-old art student whose defiance of hijab rules and heated dispute with a hijab enforcer on a city bus landed her in prison in July last year, a few months before the Mahsa protests, was suspended from Alzahra University in Tehran due to "non-observance of the Islamic hijab" last week for two semesters. 

"As a citizen, I have the right to choose the clothes I wear,” she wrote in response to the decision, adding that she planned to return to the university after her suspension “in my preferred outfit”, that is, unveiled.

Pundits have said the regime’s determination to reinforce strict hijab rules is political in nature. Vice President in Legal Affairs Mohammad Dehghan on Sunday confirmed such theories. “The Islamic Republic will not mean much if there is no hijab in the country,” he said. 

On April 4 at a meeting with state officials Tuesday, Khamenei claimed that foreign intelligence services were encouraging Iranian women to disobey mandatory hijab. 

“Discarding hijab is haram based on Sharia and also politically,” he declared. His declaration was a clear signal to authorities that they need to do anything it takes to re-establish control over women which has somehow waned following anti-regime protests.

“The order given by his excellency is clear,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said a day after Khamenei’s speech while promising to give precedence to any hijab-related motion or bill.

Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl, Deputy Director of National Intelligence Morgan Muir, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson and Vice Adm. Stephen Koehler, the Joint Staff’s chief of strategy, policy and plans will brief the senators.

Special envoy for Iran Rob Malley will not be among these officials. Politico quoted two sources as saying that Malley is on leave.

Many Iranian Americans have criticized Malley for his alleged desire to forge a new deal with Iran and revive the 2015 nuclear accord, the JCPOA, that former President Donald Trump abandoned. A revival of the agreement would lift key economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the Trump administration.

According to the report, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel has been demanding the briefing for months and has criticized the Biden administration for allowing threats from Iran to grow.

Politico also quoted a Senate Democratic aide as saying that officials will brief senators on the Iran nuclear talks. The staffer mentioned that there has been progress in the talks.

The Biden administration began indirect talks with Iran more than two years ago to revive the JCPOA but the diplomatic effort reached an impasse last September.

Republicans have long been demanding a more forceful approach by the administration toward Iran, including a vigorous enforcement of key sanctions.

Publishing the picture of his summons on Twitter, this former representative wrote that he should go to the seventh branch of the Security Prosecutor's Office located in Evin prison in Tehran on May 23.

There is no accusation mentioned in the notice, but it is stated that the former reformist MP will be arrested if he does not show up.

Sadeghi is an Iranian lawyer, jurist, and academic who was a member of the parliament representing Tehran from May 2016 to May 2020.

Sadeghi is an associate professor at the Tarbiat Modares University and his field of expertise is Private law.

In 2016, he appeared before the special court for culture and media in Tehran to answer questions about his comments on possible corruption among senior officials. He was released after posting a bond, but later he was sentenced to 21 months of discretionary custodial imprisonment.

Sadeghi has been summoned several times since 2016, but refused to appear before the court, citing his legislative immunity. Judicial authorities attempted to arrest Sadeghi at his home in Tehran at the time with an arrest warrant based on a plaintiffs’ case against him.

He was heading a new faction in parliament which was charged with helping ensure “transparency and purification of the economy.”

His remarks on the personal bank accounts of the judiciary chief put him in trouble. Sadeghi asked the justice minister to explain the reason behind the alleged transfer of public funds to the personal accounts of the then Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani.