Court Session Held For 11 Political Defendants In Tehran
A court session against 11 political prisoners took place on Tuesday at the Revolutionary Court of Tehran in the latest mass trial of anti-regime voices.
A court session against 11 political prisoners took place on Tuesday at the Revolutionary Court of Tehran in the latest mass trial of anti-regime voices.
No evidence was provided regarding the charges brought against the group, all of whom were detained by security forces between August 1 and November 20.
Among the accused, Kazem Ali-Nezhad, Arsham Rezaei, Meysam Gholami, Vahid Ghadirzadeh, and Payam Bastani-Parizi have previously faced arrests and convictions due to their civil and political activities.
The accused individuals, namely Fatemeh Haqparast, Mohammad-Reza Kamrani-Nezhad, Vahid Sorkh Gol, Kazem Ali-Nezhad Baranlou, Arsham Rezaei, Meysam Gholami, Vahid Ghadirzadeh, Ali-Asghar Hassani-Rad, Saman Rezaei, Payam Bastani Parizi, and Hojatollah Rafei, faced allegations including "conspiracy and collusion to commit crimes against internal/external security, propaganda against the system.
Charges also included insulting Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, insulting the memory of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, and encouraging people to commit crimes against internal/external security," according to reports from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
The Islamic Republic has a history of detaining, torturing, and imprisoning government critics active in civil and political spheres since its establishment. The recent wave of suppressing civil, political activists, and protesters by the government has intensified since the nationwide protests of Iranians against the Islamic Republic began in September 2022, persisting to the present day.
This request comes at a time when users are experiencing low-quality connections and are forced to pay for expensive Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and anti-filtering software to avoid the censorship imposed by the government.
For more than two decades, the clerical government has blocked thousands of websites and in recent year, most social media platforms. It also offers very slow Internet connection and often cuts service during protests.
Iran's Information and Communications Technology Minister, Issa Zarepour, stated on Monday that the increase in internet service rates has not yet been decided. He also reiterated his usual response to the issue by insisting that the increase would only happen "if the providers improve the internet quality". But users have long suspected that slow traffic is related to government actions and draconian controls.
Also, the adamant stance he takes on "better quality" might not be entirely genuine. Shargh Daily reported last month that Zarepour publicly opposes increasing Internet rates but behind the scenes is following up on it, neglecting the quality altogether.
While President Ebrahim Raeisi promised free internet for the lowest income groups during his inauguration in 2021, the number of limitations on internet access and the price have gradually increased.
With these constraints in place, Iranian citizens are deprived of access to free information. Raisi's hardliner government has increased censorship. Numerous foreign and domestic websites, including reputable news outlets and social media platforms, have been added to the government blocking scheme.
The spiral of censorship measures has intensified since the beginning of the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement last year.
According to Freedom House, Iran was the Middle East's worst country for internet freedom in 2023 due mainly to severe and overzealous responses by authorities to nationwide protests.
However, the internet shutdowns and the filtering of popular messaging apps used by citizens continued even after protests subsided.
Legislators, such as Javad Nikbin, have alluded to a connection between those lobbying for internet censorship and those marketing tools that circumvent censorship, such as VPNs.
Lawmaker Jalal Rashidi Kouchi estimated that the financial turnover of VPN providers in Iran amounts to approximately 800 million to 1 billion dollars annually.
According to Kouchi, if the minimum monthly price of a VPN in Iran is $2, the country's citizens would be compelled to spend approximately $480 million annually to circumvent the regime's bans on such services as Instagram and WhatsApp.
But that is not the end of the story. Having a VPN active on your system will result in more data usage since some of that data is consumed by the VPN.
That amount according to the Farazdaily website means half of the traffic you buy from providers is consumed solely by using a VPN. And since the current administration has imposed more limitations, users are already paying more. Not just for more VPN but also more traffic.
With the providers asking for an increase in rates, consumers will be forced to pay yet another fee for "the most expensive low-quality service in Iran".
In a statement posted on its website, Shahr-e Ketab (Book City), a flagship chain bookstore, revealed that the police department in charge of overseeing retail shops, restaurants and similar businesses had sealed its central store in Tehran.
The police cited a “failure to abide by regulations of trade and interior ministry’s [directives]” as the reason for the closure of the popular bookstore in the heart of the capital.
Shahr-e Ketab, Iran’s largest chain of book and music stores, is a non-profit organization that operates dozens of modern bookstore-cafes across the country. In addition to selling books, it holds various cultural events.
“The Book City of Tehran was closed down over a few strands of hair!” Mohammad-Taghi Fazel-Meybodi, a prominent cleric who opposes coercion of women to wear the hijab, said in a tweet Friday. He questioned the religious and legal justification for suspending cultural centers and businesses over such minor issues and criticized the authorities for disgracing the country.
Fazel-Meybodi, like many others, also criticized the government for prioritizing the enforcement of hijab rules over addressing more pressing issues such as corruption and economic improvement. He suggested that the money spent on enforcing the compulsory hijab could have been better utilized to combat embezzlement and rising prices.
In recent months, authorities have increased pressure on businesses and retailers to enforce hijab rules and have warned or shut down thousands of businesses.
The closure of businesses for hijab-related issues, a tool used by authorities for four decades, is aimed at pressuring them to police women's hijab compliance, allowing the police and other authorities to avoid direct confrontation and potential clashes with citizens over hijab observance.
Many among Iranian women are increasingly refusing to wear the hijab even at the risk of being deprived from services in government offices, hospitals, and other public areas or their vehicles being impounded by the police for weeks.
On Friday an airport police official, Mohsen Aghili, said women who do not fully adhere to the “sharia-dictated hijab”, would no longer be served at airports.
After weeks of denial by various officials including the mayor of Tehran and the interior minister, the Secretary of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, Abdolhossein Khosropanah, on Friday confirmed that hijab enforcers are indeed organized by the council’s “Hijab and Chastity Taskforce” in coordination with the interior ministry.
Hijab enforcers, uniformed women in black veils, are sometimes accompanied by male plainclothes cameramen who record hijab breaches. They were initially stationed at metro stations in August but are now seen patrolling other public places, such as parks and busy streets, and admonishing women whose appearance does not conform to the dictated hijab rules.
Khosropanah also demanded gender segregation in universities and claimed that “the world has realized that gender segregation in different areas [of society] ensures better performance and security of both genders.”
