September 2020

In this issue, you read:
- Unforgivable Crime
- The representative of the European Parliament in the negotiations with Iran strongly condemned the murder of Navid Afkari!
- No More Youth Killing!
- Silence against Rape and Sexual Harassment is to the Detriment of Society!
- In prisons and with political prisoners

Political prisoners in Iran have always been held hostage by the regime. For more than forty years, the ruling dictators have used prisoners as means of pressure on society and tools to intimidate the people the way they wanted and as much as they could. Now that the regime is in the throes of another uprising and is facing a more powerful resurrection, it is furiously trying to push back the outbreak of the protest movement by violently repressing people inside and outside of the prison.

Any agreement that is not based on assuring the basic and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people on their land, putting an end to the Israeli occupation and recognizing the right of the Palestinian people to establish their independent national state on the land of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, can only be described as a surrender agreement that blatantly denies the just cause of the Palestinian people and their struggle, that is full of sacrifices, to end the abhorrent occupation

Navid Afkari was a victim of the usual frame-ups of the intelligence-security organs and the judiciary of the IR. According to his lawyer, in Navid's case, there is not the slightest evidence to prove his guilt, except for the confessions obtained under torture and dictated by the interrogators. The repressive apparatus of the regime has forced Afkari brothers to confess against each other and accept false accusations under torture.

Navid was not an unknown figure like many other detainees of the August 2018 nationwide protests, but a conscious choice by the IR's repressive apparatus to say that even an international reputation would not prevent the killing of protesters, and that street killings would not suffice but will be complemented by mass detentions, mass torture, insults and confessions and executions.

The report, entitled "Destroyers of Humanity: Massive Detentions, Disappearances, and Torture in the wake of the November 2019 protests in Iran," is based on the horrific narratives of dozens of protesters, passers-by, and others who were forcibly arrested, disappeared, kept in solitary confinement and repeatedly tortured for confession.

In this issue, you read:
Political developments in the region, a barrier to regional politics of the Islamic Republic
Continuation and expansion of workers' strikes
Crime does not guarantee the survival of the regime
Joint national action to achieve truth and administer justice
Parliament’s delegation chair expresses concerns over the human rights situation in Iran

Such a "feeling of immunity" from the reaction of society and current laws stems from several factors, the most important of which is rooted in society's traditions and attitudes towards women, which are followed by "normalization" and the passage of patriarchal reactionary laws and cause fear and instability in the will of victimized women in pursuing and punishing the perpetrator.