Archive for April, 2016

IRAN CONFIRMS FORCED “VIRGINITY TEST” ON ARTIST

URGENT ACTION Iranian painter and prisoner of conscience Atena Farghadani remains in prison pending the outcome of her appeal against a 12 years and nine months prison sentence. The authorities have now confirmed that they subjected her to virginity and […]

IRANIAN TRADE UNIONIST FACES SIXTEEN YEARS IN JAIL

URGENT ACTION RANIAN TRADE UNIONIST FACES SIXTEEN YEARS IN JAIL Ismail Abdi, prisoner of conscience and Secretary General of Iran’s Teachers’ Trade Association (ITTA), has been sentenced on charges related to his peaceful trade union activities. He is awaiting an […]

Solidarity with the detained trade union leaders in Iran

CODIR calls for an international campaign for the release of Jafar Azimzadeh and Esmail Abdi as they are set to begin their hunger strike on 29th April     Esmail Abdi is General Secretary of the Iranian Teachers Trade Association.  […]

CODIR calls for press freedom in Iran

11th April 2016 Press Release For Immediate Use Solidarity organisation, the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR), has today called for urgent action to defend press freedom in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In particular, CODIR […]

Rouhani’s “Open-Door” Economic Policy for Iran: Recipe for Indebtedness, Deindustrialization and Dependence

by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH A number of commentators have compared President Rouhani’s policies of opening Iran’s markets to Western business with those of China’s Deng Xiaoping following the death of Mao Zedong some four decades ago [1]. A closer look at […]

Iranian film-maker Mania Akbari: ‘Cinema threatens the government’

theguardian.com Tom Seymour Among the laptops and the lattes in the foyer of London’s BFI Southbank sits a dissident and exile. Film-maker Mania Akbari fled her native Tehran last summer. She is determined to examine marriage, abortion, infidelity and lesbianism […]