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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Despite its brutal tactics, Iran’s regime fails to contain mass protests

Despite its brutal tactics, Iran’s regime fails to contain mass protests

Vox reports: On Monday, at the start of their first match in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, members of the Iran men’s national soccer team stood silently as their national anthem played. It was a highly visible reminder that dissatisfaction with the Iranian government remains strong, several months into ongoing protests in the country. #BREAKING: Iran national team players choose not to sing national anthem at World Cup match; some of the Iranian crowed booing their own national anthem pic.twitter.com/RYPvgHMNUi…

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How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

CNN reports: A trickle of people passes through a normally busy border crossing in the mountains of northern Iraq. “It’s a big prison over there,” one Iranian woman says, gesturing to the hulking gate that marks the border with Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been convulsed by protest for over two months. A portrait of the founder of Iran’s clerical regime, Ruhollah Khomeini, looms against a backdrop of rolling hills studded with streetlights. Snatches of travelers’ muted conversations punctuate an…

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Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

The New York Times reports: Three months into a nationwide uprising, Iranian protesters have turned their fury against the founder of the Islamic revolution and of the country’s theocracy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Protesters set ablaze the museum of childhood home of Mr. Khomeini, who died in 1989, in his hometown, Khomein, on Thursday night, videos showed. Crowds of men smashed and stomped on a street sign bearing his name in the town of Khash, according to a video posted online….

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Iran unleashes its wrath on its youth for joining protests

Iran unleashes its wrath on its youth for joining protests

The New York Times reports: One girl, a 14-year-old, was incarcerated in an adult prison alongside drug offenders. A 16-year-old boy had his nose broken in detention after a beating by security officers. A 13-year-old girl was physically attacked by plainclothes militia who raided her school. A brutal crackdown by the authorities in Iran trying to halt protests calling for social freedom and political change that have convulsed the country for the past two months has exacted a terrible toll…

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In Iran, pluralism begins to take root

In Iran, pluralism begins to take root

Paymon Azmoudeh writes: There are few places in Iran further from Saqqez, in Iranian Kurdistan, where Zhina (aka Mahsa) Amini was born in 1999 and buried on Sept. 17, than Zahedan, 1,200 miles away in Sistan and Balochistan province. Yet, despite living at opposite ends of the country, Iran’s Kurdish and Baloch communities face similar challenges as non-Persian Sunni Muslims in the Shiite-centric Islamic Republic. Even so, they have never before made common cause in combating their shared marginalization. This…

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Iran and China use private detectives to spy on dissidents in America

Iran and China use private detectives to spy on dissidents in America

The New York Times reports: The job that came in through Michael McKeever’s website was unremarkable, the kind of request he often received in his decades working as a private investigator in New York. An international client wanted his help tracking down a debtor who had fled from Dubai and was believed to be in Brooklyn. Mr. McKeever was to surveil a house and photograph the people coming and going. “Kindly be discreet as they are on the lookout,” he…

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Iran’s protest movement has been years in the making

Iran’s protest movement has been years in the making

Ali Hashem writes: [I]n the span of less than half a century, many Iranians have undergone a seismic shift in attitudes – moving from a tendency toward Islamism under secular rule to a yearning for secularization under theocracy. This shift illustrates what the renowned Iranian scholar Homa Katouzian has dubbed Iran’s “short-term society.” Katouzian likens Iranian society to buildings whose owners prefer to demolish and reconstruct them from scratch, rather than renovate and make them more appropriate to the times….

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Ukraine’s war has forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes, the UN says

Ukraine’s war has forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes, the UN says

The New York Times reports: Russia’s eight-month war in Ukraine has already created the largest and fastest refugee crisis in decades. But the United Nations and humanitarian agencies are warning that new fighting in the east and south, Moscow’s intensified targeting of power plants and other infrastructure, the approaching winter and fears of a nuclear attack could drive even more Ukrainians to flee their homes in the coming months. More than 14 million people have fled their homes since Russia’s…

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China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs

China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs

Steven Feldstein writes: On August 31, 2022, in the final hours of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s term, after months of delays and postponements, her department released a comprehensive report detailing China’s oppression in Xinjiang Province. The circumstances of China’s repression are well documented. Academics and human rights organizations estimate that 10 to 20 percent (with an upper limit calculated at 1.8 million) of adult Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been subjected to detention by Chinese authorities. Officials…

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Students defy Iran protest ultimatum, unrest enters more dangerous phase

Students defy Iran protest ultimatum, unrest enters more dangerous phase

Reuters reports: Weeks of protest in Iran entered a more violent phase on Sunday as students defied an ultimatum by the Revolutionary Guards and were met with tear gas, beatings and gunfire from riot police and militia, social media videos showed. The confrontations at dozens of universities prompted a threat of a tougher crackdown in the seventh week of demonstrations since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after she was arrested by the morality police for attire deemed inappropriate. Iranians from all…

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Resisting Israeli efforts to displace them, Palestinians move into caves

Resisting Israeli efforts to displace them, Palestinians move into caves

The New York Times reports: Faced with expulsion from their villages and the demolition of their homes by Israeli authorities, hundreds of Palestinians are trying to stay by reverting to an older form of shelter: living in underground caves. “We have no home to live in and no tent — we have no option but to live in the cave,” said Wadha Ayoub Abu Sabha, 65, a resident of the village of Khirbet al-Fakheit, in a rural area of the…

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Forced transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia may be a war crime and an act of genocide

Forced transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia may be a war crime and an act of genocide

The New York Times reports: As Russian forces laid siege to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol this spring, children fled bombed-out group homes and boarding schools. Separated from their families, they followed neighbors or strangers heading west, seeking the relative safety of central Ukraine. Instead, at checkpoints around the city, pro-Russia forces intercepted them, according to interviews with the children, witnesses and family members. The authorities put them on buses headed deeper into Russian-held territory. “I didn’t want to go,”…

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In the shadow of war, Kremlin continues terrorizing Crimean Tatars

In the shadow of war, Kremlin continues terrorizing Crimean Tatars

The Kyiv Independent reports: They usually come at four or five in the morning. Men in uniform and with guns pull up in large vehicles. The dogs start barking. The family wakes up, knowing exactly what is about to happen. The house is searched. Phones and computers are taken away. And so is the father, or a brother, or another male relative, who is almost always suspected of terrorism – a charge they deny. This is a typical scene in…

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After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

CNN reports: The White House has engaged in talks with Elon Musk about the possibility of setting up SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink inside Iran, multiple officials familiar with the discussions told CNN. The conversations, which have not been previously reported, come as the Biden administration searches for ways to support the Iranian protest movement that exploded just over a month ago after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died under suspicious circumstances after being detained by the country’s morality police. The White…

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Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90

Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90

The Washington Post reports: Growing up in the 1930s, Daniel R. Smith would listen to stories from his father, as young boys often do. He was not supposed to hear these stories — they were meant for his older siblings, not for a child as young as 5 or 6 — but after dinner on Saturday evenings he would sneak out of bed and listen to accounts of the “whipping and crying post,” of the lynching tree and the wagon…

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Russia ramps up deportations, as Putin imposes martial law in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine

Russia ramps up deportations, as Putin imposes martial law in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine

Politico reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday imposed martial law in the four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed by the Kremlin’s forces, against the backdrop of mass deportations of Ukrainians to Russia and as Moscow lays the ground for further losses of territory. Kremlin-backed authorities in the Ukrainian city of Kherson are planning to “relocate” about 50,000 to 60,000 people to Russian territory, the Moscow-installed regional governor Vladimir Saldo said in a television interview Tuesday. Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian…

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