The “Week in brief” by Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) is a weekly review of the most important human rights news and developments from and about Iran’s Kurdish areas.
Iran’s Kurdish regions militarized amid anti-government protests
Iranian police, security forces and the loyalist militias of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have been deployed across the country’s Kurdish areas amid on-going anti-government protests.
Locals, sources and activists have said that their areas have turned into military zones in Sanandaj, Kermanshah, Ilam, Islamabad, Orumiyeh, Bukan and Dehloran.
But anti-government protests have continued taking place despite the fear and hate that the Iranian forces are trying to spread to scare the locals through in such a show of force.
Read more and watch videos: http://kurdistanhumanrights.net/en/continued-national-protest-rally-kurdistan-has-become-a-military-base/
Iranian Kurdish student protesters remain missing after arrest
Two of the five Iranian Kurdish student protesters arrested in Sardasht and Kermanshah over the past few days have been released but the other three detained students remain missing.
An undergraduate student of Anthropology at the University of Tehran, Mohammad Javaheri, was released several hours after his arrest.
Loghman Visi, a student at the Razi University in Kermanshah, was arrested on 1 January and was released a few days later.
The other three detained student protesters, Nabi Tardat, Mohammad Mazhari and Omid Jamshidi, have remained missing after their arrest at the hands of the Iranian forces since 29 December 2017.
Iran forces open fire on protesters, hundreds jailed
Iran’s anti-government protests expanded and spread across the Kurdish populated provinces, particularly Kermanshah province.
Some 200 protesters have been arrested in Kermanshah, Kangwar, Ilam, Asad Abad, Nourabad (Delfan), Tuyserkan, Khoramabad and Orumiyeh in recent days, according to information that the KHRN has obtained from its local sources and activists.
A source in Noorabad (Delfan) of Lorestan Province told KHRN that the Iranian forces opened fire critically wounding two young protesters on 31 December.
A day after, on 1 January, Iranian security forces raided the homes and later on the same day arrested at least 30 people.
The IRGC has sent a message to its members on the deployment of their troops in the provinces of Kurdistan, Ilam, Lorestan and Hamadan, in a bid to forcefully clampdown on the protesters spreading anti-government dissent across the cities and towns of those provinces.
Kurdish local sources in Sanandaj also said that anti-government protests continued despite the gigantic presence of the anti-riot police and IRGC militiamen in the streets and on the top of the roofs of the city’s the government buildings.
The crackdown on the anti-government protests has so far resulted in the killing of at least 22 people with many more injured, beaten and held against their will at prisons and secrete detention centres of the security and military apparatuses of the Islamic Republic.
Read more and watch videos: http://kurdistanhumanrights.net/en/continued-protest-rally-in-different-cities-hundreds-of-protesters-arrested/
A Kurd hanged on murder charges in Iran’s first 2018 execution
Iranian Kurdish death row prisoner Bakhtiyar Mohammad was executed on murder charges at Dizelabad prison in Kermanshah on 2 January.
His execution marked the implementation of the first death penalty in 2018 in Iran.
Mohammad was from Iran’s Kurdish Rwansar (Ravansar) area but the national media have not yet covered the news of his execution.
Read More: http://kurdistanhumanrights.net/en/a-prisoner-hanged-on-murder-charges-in-kermanshah-prison/
Outlawed Iranian Kurdish armed group kill government troops
Members of the outlawed armed opposition Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) have killed at least six Iranian government troops amid clashes in the village of Ziwe in Piranshahr.
A local source said three members of the IRGC and three members of the intelligence ministry were killed but no information is not yet available on the fate of the PDKI members.
The source told KHRN that the Iranian intelligence agents and the IRGC members had tried to enter the house of one of the villagers and that the PDKI fighters had opened fire to prevent them from entering the house.
The reports from Hamza Seyyed al-Shohda’s campus in Orumiyeh said three members of Imam Zaman’s Unknown Soldiers were killed in Piranshahr.
A day after the deadly armed clashes, on 4 January, the Ministry of Intelligence issued a statement confirming the death of three of its officers in an armed confrontation in the area.
Prison guard chief kills Baloch political prisoner with electric shocks
The head of the special prison guards of Birjand Central Prison has killed a Baloch political prisoner at one of the prison’s solitary confinement cells using electric shocks 1 January 2018.
KHRN has learnt that the Balochi prisoner, Abdul Rahman Naroui, son of Abdul Hamid from Zahedan, was transferred to a solitary confinement cell with a other prisoners for punishment following a brawl with another prisoner of ordinary crimes at ward 105 of the prison
Ahmed Ansari, the head of the Prison’s Special Guard, had hit the political prisoner with an electric shocker on the head and chest in the solitary confinement jail in front of several other political prisoners.
As a result, Naroui had become unconscious and transferred to the prison’s clinic, where it was confirmed that he had lost his life as a result of the physical torture.
Naroui, 30, was arrested nine years ago in Zahedan and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison on drug-related charges.
