Bloody November Families Form Association To Call For Justice
Family members of the victims of the November 2019 protests have formed an association to call for justice, the Aban Families For Justice.
Family members of the victims of the November 2019 protests have formed an association to call for justice, the Aban Families For Justice.
The new victims' association aims to keep the issue of the brutal crackdown of 2019 in the public mind and lobby for justice through activities including preparing an archive of documentation, holding anniversaries and commemoration events for the victims, and filing cases at the international courts.
A series of nationwide protests in Iran, known as Bloody November, took place in 2019. Initially triggered by a 50 to 200-percent increase in fuel prices, the demonstrations quickly turned into calls for the overthrow of the government and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
According to a report by a rights group, at least 3,000 protesters were killed by the Islamic Republic security forces from November 15 to 17, and nearly 20,000 arrested. Reuters at the time reported 1,500 deaths.
"Due to the widespread crimes of the Islamic Republic in Bloody November, it was not possible to communicate with all the families during the past 43 months. This association was formed with the cooperation of a number of families, but it belongs to all the freedom-loving people of Iran,” the group said in a statement.
Iranian journalist Mohammad Bagherzadeh said in a tweet on Monday that sources of the report, one of whom was a former employee of the state charity organization, were contacted and threatened.
Without saying who contacted the sources, Bagherzadeh said they told them either they rescind their statements or would be charged with insulting the clergy. He added that one of the sources was called in by the judiciary earlier in the day.
The original report was published by Etemad newspaper on June 11, revealing cases of child abuse at an orphanage operating under the supervision of the State Welfare Organization of Iran.
The operations of the center,whose employees were reportedly clerics, were suspended after the report published by the daily was also confirmed by several other sources.
In one of the cases, the clerics who were working as social workers put burning-hot clothing-iron on the hands and feet of a seven-year-old child as a punishment for bedwetting. Then they imprisoned him in an old bathroom infested with cockroaches and he was fed with dry bread and water for about a week.
According to one of the sources, who blew the whistle after he was fired from the center, the situation of all the 24 children kept at the orphanage for the past eight years were suffering from somewhat similar abuse.
For example, the clerics had devised a scoring system to evaluate the behavior of the children, subjecting them to serious psychological torture.
The accounts of these abuses and their validity were also confirmed by other sources, who also used to work there.
One of the sources was cited by Etemad as saying that "The children of the center were strangely afraid of one of the managers, who himself explained the reason for this fear: Since the early days, I scared the hell out of the children, so they would know who’s the boss here. I told one of the kids that I would cut his tongue and hit him on the mouth repeatedly until it was full of blood; and now these children are afraid of me like death.”
Another source told the paper that in one of the cases, a child was so traumatized by the physical and psychological sufferings inflicted by one of the female managers of the center that wanted to commit suicide, but he was finally dissuaded from any high-risk behavior and was put to sleep with a pill.
Mohamamd-Javad Hosseini, one of the senior officials of the State Welfare Organization of Iran, said that the center was given a warning and was only suspended temporarily because there were no prior complaints against it. The guardianship of the children was terminated, and new staff took control of the center, he added.
Reports of such abuses are usually buried by authorities but even with all the coverups the number of cases that made headlines is very high. The most recent case took place less than a month ago, when the manager of a center was arrested for abuse of handicapped children in the city of Shiraz.
On the other hand, reformist clerics suggested that the government had better stop putting religious pressure on citizens to “guide them to heaven.”
The Imam in Tehran, Mohamad-Javad Haj-Aliakbari, said that "the enemy" is spreading nihilism in Iran, adding that "In a year when we are getting close to the Majles [parliament] and Assembly of Experts elections, the enemy is trying to sow despair and heresy in Iran."
The term enemy, regularly used by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his loyalists, refers to the United States. By making this statement the Friday Imam was attributing Iranian women's defiance to compulsory hijab to a conspiracy by the United States.
Iranian clerics and regime officials invariably attribute their failures in various cultural, political and economic areas to the United States or the pre-revolution government that was replaced by the Islamic Republic 44 years ago.
The Tehran Imam said the West is waging a cultural onslaught against Iran to stop the country's progress in areas such as missile development. Meanwhile he accused Iranian women of not being chaste enough as they follow the West's teachings.
In another development Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayers Imam of Mashad said: "The Islamic revolution's aim was not simply feeding the people and improving the economy. We did not simply want to give political control to the pious and expel US mercenaries from Iran. The aim was to allow the people to live freely."
However, Alamolhoda. a staunch supporter of compulsory hijab and one of the biggest defenders of clerical rule in Iran did not explain how the Islamic Republic or his own ideology would let people live freely. Meanwhile he praised the Islamic Republic's "achievement" in developing a “supersonic missile” that can reach Israel in less than 10 minutes.
Alamolhoda is the father-in-law of President Ebrahim Raisi and enjoys some influence with Khamenei.
As if he was responding to Alamolhoda,Sunni Leader Mawlana Abdolhamid, who led the Friday prayers in Zahedan, said, "Good for you if you can make missiles, but you need to feed the people first." His comment was a reference to Iran's economic crisis that has been pushing millions of Iranians under the poverty line particularly during the past two years.
Meanwhile, Iran's former reformist President Mohammad Khatami criticized the government's approach to hijab and hardliner clerics such as Alamolhoda's insults against Iranian women who brand women without hijab as "unchaste." Khatami said: "Hijab and chastity are two different things," adding that hardliner "clerics should not impose the hijab on the Iranian society."
He pointed out that hijab is a matter of choice, and it should not be imposed on women. He suggested that hardliners should avoid imposing "backward" ideas on the society. He added that "Islam should respond to the needs of the modern world." Khatami further stressed that "Women need to be respected if we wish to move toward a better future."
Khatami said: "You should be a human being first and then decide whether you want to be a religious person." He reiterated that there should be no difference between men and women in terms of freedom and dignity and we understand that there will be no limit to our growth."
Meanwhile, Khatami's former chief of staff, Mohammad Ali Abtahi said: "The affairs of the state cannot be furthered by forcing the people and pushing them into paradise, but some of the country's decision-makers believe that this is a good way of running the country and anyone against it should be suppressed." He called on the government to respect the preferred lifestyle of young Iranians.
