Eye on Iran’s Protests - February 22, 2024

The Woman, Life, Freedom movement has galvanized supporters worldwide, including human rights activists advocating for strategies to liberate Iran from Islamic government, a tyrannical, violent, corrupt, and mismanaged system, which has claimed over 500 lives in connection to the protests and executed over 800 people throughout 2023.

Iranian people chanted “death to the Islamic Republic” on the Revolution’s 45^th anniversary.

Human rights activists are calling on diplomats to walk out of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s annual opening on February 26 when Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian addresses the body.

Mahsa Amini’s uncle was sentenced to a minimum of five years in prison. He was charged with “participation in protests against internal security, dissemination of anti-government propaganda, and insulting the Supreme Leader,” according to Hengaw.

The Islamic Republic banned Valentine’s Day in 2010, viewing it as “non-Islamic.” But Iranian people oppose the regime’s policing of romance.

Iranian liberal and anti-Islamist diaspora stands shoulder to shoulder with the Australian Jewish community against antisemitism.

Human rights activist and actress Nazanin Boniadi sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State and the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., calling on U.S. officials to walk out of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s February 26 session when Abdollahian addresses the council.

Upon entering Iran, members of the Iranian diaspora who partook in Mahsa Amini protests—specifically the big Berlin rally in October 2022—are being arrested, interrogated, having their electronic devices seized, and/or passports taken away.

Journalist and human rights activist Gazelle Sharmahd began a viral social media campaign called “Cut the Rope” to call attention to the over 834 people who have been executed in Iran throughout 2023. Her father, a German-Iranian, is on death row in Iran. 

Members of the Iranian diaspora community are calling on the U.S. Congress to advance the MAHSA Act, which would require the executive branch to sanction Iran’s senior leadership, including the Supreme Leader and the President of Iran.

Vahid Beheshti, a journalist and human rights activist, began his sit-in outside the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office over a year ago. He is still there, calling on the U.K. to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, as the U.S. has done.

Amnesty International warned that an Iranian protester was at imminent risk of execution.