NCRI: Iran ranks 190 out of 199 for press freedoms – watchdog/Rouhani’s record on workers’ rights in Iran/26 government bodies in Iran involved in suppression of women

Iran ranks 190 out of 199 for press freedoms – watchdog
Saturday, 30 April 2016 /National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI

The mullahs’ regime in Iran ranks among the world’s top ten state violators of press freedoms, the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House has said in its latest annual report.The situation for journalists in Iran remains uncertain in the face of “harsh censorship” and “increased arrests by security services,” Freedom House said in its report FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 2016 published on Tuesday. “The Iranian government attempted to shape domestic media coverage of the international agreement on its nuclear program. The Supreme National Security Council instructed media outlets to praise Iran’s team of negotiators and to avoid any talk of ‘a rift’ between top officials,” the report said. “The intelligence division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps arrested several journalists late in the year for alleged involvement in an ‘infiltration network’ serving hostile foreign countries,” it added. Iran and Syria jointly ranked 190th out of 199 countries in the global rank for freedom of the press. They jointly ranked as the Middle East’s top press freedom violator.

Rouhani’s record on workers’ rights in Iran
Saturday, 30 April 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI – Millions of Iranian workers are continuing to suffer from poverty out of unemployment, inadequate pay or non-receipt of their wages. Their situation has worsened since Hassan Rouhani took office as the regime’s President in 2013.
The following is a breakdown of just some of the problems faced by Iranian workers:
1. The Global Wage Report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) indicates that Iranian workers’ wage ranks 138 out of 148 countries. Some 65 percent of Iranian workers cannot afford to buy food for their families on a daily basis with their current wages.
2. Unlike the labor standards and policies set by the ILO, over the past 37 years the minimum wage for labor in Iran has not been set in proportionality with the true inflation rate. The minimum wage for an Iranian worker in the current year is 8,120,000 Rials (U.S. $270) a month whereas the official poverty line announced by Iran’s Central Bank is 35,000,000 Rials (1160 dollars). Yet, there are many workers who have not received even these very low wages for several months.
3. Workers enjoy no job security in Iran and can easily be made redundant. Between March 20 and April 20, 2016, more than 5000 workers were dismissed from various work units in Iran’s northern, central and southern provinces without being paid for their work.
4. Trade unions are not officially recognized in Iran, and at present many active unionists are in jails on long term sentences simply due to their union activities and forming independent trade unions. Iranian authorities do not even acknowledge workers’ rights for May Day gatherings.
5. Iran’s most important financial and production fields and units are owned and monopolized by the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the institutions affiliated with the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, while Iranian workers and their families who form 40 million of Iran’s 80 million population have a less than 10% share of the profit.
6. Women workers are in a yet worse situation. Some female workers are paid one third of the wage paid to male workers for similar work, and at present 82% of women who are the main breadwinner in a family are unemployed.
7. The rate of suicide has risen amongst Iranian workers due to severe poverty. Between March 2015 and March 2016 there have been more than 5800 protests by workers across the country, but they have been suppressed by the regime.

26 government bodies in Iran involved in suppression of women
Saturday, 30 April 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI – Mullah Ahmad Khatami, the regime’s interim Friday prayers leader in Tehran, on Friday reiterated the legality to suppression of women in Iran based on the regime’s fundamentalist laws. “The law to combat mal-veiling has been adopted as part of the 2007 Act approved by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. According to this Act, 26 governmental bodies must get to work. This Act consists of 310 Articles specifying duties to be implemented by these governmental bodies,” he said.
Last week the mullahs’ regime launched a new plan to suppress women for “improper veiling.” It deployed some 7,000 so-called undercover ‘morality police officers’ in Tehran tasked with suppressing women on the streets and alerting official law enforcement agencies of instances of “mal-veiling” and other “violations” of the mullahs’ fundamentalist laws. Khatami said: “In the police’s plan, the fight against improper veiling is stressed as legal and kind, and these measures are only undertaken by police officers. Thanks a lot to them.” Khatami also expressed his fear of the spread and universality of internet technology.
He stipulated: “There is now a major war in the cultural arena especially in cyberspace. This war is ongoing in websites, foreign channels, audiovisual and print media, in the field of books and movies as well. These are the weapons of the soft war.”
Commenting on the recent plan to crack down on women in Iran, Ms. Farideh Karimi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and a human rights activist, last week said: “Suppression of women is further institutionalized in Iran with each passing day. The regime’s suppressive institutions are ever more blatantly cracking down on women. This has been a tenet of the mullahs’ regime from its outset.
The addition of 7000 forces dedicated to the suppression of women and further gender discrimination speaks well of the reality that Hassan Rouhani is no different from the other mullahs and the hopes for an improvement of women’s rights in Iran which some had advocated at the start of Rouhani’s tenure as President are a mirage.
According to the regime’s laws, Rouhani has the authority to halt the new suppressive measures against women. By refusing to do so, he is in practice endorsing them.”
The Iranian regime has hanged at least 66 women and 2,300 men since Hassan Rouhani took office as President in 2013.

Big win for Rowhani’s allies in Iran election second round
AFP, Tehran Saturday, 30 April 2016/Reformist and moderate politicians allied with Iran’s President Hassan Rowhani won twice as many seats as their conservative rivals in the second round of parliamentary elections, official results said Saturday. The reformist List of Hope that backs Rowhani gained 38 lawmakers in run-off polls that took place Friday, with conservatives winning 18 and independents 12, the interior ministry said. The second ballot for 68 seats was needed as no candidate won the minimum 25 percent of votes in the first round of voting which took place on February 26, and its outcome will make the List of Hope the biggest single group in parliament when lawmakers are sworn in next month. The second ballot to complete a new 290-seat parliament took place Friday because initial polls on February 26 did not produce clear winners in the 68 seats. Rowhani’s allies made huge gains in the first round of elections, on February 26, when voters drove many conservatives out of the parliament. Results from Friday’s second ballot will decide who has the most power when lawmakers are sworn in next month, opening or potentially closing a politically delicate path to even limited social and cultural change in the Islamic republic. Tension over the vote’s high stakes was dramatically underlined by a shooting involving supporters of rival candidates in a southern province. The rare political violence left four people wounded, a security official said. Around 17 million citizens were eligible to vote on Friday in 55 towns and cities. There was no voting in Tehran as the List of Hope swept all 30 of the capital’s 30 seats in the first round.