Iran: man attempts suicide for not having $100 needed to be hospitalized
Thursday, 05 May 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI –
Numerous Iranian state-media outlets have reported a heartbreaking story on April 30 of a 45-year-old man committing suicide in a Tehran hospital. He had suffered extreme stomach pains yet was not accepted into the hospital as his insurance booklet had expired and he didn’t have the less than $100 cash needed to be hospitalized. As he continued to suffer from his excruciating pains he threw himself off the third floor and is currently in a coma. This man is married and has two children under the age of 10. The state-run Hamshahri daily wrote on April 30 that this incident took place last Friday in Tehran’s Milad Hospital. Ali Shafie entered the hospital asking for medical care while suffering from extreme pain, eyewitnesses reported. “My brother, Ali Shafie, began suffering extreme pains in the stomach around Friday at noon, and he was on the ground with the agonizing pain. He was transferred to Tehran with a vehicle and brought to Milad Hospital. My showed his [insurance] booklet at the hospital, yet officials said it is expired and he has to provide three million rials (around $95). My brother said he is insured and the booklet was expired only a few days ago, and they can run a check through their system,” said Shafie’s brother. “However, the hospital officials simply would not back down. They were demanding the three million rials. Neither my brother, nor those accompanying him, had the money. He was suffering from such pains that he finally decided to throw himself off the third floor.” Shafie suffered serious wounds after this incident and is currently in a coma in intensive care.“For three million rials they forced my brother into making such a decision. He is married, with two children under the age of 10. Now they say he is in a coma. One person says he is brain dead, while another says there is no hope for him,” his brother says with tears in his eyes. Meanwhile the Iranian regime’s officials continue to embezzle the nation’s wealth. In just one example, Nasser Saraj, President of the Iran Observation Organization said in an interview with the state IRNA news agency on November 25, 2015, “An individual was receiving oil from the Iran Oil Ministry and arrangements were made for him to pay the government in return. However, he stole around 1.6 trillion rials of this money (around $30 million) and fled to Canada.”Based on a report wired by the state Fars news agency on April 14, 2016, former Iranian oil minister Mohammad Gharazi said, “The smuggling statistics in Iran is above $25 billion… yet there is no strong determination seen in officials and authorities to confront this phenomenon.”
Iran: Call for revoking punishment of blinding a 31-year-old
Friday, 06 May 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/Execution of 10 prisoners, including two young men and a public hanging, in three days
The Iranian Resistance calls on all human rights organizations, especially the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on torture, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, to condemn the cruel punishments in Iran and urges immediate and effective measures to prevent blinding the second eye of Mojtaba Saheli, 31, a prisoner in Ward 2 of Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) Prison in the city of Karaj. In an unparalleled atrocity the regime’s henchmen blinded one of the eyes of this prisoner with acid on March 3, 2015 and now after 14 months that he has been unable to pay the diyeh (blood money) specified by the mullahs’ Sharia, he is about to lose his second eye as well. Carrying out this brutal punishment is but a diminutive show of the catastrophic situation of human rights in Iran that as the noose of domestic and international crises tightens around the neck of this repugnant regime, its human rights abuses intensify in both breadth and depth. These crimes that are taking place concurrent with visits by western officials to Iran indicate that these relations have not only failed to improve human rights in Iran, but have emboldened the religious fascism ruling Iran in its barbaric and systematic human rights abuses such that the number of execution of prisoners in April reached 55 and included four women. This criminal trend is speedily continuing. Just in the first three days of May, 10 prisoners, including two men aged 25 and 28, have been hanged. These executions have been carried out in Ghezel-Hessar, Fashafouyeh, central Ardebil, Mashhad and Nahavand prisons while one prisoner was hanged in public in Nour County. The Iranian Resistance calls on the Iranian people, particularly the youth, to protest these atrocities by the velayat-e faqih regime. Instead of expanding relations with the torturers ruling Iran, the international community should bring them to justice for the crimes against humanity they have committed in four decades of their rule.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 6, 2016