Intelligence Officers Interrogate Iranian Expats Arriving In Tehran

A photo report headlined "The Night Bus" published by the Iranian Students News Agency(ISNA) has heightened the issue of homeless people sleeping on Tehran buses.

Most are not drug addicts, the report said Saturday, and were people who work but cannot afford the cheapest guesthouses as accommodation. The night bus sleepers told ISNA that buses offered the chance for a few hours’ secure sleep away from shelters they found unsanitary and unsafe. Some said they always sleep in buses.

Ahmad Alavi, a member of Tehran City Council, told ISNA Sunday that municipality officials were aware that night bus sleepers were different from the “typical” homeless who were often addicted to drugs and frequented homeless shelters.

Social media activists responded to the report by suggesting mosques should open their doors for rough sleepers on cold winter nights, while hardliners who control the government and religious institutions opposed the idea on grounds that mosques should be used strictly for religious purposes. Mosques were not "dormitories," tweeted Abdollah Ganji, editor-in-chief of Javan newspaper, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.

In response, social media users said mosques are being used for state propaganda and housing the Basij, the paramilitary arm of the Revolutionary Guards, and even for economic activities such as cryptocurrency mining which is much cheaply done in mosques due to the special rates they pay for electricity.

There are around 2,000 mosques in Tehran alone. According to Tehran Municipality, Tehran had around 130,000 homeless last year while shelters could only accommodate around 3,000.

Adding to the media hubbub, Mehdi Chamran, conservative chairman of Tehran City Council, said Tuesday he had asked the mayor, Alireza Zakani, to stop people sleeping on buses and to find other accommodation. He said foreign media running the story had “forgotten how garbage scavengers live in London or other places."

Living costs, particularly housing, have risen sharply in Tehran, which according to the Economist's 2021 index of worldwide cost of living jumped from 106th in 2019 to 29th in 2021. The EIU attributed the rise to “continued supply-side constraints, goods shortages and rising import prices following the reimposition of US sanctions.” The EIU ranked Tel Aviv as the most expensive city in the world, followed by Paris.

According to a report by EcoIraneconomic website published January 3, the index for ‘misery’ – adding the unemployment rate to inflation – rose 20 points to 55 points in the twelve months leading to September 2021.

The increase results entirely from rising inflation as government figures, on which the EcoIran report was based, show a fall in unemployment from around 12 percent in summer 2020 to 9.6 percent in 2021.Economists say the figuredoes not include those losing work during the pandemic, and that the government-run Iran Statistical Center considers anyone who has worked for at least one hour a week to be employed. According to ISC,unemployment is at the lowest levelsince 1996, with the center highlighting “the spread of the coronavirus disease which has caused many young adults to leave the labor market.”

The Washington-based conservative Cato Institute, committed to ‘libertarian’ economics, ranked Iran 8th in the world in its Hanke's 2020 Annual Misery Index, with Venezuela as the world’s most miserable country.

The ultra-conservative parliament has already annoyed a major part of the population by considering a bill to limit citizens access to the Internet and opposing a long-awaited pay adjustment for the country's low-paid teachers who have been taking to the streets in recent months, the moderate-conservative website, Khabar Online said.

The website added that insisting on ratifying radical laws will impose a high cost on the current Majles which has a weak voter base. Some lawmakers were elected by around 2 percent of their constituency's eligible voters.

Hundreds of reformist candidates were barred from candidacy in the 2020 election and ultra-conservatives virtually ran unopposed.

Based on a massive body of facts and figures, Khabar Online said that 38 of the lawmakers at the Majles have won between 2 to 10 percent of the votes in their constituencies. Two members won around 2 percent of the votes in their districts, while at least 3 lawmakers in this group chair various parliamentary committees despite their less than 10 percent voter base.

The next group includes 175 lawmakers who have won between 11 to 20 percent of the votes in their constituencies in the February 2020 parliamentary election. This is the largest group of lawmakers at the Majles, and Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf who has won some 19 percent of the eligible votes in Tehran falls in this group.

The third group, which includes 77 lawmakers have won between 21 to 40 percent of the votes in their regions, while only two lawmakers managed to get 40 percent of eligible votes in their districts.

While the overall turnout of the 2020 election was announced as 42.5 percent, the actual turnout was far less due to the large number of void ballots. In some cities the number of votes won by the leading winner was less than the number of void ballots. According to Khabar Online, the reason for the low turnout, which was lowest in Tehran with just over 26 percent, was popular discontent over the bloody clampdown on the 2019 nationwide protests and barring reformist candidates from running in the election.

Last week, reformist newspaper Sharq examined the performance of the lawmakers and concluded that although the new Majles had promised to take on a predominantly supervisory role and control the presidential administration, it has done very little in this regard. According to one lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the parliament’s performance was "unacceptable." The lawmaker criticized the ultraconservative parliament for "not being able to solve any of the country's economic problems, including its uncontrolled inflation."

Sharq quoted another lawmaker as having said that the Majles tables a large number of meaningless bills, "but some 95 percent of them are never being discussed, let alone being ratified." In August, the official news agency IRNA said that "over 300 bills were tabled by the lawmakers during the preceding 6 months often about insignificant matters."

At the same time, the Majles has failed to supervise President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration although more lawmakers have lately become vocal in their criticisms of the government.

According to Sharq, even Speaker Ghalibaf has called for less legislation, and demanded attaching more significance to the parliament's supervisory role. Nonetheless, last week, when lawmakers wanted to perform their supervisory role by impeaching the economy minister, it was Ghalibaf who stopped the motion.

Sociology professor Saeed Madani said he was stopped at an airport gate December 7 as he was about to board while security checked his United States visa, and that a Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) intelligence officer then told him, without an explanation, that he was barred from leaving the country and kept Madani's passport.

Madani said in his letter to Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei he had two days earlier been summoned by the intelligence ministry, questioned for four hours, and then told he was free to leave Iran.

It is not unprecedented for someone leaving Iran to discover at the airport they are unable to leave. In 2005, Emaddedin Baghi, who campaigns against capital punishment, was stopped minutes before boarding a flight to Paris, where he was due to receive an award from the French government.

Baghi, also chairman of Society to Defend Prisoners' Rights, was again denied exit in 2009, when he was travelling to receive the Martin Ennals Award, which is given by ten international human rights organizations.

Unofficial foreign travel bans often prevent activists, political figures, and former officials from participating in international academic events and seminars.

On several occasions in recent months, Mohseni-Ejei has criticized foreign travel bans levied by tax authorities, banks, and legal authorities, but not by security and intelligence bodies. Any or all could act against activists. Mohseni-Ejei told judiciary officials October 11 that for people to find out they were unable to leave only at the airport was “damaging.”

In his letter, Madani wrote that such actions, regardless of who was behind them, violated Articles 9, 20, 30, and 33 of the Iranian constitution, and violated the right to freedom of movement given by Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In an earlier letter, sent to the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaili in November, Madani protested against the ministry banning publication of his books without a court order.

Madani − whose research interests include poverty, drug addiction, child abuse, and prostitution − belongs to the banned Nationalist-Religious Alliance, a group of small non-violent religious opposition groups that favor political reform and welfare economics. He has been sentenced and imprisoned several times for membership of the alliance and for "propaganda against the state." In 2016, he was exiled to the southern port city of Bandar Abbas after four years of an eight-year prison sentence served at Evin prison, Tehran.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British expert on Islamic studies who was also jailed in Iran for about two years, said Wednesday that the non-profit NGOaims at preventing the inhumane act of hostage taking while advocating for the unjustly detained and their families.

“As a former hostage who was kidnapped for almost 4 years in Iran, I have experienced firsthand, the pain, suffering and betrayal that comes with it”, Zakka said on the website of Hostage Aid Worldwide.

He was arrested on vague charges of espionage for the US and was released in June 2019 after an appeal by Lebanese President Michelle Aoun. After his release, Zakka talked about various types of torture he suffered in prison, including spending about 18 months blindfolded.

Zakka, who was also a US permanenet resident, was invited to Iran in 2016 by a top official of former president Hassan Rouhani’s government but he was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard.

Iran has detained many dual nationals who have visited the country and used them as bargaining chips against Western countries, according to human rights organizations.

Mostafa Nili said in an interview on Tuesday that these two award winning students, who are only 21 years old, have been held in harsh conditions of the notorious 209 section of the prison for over 600 days.

He added that despite repeated demands to transfer them to other wards, the prosecutors want to keep them there until a final verdict is issued.

Section 209 of Evin Prison, reportedly the most dreadful ward of the detention facility, is one of three prison sections that are controlled by Iran’s intelligence ministry.

Nili also talked about a video of forced confessions by the two students that was published by the Fars news agency, saying that it was recorded under duress and was not even included in their files. “The question is how the agency even acquired such a document that we, as the lawyers of the case, hadn’t seen them”, he asked.

Younesi, who was the winner of the gold medal in the International Astronomy Olympiad in 2018 in China, was arrested in April 2020 along with Moradi, another award-winning physics student of the Sharif University. They are charged with “corruption on earth”, which is punishable by death in Iran.