Iranian-Canadians Hold Gathering In Solidarity With Political Prisoners

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), security forces stormed a small gathering at the home of one of the Baha’i families in the city and detained them. 

Late in August, UN experts and Amnesty International expressed deep concern over Iran’s persecution of Baha’is and urged an end to pressure on religious and other minorities.

The Shia clergy consider the Baha’i faith as a heretical sect. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i faith a cult and in a religious fatwa in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith.

Bahai’s, who number around 300,000 in Iran, cannot hold jobs in the public sector and are sometimes sacked from their jobs in the private sector under pressure from authorities. They are also deprived of higher education.

Informed sources told Iran International earlier in August that at least 90 Baha'i students have been barred from universities this year due to a secret government policy.

In early August, security forces laid siege to Roshankouh, a village in Mazandaran province, and started demolishing houses and farms belonging to members of the persecuted Baha’i faith.

Several countries including Canada, the United States, and Britain have expressed concern over the Islamic Republic’s systematic prosecution, harassment, and discrimination against the Baha'i minority.

Syria’s state news agency (SANA) reported material damage at the airport, saying, "At around 20:00 hours (17:00 GMT), the Israeli enemy targeted Aleppo International Airport with missile fire, causing material damage at the heart of the facility.” 

The UK-based war monitor, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that four Israeli missiles had targeted the runway and depots at the airport.

According to Syrian military sources, air defense systems near Latakia, located southwest of Aleppo, were activated in an attempt to intercept the missiles headed towards Aleppo. Shortly after the strike in Aleppo, Israeli airstrikes targeted sites near Damascus International Airport and other targets south of Damascus, with Syrian air defenses downing “a number of missiles.”

Sabereen News, a channel close to Iran-backed forces in Syria reported that Israel targeted Aleppo airport to prevent a US sanctioned Iranian plane – belonging to the Yas Air cargo airline -- from landing as it appeared to be descending, adding that the plane changed course to Damascus so the Israeli aircraft returned and bombed Damascus airport. 

Pouya Air – also known as Yas Air – is an Iranian cargo airline that has been owned by Pars Aviation Services Company (PASC), which the UN Security Council has identified as an entity affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). According to the US Department of the Treasury, it has transported illicit cargo to Iranian proxies in the region on behalf of the IRGC Quds Force (IRGC-QF).

The Wednesday attack was the first alleged Israeli airstrike to target the Aleppo airport since 2019 and the second time Israel targeted a Syrian airport this year. On June 10, Israel bombed the Damascus International Airport, causing the airport to go completely out of service for a period of two weeks.

The airstrikes come less than a week after similar airstrikes targeted the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in Masyaf, located southwest of Aleppo, reportedly destroying more than 1,000 Iranian-made missiles. The Observatory for Human Rights said the attack targeted a missile warehouse in the SSRC complex that stored thousands of medium-range, surface-to-surface missiles assembled under the supervision of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s “expert officers.”

The observatory added that 14 Syrian civilians sustained injuries with varying levels of severity during the Masyaf airstrike, in addition to casualties reported among Iranian-backed militias guarding the research center– which was heavily damaged during the attack.

In addition to the strikes attributed to Israel, the United States also engaged in a string of tit-for-tat attacks last week against Iranian militias in northern Syria who had targeted US forces with rockets and drones.

Iran-backed militias established a foothold in Syria while fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's civil war.

The airstrikes came just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke with US President Joe Biden about the continuing efforts by the US, EU and Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. During the conversation, Lapid also welcomed recent US strikes on Iran-backed militias in eastern Syria.

One of them said that he saw two people beating up a cleric he knew with metal pipes and when the attackers saw him looking from his car they started beating him too and broke his cars windows. The clerics are prayer imams at two mosques

The second cleric who has lighter injuries criticized the city’s police for showing up very late -- after about 40 minutes – and for not arresting the perpetrators despite the fact that they knew where they were hiding. 

It is not clear if the attackers knew the first victim and if they attacked him for a personal reason.

Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.

Late in July, a cleric named Mojtaba Hosseini was stabbed several times in his back during his sermon in the city of Karaj in Western Tehran. And earlier in July, a congregational prayer imam was injured in an assassination attempt by an assailant on a motorcycle in the city of Esfahan.

In early June, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the central city of Esfahan was also attacked by a young man carrying a knife. And in April, a man stabbed three clerics in Iran's largest Shiite shrine in Mashhad, killing two.

Nouri said that the revision of textbooks and educational content will be carried out for the next academic year in 2023 because the books were being printed when the order was issued.

About 200 titles of books from all grades of elementary to high school have been sent for revision, he said, adding that some of them will be revised by the professors at the Farhangian teacher training university and some by the country's educational research and planning organization. 

Earlier in the year, Ali Khamenei said that the content of some schoolbooks that is not practical and does not benefit the students should be removed. 

In the last few years, some changes and edits in students’ textbooks, including removal of an illustration of some girls from the cover of the third-grade math book and adding anti-American and pro-Russia materials, led to controversy among Iranians. 

A conscious ‘Islamization’ of primary, middle and high school books started soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The process has applied to literature, art and all illustrations in the teaching of history. Last year textbooks were revised to play down historical rivalry between Iran and Russia, particularly in the 18th and early 19th century, reflecting Tehran’s current desire for closer relations with Moscow.

President Ebrahim Raisi has also permanently cancelled the implementation of UNESCO 2030, a United Nations document calling for gender equality in education that Khamenei had suspended in 2017. Former President Hassan Rouhani’s administration had adopted the document as a UN member state and was planning its implementation when hardliners lobbied Khamenei to suspend it.

In a new report, titled 'They don’t treat us like humans,' Amnesty released documents of numerous instances -- mostly at Iran border -- where security forces have shot directly at the refugees as they climbed over walls or crawled under fences to prevent their entry or forcibly return them to face life-threatening risks under the Taliban regime, in violation of international law.

Highlighting their plight, the report said the migrants are poor and lack passports or other valid travel documents, therefore they are especially vulnerable to border police who use threats or outright violence to keep them out. 

It added that Afghans who do manage to enter Iran or Turkey are routinely arbitrarily detained and subjected to torture, with a total of 11 killings by Iranian security forces. Although the true death toll is likely to be significantly higher, the Amnesty said.

“One year after the end of airlift evacuations from Afghanistan, many of those left behind are risking their lives to leave the country – Afghans who have travelled to the Iranian and Turkish borders over the past year, in search of safety, have instead been forcibly returned under fire. We documented how Iranian security forces have unlawfully killed and injured dozens of Afghans since last August, including by firing repeatedly into packed cars,” said Marie Forestier, researcher on refugee and migrants rights.

Hundreds of thousands fled Afghanistan in August 2021 after the US left the country in a chaotic military pullout, allowing the hardline Taliban Islamists to retake control.