Alinejad Given Police Protection On UK Visit After Renewed Threats
Iranian dissident figure Masih Alinejad has been put under police protection on a visit to the UK as threats to her life continue.
Iranian dissident figure Masih Alinejad has been put under police protection on a visit to the UK as threats to her life continue.
The US-based opposition activist, in London to meet lawmakers and lobby for proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, said she has been put under 24-hour police protection in the UK after the Metropolitan police received threats to her life.
After she appeared at the Piers Morgan Uncensored show earlier this week, British police came to see her at her hotel room, informing her that they would be giving her protection during the remainder of her stay.
However, unperturbed, in spite of numerous threats to her life from IRGC operatives abroad, the fearless campaigner said: “I’m not as scared for my life, I survived kidnapping plots,” she said. “I survived an assassination plot, so I am not scared for my life at all. I dedicate my life to giving voice to voiceless people.”
Alinejad said the move confirmed the level of danger she continues to live under, the regime seeing her outspoken leadership against the Islamic Republic as a major threat.
“I know that the British are a little bit relaxed when it comes to death threats. Now, I believe that the level of the threat is very intense, and it’s very serious.”
It has, however, given her direct access to security chiefs to fight for proscribing the IRGC, which has been behind numerous attacks globally, not only on Iranian soil.
Since 2015, there has been a surge in IRGC activity in the UK, Europe and the United States. Most recently, UK spy agency MI5 acknowledged the real threat from Iran’s “aggressive intelligence services” to kidnap or kill UK-based people in 2022.
Earlier this year, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard took credit for the relocation of Iran International studios from the UK to the US following terror threats, calling it a victory for the Islamic Republic.
Iran International was warned by authorities in November that its journalists were under threat from Iranian agents and the Metropolitan Police took measures to strengthen security around the network’s office in the area.
On February 18, the network announced that following the advice of UK anti-terrorism officials it decided to temporarily move its studio operations to the US.
In her remarks at Sir Harry Evans Global Summit in Investigative Journalism on Wednesday, she said, "I told the members of the British Parliament that you asked the Iran International network to stop their work in London... Instead of canceling the activities of journalists, you should stop the Islamic Republic."
She made the remarks at a panel discussion titled "Iran's War Against Journalists," during which she talked about the latest developments of the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests in Iran, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, and the Islamic Republic’s repression of journalists and any voice of dissent at home and abroad.
In February, the Jewish Chronicle reported that Iran is reportedly preparing to close the British embassy in Tehran as tensions simmer over a plot to kill journalists in the UK, and London’s rebuke of crackdown on dissent.
The British embassy in Tehran has been a regular flashpoint in recent years. In December, its walls were defaced by the Basij paramilitary militia, one of the forces operating under the IRGC, with slogans labelling it a “terrorist center”.
Alinejad, who has become one of the main opposition figures amplifying the voice of protesters inside Iran, has appeared at the UN and met with several European leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and the Netherland’s Mark Rutte.
Talks about further restrictions on the activities of the regime and proscribing the IRGC have been among the hot topics at the British parliament in the past several months.
Despite repeated calls by a large number of lawmakers, London has failed to take any tangible actions against Iran and its most important arm the IRGC. However, several rounds of sanctions and other punitive measures have been taken but Iranian people suffering under the atrocities of the regime do not believe that they have been enough.
Earlier in the week, The UK’s Charity Commission removed trustees from the board of the Islamic Center of England for its links to Iran. The UK's security minister Tom Tugendhat welcomed the decision by the regulator, saying its leadership was appointed by the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
But in a bitter twist of fate, the prisoners’ families were violently dispersed by security forces using teargas, batons and warning shots, with no chance to say goodbye, or see their loved ones for one final word.
"A family member of one of the prisoners was taken to the hospital after being beaten by the forces and he is in critical condition,” a human rights group cited an unnamed source as saying, the brutal scenes compounding the pain of the families pleading for amnesty for their loved ones.
Three inmates were executed at Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj while another four were hanged at Rajai Shahr Prison also in Karaj. The charges for the executed prisoners were announced as drug trafficking and rape and have been part of a spree of killings by the Islamic Republic in recent weeks.
The number of executions started to rise after President Ebrahim Raisi – the former head of the country’s notorious judiciary -- took office in August 2021 but the recent exponential spike has triggered concern at home and abroad.
The United Nations said Tuesday that Iran has executed 209 people so far this year, calling the record "abominable". The Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran 2021, published by Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and Paris-based Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort or ECPM (Together Against the Death Penalty), said at least 333 people were executed in 2021, about two thirds of whom were during Raisi’s administration. This was up from 267 in 2020.
In 2022, executions rose by about 80 percent, with at least 582 people put to death. Several right groups such as IHRNGO, ECPM, and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) described the rise as the authorities’ tactic to "spread fear" among protesters.
A glance at the HRANA’s 2022 reports on Iran's rights violations clearly shows a sharp upward trend in the reported cases since mid-September when the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in the custody of the so-called “morality police,” following which protests swept across the country.
Iranian social media users have launched a twitter campaign calling on the regime to stop the executions, particularly of prisoners of conscience. The Persian translation of the hashtag “we are all together” had been retweeted about 300,000 times by mid-Wednesday.
The global community has also been vocal about the exponential rise in the number of executions, with many officials condemning the acts and calling on the regime to halt the hangings.
Two Iranians jailed for insulting religious entities were hanged on Monday, strengthening speculation that the killing spree aims to intimidate people against further protests. Moreover, Iran executed Iranian-Swedish political activist and former leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) Habib Chaab (Asyud) on Saturday for “corruption on earth”.
Speaking to Iran International, the Canadian foreign ministry called the executions of the three activists hanged in the past few days “appalling,” urging the Islamic Republic to abolish capital punishment.
Australian Senator Jordon Steele-John, a political sponsor of Majid Kazemi -- among four men accused of being involved in the deaths of three IRGC’s Basij militia members during anti-government protests in the city of Isfahan – called on the Federal Government and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong “to have an urgent meeting with her Iranian counterpart to do all they can to prevent the execution of Majid, which could happen at any moment”.
On Tuesday, the sentiments were echoed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk. ”On average so far this year, over 10 people are put to death each week in Iran, making it one of the world's highest executors,” she said. And as numbers continue to climb, it looks unlikely to stop any time soon, with the regime doing all it can to spread fear among its people.
The Coordinating Council of Teachers' Union Organizations had called for further protests last week just hours after the Supreme Leader failed to address nationwide school poisonings.
The rallies were scheduled as a tribute to Jabbar Baghcheban, also known as Mirza Jabbar Asgarzadeh, an Iranian inventor and educator born on May 9, 1886, who established the first Iranian kindergarten and the first deaf school.
The council stressed the necessity of ending the "dominance of the ruling totalitarian ideology" in Iranian schools, claiming the current incompetent managers of the educational system should be replaced by those educated under more modern, secular pedagogy.
In addition to their usual demands such as better salaries and working conditions, the teachers’ council reiterated that Iran’s education system will not improve without a fundamental change.
In response, teachers in the cities of Kermanshah, Arak, Shush, Ahvaz, Torbat Heydarieh, Hamedan, Sanandaj, Eslamabad-e Gharb, Qazvin, Esfahan and Harsin gathered in front of the Education Departments on Tuesday.
Gatherings were held peacefully in some cities, but in Sanandaj west of Iran and Esfahan in the center the police force attacked protesters.
Hengaw Human Rights Organization, a Kurdish rights group, reported that the security forces have kidnapped two teachers in the city.
In its final statement, The Coordinating Council of Teachers' Union Organizations slammed the ideological indoctrination in textbooks, creating psychological insecurity and threatening the female students, and urged attention to the livelihood of the teachers.
“The goal of the education system is not to train citizens, but to train soldiers aligned with the narrow-minded indoctrination of totalitarian ideology," reads the statement.
Referring to the nationwide uprising following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the statement added what was seen in the schools and streets was the failure of a model that ignores the deep changes in society which wants to achieve its unrealistic ideals in the educational system.
Hundreds of schools in the Iranian provinces have been attacked by unidentified gases since November 30 when the first case of poisoning among schoolgirls was reported in the religious city of Qom. However, the government has not taken any tangible measures to identify and pursue the perpetrators, nor to explain to terrified parents and students what was happening, other than a few staged arrests. It is impossible such wide scale attacks could happen without regime approval.
Thousands of students have been affected, mostly girls, with hundreds hospitalized with symptoms including respiratory distress, numbness in their limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.
Critics of the regime say the attacks are part of a crackdown on protests, a claim denied by government officials who have claimed the symptoms are the result of mass hysteria.
Families of students have staged protest rallies urging officials to hold classes virtually rather than in school to protect children from further attacks.