Iran International
The top sunni cleric in Iran has said that the death of a young Baluch man claimed to have been killed by security forces is suspicious and authorities must reveal the truth about the incident.
“Sepehr Shirani was killed in a suspicious manner. Anyone who has been involved in his killing should be punished,” Mowlavi Abdolhamid Esmaeil-Zehi said in his Friday sermon on February 2.
Shirani, a 19-year-old student from the small town of Fanuj in the southwest of Sistan and Baluchestan Province of Iran, went missing Tuesday, January 30. He lived and studied in the provincial capital Zahedan.
According to Haalvsh, a website dedicated to human rights issues and events in Sistan-Baluchestan, Shirani’s family found out that he was in the custody of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Intelligence Organization (SAS) after checking with local police and security authorities. They were told he had been detained for his social media activities but would be released “after a few questions”.
An informed source told Haalvsh that Shirani’s body, shot in the head, was discovered early Thursday morning on the rooftop of the apartment building where he lived. His family say they had not been informed of his release and he had returned to his home.
The public and revolutionary prosecutor of Sistan and Baluchestan, Mehdi Shamsabadi, on Thursday denied reports of Shirani’s death under torture at IRGC’s detention facility in Zahedan.
Shamsabadi also denied Shirani’s arrest by security agencies and said preliminary information indicate that he committed suicide.
Rasad Baluchestan, a Telegram channel dedicated to news on the Baluchi ethnic population of Iran, quoted Shirani’s relatives as saying that the claim of suicide is false and he was beaten to death by a stick in the custody of the intelligence ministry.
According to Haalvsh, authorities only consented to hand over Shirani’s body to his family for burial after forcing them pledge to keep quiet about the circumstances of his death.
Shirani was buried in his hometown of Fanuj Friday. The Telegram channel of Baluch Activists Campaign has released a video of the burial.
Burial of Shirani’s body in his hometown of Fanuj.
Haalvsh which also claims the family have been forced into silence reported on Friday that Shirani’s body showed bruises resulting from being whipped and his right arm was broken.
The situation in Iran's southeastern Baluch region including the city of Zahedan has been very tense since September 30, 2022. Security forces opened fire on protesters on that day, day which is now often referred to as the Bloody Friday and killed nearly 90 including women and children.
Since Bloody Friday, local Sunnis have protested every week after Friday prayers. Many who worked at Makki Mosque, where the Friday prayers are held, or were associated with the mosque and its charismatic leader Abdolhamid have been arrested in the past year.
An informed source told Haalvsh that security forces had warned Shirani about his support for the weekly protests in Zahedan on social media as well as helping the security of Makki Mosque as a volunteer. The source claimed that Shirani had refused to obey the security forces’ demand not to post anything about the protests.
According to reports, Iran's best-known filmmakers refused to attend the opening gala, critics criticized the organizers for their poor programming, and artists confronted officials for various reasons. The festival has become a political tool in the hands of hardliners to punish independent filmmakers and promote their loyalists.
Elnaz Shakerdoost, an actress who received awards in previous years, purchased a ticket last week to attend the festival movie house in Tehran where her new film, “Without A Body,” was being screened since she was not even invited to the opening ceremony. Shakerdoost decided to take the stage and address the audience about censorship.
The actress, considered a superstar, had been barred from official ceremonies due to her support of the 2022 protests in Iran and her advocacy for Iranian women defying compulsory hijab. She managed to make her way to the stage at the end of her movie and declare, "This is not a festival; this is a cultural war." As officials raised the music volume to drown out her speech, she added, "The officials screen the films they cannot find a reason to ban in the 'new look' section and effectively bury the movies alive forever."
The festival this year, decided to pay tribute to director Parviz Sheikh-Tadi, known for making movies in support of the regime’s ideology. He is best known for his film, “Saturday Hunter,” full of conspiracy theories about Zionists controlling the world. Culture Minister Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili and two of the festival's officials ushered him to the stage, believing in his revolutionary credentials, unaware of any potential change in his views over the years.
Onstage, Sheikh-Tadi presented a tie as a gift to the Minister to make him appear tidy and serious, highlighting that hardliners in Iran used to cut people's ties, viewing them as a symbol of Western civilization. To embarrass the officials further, he took out a woman's headscarf and stated that it was futile to force women to wear it. The audience gave him a standing ovation, and the officials wore forced smiles, worried about what might happen next. The audience applauded every word Sheikh-Tadi uttered during his powerful protest act.
One film critic commented, "The videos and pictures of the event went viral, offering a valuable lesson for the officials. However, based on experience, we shouldn't be too optimistic." He pointed out that Sheikh Tadi shared political affiliations with the officials, making his message particularly impactful. "Who else should have told them what they needed to hear?"
Yet another embarrassment came as Asghar Naimi, a filmmaker and a former journalist tried to enter the festival's venue to watch his film, “Two days Later,” with the audience. The festivals officials and the organizers' representatives did not recognize him and violently tried to stop him. Naimi, a strong man, forcefully made his way inside while chastising the officials, who seemed clueless about the festival's essence.
Naimi later commented that "those who fund the movies through connections with the state should stop ignoring Iran's independent cinema."
Even during its best periods under President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government (1997-2005), the Fajr Film Festival, dedicated to paying tribute to the 1979 Islamic revolution, remained a caricature of the pre-revolution Tehran International Film Festival, which showcased the best of Iranian and world cinema and attracted giants from the global film industry.
Over the past decade, several concerning issues have plagued Iran's public education system, attracting significant attention.
Mass recruitment of clerics in public schools, significant dropouts even in elementary and middle schools, and a sharp drop in the quality of public education. In its latest recruitment process, the Ministry of Education hired 3500 seminary students and clerics without any training. Already, tens of thousands of seminary students and clerics were employed in this ministry.
According to Shahla Kazmipour, a demographer in Iran, 30 percent of male teenagers aged 15 to 18 have dropped out of schools and only half school-aged male teenagers are enrolled.
A report on students' average grades from 2019 to 2023 showed a decline in the GPA across all fields, particularly in experimental sciences, mathematics, physics, and Islamic knowledge. This drop in educational quality has been a consistent trend over the past 45 years.
Of course, this drop is not limited to this time period. Iran's public education has experienced a continuous decline in scores in the last 45 years despite the lowering of standards. How can we explain this drop during the Islamic Republic era?
Three fundamental reasons
The three main and fundamental reasons for this decline are 1) the sharp decrease in per capita investment and spending in public education year by year, 2) an increasing class divide in society has led to children from the ruling class attending private schools, leaving public education with fewer resources and less competition. 3) widespread poverty and high unemployment rates have strained family resources, making it difficult for many households to invest in their children's education.
The Ministry of Education had 971,000 staff and 38,000 retirees in 2023. The budget of this ministry was about 2.7 trillion rials or about $4 billion. Considering the population of 16,700,000 students in the country, the budget per student was about 12.4 million tomans, which was $250 per capita per year. In comparison, European countries, the US, and Canada allocated between $8,000 and $20,000 per student in 2019.
Furthermore, income inequality has widened in Iran, with public schools providing low-quality education for low-income families. Over 70% of top-ranking students in university entrance exams come from non-government schools, which only account for 13% of students.
Despite the government's denial of poverty statistics, approximately 90% of Iranians receive living subsidies, indicating widespread economic challenges. Moreover, unemployment affects about 53% of Iranians aged 15 to 65, rendering the official unemployment rate of 7.6% questionable. In such circumstances, families often reduce family sizes or cut "non-essential" expenses, including education.
Four security-political concerns
Instead of addressing the underlying causes of decline in the education system, the authorities have been inserting clerics and Basij members into the school staff based on four false perceptions: 1) brainwashing instead of civil education, 2) ideological and political indoctrination instead of teaching sciences and skills, 3) preventing student protests by having loyal people in the schools’ staff and supervisors, and 4) keeping the clerics and Basij members loyal by giving them public jobs.
This totalitarian approach can hardly succeed in Iran for the resistance of families against the indoctrination of the clerics’ lifestyle and ideas. Parents and students alike have access to the Internet as a window to alternative lifestyles, and flaws in the ideological and political programs of the government.
The Shiite clerics’ main agenda in Iran has been to reverse the modernization of the Pahlavi era in all aspects of governance. This agenda is gradually returning Iran’s public education to the 19th century Qajar era, similar to the judicial and legislative systems of the Islamic Republic. With the current trend, Iran's public schools could become the madrasas of the Qajar era in the next decade.
