Iranian, Saudi Foreign Ministers Meet In Beijing, Agree Bilateral Steps

Agents on Wednesday arrested the parents and a brother of Javad Heydari who was killed last September by the security forces of the Islamic Republic in a village near Qazvin west of Tehran.

Fatemeh Heydari, Javad’s sister, announced in a tweet that her parents and Mohammad, one of his brothers, were arrested on Wednesday.

The arrests come as Ruhollah Heydari, another member of the family, has been detained since Monday.

Javad Heydari's sister was also fired from her workplace, Iran’s Mapping Organization in March.

During the protests, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, hundreds of people lost their lives and many more received permanent injuries.

The authorities not only failed to accept any responsibility, but put pressure on some of the victims' families who made statements against regime officials during funerals or on social networks.

According to Amnesty International, the Iranian authorities’ arbitrary arrests, intimidation and harassment of relatives of victims exposes their inconceivable cruelty and sinister attempt to cover up their crimes.

“The authorities have not only condemned families …to a lifetime of inconsolable sadness, but they have also inflicted extreme mental anguish upon them through cruel restrictions on burials, commemorations and relentless intimidation aimed at enforcing silence,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

According to the research published by The Lancet journal, currently, the number of “deaths due to global warming in the Middle East is 2·1 per 100,000 people”. However, the region “will have experienced substantial warming by the 2060s with the potential to reach the annual heat-related deaths to 123·4 per 100,000 people”.

In Iran’s case, this number is currently 11 deaths per 100,000 people, which is five times the average of the Middle East, but it will reach 423 in the next four decades.

“This death rate would be reduced by more than 80% if global warming is limited to 2°C, [but] Iran currently has the highest heat-related death rate and will experience the greatest impacts between 2021 and 2100.”

According to the report, the Middle East is one of the most vulnerable parts of the world to global warming and climate change.

The report states that the number of annual deaths due to global warming in Iran is around 1,703 people meaning six times more than that of Saudi Arabia.

The most important cause of global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases. International statistics, including those of the International Energy Agency and the Global Carbon Project, show that Iran has the highest emission of greenhouse gases in the Middle East and is ranked sixth globally.

Rouydad 24 website reported Wednesday that four security agents from the intelligence department of Western Tehran arrested Habibi at his home.

On February 8, he was released from the notorious Evin prison as part of a so-called general amnesty announced by the Iranian judiciary on the occasion of 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

This is not the first time that security forces raid Habibi’s home, who is also known as a human rights defender. On March 30, 2017, agents raided his home and confiscated his electronic devices.

Previously, he had been terminated twice from his teaching position under the pretext of the “unjustified leave of absence” while he was behind bars.

In August 2018, he was sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment on charges of “collusion against national security”, and “propaganda against the regime” for his peaceful activities in teachers’ association.

In November 2020, he was released from prison after his sentence was reduced based on a new directive issued by the head of the Iranian judiciary.

According to the Telegram channel of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, at least fifteen teachers including Mohammad Habibi were detained on April 30, 2022.

The news comes amid reports of the cultural icon’s sense of hopelessness in the face of the country’s dire political and economic situation having led to his death.

Pour-Ahmad had described the popular protests that started last September as “bloody and painful” and wrote: “With all the scorching we have on our souls, what festival, what festivity?”

Initially, reports had claimed Pour-Ahmad died of a heart failure, but the Iranian magazine, Today’s Film, reported that he ended his life because of “depression, despair, the feeling of uselessness and lack of hope in future. Simply so terrible, unbelievable, horrible and shocking,” citing sources close to the star.

The verdict of the 74-year-old’s suicide was ruled by Mehdi Fallahmiri, the prosecutor in northern Gilan Province, who initially dispatched a murder investigation team on hearing the news of Pour-Ahmad's death.

Though the suicided was confirmed, Fallahmiri said “further investigation” is needed. The body has been transferred to the coroner’s office.

Unconfirmed reports say that he left an eight-page letter explaining his decision. However, the content of the note has not been disclosed.

Mehdi Kouhian, an attorney who has been close to the legal cases of detained artists during recent protests recently warned of the toll the unrest and subsequent crackdowns on the cultural community were having in a chilling foreboding of the fate of Pour-Ahmad.

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Just days ago, he publicly recommended that the community of artists should help those who were being persecuted by the government by providing secure therapy services.

In a tweet Thursday, he said: “As a result of close contacts I had with dissident artists in the past seven months, I warned less than a month ago about their psychological condition.”

The veteran filmmaker was not a revolutionary and once admitted that before the 1979 revolution he had a beard, but when he saw protesters burning a bookstore, he shaved it off.

Although he was not an outspoken critic of the regime, like some other famous artists who have been jailed, he had become critical of the clerical regime’s intrusion into artistic works.

He had spoken out against censorship and Iran’s annual Fajr Film Festival, where the government increasingly intervenes to ban films it deems “unsuitable”.

Some have already labeled Pour-Ahmad’s death as “government murder” with tributes pouring in from around the world.

Journalist Noushabeh Amiri, who is now in Europe, Tweeted: “Pour-Ahmad was killed by the filthy Islamic Republic, yes, killed.”

She went on to say, “Killing can take different forms. When you chock off the air from an artist, when you pressure him every day, when you take his unfinished film and give it to security agents to complete it, when…This is how they killed Kyumars.”

He will go down in history as one of Iran’s greats. His most famous production was a TV serial called Majid’s Stories, about a boy living with his grandmother, which captivated children, teenagers and adults alike.

Film critic Mehrsa Rahnema told Iran International TV that Pour-Ahmad was one of the few Iranian filmmakers whose films and serials captured the hearts of people of all ages, because he was so close to the real lives of ordinary people.

Member of Parliament, Mohammad Sargazi, said most citizens consume water, tomato paste and bread as their main meal.

Sistan and Baluchestan is the poorest province of Iran with a population of around 4 million, including 700,000 Afghan nationals.

During the past years, this region has experienced many crises, including shortage of fuel, bread, and drinking water, as well as drought, widespread unemployment and increasing poverty.

Despite frequent promises to improve the situation, successive administrations have done little to invest in the region, create jobs, build housing or even decent schools. Some children study outdoors, while teenagers smuggle small quantities of fuel to neighboring Pakistan to make some money.

Narcotics smuggling from Afghanistan is also a serious problem in the region, with hundreds of small-time traffickers executed each year according to Iran's tough criminal laws.

In the recent popular protests following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, Sistan-Baluchestan has had the highest number of victims among 31 provinces.

The Islamic Republic has been struggling with high inflation since 2019, but the raging inflation in the past Iranian year which ends on March 20, was seriously different from previous years.

Food prices continue to climb as the national currency declined by 50 percent in the past six months. According to the report of the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI), in some months, the food and beverages inflation hit 87%.