More Shops Sealed In Iran Over Hijab Rule

Baha'i activists say Naimi was spending a holiday with his family and relatives in a resort in Karaj in the outskirts of Tehran, when more than ten security agents entered and arrested him.

The arrest of the Baha'i citizen comes less than four months after his release on bail.

He suffers from heart disease and passed out many times during his previous detention.

This former director of Iran's Baha'i community known as "Yaran" was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of fifty billion rials (100,000 USD) by the Karaj Revolutionary Court in February last year. His sentence is now being appealed.

Two other Bahai community leaders Fariba Kamalabadi, 60, and Mahvash Sabet Shahriari, 70, were handed new 10-year sentences in December after having served 10 years previously on charges of threatening national security.

The 1979 constitution of the Islamic Republic recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. 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.

Baha'is, who number around 300,000 in Iran, say their rights are systematically violated and they are often harassed, forced to leave their homes and businesses, and are deprived of government jobs and university education.

On Saturday, Iranians living in Vancouver, Canada, in solidarity with Vahid Beheshti and workers' strikes in Iran, called for increased international pressure against the Islamic Republic. Activists living in Montreal also held demonstrations in solidarity with Vahid Beheshti.

Similar events were held in Berlin, Frankfort, Bonn, Kassel in Germany and also Vienna, Gothenburg and Milan.

In France, Iranians held a protest in Paris and emphasized the need to designate the IRGC as a terrorist arm of the Islamic Republic.

Thousands of others marched in London to 10 Dawning Street to ask the UK to proscribe Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.

The protest rally was attended by activist Vahid Beheshti who has been on a hunger strike in London since February 23 outside the UK Foreign Office to raise awareness for the need to designate the IRGC.

He said he will not back down "even a millimeter from my position" as he risked his well-being for the sake of freedom of speech and human rights.

He said the voice of the huge crowd of Iranians in front of the British Prime Minister's office in London made the UK authorities realize the need to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

Several other Iranians have joined Beheshti’s protest action in the past weeks and set up their tents for a sit-in in front of the Foreign Office building.

Reports on social media say the workers went on strike on Sunday demanding a 79% wage increase for the current year.

The plant began operations in 1968 to produce Ammonia, Urea, Phosphoric Acid, Sulphuric Acid, etc. It is also the largest fertilizer producer in Iran.

In 2020, Ali Akbar Ahmadi Dashti, CEO of the company was arrested on charges of financial corruption and a 330,000 USD embezzlement.

Workers in more than 80 companies, including steel workers, across the country joined industrial action, protesting poor working conditions, low wages and rising costs of living, the Council for Organizing Oil Contract-Workers' Protests said April 25.

On Friday, a regime official said four thousand striking energy workers in the energy and petrochemical sectors are being replaced.

In recent years, as the Iranian National Oil Company has ceded many operations to quasi-private companies, most of the work is done by temporary contract workers with little pay and no benefits.

The so-called private companies are controlled by the military or other state entities, or by well-connected regime insiders who quash labor demands by using government security forces.

Labor activists warn that society is on the verge of explosion as strikes reach expand. Experts say there is no end in sight as tensions rise amidst a crumbling economy and the biggest anti-regime sentiment in years.

Reacting to the recent arrest of a group of labor and union activists, Hassan Saeedi, Keyvan Mohtadi and Reza Shahabi, members of the Workers Syndicate of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkat-e Vahed), who are imprisoned in the notorious Evin prison, slammed the regime's suppression tactics on the eve of May Day, the international labor day.

They said the security agencies, which do not even respect people's privacy, resort to terror instead of dealing with the problems and resolving them.

"Ignorant of the fact that the people are alert, and bullying will not be tolerated by any part of society, [regime repressions] will only lead to more unity among the protesters," they underlined.

They also called on all trade unions, labor, social and political activists, as well as all the freedom seekers not to remain silent in the face of suppression, and to challenge the brutality of the security apparatus by any means possible.

On Friday, a group of labor activists, who went to visit the family of the imprisoned teacher, Mohammad Habibi, were violently attacked by security agents and arrested.

According to the statement, one of the teachers suffered a heart attack and nine others were taken to Evin prison with some in solitary confinement.

In recent days, a new wave of labor strikes have swept the country, with workers from more than 100 companies and plants involved in the protest movement.

An official at South Pars gas field on the Persian Gulf stated that 4,000 protesting workers will be replaced by new ones.

The Islamic Republic has kept accusing the protesting workers of being encouraged by foreign "enemies".

Nour News, affiliated with the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), reported that unknown gunmen fired at the car of Major Alireza Shahraki.

The officer's wife was also severely wounded in the attack and taken to hospital in critical condition. Judiciary officials say no one has been detained yet but a manhunt is underway to arrest the perpetrators.

Halvash website that covers Baluchestan events reported that Shahraki used "extremely violent" methods against detainees in the past years.

Earlier in March, two other police officers were gunned down in the restive province with a Sunni-majority population. The attack occurred in a region called Golshan.

Local media identified the two officers as Mohsen Pudinei and Ehsan Shahraki who were shot "while carrying out a security mission regarding Friday prayers".

Last week, tensions built up in Fanuj in the same province after regime forces ran over two motorcycles with their vehicles killing a young man.

The outraged local population took to the streets to protest the actions of the repressive forces in the province. Local media reported that police opened fire at the protesters.

In recent months, pressure on the people in Sistan-Baluchistan has increased, and the situation in various cities has been described as very tense, especially on Fridays, when residents come out to protest against the regime.

The protests began on September 30, 2022, after nationwide unrest broke out following the death of Mahsa Amini.