1st Feb 2022 - By the most conservative estimates, the COVID-19 death toll in 547 cities across Iran has reached a staggering half a million now, this was collated through a network of activists in Iran and announced on, January 25, 2022. The regime’s leaders tried to undermine the severity of the pandemic as much as they could.
To justify his unpatriotic and inhuman policies, Khamenei said on March 3, 2020: “Let’s not exaggerate the issue (of the pandemic) too much. It’s an incident that has happened and will disappear, God willing, not very long. It will (emerge) in the country and spread and then leave.” Worse, he called the deadly virus a “blessing” and an “opportunity.”
23 Jan 2022 - In retaliation to and out of fear of growing public dissent, the regime has executed 6 prisoners both Wednesday 19th January 2022 and Thursday 20th January 2022. In addition to this, there were 45 executions in December 2021. The clerical regime’s criminal record must be referred to the UN Security Council, and its leaders, especially Khamenei, Raisi, and the Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i must be brought to justice for four decades of crimes against humanity and genocide.
Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, who had been jailed on security charges, has passed away in a hospital in Tehran after contracting COVID-19 in detention. Abtin was a joint winner of the 2021 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award. The 48-year-old was transferred to a hospital from the Evin Prison in mid-December and was placed in a medically induced coma a week before his death in an attempt to help him recover from a severe case of the coronavirus. Rights groups claimed authorities wasted time in offering him medical assistance when he first started showing symptoms of the disease more than a month ago.
The regime’s judiciary in Lorestan province announced on January 12th, 2022, that “the death sentences of two people had been carried out,” but the names of the victims, the time of execution and the place of their burial remained unknown. We now know the two executed dissidents were Jahanbakhsh Abbasi and Mehran Naqdi, whom the mullahs’ court sentenced to death last year after torturing them and forcing them to take part in television confessions. Both men were charged with “Moharebeh” (Waging war against God). Engulfed in crisis, and terrified of the spread of uprisings, the clerical regime has found the only way to remain in power in stepping up executions, torture, and repression.
