Iranians Will Certainly Get Justice: UN Special Rapporteur

According to the report, 182 Baluch people were executed in 23 prisons across Iran, out of which about 81% were drug-related cases.

At least 167 others have lost their lives due to the direct gunfire by military agents in Sistan-Baluchistan province.

On the other hand, at least 76 citizens were victims of "violence by generally unknown armed persons" last year. Activists believe these people are mostly armed by the IRGC to conduct missions for the security organizations.

The report further added that 82 people lost their lives when smuggling fuel across the border to Pakistan. Gasoline and especially diesel are extremely cheap in Iran because of heavy government fuel subsidies. One gallon of diesel is just 4 US cents.

More than 120 protesters were killed on Bloody Friday on September 30 and during protests in the following weeks in Zahedan and Khash, the report says. On Bloody Friday in Zahedan, the provincial capital, security forces killed more than 80 people, and injured hundreds. Zahedan is one of the few Sunni-majority cities in predominantly Shiite Iran.

Since then, people in Zahedan held anti-regime protest rallies for 25 weeks in a row amid heavy presence by security forces.

Following Friday prayers every week and sermons by Sunni Baluch religious leader Mowlavi Abdolhamid, people hold demonstrations to vent anger at regime brutalities.

“His highness the Supreme Leader is the best personality [created] after the Imam of the Age,” Kazem Sadighi, Friday imam of Tehran told his congregation Friday in his first sermon of the new Iranian year.

In Shiite eschatology, the twelfth imam, Mahdi, is a messianic figure thought to have been in occultation by divine will since 941 CE. He is referred to as the Imam of Ages who will appear at the end of time to cleanse the world of sin and evil. Khamenei’s devotees often refer to him as the representative of the Imam of Ages, with absolute power to rule.

Sadighi also promised that Iranians will make the world a better place under Khamenei’s banner who he said is the commander-in-chief of all of the world’s oppressed people and “the resistance front” against the world powers and “an example [for mankind], an imam, a leader and divine executive.”

“The esteemed Leader has waged war on Satan and named this year as the year bridling inflation and boosting production,” another imam in the southern city of Shiraz, Ayatollah Lotfollah Dozhakam said in his sermon while exhorting his congregation to obey Khamenei.

“We can’t claim we are Muslims and awaiting the appearance of the Imam of Ages but do not obey his representative (Khamenei),” Dozhakam said.

Another Khamenei appointed Friday imam, Hojjat ol-Eslam Mahmoud Noorpour who also represents him in the northern Golestan Province told his congregation that hijab is “the most important institution of the Islamic Republic” and urged the authorities to enforce it at government offices, public places, hospitals and pharmacies, shops, and schools and universities.

Many women have been refusing to wear the compulsory hijab since September when anti-government protests engulfed the country in reaction to the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Aamini in the custody of the morality police. The young woman was arrested and taken to a detention center because the morality police patrols deemed her hijab not appropriate enough.

Photos and videos posted on social media these days show many women stepping into shops and banks and riding on public transport with no headscarf. To the religious and hardline political establishment, refusal to wear the hijab is nothing short of open defiance of the regime and its ideology.

But it is not only the hijab that they are worried about these days. The month of Ramadhan has arrived. For decades, the regime has banned all eating, drinking, and smoking in public including at workplace and schools before dusk when those who fast can begin eat and drink.

Clerics have even coined a term for the acts of eating, drinking, or smoking in public during the fasting hours which could very loosely be translated into “showing off in public that one is not fasting”. This ‘crime’ is punishable by ten to sixty days of prison or up to 74 lashes.

Even girls as young as nine are required to abide by the fasting rules at school because it is the age they are believed to be mature enough to wear the hijab and to fast. For boys the age of maturity comes much later, at fifteen.

“Respecting the holiness of the month of Ramadhan is a must for all. Showing off that one is not fasting is even worse than not fasting,” Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, the Friday imam of the city of Arak said while his peer in Gonbad, Noorpour, urged the police and state-sponsored vigilantes who are mainly responsible for warning those who do not abide by the hijab to “take decisive action against those who break the law.”

Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani was quoted by the official news agency IRNA as saying, “The continuation of America’s illegal presence in, and occupation of parts of Syria, as well attacks against different targets in that country, are violations of international law and Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The US military retaliated against drone and rocket attacks targeting its bases in northeastern Syria launched by proxy forces controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC, on Thursday and Friday.

The Pentagon and the Biden administration, while reiterating their determination to defend US personnel, emphasized that they were careful in their military strikes to minimize loss of any Iranian lives and collateral damage.

Kanaani referring to US support for “the fake Zionist regime” said, “US claims of maintaining a presence in Syria for fighting against the Islamic State group, which the US has a major role in its creation, is simply an excuse for occupation and pillaging Syria’s national wealth, including its energy resources.”

Tehran has been repeatedly alleging that the United States is “stealing oil” from Syrian oil fields close to its bases.

The spokesman also rejected US accusations as unfounded, implicitly referring to statements that attacks on US forces were launched by militias under Iranian command.

Earlier, Iran's security council warned the US against further attacks, stressing that any further strikes will be countered immediately.

Critics in the US have accused the Biden Administration of a meek response to Iranian-led attacks in Syria and Iraq. Since President Joe Biden assumed office there have been 80 such attacks and but only a few US retaliatory strikes.

Supreme National Security Council spokesman Keyvan Khosravi issued the warning following reports about an increase in casualties of US attacks on pro-Iranian militias in Syria.

So far, militias controlled by Iran have carried out at least two attacks on US bases in northeastern Syria, with two instances of US retaliation.

According to a report by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attacks left 19 dead, including three Syrian regime soldiers and 16 members of Iran-backed forces.

The Observatory said the attacks were carried out in the early hours of Friday local time by US fighter jets and drones, targeting positions of forces led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in Al-Bokamal desert, as well as other positions on the southern outskirts of Al-Mayadeen city and an ammunition warehouse opposite the “Officers Residences” in Harabesh neighborhood in Deir ez-Zur city.

The Pentagon said on Friday that the US military carried out the attack against militia groups who it blamed for a drone attack on Thursday that killed an American contractor, injured another, and wounded five US troops.

The US intelligence community assessed that the one-way attack drone was Iranian in origin, the military said, a conclusion that could further aggravate already strained tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Akbar Showkat told ILNA news agency in Tehran on Saturday that neither the employers nor expert workers are satisfied with production and work at factories because of the government’s wage policies.

Because of highly erratic currency rates, businesses are reluctant to take risks as there is the ever-present danger of higher inflation.

“Most of the employers’ expenses are related to working capital, which leads to an increase in the price of manufactured goods every year and as a result it puts more pressure on the workers’ lives.”

Critics say the minimum wage increase for the new Iranian year violates the labor law by disregarding the inflation rate, which is more than 50 percent, while workers received half that amount for the new Iranian year which started on March 21.

Almost 15,000 workers have signed a petition, saying the 27 percent increase in the minimum wage and benefits to 82 million rials per month ($180) for a family of 3.3 is “unfair”.

The minimum wage in Iran is determined by a council composed of government, business, and government-approved unions, and in fact it sets the income for most wage earners.

Labor representatives insist that next year’s minimum wage in the non-governmental sector should be on par with the inflation of over 50 percent, but government representatives are of the idea that salaries should increase at about the same rate that public-sector employees are set to receive.