Iran

Amnesty International fears the Iranian authorities are implementing a programme that will isolate Iranians from the outside world after contact with more than 60 foreign institutions, including human rights organizations, was banned. A statement issued by the Iranian authorities on Tuesday also designates as subversive a number of foreign media outlets, thereby criminalizing contacts with them. The move leaves anyone making such contacts at risk of prosecution and appears designed to hide from the world the true scale of what is happening in Iran and to obstruct reporting on human rights violations, the organization said.

Following increasing threats and harassment earlier in the year, Nobel laureate and women's rights advocate Shirin Ebadi has been unable to return to Iran since the June 2009 presidential election. She has, however, remained vocal in her defense of human rights, and as a result, her 47-year old sister, Noushin--a professor of dentistry who is not engaged in any human rights work or political activity--was arrested in her home in Tehran by security officials on Monday, December 28. The previous week, Noushin Ebadi had been contacted by officials and ordered to tell her sister to stop her work.

With Great sadness, I learned this morning that Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a Shiite Scholar, a political activist, and a champion of human rights passed away this morning at the age of 87, writes Hossein Alizadeh. Ayatollah Montazei was a political philosopher and a social activist, who spent many years in jail, exile and under house arrest. He was the founder of a new political school in Shiitte Islam, known as Velayat-al-Faghih, which calls on Shiite religious leaders to lead the Muslim societies as their political leaders.

The on-camera martyrdom of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year old philosophy student shot dead during the protests after the fraudulent presidential election in Iran in June, caught the imagination of the world. But the post-election crackdown has two other victims whose fates better capture the radical shift in the country’s political culture.