We are going to invite a variety of people, including equal rights activists, researchers and journalists, to share their experiences and their views on the challenges, achievements and rights of the religious minorities and civil society in Iran at the Mvoices’ “Carte Blanche”. For this number, we have invited Sepideh Nasseri, a civil rights activist, artist, and atheist based in Sweden, to share her experience of being an atheist in Iranian society: Let’s start with the problems atheists face in Iran. According to a recent poll by the GAMAAN Institute in the Netherlands, 9% of Iranians have claimed/claim to be atheists, and only 32% of Iranians consider themselves the followers […]

Mvoices invites a variety of people, including equal rights activists, researchers, and journalists, to share their experiences and their views on the challenges, achievements and rights of the religious minorities and civil society in Iran at the Mvoices’ “Carte Blanche”.  In this issue, Awin Mostafa Zadeh / Kurdpa Human Rights Organization writes the story of “new slaves” in Iran, “Koolbars”.The Kurds suffer from discrimination for being both Sunni Muslims as well as an ethnic group in Iran.     The people living in Iranian Kurdistan have been systematically targeted by economic deprivation, such that on the one hand Koolbari is imposed on them but on the other hand they are killed […]

The persecution of Baha’i villagers became “stranger than fiction” when the Baha’is were ordered to “go to Israel ” and separate their own cows from cows belonging to Muslims in Ivel, a village in Mazandaran Province.  This issue of systematic expropriation of the Baha’is in Iran and in Ivel was highlighted during a webinar hosted by Evin Incir, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), from the Swedish Social Democratic Party on the 4th of February 2021.  The panelists included Miloon Kothari (former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing), MEP Antonio Lopez-Isturiz White, Member of the Swedish Parliament Anders Österberg, and Diane Alai (Representative of the Bahá’í International Community Geneva). […]

Many Christian converts seeking asylum, even after leaving Iran, have been painfully dealing with the denial of protection by their countries of destination for years now. About a year ago, a group of Christian converts living in Stockholm launched the campaign “I am a Christian too” to raise awareness of the systematic violation of rights of Christian converts in Iran and to change the approaches used to examine Christians’ asylum applications. These Christian converts have been staging regular protest rallies outside parliament in the Swedish capital of Stockholm for about 70 days. The campaign also protests the ongoing human rights abuses in Iran and the repression of civil society activists […]