Iranian Girls Burned in 2012 School Fire Protest for Aid in Tehran

07/20/18

By Shahram Bahraminejad & Michael Lipin, VOA

A group of Iranian girls who suffered severe burns in a 2012 school fire have staged a protest in Tehran to draw attention to what they say are broken promises of government aid.



Read Article by Aftab Yazd daily

An Iranian lawyer representing the 11 girls sent VOA Persian several images showing them and their supporters gathered outside the compound of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday. One sign held by the girls said they were "fed up" with waiting for authorities to pay for medical treatment that they still need for injuries sustained in the December 5, 2012, accidental fire at an elementary school in the northwestern town of Shinabad. Another sign said the girls, who are from a predominantly ethnic Kurdish part of Iran, consider medical treatment to be an inalienable right.

The girls' Tehran-based lawyer, Hossein Ahmadiniaz, told VOA Persian that they have been in the capital for a week while seeking meetings with Iran's education and health ministers but have been turned down. He said they decided to rally near President Rouhani's office on Wednesday to protest the apparent ministerial snubs.

WATCH: Iranian school fire survivors voice their complaints outside President Rouhani's compound in Tehran

In a video clip sent by Ahmadiniaz, a girl who identifies herself as Ameneh Raad holds the camera, pointing it at the other girls with the signs and saying: "We, the Shinabad students are gathered near the doors of the presidential office because our medical treatment has stopped and our only request is to meet with the president. The authorities did not fulfill their promises."

There was no immediate government reaction to the protest in Iranian state media.

The Shinabad school fire broke out in a faulty oil stove being used during winter to heat a classroom of girls ages 6 to 10. A staff member attempted to remove the stove while the students were still in the room and it exploded, causing injuries that killed two girls and left 26 other children suffering burns. Some of the surviving girls still need reconstructive surgery more than five years after the incident.

In December 2017, overseas rights groups published reports quoting Ahmadiniaz as complaining that the Iranian government was not providing a full blood money payment known as "Diyah" to the surviving girls or to the families of the two girls who died. Under Iran's Islamic laws, Diyah is paid as financial compensation to victims or heirs of a victim in cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage. But Iran's Diyah for women is half the value of that provided for men.

In an interview with the U.S.-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, Ahmadiniaz said the government was offering only half of a blood money payment to the Shinabad school victims because they were girls and called that "discriminatory and unfair."

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Persian Service.

About the author: Michael Lipin covers international news for VOA on the web, radio and TV, specializing in the Middle East and East Asia Pacific. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Lipin </s> The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has taken a combative tone in campaigning as conservative rivals pull out all the stops to prevent him from being re-elected. 



The favourite among reformists of the six candidates running for president on 19 May, Rouhani has crossed red lines in Iranian politics with attacks on the elite Revolutionary Guards and the characterisation of one of his main challengers as someone whose only talent was execution and imprisonment.



The president had been put on the defensive during two televised debates in which conservative rivals Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Tehran mayor, and hardliner Ebrahim Raisi attacked the country’s economic performance since he made the 2015 nuclear deal with the west, which lifted some sanctions.

But Rouhani, a moderate, hit back with attacks on the hardliners as he sought to reach the estimated 40% of the 55 million Iranians who do not usually vote.

“We want the law for all institutions, we don’t want institutions exempted from tax. How come it’s good for people to pay tax, not for you?” Rouhani said in an apparent reference to Raisi, who is the custodian of the wealthiest charity in the Muslim world, which does not pay tax. 



In an extraordinary reference at a rally on Monday to Raisi’s former judicial career, which includes a notorious incident in 1988 when he was one of four judges who oversaw the mass execution of dissidents, he said: “The people of Iran will announce in this election that they don’t accept those who only knew executions and prison for 38 years.”

At a rally for female supporters in Shiroudi stadium in Tehran on Tuesday he told the crowd that he strongly opposed gender segregation in the society or at universities.

“We won’t accept gender discrimination, we won’t accept gender oppression … we want social and political freedom,” he said amid occasional eruptions of chants in support of opposition leaders under house arrest, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, weighed in on Wednesday, urging everyone to preserve the security of the country, saying that “anyone who deviates from this path should certainly know that they will be given a slap in the face”.

The ayatollah also warned against “a sedition”, using the same term deployed against the opposition Green movement after the disputed 2009 election.

Sadeq Zibakalam, a professor at Tehran University, said that Rouhani’s change of tone was retaliation after Ghalibaf and Raisi mounted “unethical” attacks on him during TV debates. Rouhani was also reacting to many state-backed groups throwing their weight behind Raisi, Zibakalam said.

“The establishment’s favourite candidate is Mr Raisi,” Zibakalam told the Guardian by phone from Tehran. “Clergies, state television, Friday imam prayers, basij [voluntary] militia and the Revolutionary Guards are all supporting Raisi.” 



Zibakalam said it was unlikely that Raisi, who until recently was being touted as a frontrunner to succeed the country’s supreme leader, would drop out in favour of Ghalibaf, the other conservative candidate. He rejected a theory suggesting Raisi might drop out at the last minute just in time to raise his profile for a possible succession in future, saying: “Raisi is running to become president.” Critics say a defeat would scupper his chances of a possible succession.

“Rouhani faces a tough race ahead, but in contrast to all the institutions backing Raisi, there exist those who had decided to boycott. Gradually we’re seeing them coming in support of Rouhani. A wave of such voters is gradually emerging.” 



Nasser Hadian, a political expert based in Tehran, said the election mood was heating up. “A bigger participation would make it easier for Rouhani to win,” he said. “The president is mainly alluding to those who haven’t made up their mind whether to vote or not.” 



Rouhani has attacked the Revolutionary Guards twice in a course of one week. He accused the elite forces on Friday of attempting to derail the nuclear agreement. On Tuesday, he attacked them again for criticising him over a mine explosion in northern Iran. All candidates will take part in a final live TV debate on Friday.

Hadian said Ghalibaf and Raisi both were likely to remain in the race but if Ghalibaf pulled out in favour of Raisi, then Rouhani would benefit because not all Ghalibaf supporters backed a traditional hardliner. “I think if any of those two would step aside, that would be Raisi. He’ll save his face and his vote could go towards Ghalibaf.”

Ghalibaf and Raisi were busy campaigning this week. In Tehran, Ghalibaf fans, holding flags emblazoned with “96%”, shouted at a rally: “Handsome blond man, you are our president”. Ghalibaf has been promoting the idea that he stands for the 96%, saying he opposes the top 4% wealthiest in the society. In Kerman, south of Iran, Raisi was also greeted by a packed stadium shouting “Heidar, heidar” – the Arabic for lion. </s> BEIRUT, May 30 (Reuters) - In the week before the May 19 presidential election in Iran, the eventual victor, Hassan Rouhani, criticised the judiciary and the powerful Revolutionary Guards with rhetoric rarely heard in public in the Islamic republic.

Now, in the eyes of his supporters, it is time to deliver. Millions of Rouhani's followers expect him to keep pushing on human rights issues.

"The majority of Iranians have made it clear that they want improvement on human rights," said Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), a New York-based advocacy group. "Expectations are running high."

That message came through loud and clear shortly before Rouhani, who won re-election with more than 57 percent of the vote, took the stage at a gathering of supporters in Tehran last week.

"Ya Hussein, Mirhossein" went the thunderous chant, a reference to Mirhossein Mousavi, a presidential candidate in the 2009 election, who, along with fellow candidate Mehdi Karroubi disputed the results, spurring widespread protests.

Dozens of protestors were killed and hundreds arrested in the crackdown that followed, according to human rights groups.

Mousavi, his wife Zahra, and Karroubi, were placed under house arrest in 2011 after calling for protests in Iran in solidarity with pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East.

The trio's continued detention is a divisive political issue in Iran and one that Rouhani has promised to resolve.

But if he keeps pushing, he will face a backlash from his hardline opponents which could undermine his second term, analysts say.

At the rally, it took several minutes for the announcer to quiet the crowd before another chant broke out: "Our message is clear, house arrest must be broken".

Along with those arrests, more than 20 journalists and activists were arrested in the lead-up to the elections according to CHRI, an issue which has also been raised by Rouhani supporters.

Many political prisoners are kept in solitary confinement and not allowed to see their families for long periods of time, according to human rights groups.

Iran has one of world's highest rates of capital punishment. At least 530 people were executed in 2016, according to a United Nations report.

Rouhani's supporters also expect him to fight for basic rights that affect their daily lives, like preventing security forces from harassing women for the way they dress or the judiciary from cancelling concerts.

During his first term, Rouhani made the signing of an agreement with Western powers, which lifted a large number of sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear program, his top priority.

As a result, human rights issues were sidelined, analysts say. But now that the nuclear agreement is being implemented, his supporters are waiting for change.

Rouhani's decisive election win may have finally given him the opportunity to address human rights issues.

"As the head of the executive branch, Mr. Rouhani and his colleagues must use this opportunity to the maximum," parliamentarian Gholamreza Tajgardoon said last week, according to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA).

But signs are emerging that hardliners are ready for a fight.

Iran's judiciary chief hit back at Rouhani on Monday for bringing up the issue of the house arrest of opposition leaders during his campaign.

"Who are you to break the house arrests?" Larijani said without naming Rouhani, according to the judiciary news site Mizan.

Larijani said the Supreme National Security Council must take the initial decision to end the house arrests and then the judiciary would step in.

Any attempt to resolve this issue outside this legal procedure would be seen as an attempt to stoke up unrest similar to 2009, he said, according to Mizan.

"We're issuing a warning that they should wrap this issue up otherwise the judiciary, with authority, will wrap this issue up itself," Larijani said.

Karroubi, 79, served as speaker of parliament before running for president in 2005 and 2009. He now stays largely on the upper floor of his house in Tehran and gets exercise by walking indoors, according to his son Mohammad Taghi. His only sources of information are local newspapers and state TV.

Security agents stay on the premises around the clock and do not allow him to have access to the phone or Internet.

Taghi, speaking by telephone, said the hosue arrest had backfired, raising the profile and importance of his father and the other detainees.

"If the goal is to cut off their political ties, what we've seen is that the passage of these six or seven years hasn't had any effect," he said. "In fact, the limitations and problems have increased their impact in society."

Little progress can be made on any human rights issue without the approval of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest power in the country.

"Since becoming Supreme Leader in 1989, Khamenei has sought to weaken every Iranian president in their second term," said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

"Given how directly Rouhani challenged Khamenei during the campaign this tradition is likely to continue." </s> An Iranian woman who protested the obligatory Islamic headscarf by removing it in public says she has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Shapark Shajarizadeh, 42, was arrested in February after she was filmed standing on a traffic island in the Iranian capital Tehran, while waving her headscarf around on the end of a stick.

This week, she posted on her personal website that she had been jailed for 'opposing the compulsory hijab' and 'waving a white flag of peace in the street.'

Shajarizadeh was released on bail in late April after Amnesty reported that she had been charged with 'inciting corruption and prostitution'.

Her current whereabouts are unknown, and there has been no immediate comment from Iranian officials.

In a video posted on Twitter, Ms Shajarizadeh said she had fled the country upon being released on bail because she feared for her own safety.

In the month of February alone, Iranian police arrested 29 women for removing their headscarves in public as part of a campaign known as 'White Wednesdays.'

Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer who represented Shajarizadeh and other women, was arrested last month.

The Islamic dress code, in place since the 1979 revolution, considers veiling obligatory for any female above 13 in Iran and says they should cover themselves from head to toe, while disavowing any figure-hugging clothes.

Breaking the rules can result in fines of up to 500,000 rials (£17) and up to two months in prison.

President Hassan Rouhani, who came to power in 2013 promising a more moderate stance, has previously said it is not the job of police to enforce religious rules such as those forcing women to cover their hair.

But in April 2016, officials said there were 7,000 undercover morality police reporting on things like 'bad hijab' - a blanket term usually referring to un-Islamic dress by women.

Figures are rarely given, but Tehran's traffic police said in late 2015 they had dealt with 40,000 cases of bad hijab in cars, where women often let their headscarves drop around their necks.

These cases generally led to fines and a temporary impounding of the vehicle. </s> In most democracies, a resounding win at the ballot box would put a president in a strong position to deliver promised changes. But Iran is only partly a democracy.

President Hassan Rouhani, who was officially sworn in for a a second term Saturday, must contend with mounting opposition from religious hard-liners who keep losing elections but control key centers of power in the Islamic Republic.

The question is whether Rouhani can use his mandate to push through policies sought by his many young supporters to open up Iran politically and economically — or whether he will need to appease conservative clerics and security commanders who are the custodians of Iran’s theocracy.

History suggests that Rouhani has cause to be wary. His three immediate predecessors were reduced to the status of lame ducks in their second terms after clashing with the conservative establishment, led by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“There are clearly almost Soprano family-style moves to make him recognize how vulnerable he is,” said Abbas Milani, a Tehran-born academic who directs the Iranian studies program at Stanford University, referring to the mob-themed U.S. television series.

Last month, Rouhani’s brother, Hossein Fereydoun, was detained on charges of financial impropriety in what some experts describe as a shot across the bow by the conservative judiciary. Fereydoun was reportedly taken to a hospital the next day after appearing unwell at a court appearance and released on bail.

At his inauguration before parliament Saturday, Rouhani underscored the need for “national cooperation” and “constructive” relations with the world, familiar themes from his first term. Gone was the fiery rhetoric about freedom and civil rights that galvanized more reform-minded voters to his side during a bruising election campaign.

“We want to be a moderate government,” Rouhani said before lawmakers, government insiders and foreign dignitaries, “both in domestic and foreign policy.”

Some of those who helped Rouhani increase his mandate by 5 million votes are now worried that the president won’t fulfill campaign pledges to include women and more reform-minded politicians in his 18-member Cabinet.

Tradition dictates that the president should consult the supreme leader about key appointments, such as the ministers of foreign affairs and intelligence. But Rouhani is said to also be running names for less sensitive posts by Khamenei.

“One woman minister isn’t a big deal. Why doesn’t he try it?” complained Siavash Ramesh, a 30-year-old political activist who until last week was an enthusiastic supporter of the president. “We wanted more when we voted for him. We’re unhappy, but what option did we have?"

The president’s defenders say Rouhani has been consulting with the supreme leader about his Cabinet picks more than is customary so hard-liners won’t mount a challenge when he presents the list to parliament for a confidence vote.

He already faces accusations of selling off the country to “colonizing” interests after the announcement of a multibillion-dollar deal with French oil giant Total and the China National Petroleum Corp. to develop part of a massive natural gas field.

And new sanctions imposed by the Trump administration are providing grist for the mill of opposition to the nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers, Rouhani’s signature achievement.

Although many of the most crippling economic penalties imposed on Iran have been lifted since the Islamic Republic agreed to curb its nuclear activities in 2015, the country has not experienced as robust a recovery as officials had hoped.

Foreign banks and businesses are worried about the Trump administration’s more aggressive approach to Iran and don’t want to run afoul of sanctions imposed by the U.S. for other alleged transgressions. These include Iran’s ballistic missile program, support for U.S.-designated terrorist groups and human rights abuses.

Iranian officials accuse Trump of acting in bad faith and have threatened to take “proportional” retaliatory measures.

"Iran will not be the first to pull out of the nuclear deal, but it will not remain silent about America’s repeated violations," Rouhani said.

The supreme leader, who gave his official endorsement Thursday for Rouhani’s second term, said he supports “extensive interaction” with the world. But he advised Rouhani to be mindful of the plots of Iran’s enemies and reiterated the need for a “resistance economy,” or one that is not vulnerable to sanctions.

“The cost of surrendering to aggressive powers is far greater than the cost of standing up to them,” Khamenei was quoted as saying Thursday by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The supreme leader has been increasingly critical of Rouhani for policies that Khamenei says fail to protect the “dignity of the Islamic system.”

Such remarks have emboldened hard-liners who surrounded Rouhani at a rally in June and shouted slogans likening the president to one of his predecessors who was forced into exile after falling out of favor with the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Embarrassing video of Rouhani being whisked away by his bodyguards was broadcast widely in Iran, including by state-run news outlets. Some saw this as payback for the election campaign, in which Rouhani lashed out at conservative rivals for repressing dissent, accused the judiciary of breaking the law and demanded that the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard stay out of politics.

In office, however, the president has a reputation as a moderate pragmatist and consensus builder.

“Rouhani hasn’t gone rogue,” said Reza Marashi, research director for the National Iranian American Council, which advocates for better U.S.-Iran relations. “He hasn’t approved a single thing without getting Khamenei’s approval.”

Analysts expect Rouhani to focus on reviving Iran’s economy in his second term. “It’s an issue where he has a greater chance of avoiding real gridlock within the system itself,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “It’s not nearly as dangerous as taking on issues of political prisoners or trying to open up the political space to those who feel marginalized.” </s> DUBAI: Iran's health minister has resigned over proposed budget cuts, the official news agency IRNA reported, amid an economic crisis wrought by the reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

IRNA said on Thursday President Hassan Rouhani accepted the resignation of Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, widely seen as the key official behind the 2014 launch of an ambitious plan for universal medical insurance sometimes dubbed "Rouhanicare".

Hashemi had repeatedly complained about delays in payments of budgeted funds in the past and about cuts in his ministry's budget under the new state spending plans, IRNA said.

U.S. President Donald Trump reintroduced sanctions on Iran last year, targeting in particular the country's lifeblood oil sector, after pulling out of a 2015 nuclear deal. The move has helped depress the value of Iran's rial currency and aggravated annual inflation fourfold to nearly 40 percent in November.

Last month, Rouhani presented a US$47 billion draft state budget with increased spending on lower income groups, saying the U.S. sanctions would affect people's lives and economic growth but not bring the government to its knees.

Despite the rise in the rial value of the budget, however, it is effectively worth about half of the current budget because of the recent weakening of the currency and galloping inflation.

In recent months, various Iranian cities have been rocked by demonstrations as factory workers, teachers, truck drivers and farmers protested against economic hardship and corruption. </s> LIMA, PERU: Ten people were treated for burns after a man doused a woman with gasoline and set her alight inside a public bus in the Peruvian capital Lima, firefighters said.

Witnesses to the incident late Tuesday said the man approached the woman aboard the bus, spoke to her briefly, doused her with fuel and set her on fire.

The attack caused panic aboard the bus in the capital's Miraflores district, as passengers stumbled out the doors or threw themselves through the bus windows, witnesses told Peru21 newspaper. The driver used a fire extinguisher to save the victim.

The attacker escaped in the confusion.

Peru's ministry for women described the incident as an "attempted feminicide" and said it was providing assistance to the victim.

"A team of specialists is in the hospital to provide care to the woman, a victim of attempted feminicide," the women's ministry said in a statement.

According to the Organization of American States' Observatory on Citizen Security, Peru has Latin America's second-highest rate of violence against women after Bolivia.

The 10 injured passengers were treated for burns in the city's Loayza hospital.

Miraflores mayor Jorge Munoz said on Twitter he was "dismayed by the reprehensible act committed by a coward a few minutes ago against a woman, by setting her on fire when she was on a bus."

He said local authorities were putting themselves at the disposal of the police so that the attacker is caught "and punished with the full weight of the law." </s> A wife of an adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was shot and killed at her home, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Tuesday.

 The report said Mitra Najafi — the second wife of Mohammad Ali Najafi, a former reformist mayor of Tehran and a Rouhani confidant — was killed in northern Tehran. The report did not elaborate.

 Such gun violence is incredibly rare in Iran, especially in the tony neighborhoods of northern Tehran, home to the country’s political and economic elite.

 Another Iranian semi-official news agency, Tasnim, quoted Tehran prosecutor Mohammad Shahriari as saying she was killed by several gunshots, one of which hit her heart. Her body was found in a bedroom on the seventh floor of a residential high-rise in northern Tehran.

 Najafi resigned as mayor in 2018, after hard-liners criticized him over a video showing he attended a dance performance by young girls at a school show.

 Polygamy is legal in Iran, though some criticized Najafi on social media after he married Mitra Najafi. </s> Several people were injured in the southwestern Iranian city of Khorramshahr late Saturday during a demonstration against water pollution, Iranian state media reported.

The protesters set fire to rubbish bins and damaged public property, prompting police to fire tear gas to disperse them, state-run IRNA news agency said Sunday.

Officials gave different accounts of those injured during the protest, with Deputy Interior Minister Hossein Zolfaghari saying 11 people were hurt when someone opened fire.

"Ten were members of the security forces" and one was a civilian who was hospitalised, he was quoted by IRNA as saying.

The attacker has not been identified, the news agency said.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, meanwhile, said just one person was injured in a "confrontation involving shots".

He denied reports carried by Saudi media that Iranian security forces had shot and killed at least four protesters.

"The statements saying numerous people were killed are false," he said during a press conference.

The unrest erupted after some 500 people, mostly youth, gathered at a main square in the city to protest against pollution that is seeping into the city's drinking water network, IRNA reported.

Protesters also gathered outside a mosque, the agency added.

According to IRNA, there have been several protests against water pollution in Khorramshahr and the neighbouring city of Abadan over the past three days.

Iran has been facing mounting economic woes since the United States in May pulled out of a 2015 accord between Tehran and world powers that had lifted international sanctions in exchange for curbs on the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

Iran's currency has plunged almost 50 percent in value in the past six months against the US dollar and inflation is on the rise.

Traders in Tehran's Grand Bazaar held a rare strike on Monday against the collapse of the rial.

Brief scuffles also broken out on Monday between protesters and police in the capital.

On Sunday, Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri said in statements broadcast on state television that Iran is suffering from several problems, not just US sanctions.

Among Iran's "woes", he cited its dependence on oil revenues along with a weak private sector and a fragile banking sector.

Industry Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari told a news conference in Tehran on Saturday that the situation was not "critical" but "special".

He urged foreign firms working in Iran to resist US "threats" of sanctions and to continue doing business in the country.
Outside President Hassan Rouhani's office in Tehran, a group of Iranian girls severely burned in a 2012 school fire protest unequal diyah by the government toward their medical bills, which some say is an inalienable right. Their lawyer says Iran's policy of paying half diyah to women is "unfair and discriminatory".