The monthly report of the Iranian Center for the Defenders of Human Rights (Kanoon Modafean Hoghooge Bashar) for the month of Farvardin (March 21st to April 21st) references Younes Asakareh who set himself on fire in the city of Khoramshahr last month and reports that the incident shows the growing rate of poverty and more importantly lack of justice in society. The center is run by Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s lonely Nobel Prize winner in 2003.

According to the report more than a quarter of the population of Iran live under the poverty line and the rising rate of inflation continues to lower the standard of living of ordinary Iranians, especially the lower income groups. The center concludes that it is this social deprivation and economic uncertainty that turns poverty into suicide.

The report criticizes the government’s double standards in ignoring to address issues such as Asakareh’s suicide while providing support to foreign governments.

The Center’s monthly reports cover the human rights situation in Iran under three distinct sections: Civil, Cultural and Political Rights; Social and Economic Rights, and; Cultural Heritage and the Environment.

The report points to a shortage of medical services in the provinces and mentions that research centers put the number of children in Iran who are deprived of education because of poverty at over a million. It writes that official figures in Iran indicate that over a quarter of the population lives under the poverty line. It quotes a deputy minister at the Ministry of Labor to have said that at the end of 1393 (March of 2015) that the poverty line for a family of four is set at one million Toman while the minimum wage for workers is set at 712,000 Toman a month for 2015.

On inflation, the report writes that while the rate has fallen from 40% to 16%, it is still a two-digit rate making the country one of those with the highest inflation rate in the world. To exacerbate the situation, the Iranian economy has had a very slow growth rate while employment rate has not improved significantly.

The report writes that its authors are witness to a situation in which Iran disregards the conditions of its own citizenry while sympathizing with the people of other countries and provides material assistance to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and a number of African countries. And this does not even take into account the resources that are thrown at the nuclear program. It points out that while Iranian citizens suffer from a shortage of medical services and medicine, Yemeni war victims are brought to Iran and given medical treatment at domestic hospitals.

According to the report, 31 individuals were arrested in the month and provides a summary of the circumstances under which each of them was arrested and treated. Regarding cultural issues, the report mentions, along with six other specific issues, that the editor and a journalist from Mizan news agency – affiliated to the judiciary branch of government – were expelled from their job after they published the condolence message of the former minister of justice to former president Mohammad Khatami on the occasion of his mother’s death. Under the Social and Economic section of the report, the authors write that the minister of labor has acknowledged that the rate of unemployment is twice as high for women as it is for men.

The report ends by reminding the government of its constitutional and legal responsibilities regarding human rights conditions of Iranian citizens.
Roozonlin