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	Iran: More than 7,000 arrested in chilling crackdown on dissent during 2018 by Amnesty International, agencies   The Iranian authorities carried out a shameless campaign of repression during 2018, crushing protests and arresting thousands in a wide-scale crackdown on dissent, said Amnesty International, a year after a wave of protests against poverty, corruption and authoritarianism erupted across the country.   The organization has revealed new figures showing the extent of the Iranian authorities’ repression during 2018. Over the course of the year, more than 7,000 protesters, students, journalists, environmental activists, workers and human rights defenders, including lawyers, women’s rights activists, minority rights activists and trade unionists, were arrested, many arbitrarily.   Hundreds were sentenced to prison terms or flogging and at least 26 protesters were killed. Nine people arrested in connection with protests died in custody under suspicious circumstances.   “2018 will go down in history as a ‘year of shame’ for Iran. Throughout the year Iran’s authorities sought to stifle any sign of dissent by stepping up their crackdown on the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, and carrying out mass arrests of protesters,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director.   “The large scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences reveal the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent.”   Throughout the year and particularly during the months of January, July and August, the Iranian authorities violently dispersed peaceful demonstrations, beating unarmed protesters and using live ammunition, tear gas and water cannons against them. Thousands of people were arbitrarily arrested and detained.   Some of those swept up in the wave of arrests during the January protests were students, human rights defenders and journalists. Also targeted were the managers of channels on the popular mobile messaging application Telegram, which was used to disseminate news about the protests and to mobilize demonstrators.   Overall in 2018, whether in the context of protests or as a result of their work 11 lawyers, 50 media workers and 91 students were detained arbitrarily.   At least 20 media workers were sentenced to harsh prison or flogging sentences after unfair trials. One journalist, Mohammad Hossein Sodagar, from the Azerbaijani Turkic ethnic minority, was flogged 74 times in the city of Khoy in West Azerbaijan province after being convicted of “spreading lies”. Another media worker, Mostafa Abdi, who is an administrator of the Majzooban-e-Noor website, which reports on human rights abuses against the Gonabadi Dervish religious minority, was sentenced to 26 years and three months in prison, 148 lashes, and other punishments.   In addition, at least 112 women human rights defenders were arrested or remained in detention in Iran during 2018.   Women’s rights defenders   Throughout 2018, brave women’s rights defenders across the country joined an unprecedented protest movement against the abusive and discriminatory forced hijab (veiling) laws in Iran. Women took to the streets and stood on top of raised structures in public places, silently waving their headscarves on the ends of sticks.   In response, they suffered a bitter backlash from the authorities, facing violent assault, arrest and torture and other ill-treatment. Some were sentenced to prison terms after grossly unfair trials.   Shaparak Shajarizadeh was sentenced to 20 years in prison, 18 of which were suspended, for her peaceful protest against forced hijab. She fled Iran after she was released on bail and has since described in media interviews how she was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in solitary confinement and denied access to her lawyer.   Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer and women’s rights defender, who represented Shaparak Shajarizadeh, was herself arrested on 13 June 2018 for defending protesters against forced hijab. She faces several national security-related charges which could see her sentenced to more than a decade in prison, in addition to the five-year sentence she is already serving for her work against the death penalty.   “Throughout 2018, the Iranian authorities waged a particularly sinister crackdown against women’s rights defenders. Instead of cruelly punishing women for demanding their rights, the authorities should put an end to the rampant and entrenched discrimination and violence they face,” said Philip Luther.   Workers’ rights and trade unionists   The year 2018 also saw Iran engulfed in a deepening economic crisis which triggered numerous strikes and spurred workers to take to the streets in their thousands to call for better working conditions and protections by the government. Delays and non-payment of wages amidst high levels of inflation, skyrocketing living costs and poor working conditions also provoked protests.   Instead of addressing their complaints, however, the Iranian authorities arrested at least 467 workers, including teachers, truck drivers and factory workers, summoned others for questioning and subjected many to torture and other ill-treatment. Dozens were sentenced to prison terms. Iranian courts also handed down flogging sentences amounting to a total of nearly 3,000 lashes against 38 workers.   On 10 May, the Iranian authorities violently dispersed a peaceful protest by teachers in Tehran, who were calling for higher wages and better funding of the country’s public education system. By the end of the year, the authorities had arrested at least 23 teachers following nationwide strikes in October and November. Eight were sentenced to between nine months and 10 and a half years in prison, 74 lashes each, and other penalties.   Throughout the year, at least 278 truck drivers were arrested and some threatened with the death penalty after they took part in nationwide strikes demanding better working conditions and higher wages. Following strikes in February and November, dozens of striking workers from the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company in Shush, south-west Iran, were arrested.   “From underpaid teachers to factory workers struggling to feed their families, those who have dared to demand their rights in Iran today have paid a heavy price. Instead of ensuring workers’ demands are heard, the authorities have responded with heavy handedness, mass arrests and repression,” said Philip Luther.   http://bit.ly/2CBSbtI http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/10/iran-draconian-sentences-rights-defenders http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/iran-prison-and-flogging-sentences-for-seven-journalists-and-activists-disgraceful-injustice/   http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/iran-shocking-death-of-football-fan-who-set-herself-on-fire-exposes-impact-of-contempt-for-womens-rights/ http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/10/irans-blue-girl-suicide-sparks-renewed-calls-fifa-over-stadium-ban http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/09/woman-banned-stadiums-iran-attempts-suicide Visit the related web page
	New report says that the wider the gap between rich and poor, the more the environment suffers by Marlene Cimons Think Progress, Roosevelt Institute USA   May 2017   A new report says that the wider the gap between rich and poor, the more the environment suffers, writes Marlene Cimons.   We often talk about how climate change exacerbates social and economic inequality, but rarely do we consider the opposite: that inequality itself can be a driver of climate change.   “What’s missing from the conversation is what our inequality crisis is doing to our planet,” said Susan Holmberg, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and author of a new report that shows how unequal societies inflict more environmental damage than more economically even societies.   “One key topic that is still overlooked is how environmental degradation and climate change are themselves the toxic byproducts of our inequality problem,” Holmberg said.   Her analysis calls for a greater understanding of the link between climate change and inequality. Many people who live in low-income communities, for example, cannot afford to retrofit their homes to make them more energy efficient, meaning they use more power than necessary, generating more pollution.   “We just weren’t comfortable talking about the way inequality functions in our society, which has changed since the global financial crisis,” Holmberg said. The 2008 crash showed that severe inequality creates a more fragile economic system and that the global elite hold enormous political power.   “People assume that raising incomes will increase personal consumption and, as a result, also increase carbon emissions, which would do little to alleviate climate change,” Holmberg said. “But there are so many more mechanisms at play, including how power disparities hobble communities from protecting, for example, their air or their water.”   President Trump is currently trying to roll back federal climate protections. At the same time, his administration is pushing for social policies that would favor the wealthy. His plans for tax reform and healthcare would exacerbate existing inequities.   “Watching Trump derail so much progress is discouraging to say the least, but there is so much momentum out there for creating just climate solutions,” Holmberg said. “This is a time for people to get creative about how we can leverage the challenge of climate change to solve our inequality issues.”   To protect the environment, “we need good jobs, we need a solid tax base, we need a good healthcare system, and we need criminal justice,” she said.   “Since the Reagan administration, the left has been hobbled by a supposed environment versus jobs/economy dichotomy,” Holmberg added. She cited economist James Boyce her dissertation advisor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherstt as the first to propose that lopsided income distribution can imperil the environment. Boyce theorized that the rich have the power to pollute the environments of poorer people.   “I first heard him talk about this relationship 15 years ago, and it was one of those epiphany moments,” Holmberg said. “We tend to think about conservation from the perspective of our ''footprint'' that is, how much damage are we individually doing to the Earth? Boyce changed the question to: ‘How are we treating each other, and what are the environmental effects from these dynamics?’”   Gregory Mikkelson, associate professor at McGill University’s school of environment, has studied the impacts of inequality on biodiversity loss. He and his colleagues found that, in the United States and in other countries, the number of species threatened increases with income inequality. He wrote: “Our results suggest that economic reforms would go hand in hand with, if not serving as a prerequisite for, effective conservation.”   Holmberg, an economist, believes inequality is a byproduct of Wall Street’s preoccupation with short term growth. She said that “public companies that only prioritize next-quarter share prices and pump up those share prices through stock buybacks are an enormous driver of inequality.”   She added that “corporate short-termism, by its very definition, is bad for the environment because the same shareholder incentives that skew companies away from investing in workers, capital, and innovation discourage them from investing in, for example, green retrofitting of existing buildings, sustainable production practices, and even compliance with environmental regulations.”   Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and climate policy manager for the climate and energy program of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was not involved in the study, said that the report reiterates what many environmental justice advocates have been saying for years, that financial regulation, progressive tax policy and social insurance programs should be regarded as integral to climate change policy.   “They will not directly pull carbon out of the atmosphere, which we need to do so urgently, but these kinds of progressive economic policies may be a necessary foundation for a sustainable society,” said Holmberg, who believes inequality belongs at the center of our national conversation about climate change.   “I think people who care about the environment and economic injustice need to learn about it, and incorporate it into their analysis.”   “That was absolutely the intention of this report,” she said, “to get the word out and get people thinking and talking about the fact that inequality drives environmental harm.” http://bit.ly/2rhYf7j   * Boiling Points: The Inextricable link between Inequality and Climate Change: http://rooseveltinstitute.org/boiling-points/
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