The Reformists are a political faction in Iran. Iran's "reform era" is sometimes said to have lasted from 1997 to 2005—the length of President Mohammad Khatami's two terms in office. The Council for Coordinating the Reforms Front is the main umbrella organization and coalition within the movement; however, there are reformist groups not aligned with the council, such as the Reformists Front.
Special Clerical Court, or Special Court for Clerics is a special Iranian judicial system for prosecuting crimes, both ordinary and political, committed by Islamic clerics and scholars. The Special Clerical Court can defrock and disbar Islamic jurists, give sentences of imprisonment, corporal punishment, execution, etc. The court functions independently of the regular Iranian judicial framework, and is accountable only to the Supreme Leader of Iran,. The most senior Islamic politician to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution was Abdollah Nouri who was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent by the court in 1999.
Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly. A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006, after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran. While in prison, he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a democracy". He has been described as "Iran's best-known political prisoner".
Ezzatollah Sahabi was an Iranian politician and journalist. He was a parliament member from 1980 to 1984.
The state of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been criticized by Iranians and international human rights activists, by writers, and NGOs. The United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission have condemned prior and ongoing abuses in Iran in published critiques and several resolutions. The government is criticized both for restrictions and punishments that follow the Islamic Republic's constitution and law, and for "extrajudicial" actions by state actors, such as the torture, rape, and killing of political prisoners, and the beatings and killings of dissidents and other civilians. Capital punishment in Iran remains a matter of international concern.
Habibollah Peyman is an Iranian politician. He is the founder and the leader of an Islamist Socialist political party, named Jonbesh Moslamanan Mobarez, which is banned by the religious government of Iran. He is also one of the leaders of the influential Iranian opposition political alliance, the Nationalist-Religious Forces. This is a group of politicians, academic thinkers and some parties, who are known to believe in Islamic studies and nationalist interests at the same time.
Shahla Sherkat is an Iranian journalist, publisher, author, feminist, and women's rights activist. She is a prominent Persian feminist author and one of the pioneers of Women's rights movement in Iran.
Shahla Lahiji is an Iranian writer, publisher, translator, women's rights activist, and the director of Roshangaran, a publishing house on women's issues.
Mohammad Khatami was elected as the President of Iran in 1997 after having based his campaign on a reform program promising implementation of a democratic and more tolerant society, the rule of law and improvement of social rights. After taking office, Khatami faced fierce opposition from his powerful opponents within the unelected institutions of the state which he had no legal power over, and this led to repeated clashes between his government and these institutions. After 8 years of presidency, he is widely considered to have lost the power struggle with his opponents. Many of his supporters have grown disillusioned with him and the reform programs that he was associated with.
The chain murders of Iran were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other.
Hovyiat is a biweekly TV program that was produced and aired on Iran's IRIB TV1 in 1996. The program's objective was said to be "confrontation with western cultural invasion." The series targeted a broad range of Iranian intellectuals, archeologists, artists, scientists and national leaders as Mohammad Mosaddeq.
Emadeddin Baghi is an Iranian Journalist, human rights activist, prisoners' rights advocate, investigative journalist, theologian and writer. He is the founder and head of the Committee for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights and the Society of Right to Life Guardians in Iran, and the author of twenty books, six of which have been banned in Iran. Baghi was imprisoned in connection with his writings on the Chain Murders of Iran, which occurred in Autumn 1998, and imprisoned again in late 2007 for another year on charges of "acting against national security." According to his family and lawyers, Baghi has been summoned to court 23 times since his release in 2003. He has also had his passport confiscated, his newspaper closed, and suspended prison sentences passed against his wife and daughter. Baghi was rearrested on 28 December 2009 on charges related to an interview with Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri. Baghi was released and then again rearrested on 5 December 2010.
From the Imperial Pahlavi dynasty, through the Islamic Revolution (1979), to the era of the Islamic Republic of Iran, government treatment of Iranian citizens' rights has been criticized by Iranians, international human rights activists, writers, NGOs, and the United States. While the monarchy under the rule of the shahs was widely attacked by most Western watchdog organizations for having an abysmal human rights record, the government of the Islamic Republic which succeeded it is considered still worse by many.
Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari is an Iranian cleric, researcher, journalist, reformist and former political prisoner. He has been described as "an active supporter of the revolution" who became "an outspoken and influential critic of the current Iranian version of theocracy."
Haleh Sahabi was an Iranian humanitarian and democracy activist. She was the daughter of former Iranian MP and veteran opposition figure Ezzatollah Sahabi, and the granddaughter of Yadollah Sahabi. She died at her father's funeral from cardiac arrest, the cause of her cardiac arrest however is disputed.
Hoda Rezazadeh Saber was an Iranian intellectual, economic scholar, journalist and social-political activist. He served several prison terms since 2000, and died while on a hunger strike in prison protesting the death of Haleh Sahabi. Saber played a leading role in the magazine Iran-e Farda, which was published from 1992 to 2000.Saber was devoted to social justice. In recent years he had been working in Sistan and Baluchestan, both major drug-trafficking routes from neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan. Saber’s employability-training programme, aimed to help over a thousand underprivileged young people escape the poverty of their drug infested surroundings.
The Islamic Association of Engineers is a civic and professional association in Iran founded in 1957.
The Statement of 14 Political Activists is an open letter signed by 14 political activists inside Iran, aimed at People of Iran, calling Ali Khamenei to resign his post of Supreme Leader after 20-year tenure. It was published online on tenth anniversary of controversial 2009 Iranian presidential election. One week after first letter, they published another letter asking for abolition of Islamic republic and establishment of a democratic secular government.
Iran-e-Farda is an Iranian nationalist-religious periodical publication printed in magazine-format and published digitally that focuses on current sociopolitical affairs of Iran.
The Religious-Nationalists or the National-Religious are terms referring to a political faction in Iran that consists of individuals and groups embracing Iranian-Islamic nationalism, as an integral part of their manifesto. They self-identify as political followers of Mohammad Mosaddegh and their modernist religious outlook makes them advocates of coexistence of Islam and democracy, an idea distinguishable from those of ideologies such as Pan-Islamism or Islamism.
