Dec. 15 – Iran’s President Ibrahim Raisi has cancelled a trip to Switzerland following a legal complaint submitted by opposition figures in the country calling for his arrest.
The complaint was filed with the Swiss Prosecutor’s office, and accuses Raisi of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 1988 executions of thousands of political prisoners in Iran.
Raisi had been scheduled to attend the World Refugee Forum in Geneva.
A new sanctions package against Iran was launched by the UK this week, which included designations addressing Iran’s support for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as sanctions against the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The measures include travel bans and asset freezes, and create new criteria under which individuals and entities can be sanctioned.
And religious minority groups in Iran have been exposed to “cultural violence” spanning a 45 year period by the country’s regime, according to a report published by human rights platform Global Voices.
The report said the regime used textbooks, religious debate, films and even cemeteries to assert its dominance over minorities, which also enabled the physical violence perpetrated by Iran officials against these groups.
The Islamic Republic has been routinely condemned by international human rights watchdogs for its oppression and discrimination of minority communities in Iran.
