On March 8, Iranian intelligence agents raided the home of Ali Nejati, president of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company Workers' Syndicate (Khuzestan province), and arrested him. This follows a Feb. 28 raid, in which agents searched his home and confiscated documents related to the Syndicate. Within recent weeks, seven other leaders of the Syndicate have been arrested on charges of violating "national security," and mostly released on bail.

On Feb. 18, judicial authorities in Iran carried out lashing sentences against labor leaders Shiva Kheirabadi and Sosuan Razani for their participation in May Day events last year. Razani received a 9-month suspended sentence and 70 lashes, while Kheirabadi received a 4-month suspended sentence and 15 lashes. On Feb. 21, similar sentences were handed down to two other labor activists in Sanandaj, Abdullah Khani and Qaleb Hosseini. Khani was sentenced 40 lashes and 91 days in prison, and Hosseini was sentenced to 50 lashes and six months in prison. The lashings were carried out immediately, and they were both transferred to Sanandaj Central Prison.

A Feb. 18 National Public Radio story on the crackdown on human rights activists in Iran makes the point that the US "regime change" campaign has prompted Tehran to turn up the heat on internal dissent—and makes it easier to tar activists as American agents. Iran's foremost rights activist Shirin Ebadi is quoted saying the recent closure of her office by the authorities came in response to "a resolution passed against Iran in the United Nations."

Seven members of the Baha'i faith will stand trial in Iran on charges of "spying for Israel" and "desecrating Islam and campaigning against the Islamic Republic," the official ISNA agency reported Feb. 11. Last May, Israel's Haaretz reported that Iran had detained six Baha'is on similar charges, but it was not clear whether the seven were the same leaders arrested in 2008. The European Union reiterated its deep concern over "the ongoing systematic discrimination and the persecution of the Iranian Baha'is." (Haartez, Feb. 11)

The US Treasury Department Feb. 4 branded the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), which is waging a low-level guerilla insurgency in the Kurdish regions of Iran, as a terrorist organization. The group is a front for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting the Turkish government for 25 years, said Stuart Levey, US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. Levey said PJAK's armed wing, the East Kurdistan Defense Forces, had recently been recalled to Iraqi territory on the orders of the PKK, in apparent move to bring them under greater control. (Reuters, Feb. 4)

Iran's largest university student union has been under attack recently for taking an opposition stance against the government. On Dec. 30, the government shut down Kargozaran, a major daily newspaper in Iran, after it published a statement from the student group criticizing those who use the Palestinian issue as a tool to promote their own agenda. The statement condemned Israel's invasion of Gaza but, in a surprising move, it also "equally condemn[ed] the way in which terrorist groups take refuge in kindergartens and hospitals to attack the other side." Following the banning of Kargozaran and attacks on several Iranian human rights activists, the student organization published a second statement to clarify its position. Below are translated excerpts from their latest statement. They are asking for support from students worldwide.

The Tehran Revolutionary Court announced Jan. 17 that it has convicted four Iranians of involvement in a US-supported plan to overthrow the Iranian government. The court said that the four men had confessed to planning to overthrow the Iranian government in cooperation with the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Days earlier, Iranian judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi announced the men's arrest, and said that they had received funding for the alleged coup from the administration of US President George Bush. Neither the identities of the men nor the prison sentences they were given have been released. Responding to a question on whether the US was involved in such a plan, a State Department spokesperson said such allegations were "baseless," and said that Iran was using the charges to quite political activists.

Attacks by presumed Baluch militants are reported from both the Pakistani and Iranian sides of the divided Baluchistan region. In Quetta, capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, gunmen riding a motorbike sprayed a police vehicle with bullets Jan. 14, killing four officers. (AFP, Jan. 14) On Dec. 29, the Sunni militant group Jundallah carried out a suicide attack on a police station in Saravan, in the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan, killing four and injuring 20. Iran says the group, led by Abdolmalek Rigi, has links to al-Qaeda. (Tehran Times, NYT, Dec. 30)