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In this mailing:
* Majid Rafizadeh: The UN and EU's Silence on Iran's "Shocking Human Rights Violations"
* Judith Bergman: Confiscating Books in Sweden


** The UN and EU's Silence on Iran's "Shocking Human Rights Violations" ([link removed])
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by Majid Rafizadeh • September 7, 2020 at 5:00 am
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* Last week, the Iranian regime's Supreme Court issued two death sentences to wrestling champion Navid Afkari, along with six-and-a-half years in prison and 74 lashes, according to Persian-language news broadcaster Iran International. His two brothers were also arrested; Vahid Afkari was given a prison sentence of 54 years and 74 lashes, and Habib Afkari received 27 years and 74 lashes.
* "For around 50 days I had to endure the most horrendous physical and psychological tortures... They would place a plastic bag on my head and torture me until I suffocated to the very brink of death. They also poured alcohol into my nose." — Navid Afkari, Iranian wrestling champion, in a letter.
* You would think that the EU or the UN would at least condemn the ruling mullahs of Iran for this brutality. Instead, they reward the regime. On August 14, the UN Security Council voted to allow the 13-year arms embargo on the Iranian regime to expire in October 2020. The ruling means that the ruling mullahs of Iran will be permitted to buy, sell and export as many conventional weapons they wish.
* The ruling mullahs now have enough enriched uranium to refine and build a nuclear bomb if they wish to do so. Approximately 1000 kg of uranium enriched at just 5% can be further refined to create one nuclear bomb.
* The UN and the EU need to hold the Iranian leaders accountable, or be discarded for irrelevance, where they appear to belong.

According to Amnesty International, victims of the Iranian regime's systematic torture include children as young as 10 years old. "[V]ictims were frequently hooded... punched, kicked and flogged; beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, knives,... suspended or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods; deprived of sufficient food and potable water..." (Image source: iStock. Image is illustrative and does not represent any person in the article.)

The Iranian regime has significantly ratcheted up its human rights violations. The United Nations and the European Union, which preach about human rights, completely turn a blind eye to the regime's abuses.

According to a recent report by Amnesty International released on September 2, various branches of Iran's government, including the judiciary system, law enforcement and the Ministry of Intelligence, are involved in these abuses and crimes.

The report stated:

"Iran's police, intelligence and security forces, and prison officials have committed, with the complicity of judges and prosecutors, a catalogue of shocking human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, against those detained."

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** Confiscating Books in Sweden ([link removed])
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by Judith Bergman • September 7, 2020 at 4:00 am
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* The confiscation of books and the upcoming case against author and comedian Aron Flam has ignited a debate in Sweden about the value of freedom of speech. As Flam has pointed out, a Swedish writer who happens to be Jewish having his books, critical of Swedish-Nazi collaboration during the war, seized by the Swedish state is a bit ironic.
* Uppsala, once a picturesque and peaceful university town, is now the town in Sweden with the most shootings per capita. "The gangs have been allowed to grow" Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmö University told SVT Nyheter in December 2019, adding that the police had "woken up" a little too late.
* Perhaps it is time for Sweden's government to spend fewer resources on prosecuting the speech crimes of pensioners and comedians, and more on fighting violent crime.

Perhaps it is time for Sweden's government to spend fewer resources on prosecuting the speech crimes of pensioners and comedians, and more on fighting violent crime. (Image source: iStock)

In June, four armed Swedish police officers seized and confiscated the entire stock of the book Det här är en svensk tiger ("This is a Swedish Tiger"), written by Swedish author and standup comedian, Aron Flam. The book tells the story of how Sweden's claim of neutrality during World War II covered up a reality of Swedish collaboration with the Nazi war effort and the profits that the Social Democratic government made from the war.

The title of the book is a play on the words of a 1941 wartime poster of a tiger drawn in the blue and yellow colors of the Swedish flag with the title "En svensk tiger" ("A Swedish Tiger") and made by Swedish illustrator Bertil Almqvist. The word "tiger" in Swedish means tiger, but it also means to keep silent. The original poster was part of a Swedish government campaign to warn Swedes to keep silent, presumably not to rattle Sweden's wartime relationship with Nazi Germany.

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