Consequences of the death of Qom’s salt lake

Qom’s Namak Lake, a salt lake in the Iranian province of Qom

Qom’s Namak Lake, a salt lake in the Iranian province of Qom, is gradually approaching its demise. Its dire consequences for the environment can already be felt in the environment of Qom’s neighboring provinces.

Namak Lake is located 40 kilometers north of Qom district, 85 kilometers south of Tehran. The lake which is also known as “Saveh-Qom Lake” or “Shahi Lake” spreads over a 240-kilometer area and is connected to Semnan, Tehran, Qom, and Markazi provinces. Namak Lake is also called the greatest natural mirror of Iran because of the large salt crystals that cover huge parts of it.

In the past, Karaj, Jajrud, Shur, Qamrud, and Qarechay rivers supplied Namak Lake with water keeping it alive. But nowadays, the salt lake has become one of the center points of dust storms.

According to Iranian officials, Namak Lake’s dry out will lead to an environmental disaster with more catastrophic consequences than those of Lake Urmia, another famous salt lake in Iran. The dust and haze that arises from a dried-out Namak Lake will impact approximately one quarter of Iran’s population.

When Namak Lake started to dry out and the environment started to change for the worse, local farmers began to leave the area and this process has continued until today.

On April 22, Salamat News website published a report titled “Count down until Namak Lake’s complete dry out” writing: “The dry-out crisis of Qom’s Namak Lake, which started half a century ago, accelerated with the 2003 drought, and lead to a complete evacuation of most villages lying between this lake and ‘Hoz Soltan.’”

According to Taadol newspaper, August 6, the technical deputy of the environment protection organization of Qom province acknowledges that, “If the water rights are not allocated properly and existing water resources are used excessively, 200 thousand hectares of salty area of the Namak Lake will transform Qom to another Khuzestan through widespread dust emission.” Khuzestan is a province in southern Iran with notoriously catastrophic sand and dust storms.

On July 28, Hamshahri website published an article about Qom’s Namak Lake situation and its impact on the lives of the local population.

“Nowadays, villages close to this area have become ghost towns in a 50-kilometer radius because of the drought. About 30 to 40 percent of farming lands near this area have also become unusable because the dry lake has made the water of nearby water wells salty,” Hamshahri writes.

Earlier, Jabbar Kuchakinejad, a member of the Iranian parliament, had warned about “salty rain due to the dry out of Qom’s Namak Lake.”

In an interview with Iranian parliament’s news agency he warned the department of environment and asked them to prevent the situation of Namak Lake from becoming a crisis.

“Lakes which contain salt, if they dry out, their remaining salt will pollute the environment like dust,” he added.

The main reason behind the Iranian salty lake crisis is a series of uneducated activities by state institutions and a lack of water rights for the lakes. The water rights are being stolen by the political elite to fill their deep pockets.

On May 10, Young Journalists Club, close to Iran’s paramilitary Basij, quoted the technical deputy of Qom province’s environment department saying that building two dams called “Alqadir” and “15 Khordad” in the “Moseyle” plains has destroyed the vegetation, salted the soil and created an environment crisis in the area.

Environmentalists Face Death Penalty in Iran

 Five imprisoned Iranian environmentalists are now facing the death penalty after the ridiculous charges against them were changed from "espionage" to "Corruption on Earth", according to one of the former lawyers of the accused.

Mohammad Hossein Aghasi told Radio Farda on Sunday, October 21, that the charges were changed after the examining magistrate received a letter from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and that the new charge of “corruption on earth” carries the death penalty under the Islamic Penal Code.

In January, Iranian security arrested eight environmentalists - Niloufar Bayani, Houman Jokar, Sepideh Kashani, Amir Hossein Khaleqi, AbdolReza Kouhpayeh, Taher Qadirian, Sam Rajabi and Iranian-American dual citizen Morad Tahbaz – and accused them of spying for the West, when they tried to monitor an endangered breed of tiger. They were held in temporary custody for months by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Intelligence Organization, with no formal charges brought against them.

The founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, Iranian-Canadian Professor Kavous Seyyed-Emami, was detained with the eight ecologists, but died in prison shortly after. Iran claims that he committed suicide, but there are serious doubts about that narrative.

TAKEN OFF THE CASE

Aghasi who represented Jokar, Qadirian, and Rajabi, was recently taken off the case by the Iranian judiciary, thanks to an "unfair" and unconstitutional clause in Article 48 of Iran's Criminal Procedure Act, which only allows suspects in national security cases to be represented by lawyers on Iran’s approved list. The list only contains about 20 names and many political cases are being termed national security, meaning that there are not enough lawyers to go around.

While Aghasi doesn’t know what the letter from the SNSC actually said, he speculated that it could be a response to the Prosecutor-General's enquiry about changing the charges.

Although, Isa Kalantari, the head of Department of Environment (DoE), claims that the new charges have not been officially announced, it’s worth noting that the Iranian
Intelligence Ministry has found no evidence of espionage by the environmentalists, so the government had to find another way to punish them.

MURDER OF ENVIRONMENTALIST

In a related matter, many social media posts were created on October 22 concerning the mysterious murder of prominent environmentalist and human rights activist Farshid Hakki, who was reportedly stabbed to death near his house in Tehran, before his body was burnt.

Abdolreza Davari, the managing director of "Economic Reviews" monthly magazine, where Hakki served as a scientific advisor, tweeted that the news was “shocking” and “tragic” and called for an investigation.

Thousands of death row and political prisoners call for the abolishment of executions in Iran

A conference on the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty held in Paris

 In a conference on the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty, held in the municipality of the 5^th arrondissement of Paris, a call for the abolishment of executions in Iran was read.

The signatories included 2,320 prisoners on death row from nine cities of Iran, political prisoners as well as the families and relatives of the inmates.

Behzad Naziri, a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, who read out the statement at the conference, told the audience, “I want to draw your attention to news that has been coming out of the prisoner of Iran. Since September 23, The Iranian resistance has been engaged in a widespread campaign regarding executions in Iran.

“On the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty, 2,320 death row prisoners from nine prisons in Iran called for the abolishment of the death penalty in an open statement. According to the officials of the Iranian regime, there are currently more than 5,000 people who are awaiting execution. You can only imagine at the nightmare they’re living.”

The statement has the signature of 2,320 prisoners from the following nine prisons:

1. Gohardasht Prison (Karaj)
2. Urumiyeh Prison
3. Diesel Abad Prison (Kermanshah)
4. Dastgerd Prison (Isfahan)
5. Mahabad Prison
6. Ardebil Prison
7. Yazd Prison
8. Markazi Prison (Karaj)
9. Tehran-e Bozorg Prison

Parts of the statement by the prisoners read as such:

As we approach the World Day Against the Death Penalty, in Iran, 170 people have been executed in the first six months of the Persian year (March-October). We, the signatories, are thousands of Iranian prisoners who are awaiting our deaths behind the bars of Iran’s horrendous prisons.

This is how Zaniar Moradi, who was recently executed, described the feelings of a death-row prisoner:

“Nine years have passed, during which I spent day and night contemplating on the inhumane death sentence. During this period, I always felt the presence of wooden beams and a few meters of rope at my side. Many nights, I imagined my own hanging. It’s been nine years that, day and night, I think about the gallows where I will be hanged, the rope that will be tightened around my neck. I only exhausted myself thinking about this. Every time I heard about the execution of our youth, I thought that my turn has come too…”

These are the feelings of a prisoner that is awaiting execution.

After 40 years of public executions and torture, enough is enough. The gallows are not the answer to the needs and problems of our people.

As prisoners whose every day is tied with execution and death, we call on the families of death-row prisoners and all political and human rights activists to join their voices against the death sentence. We ask the international community and human rights institutions to unite for the abolishment of executions in Iran.

Iraq: Clerics in Karbala chanting “Death to Khamenei”

Clerics in Karbala, Iraq, chanting slogans against the Iranian regime

A number of clerics in Karbala, southern Iraq, rallied outside the Iranian regime’s consulate in this city and were seen chanting “Death to Khamenei,” targeting the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. These protesters, angry over Tehran’s meddling in their country and the crimes committed by Iran-backed militias, were also chanting:

“No to the pharaoh”

“No to the devil”

“Death to Khamenei”

“Death to the mullahs’ principle”

“No to Khamenei”

“No to Khomeini,” referring to the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini.

This protest follows massive rallies in Basra, the oil-rich city of southern Iraq, where protesters were seen storming Tehran’s consulate and torching the site. They lowered the Iranian regime’s flag and raised the flag of Iraq, showing their utmost abhorrence of the mullahs’ malign and deadly meddling on their soil. Iraqi protesters are accusing the Iranian regime of having a major part in their poor living conditions and lack of basic services in a province that is rich in oil.

As a result cities in southern Iraq, especially Basra, have been witnessing nearly daily protests. From Monday onward the demonstrations in Basra reached a new level and protesters were seen torching government buildings and other sites belonging to Shiite parties backed by the Iranian regime.

Coinciding with these events two demonstrators have reportedly been killed. The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has vowed to investigate in this regard.

The Security and Anti-Terrorism Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the main Iranian opposition coalition, had warned prior to these developments about the Iranian regime dispatching its deputy Revolutionary Guards Quds Force chief as its new ambassador in Iraq, specifically aimed at continuing and expanding the mullahs’ meddling in Iraq

Iran: Demonstration of 10,000 people in Mashhad chanting "Death to the dictator" "No to High Prices"

Thousands of protesters demonstrate in Mashhad saying Death to the Dictator

The demonstration of the people of Mashhad, which began this morning at Shohada square in front of the city's municipality, spread quickly to a vast area of the city, with the participation of about 10,000 people. Demonstrators, who included men and women, elderly people and children, chanted 'No to high prices', 'Rouhani’s government; with empty promises', 'If you stop one case of embezzlement, our problems will be solved', 'Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, my soul is sacrificed for Iran'.The presence of women in this gathering was impressive.

 

 

 

Before the rally started, a large number of repressive forces and counterinsurgency guards were present in the place. However, due to large number of people they could not do anything. People pushed the police forces aside and continued to demonstrate. Half an hour after the gathering, the crowd moved to the shrine of Imam Reza. The people who were plundered by various financial institutions joined the rally too. Police officers began shooting into air and throwing tear gas in order to intimidate and disperse the people, but the youth threw back the tear gas to the regime's forces. People chanted: 'Police, go and arrest the thief', 'Death to Rouhani' and 'Death to the dictator.'

 

 

When people gathered in front of the shrine of Imam Reza, police forces attacked the people and severely beat a number of them, and sprayed tear gas at the eyes of a woman. This made people furious and in protest against this brutal attack, they broke a number of middle-of-the-road blocks and signs and fences and punished the officers who had beaten the women. The arrival of water cannon vehicles made people angrier who attacked the water cannons with rocks, wood and glass, and clashed with the repressive forces who were shooting at them. The clashes left a number of people harmed and wounded. A number of repressive forces, scared of people, escaped from the scene by their motorcycles.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran