Arrests of Citizens in Several Provinces Concurrent with Nowruz Celebrations

As Nowruz and the New Year celebrations take place in Iran, reports from several provinces indicate that multiple individuals have been arrested and are being pursued by the judiciary. The prosecutor of Fars province announced on Sunday, April 3, the arrest of 'a few individuals in some tourist locations in Fars province' during the New Year transition. According to Kamran Mirhaji, the public and revolutionary prosecutor of Fars province, these individuals, whose exact number and identities have not been disclosed, were arrested on charges of 'insulting and disrupting public order and failing to observe Islamic decorum.' Previously, Hassan Hosseini, the governor of Mashhad, also reported that 'a few individuals' were identified and arrested on Thursday during the New Year transition ceremony at the tomb of Ferdowsi, located in the Tus region of Mashhad. According to this official, the detainees, numbering 'ten to fifteen,' had 'disrupted the ceremony' and chanted 'subversive slogans.' With the increasing unpopularity of the government and its policies among the general populace, the number of individuals attempting to celebrate the New Year in historical rather than religious sites has grown each year. The beginning of the solar year 1404 was similarly marked by large gatherings of people at places such as the tomb of Ferdowsi in Tus, Mashhad, Hafezieh, and Persepolis in Fars province. These gatherings during each New Year, especially in Kurdish regions, have also been met with confrontations from municipal, provincial, and security officials of the Islamic Republic. In this context, the Kurdish website Kurdpa reported on Sunday that an individual named 'Seifollah Khan Ghafari' was arrested on Saturday, April 2, after participating in Nowruz celebrations in the village of 'Qaleh Kohneh' in Saqqez without a judicial order. A day earlier, the Hengaw website, which also covers news related to Kurdish areas, reported that two 17-year-old teenagers, Kayhan Tadbir and Mohammad Ghaderi, along with two other individuals from Marivan named Mohammad Nikpay and Kawa Dastan, were arrested by the intelligence department in connection with the 'Nowruz celebrations in Kurdistan.' Additionally, 13 other individuals should be mentioned, who, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization, were arrested last week in Sardasht, West Azerbaijan province, 'due to participating in Nowruz ceremonies.' Last year, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported that in the first two months of the year 1403, 'at least 38 Kurdish citizens' were summoned or arrested 'due to holding or participating in Nowruz ceremonies.'