Warning from a Parliament Member Regarding the Rise of Child Organ Trafficking

The newspaper Bahar reported on contradictory news regarding "child organ trafficking". On Sunday, Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar, a member of the Judicial and Legal Commission of Parliament, warned about the prevalence of child trafficking, especially among families with addiction. He stated: "The renting and trafficking of children's organs exists particularly among addicted families; therefore, the legal status of these individuals will be clarified in the child and adolescent protection bill." This member of the tenth parliament emphasized that "currently there is no clear and deterrent law regarding the sale, renting, or trafficking of children's organs." He added: "In current laws, the obligations for parents selling their children are ambiguous, and they are sometimes not recognized as criminals. However, with the approval of the child protection bill, the punishment for selling, renting, and trafficking children's organs will be clearly defined, and even parents selling their children will be recognized as criminals and subject to specific penalties." Migal Hashtroodi, a reporter for Bahar, noted that "just a few days ago, Fatemeh Daneshvar, a member of the City Council during the fourth term, spoke in interviews with some news agencies about the disappearance of children in the Harandi area and a large organ trafficking gang in this region." She quoted this City Council member from Tehran as saying: "In many cases, children go missing, and their organs are trafficked, and after a long time, the bodies of some of them are found in the deserts without kidneys and eyes. Parents must be extremely vigilant regarding their children, and if their children go missing, they should definitely file a complaint." According to this newspaper, a knowledgeable source in the police denied these statements about child organ trafficking, stating: "In recent years, we have had no reports of discovering the bodies of children in the deserts around Tehran. These statements are certainly false, and there has been no case in recent years in Tehran or in the capital's police regarding such issues." The report recalled instances of child abduction, including in Kerman, linking it to organ trafficking, stating: "Victims in Iran for organ trafficking are often children, while girls are generally between 14 to 25 years old. Economically and socially, in most cases, family disputes, parental addiction, divorce, poverty, inadequate housing, and living in densely populated and marginal areas of large cities lead to the exploitation of these family voids for stealing children and killing them for their organs or forcing girls to leave unfavorable family environments or fathers being compelled to sell their daughters. Furthermore, since most victims come from poor backgrounds and are runaway girls, they suffer from educational deficiencies, being at the middle school and high school levels, and from cultural poverty and weak beliefs." The newspaper Bahar emphasized that "organ trafficking occurs nearby among marginalized children and working or garbage-collecting children. Children for whom no one is concerned about their presence or absence. It is hard to believe that in the Harandi area, children have no peace at home due to their parents' addiction, nor outside the home from traffickers who threaten their lives at every moment. Children deserve a life free from fear and anxiety anywhere in the world." The newspaper Etemad, while publishing a photo of the heads of the three branches at the national conference "Judiciary Week," reported that on Sunday, following a report on the one-year performance of the judiciary presented by Mostafa PourMohammadi, Hassan Rouhani, as the first guest of the event, stated: "Today is not 1999, 2005, or 2009, but 2017. In such a situation, which sane mind tells us to revisit the issues of the electoral period?" The President of the Islamic Republic also stated that "Islam does not allow us to pressure a criminal beyond the penalty for the crime committed. We have no right to ruin people's reputations or summon or arrest anyone without sufficient evidence. First, we must have enough evidence to inform the accused of the charges, and then summon them, not summon the accused to generate evidence; as much as we studied law, we did not find such a thing." According to this newspaper, Hassan Rouhani emphasized that "if we implement our own laws and Islam, many excuses will be taken away from the enemy," stating: "The presumption of innocence or conviction must be equal for the judge, and wherever the evidence is weak, it should lead to acquittal. We do not accept the saying that the shovel is on the back of acquittal, and we believe that the presumption of innocence is alive and active," adding that the judge must be impartial. The right and left, Turk, Kurd, Baluch, Arab, Turkmen, Shia, Sunni, Christian, and Muslim have no place in judgment," and "according to the Constitution, all individuals of the nation are equal before the law and enjoy equal rights." The newspaper Etemad also referred to Hassan Rouhani's statements based on Ayatollah Khomeini's will regarding the non-involvement of military forces, including the IRGC and Basij, in political activities, emphasizing that "the police and IRGC and Basij have no right to intervene in party and political factional matters," and "judicial agents must be impartial, and if agents benefit from a case, public opinion will doubt the impartiality of the ruling." Kayhan focused on the statements of Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary, at this conference, quoting him as saying: "The enemy brazenly speaks of overthrowing; some extend a hand of friendship to it." Sadegh Larijani also stated: "Some of the words said in Parliament practically undermine the independence of the judiciary. We see that under the pretext of criticizing the rulings of judges or the judiciary, they want to put pressure on it. A person after a trial in a very broad and important case says such a ruling has not been issued in three thousand years of Iranian history. This is an insult to the judiciary, injustice, and against the independence of this institution." According to Kayhan, the head of the judiciary also stated: "We accept the judiciary's accountability as meaning explanation; in fact, in society, we should be able to speak more substantiated. Sometimes the intention of accountability is that any institution or body, even Parliament, comes to question about cases, and the judiciary is obliged to respond, and then they say that there is a flaw in the ruling. This is contrary to the duties of the judiciary." The newspaper Shargh published a front-page story titled "Ali Razini's Account of the Events of 1988," quoting this judicial official as saying: "The officials involved in the events of 1988 were Mr. Hossein Ali Niri, Ebrahim Raisi, Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri, Morteza Eshraqi, and Mostafa PourMohammadi." According to this newspaper, "Ali Razini, the current head of Branch 41 of the Supreme Court, who has a history of presiding over the Special Court for Clergy, the judiciary of the Armed Forces, and the Special Court for War Offenses by the order of Ayatollah Khomeini, spoke with the news agency Tasnim and discussed the judicial rulings of the early revolution and the events of the 1988 executions, emphasizing that 'myself and our friends, who are among the 20 judges in the country, did something that guaranteed security at that time and in the following years and ensured that the Mojahedin (People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran) could never gain strength in this country.' Ali Razini explicitly stated that 'the officials involved in this matter of the 1988 executions were Mr. Niri, Raisi, Reyshahri, Eshraqi, and PourMohammadi, who should be questioned because we were not in the text of the matter, but generally I must say that if Imam (Ayatollah Khomeini) was to issue death sentences without accountability as the anti-revolutionaries claim, there would be no need to form a three-member committee.' This senior judicial official of the Islamic Republic emphasized that in 1988 'it was announced in prison that these should be executed,' stating that 'the head of the revolutionary court in Semnan or Mashhad, along with the revolutionary prosecutor of that city, who has a normal responsibility, plus a representative of the intelligence of that city, formed a three-member committee, which sometimes held trials lasting about an hour, condemning some to death and others not.' The newspaper Iran, close to the government, reported that Hassan Rouhani, in a letter to Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Parliament, requested the withdrawal of the "Labor Law Reform" bill. This newspaper noted that "this bill was sent to Parliament during the tenth government, and the request to withdraw it was made at the suggestion of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare and considering the criticisms of labor and employer organizations was approved by the government," stating: "The withdrawal of this bill was a promise that Rouhani made during the presidential election as one of his work priorities in the twelfth government to positively respond to labor demands." According to the newspaper Iran, "the controversial Labor Law Reform bill was prepared in the tenth government and sent to Parliament without considering the opinions and demands of the 12 million-strong labor and employer community by the then officials of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, but this decision led to criticisms and protests from labor and employer organizations, to the extent that many workers prepared a petition to express their concerns and dissatisfaction regarding the contents of this bill to the members of Parliament and demanded its return to the government. However, despite the criticisms of labor organizations, the eleventh government also sent the previous government's bill to Parliament unchanged." This newspaper recalled that "workers believe that the Labor Law Reform bill was drafted unilaterally without considering the interests of the millions-strong labor community." The newspaper Javan reported in a story titled "Working Old Men," stating: "The defective structure of social justice and serious disregard for demographic warnings has led to the phenomenon of 'working old men' emerging." Zahra Chidhari wrote in this newspaper's report: "At an age when an elderly person 'should either rest or travel, they are working as a taxi driver in the summer heat. They are not just a few; there are many jobs, from street vending to driving and even teaching during retirement. This is not limited to the upper and lower parts of Tehran and the provinces; both in the northernmost points of the capital, elderly men and women are working, and even in the most remote villages, grandfathers and grandmothers are working instead of sitting under the windcatcher next to their grandchildren and children to make a living." The newspaper Javan quoted Parisa Taheri, the former head of the Elderly Department of the Ministry of Health, stating: "Only in Tehran, 600,000 elderly people live who are not supported by any organization and are forced to work to make ends meet," noting that only 36% of the elderly in Iran "receive retirement benefits, while many elderly people do not receive salaries or insurance and suffer from malnutrition. Additionally, 89% of the elderly have not received vaccines," and this issue "means that we should expect various social harms in the area of the elderly." Following the publication of articles against Sharmin Mimandi Nejad as the founder of the "Imam Ali Society" in Kayhan, Zahra Rahimi Khamenei, the CEO of the Imam Ali Student-Popular Society, responded to the editor of this newspaper, stating: "The one who so boldly accuses the people and speaks of 'the secretions of pen and speech' is following which creed and adhering to which law? The CEO of the Imam Ali Society emphasized that 'a significant portion of what the Kayhan newspaper attributed to Sharmin Mimandi Nejad consists of criminal titles,' reminding that 'the Constitution of the Islamic Republic has entrusted the investigation of crimes to the judiciary, and in Article 22, it has protected the dignity, life, and property of individuals from violation.' The Kayhan newspaper 'if it truly had information about the occurrence of the aforementioned crimes, could have referred these judgments to the judge, rather than defaming individuals sheltered under the law without any evidence and accusing them of such heinous crimes that even the pen is ashamed to respond to them.' Zahra Rahimi Khamenei emphasized in her response that Kayhan 'repeatedly speaks of the people's deception by the Imam Ali Society and its founder,' asking this newspaper, 'Who is seeking to deceive the people? A society that has been present in marginalized neighborhoods for nearly two decades without any material expectation and completely voluntarily, with its work visible to the eyes of the people and responsible organizations, intends to deceive the masses? Or a media outlet that, with generalizations, without mentioning even a single document and weaving together irrelevant matters, labels a society as deviant, mercenary, and a false sect?' Kayhan, while publishing the response of the CEO of the Imam Ali Society in its Tuesday issue and noting that 'it had previously examined the backgrounds and records of Mohammad Hossein Mimandi Nejad based on published documents and will soon publish a series of articles examining the thoughts and activities of Sharmin Mimandi Nejad,' threatened that it would 'unmask the face' of the founder of the Imam Ali Society.