Women’s Center in Iran ‘Forced’ to Shut Down

A non-governmental organization’s center for women in Iran has been “forced” to close due to pressure from unnamed officials or offices, reported IranWire, a news website published by Iranian journalists living abroad. Khaneh Khorshid, or Sun House, one of the first drug addiction treatment centers for women in the most underprivileged part of Tehran, called Darvazeh Ghar, has been active for the last 15 years and has helped more than 2,500 women facing drug problems, homelessness or domestic violence. The center’s Instagram page said that it had been forced to shut down, but did not say by who did the forcing. “They don’t want NGOs to be as active as they were before,” Sun House founder Leila Arshad reportedly told the Hamshahri newspaper, without naming anyone specifically. Restrictions on the center began being levied by the government in 2018.  Another NGO that ran a school for poor working children in Kerman also shut down this week after battling government agencies for years, according to the report.  The Iranian government in recent years has tightened the monitoring and control of NGOs’ activities across the country.