Posts Tagged ‘Iran’
September 4, 2012
Ban Ki-moon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On Thursday 30 August, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who was in Tehran for the Non-Aligned Movement called on Iran to release its political prisoners and human rights defenders. This rather exceptional appeal to release “opposition leaders, human rights defenders, journalists and social activists,” was made in a speech to an Iranian diplomatic college last Thursday. Ban stressed that allowing the Iranian people’s voice to be heard was especially important ahead of the country’s 2013 presidential election, when a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be chosen. “Restricting freedom of expression and suppressing social activism will only set back development and plant the seeds of instability,” he added. His comments went without official response from Tehran.
Posted in UN | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Ban Ki-moon, Human Rights Defenders, Iran, Non-Aligned Movement, political prisoner, Tehran
June 19, 2012
Several human rights organizations, including AI, called on Iranian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Abdolfattaf Soltani, a prominent lawyer and founding member of the Center for Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), an organization co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi
Abdolfattah Soltani was originally sentenced by Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court to 18 years’ imprisonment to be served in the remote city of Borazjan, some 620 miles south-west of Tehran, which will make it hard for his family to visit him. Soltani was also banned from practicing law for 20 years.
His lawyer and family were informed of the initial sentence March 4. On June 4, his family was informed that Branch 54 of the Appeal Court of Tehran had reduced his sentence to 13 years’ imprisonment and overturned the ban on practicing law for 20 years; the court confirmed that his imprisonment sentence is to be served in the city of Borazjan.
Arrested on September 10, 2011 on charges including “spreading propaganda against the system,” “setting up an illegal opposition group [the CHRD],” and “gathering and colluding with intent to harm national security,” Soltani also faced charges of “accepting an illegal prize and illegal earnings” relating to his acceptance of the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award in 2009.
On at least two occasions since his imprisonment, Soltani was pressured to “confess” on camera, including “confessing” that the center had received funding from foreign sources to encourage a “soft revolution” in Iran – which Soltani denies.
Since the CHRD was forcibly closed in December 2008, Iranian authorities carried out a campaign of prosecution and harsh sentencing against anyone with actual or perceived links to the center. Its members have continued to carry out their work in support of human rights but have faced repeated harassment, intimidation, arrest and imprisonment. Several are currently serving prison sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison, including Narges Mohammadi (six-year sentence), Mohammad Seyfzadeh (a two-year prison sentence), Mohammad Ali Dadkhah (nine years’ imprisonment – currently at liberty, though he may be called to serve his sentence at any time) and MEA 2012 nominee Nasrin Sotoudeh (6-year jail term).
Iran: Immediately Release Imprisoned Human Rights Defenders | Amnesty International USA.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders, nominees | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Abdolfattah Soltani, Amnesty International, HRDs, Iran, MEA, Nasrin Sotoudeh
May 3, 2012
And the virtual ink on my previous post is hardly dry and I come across the case of Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, just but not justly sentenced to 9 year prison. Iran can hardly be surprised that it leads the table of HRDS honored in the context of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.
A prominent lawyer who worked on the case of a Christian pastor on death row in Iran for apostasy, which made headlines around the world, Dadkhah has been sentenced to nine years in jail. “I have been convicted of acting against the national security, spreading propaganda against the regime and keeping banned books at home,” he said. Iranian authorities have used such vague charges in recent years to incriminate activists and lawyers in recent years. He had also been banned from teaching at universities or practicing law for an extra 10 years.
Dadkhah has represented several political and human rights activists jailed in the aftermath of the country’s 2009 disputed elections. He has also been the lawyer of the 32-year-old Yusuf Naderkhani, whose sentencing to death for apostasy triggered an international outcry.
Other prominent Iranian lawyers have also been sentenced to lengthy prison terms such as Abdolfattah Soltani, Nasrin Sotoudeh and recently Narges Mohammadi. Like them, Dadkhah worked for the DHRC of Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi who fled the country in 2009.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) on Thursday condemned the sentencing of Dadkhah as well as the systematic harassment by the state against the DHRC members.
“We fear that the harassment against DHRC and attempts to silence its members will continue exponentially”, says Souhayr Belhassen, the FIDH President.
“The authorities in Iran are doing their utmost to stifle human rights defenders by imposing heavy sentences of imprisonment, exile, and ban on professional practice. All this is aimed at intimidating the whole society into a deadly silence”, adds secretary general of the OMCT, Gerald Staberock.
Iranian lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah sentenced to nine years in jail | World news | guardian.co.uk.
Posted in human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: detention, FIDH, Human Rights Defenders, Iran, lawyers, Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, Narges Mohammadi, Observatory for the Protection of HRDs, OMCT, Shirin Ebadi, Soltani, Sotoudeh
May 3, 2012
Prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi was arrested last month. On Wednesday 26 April Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Paris said the group “strongly condemns” her jailing. Narges Mohammadi was a spokeswoman for Ebadi’s now-banned Center for Human Rights Defenders.
She was reportedly detained on Saturday 21 April and brought to Tehran’s Evin prison to begin serving a six-year sentence following a conviction in 2010 after she was accused of anti-government crimes. Mohammadi had remained free pending appeals. Ebadi left Iran after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities. Several of her co-workers have been arrested and harassed, such as Nasrin Sotoudeh, recently announced as a 2012 nominee of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (www.martinennalsaward.org).
For more details on her case see: http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2012/04/narges-arrest/
Reporters Without Borders is concerned by the case because Narges is a journalist and author. In its recently released report on press freedom in 2011, the organisation ranks Iran number 175 outr of 179 countries surveyed. I states inter alia: “It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.”
For the full report go to:
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
Posted in Human Rights Defenders, MEA | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Evin Prison, Human rights defender, Iran, Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, Narges Mohammadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, press freedom index, Reporters without Borders, RSF, Shirin Ebadi
April 24, 2012
Today the nominees of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders 2012 are announced in Geneva. The ann0uncement was made by the new Chair of the Martin Ennals Foundation, Mrs Micheline Calmy Rey, until last year the President of and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. Each nominee deserves its own post! One of the 3 nominees is Nasrin Sotoudeh from Iran.
Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human rights lawyer and a member of the now closed Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC); she was imprisoned for “spreading propaganda against the State”, “collusion and gathering with the aim of acting against national security” and “membership in an illegal organisation”. She worked for Shirin Ebadi‘s law firm, and represented imprisoned opposition activists following the June 2009 presidential elections. In this regard, she represented Shirin Ebadi after she left Iran and her assets were confiscated. On September 4, 2010, Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested, and later sentenced to 6-year of prison and a 10-year ban on practising as lawyer. She remains detained in Evin prison and on several occasions subjected to solitary confinement. Unlike fur common criminals her family visits and furlongs are limited. Despite real danger for her security and liberty, Nasrin Sotoudeh has relentlessly defended those most vulnerable. As started by Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi “Ms. Sotoudeh is one of the last remaining courageous human rights lawyers who has accepted all risks for defending the victims of human rights violations in Iran”. After Akbar Ganji (2006) and Baghi (2009) this is the third human rights defender from Iran chosen by the Jury in the last seven years. The Government will surely portray this as a bias, but the rest of the world will understand that Iran is one of the worst when it comes to respect HRDs.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders, MEA | 3 Comments »
Tags: Akbar Ganji, Baghi, Evin Prison, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, Iran, Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, MEA, Micheline Calmy Rey, Nasrin Sotoudeh, nominee 2012, Shirin Ebadi
March 18, 2012
Iranian activists have issued a statement urging the government to release political prisoners for Norooz, the Iranian New Year. Radio Zamaneh reports that 440 Iranian civic and political activists of various stripes have signed a statement demanding that the government at least allow political prisoners to spend the New Year with their families, on the first day of spring in March.
The statement condemns the harsh sentences handed recently to Nasrin Sotoudeh, Nargess Mohammadi and Abdolfattah Soltani, members of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, and it denounces the arrest of journalists, political activists and all prisoners of conscience.
via Iranian activists call for release of political prisoners for Norooz.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Abdolfattah Soltani, detention, HRDs, Human Rights Defenders, Iran, Nargess Mohammadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Norooz, political prisoners
March 13, 2012
If it was not so serious a subject, the Iranian government’s response to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran could be considered comical. On June 17, 2011, the UN Human Rights Council named former Maldivian Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed as its human rights investigator on Iran. Numerous reports including this blog reported last year that Iran was not willing to cooperate with this rapporteur. So it is a bit much to hear now the official complaint that the Rapporteur has relied on “political motivations based on news provided by terrorist groups”. On Monday 12 March, a senior Iranian official censured Shaheed for his biased report against the Islamic Republic with the following words: “The documents presented by Ahmed Shaheed in this report were extracted from the resources and groups which are terrorist and are known as undesirable elements all over the world,” (Director-General of the Iranian Presidential Office for International Affairs Mohammad Reza Forqani speaking to FNA).
Government spokesman Mehman-Parast’s statement that “Iran is ready to cooperate with human rights bodies like the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights” now sounds utterly unbelievable.
Fars News Agency :: Spokesman Criticizes UNs Biased Report on Irans Human Rights.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders, UN | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Ahmed Shaheed, Human Rights Council, Iran, UN, United Nations Special Rapporteur
November 29, 2011
The United Nations announced today that its Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, will launch a fact-finding mission to three European countries which host Iranian diaspora. He will visit France, Germany and Belgium from 30 November – 8 December 2011 to gather information about alleged human rights violations in Iran. As reported in this blog earlier, serial cooperation refusnik Iran (7 July and 8 August 2011), the independent expert has made official requests to the Islamic Republic of Iran for a country visit, without obtaining a positive response from the authorities. “I will continue to make every possible effort to get the Iranian authorities’ support,” Mr. Shaheed said. “A country visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran would have allowed me to gain better understanding of the situation in the country, explore possible areas of cooperation, offer constructive dialogue with the authorities and produce report that reflect the views of all parties concerned, not the least the views of the Government.” … “ I will now study wide range of human rights issues by meeting activists within Iranian diaspora, alleged victims of human rights violations, intergovernmental and civil society organizations,” he explained. “The information collected in France, Germany and Belgium will help shape my report to the Human Rights Council in March 2012.” The human rights expert will hold a press conference on Thursday 8 December 2011 at 10:30 at the United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) office in Brussels.
NB. The person the Iranian regime is refusing is Ahmed Shaheed, a Visiting Lecturer at the Maldives National University, a member of the presidential Commission Investigating Corruption and a former foreign policy advisor to the President of the Maldives. Mr Shaheed was Foreign Minister of the Maldives from 2005 to 2007 and from 2008 to 2010.
see also: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/AsiaRegion/Pages/IRIndex.aspx
Posted in human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Human Rights Council, Iran, Special Rapporteur, UN
September 30, 2011
Narges Mohammadi, who became ill after being detained by security officials, was convicted by a court in Tehran to 11 years in jail. Narges Mohammadi, 39, the deputy head of Iran’s Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC), a rights organisation presided over by the Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, was picked up last year by security officials who raided her house without a warrant for her arrest. She was taken to Tehran’s Evin prison where she was kept in solitary confinement but was released after a month and taken to hospital. It emerged on Tuesday that a court in Tehran has now convicted her on three charges: acting against the national security, membership of the DHRC and propaganda against the regime.
“I’m not involved in politics, I’m only a human rights activist,” Mohammadi said by phone from Tehran. “I was informed of the 11-year sentence through my lawyers, who were given an unprecedented 23-page judgment issued by the court in which they repeatedly likened my human rights activities to attempts to topple the regime.” In March the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a US-based non-governmental organisation, reported that security forces had stolen Mohammadi’s medical records from the hospital. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, a political activist, has spent a third of his life in jail.
Amnesty International reacted with outrage to Mohammadi’s conviction. “The verdict claims that Narges Mohammadi is a liar and has tarnished the image of Iran,” said Drewery Dyke, Amnesty’s researcher on Iran. “However, this latest verdict regrettably does exactly that by showing what Iran’s judiciary thinks of the government’s so-called commitment to uphold human rights in the country, and indeed exactly how it deals with those advocating international human rights standards.”
for more info see inter alia:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/28/iranian-activist-narges-mohammadi-jailed?newsfeed=true
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/leading-iran-rights-activist-sentenced-11-years-2011-09-28
Posted in Amnesty international, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Amnesty International, Human rights defender, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Iran, Narges Mohammadi, Shirin Ebadi
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 