Posts Tagged ‘Iran’

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UN human rights monitor on Iran has to rely on diaspora

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

 

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Iran again: HRD Narges Mohammadi gets 11 years prison sentence

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

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Iran ‘continues’ its good cooperation with the UN………

August 8, 2011

According to the official iranian students news agency (ISNA) on 6 August, Iran continues to work with the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as it used to do. “We have good relations with the UN Human Rights Council and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. We are sorry that some countries use the issue of human rights as an instrument and this time the US and some western states have employed human rights as an instrument to press Iran, but these pressures will go nowhere,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in a press conference referring to reports that a special United Nations human rights reporter has called for travel to Iran.

see: ISNA – 08-06-2011 – 90/5/15 – Service: / Foreign Policy / News ID: 1821676.

On 20 July I reported already in this blog that Mohammad Javad Larijani, Iran’s secretary general of the high council for human rights, had rejected the appointment of a rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran and that  Iran “will not accept the decision”; so the Minister of Foreign Affairs is not totally aware of the position taken by the SG of the High Council for Human Rights.

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Iran: non-cooperation with the UN seems to be the norm

July 20, 2011

On 28 March this year I reported some good news in the ‘crime-should-not-pay series”: the UN decided to finally establish an Iran investigator. But  that joy seems to have been a bit premature as Iran has now announced that it will not permit the UN special rapporteur assigned with investigating its record of human rights to enter the country. Ahmad Shaheed, a former foreign affairs minister of the Maldives, was appointed by the UN as the monitor in June. According to the Tehran Times, a government sponsored English-language newspaper, Mohammad Javad Larijani, Iran’s secretary general of the high council for human rights, said: “The western-engineered appointment of a special rapporteur for Iran is an illegal measure”, adding that “this unilateral action makes no sense and if they want to send a special rapporteur to Iran, they should take the same measure in the case of other countries.”

The appointment of the rapporteur was the result of concerted warnings by various human rights organisations against Iran’s current record of human rights. In recent years, rights groups have expressed concerns over the arbitrary arrests of political activists, the sharp rise in the country’s rate of execution and claims of torture and rape inside Iran’s prisons. According to the organisations that have been monitoring Iran, in the first six months of this year an average of almost two people a day were executed. Dozens of journalists, several lawyers, political activists, members of different ethnic minorities and many political figures remain in jail with poor legal representation and little access to the outside world (see e.g. my blog from yesterday on the position of Norway). In his remarks about Shaheed, Larijani objected that the countries behind the appointment of the special rapporteur had remained silent over the human rights issues surrounding “Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Israeli jails”. “Iran has no problem with the individual who has been appointed as the special rapporteur, but the appointment of a rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran is unacceptable and Iran will not accept the decision,” he added.

The big question remains whether the systematic non-cooperation by Iran and similar regimes pays in the end or not. It would be of little use to make new norms or procedures if the most basic existing ones can be flaunted.

For more details see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/18/iran-refuses-un-human-rights

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Norway bravely criticizes Iran for persecution of human rights defenders

July 19, 2011

 

 

 

On 13 July 2011 the State Secretary at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gry Larsen, commented in very clear terms on the situation in Iran, saying inter alia: “Iran’s groundless persecution of people connected to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi’s Defenders of Human Rights Center give cause for serious concern.”

A number of Iranian lawyers have recently been given, or can expect to be given, severe prison sentences. Two of the founders of the Human Rights Centre set up by Shirin Ebadi, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah and Mohammad Seifzadeh, have been sentenced to nine and two years’ imprisonment respectively. Another prominent lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani is still waiting for his case to be tried more than two years after he was arrested, and Shirin Ebadi’s own lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment earlier this year.

“The legal proceedings against these lawyers seem to have focused solely on their work to promote and defend human rights in Iran. They are in violation of both national and international principles of the rule of law. For example, the defendants were denied proper legal assistance,” said Ms Larsen.

The Iranian authorities have systematically persecuted people connected to the Defenders of Human Rights Center and confiscated property and materials relating to their work over a period of time in an attempt to stop the centre’s activities.

“Norway urges Iran to fulfil its obligations under international human rights conventions. We particularly urge Iran to stop its campaign against the Defenders of Human Rights Center and to safeguard the rights of people who are themselves working diligently to promote the rule of law in the country,” said Ms Larsen.

Groundless prison sentences for human rights defenders in Iran.

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Ashton demands release of Iranian women HRDs

July 7, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton released a statement on 5 July condemning the recent arrests of women’s rights defenders. She specifically refers to the arrests of photographer Maryam Madj, film-maker Mahnaz Mohammadi, journalist Zahra Yazdani, and women’s rights advocates Maryam Bahrman and Mansoureh Behkish.

Maryam Madj, an Iranian photojournalist and women’s rights activist, was taken from her home the day before she was scheduled to fly to Germany to photograph the Women’s World Football Cup on 17 June. She has long been an advocate of women’s rights, especially the right of women football fans to publically watch football matches. Madj’s arrest has been challenged by 32 other Iranian photojournalists and the German commissioner of human rights, Markus Loening.
Mahnaz Mohammadi, an Iranian documentarian and filmmaker, was taken from her home by Iranian security officers two weeks after the arrest of Madj. The unidentified officers refused to show a warrant when they picked up Mohammadi. She is reportedly being kept incommunicado in Tehran’s Evin prison, meaning she has no access to her family or proper legal representation.
Zahra Yazdani is a journalist for the Asr-e Eghtesad, the newspaper owned by her father. Like the others, no clarification was given for her 21 June arrest from her home. She has had no contact with her family since she was taken.
Maryam Bahrman is a women’s rights activist and promoter of the ‘One Million Signatures for Equality’ campaign, which calls for a reform of the Iranian laws that discriminate against women. She too has being denied a lawyer or any contact with her family since her arrest on 11 May.
Mansoureh Behkish is a member of the ‘Mouring Mothers Group,’ which protests unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, and enforced disappearances. Several of Behkish’s family members were executed in the 1980s and she has been a human rights activist ever since. This is not her first arrest.
These arrests and others have spurred an outcry from the rest of the global community. Amnesty International is demanding clarification for the arrests, while other groups urge citizens to sign petitions and write letters calling for the detainees’ release.
The 2011 World Press Freedom Index lists Iran as a “very serious situation,” ranking 175th out of 178 countries for freedom of the press!


Ashton demands release of Iranian women prisoners – New Europe.

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Emad Baghi, Laureate 2009 of the Martin Ennals Award, released from prison

June 21, 2011

Yesterday we received the good news that Emad Baghi (Iran), MEA Laureate 2009, has been released from prison. He had started a hunger strike again which may have contributed to him having been released ‘normally’ at the end of his one-year term.

 

 

With the liberation of Muhannad Al-Hassani (Syria) on 3 June, this is most encouraging news and the postcard campaign for them is suspended for the time being.

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Some good news in the crime-should-not-pay series: Iran investigator

March 28, 2011

In 2002 the UN decided not to renew its Special Rapporteur on Iran. He had explicitly been banned from visiting the country in 1996 and this became an example of how non-cooperation by States with UN mechanisms paid off. But now, on Thursday 24 March 2011, the UN Human Rights Council has redeemed itself and voted to step up international scrutiny of Iran by appointing an investigator to monitor the country amid a crackdown on dissent, detention of Human Rights Defenders and a surge in executions. Ending this nine-year break in scrutiny was done by a surprisingly large margin in the Council’s vote ( 22 to 7 and 14 abstentions). This is the first country-specific appointment of a Special Rapporteur by the new Council.

In December last year, the UN General Assembly had expressed “deep concern at serious ongoing and recurring human rights violations” in Iran, such as “torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including flogging and amputations.” High Commissioner Pillay last month also expressed dismay at an increase in executions since the beginning of 2011 and reiterated calls for a moratorium on the death penalty. She had highlighted the executions of “political activists” who were arrested during protests in September 2009 and hanged in January this year.

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Don’t forget the two MEA Laureates in detention

December 23, 2010

Two MEA Laureates are in detention currently. Please do not forget them and send a postcard to the authorities. You can order the cards from the MEA Secretariat, info@martinennalsaward.org. Happy new Year to you all

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MEA Laureate 2009 Emad Baghi under threat again

August 6, 2010

The Laureate of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders Emad(dedin) Baghi was released from jail only a month ago, but according to a new court ruling – issued 2 years after the trial related to Defending Prisoners’ Rights Society – he has been sentenced to 1 year imprisonment and 5 years prohibition from political, organizational, and media activities. Does the harassment ever stop?

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