Human Rights in Iran

["Mohammad Maljoo" <mmaljoo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.hrw.org/wr2k2/mena3.html


Iran: Human Rights Development (World Report 2000)



Factional conflict within Iran's clerical leadership continued to result in
severe restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and political
participation. Deteriorating economic conditions made worse by severe
natural disasters contributed to increasing unrest and a pervasive sense of
social insecurity, reflected in clashes between demonstrators and the
security forces and in harsh measures against drug-traffickers and other
criminals. President Mohammad Khatami won another landslide victory for
those associated with the cause of political reform when he was reelected by
77 percent of voters for a second four-year term in June, but the power
struggle between conservatives and reformists remained unresolved.
Conservative clerics maintained a strong grip on power through the
judiciary, the Council of Guardians and the office of the Leader of the
Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Promises by reformists to increase
respect for basic freedoms and the rule of law remained unrealized, and
severe restrictions imposed on the independent print media, the major
visible gain of President Khatami's first period in office, remained in
place. The judiciary, and branches of the security forces beyond the control
of the elected government, resorted increasingly to intimidatory tactics,
with a sharp increase in public executions and public floggings.
Conservative clerics taunted critics of corporal punishment, and accused
them of being opposed to Islamic rule--in some cases even calling for the
shedding of the blood of such critics. Such remarks fueled an increasingly
polarized political stand-off, which, coupled with governmental
ineffectiveness in the face of mounting economic and social problems,
contributed to a volatile situation where the threat of political violence
loomed large.
The clampdown on the independent print media that had followed the sweeping
reformist victory in parliamentary elections in February 2001 (see Human
Rights Watch World Report 2001) was followed by the detention of scores of
leading independent and reformist figures and activists. Many of these
activists had participated in the flowering of the independent press in the
late 1990s as writers, editors, and publishers. Other targeted activists
included supporters of the national religious trend, a loose alliance of
intellectuals and politicians advocating Islamic government with adherence
to the rule of law and the constitution, who for many years had been one of
the few currents of internal political opposition tolerated by the
establishment.
Seventeen reformist figures, many of them prominent, were brought to trial
in October 2000 in connection with their participation in an international
conference on the future of Iran, held in Berlin, Germany, in April 2000.
The trial before the Tehran Revolutionary Court was unfair. Many of the
defendants were held in protracted incommunicado detention after returning
from Berlin, during which time they were forced to make incriminating
statements that formed the evidence against them at their trial. Akbar
Ganji, a well-known investigative journalist who was among the accused,
protested at his hearing in November 2000 that he had been beaten by his
interrogators while in detention in order to pressure him to confess to
crimes. Most of the trial was conducted behind closed doors.
On January 13, the court convicted seven of the defendants on vague charges
of having "conspired to overthrow the system of the Islamic Republic." The
severest sentences, ten years of imprisonment, were passed on Akbar Ganji
and Saeed Sadr, a translator at the German embassy in Tehran. A second
translator, Khalil Rostamkhani, received a nine-year sentence, even though
he had not attended the conference. His wife, Roshanak Darioush, a
translator of German literature into Persian, had served as a translator at
the conference but did not return to Iran to face charges. The trial and the
harsh sentences imposed on local employees of the German embassy appeared
designed to cause maximum embarrassment to President Khatami's government in
its relations with Germany, a major trade partner which he had visited in
2000, and with other European states.
The court also sentenced student leader Ali Afshari to five years in prison,
and veteran politician Ezzatollah Sahhabi to four and a half years. Both
were already in prison by the time the trial began in October 2000. Women's
rights activists Shahla Lahidji and Mehrangiz Kar each received four-year
prison sentences, but were released pending an appeal. Ezzatollah Sahhabi
was also provisionally released, but he was re-arrested following public
remarks he made in March and was still detained without charge in November.
An appeal court reduced Akbar Ganji's sentence to six months of imprisonment
but before he could be released, the Tehran Press Court sentenced him again
to a ten-year term on the same charge of conspiring to overthrow the system.
He had the right of appeal but no appeal had been heard by November. In
March and April, the authorities detained more than sixty political
activists associated with the national religious trend, including the
leadership of the formerly tolerated Freedom Movement (Nehzat-e Azadi).
Throughout its fifty-year history the Freedom Movement had been an advocate
of constitutional Islamic rule with respect for democratic principles. On
March 18, the Tehran Revolutionary Court ordered the closure of the Freedom
Movement, accusing it of attempting to "overthrow the Islamic regime."
These detentions further chilled the political climate in the run-up to the
June presidential election as opponents of reform showed themselves
determined to intimidate, silence, or punish those known to support the
reformist cause. A leading conservative cleric, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi,
stated in April: "what is being termed as reform today is in fact
corruption." And other conservatives sought to discourage President Khatami,
the reform movement's figurehead, from standing for a second term. When he
could not be discouraged, they signaled by their actions that regardless of
the outcome of the election, there would be no concession to the reformist
agenda.
Another persistent challenger to the dominant orthodoxy of the conservative
clerics who held power was Ayatollah Hossain Ali Montazeri, the former
designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini as Leader of the Islamic
Republic. He remained under house arrest in Qom, but his criticism of the
present system, especially of the institution of the velayat-e faqih (rule
of the supreme jurist), continued to circulate by cassette tapes,
photocopied statements, and through the Internet. In December 2000, the
authorities detained the ayatollah's son for allegedly distributing illegal
literature, but the real reason appeared to be related to the publication of
Ayatollah Montazeri's memoirs on the Internet. These directly attacked the
position of Supreme Leader, arguing that the concentration of power in the
hands of one man was contrary to Islamic principles. Protests about the
continuing restrictions on Ayatollah Montazeri's liberty mounted throughout
the year. In June, the ayatollah's children (with the exception of his
jailed son) circulated a letter calling for the lifting of these
restrictions, and 126 out of 290 members of parliament signed a similar
statement. President Khatami several times publicly criticized the stifling
of dissent, including closures of newspapers and magazines, and the
imprisonment of political dissidents, but he appeared unable or unwilling to
remedy these problems. In February, in a speech marking the Islamic
Revolution's twenty-second anniversary, he warned: "those who claim a
monopoly on Islam and the revolution, those with narrow and dark views, are
setting themselves against the people." He also complained repeatedly that
he lacked the power to carry out his obligation as president to uphold the
constitution. But even after his sweeping election victory in June, when he
increased his share of the popular vote, he continued to shy away from open
confrontation with his opponents and made no discernible progress in
implementing his promised reforms. Increasingly, through his statements, he
appeared to represent more of a safety valve for public frustration than an
agent of tangible change.
A severe drought in the east and floods in the north-west exacerbated the
country's economic malaise and contributed to public scapegoating of Afghan
refugees and migrants, who were blamed for high unemployment and rising
crime and were increasingly a target of violence. Afghans were viewed as
particularly culpable for drug offenses, and thousands were detained and
scores executed in an intensified official clampdown on alleged
drug-traffickers. The government repatriated thousands of other Afghans
under a process agreed with the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), despite insufficient safeguards to prevent those at risk
of persecution being returned. At the same time, there were new influxes of
refugees fleeing continuing unrest and violence in Afghanistan, although the
border was officially closed by Iran. The repatriation process was halted
with the onset of U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan in October, when there
were fears of a further massive influx to add to the one and a half to two
million Afghan already displaced to Iran.
Law enforcement authorities made increased use of public executions and
corporal punishment, often after only cursory trial proceedings. In
February, five convicted drug-traffickers were publicly executed by being
hanged from construction cranes in the Khak-i Sefid district of Tehran, part
of an intensified clampdown on drug-traffickers, and the authorities carried
out more than twenty public executions for drug-related offenses in July and
August. Public floggings were also increasingly used for a wide range of
social offenses, including breaches of the dress code, despite opposition
from Ministry of Interior officials who questioned the effectiveness of such
punishments. In July and August, clashes reportedly occurred at public
floggings and executions in Tehran between police and demonstrators opposed
to these punishments.
In August, the parliamentary commission charged with investigating human
rights violations by public institutions, known as the Article 90
Commission, produced a report sharply critical of deteriorating prison
conditions. The report itself was not made public, but members of the
commission said it identified the sharp rise in the number of offenders
being sent to prisons as a major cause of prison overcrowding and the high
level of drug abuse among prisoners. More than two-thirds of all prison
inmates were reportedly held for drug-related offenses, and AIDS and other
diseases were reported to be spreading rapidly among the prison population.
The proliferation of unofficial, illegal detention centers, such as the
so-called Prison 59 in Tehran, gave major cause for concern. Prison 59 was
reportedly administered by the Ministry of Intelligence, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps and clandestine paramilitary forces, and was
entirely beyond official oversight. Political prisoners detained there or in
similar facilities could be held for months at a time without their families
or lawyers being informed or having any idea of their whereabouts, treatment
or conditions, and being powerless to seek remedies.
The independent press, before it was closed down in mid-2000, had sought to
expose the connections between certain state institutions and the
clandestine underworld of death squads and enforcers. It was the
investigative journalism of people such as Akbar Ganji that led to the
prosecution of eighteen Intelligence Ministry officials for alleged
involvement in the murder of a group of intellectuals and political leaders
at the end of 1998. (See Human Rights Watch World Report 2000.) On January
27, fifteen of these defendants were convicted after a trial mostly held
behind closed doors: three were sentenced to death, five received life
imprisonment, and seven received prison terms of between two and a half and
ten years. It remained unclear, however, who had ordered the murders: press
investigators had pointed to senior figures, such as former information
ministers Dori Najafabadi and Ali Fallahian, as possible suspects but they
were not charged and no information against them emerged at the trial. On
August 18, the Supreme Court reversed the convictions of the fifteen
ministry officials, who may be re-tried. Lawyers representing the murder
victims' families accused the judiciary of failing to ensure a thorough
inquiry into the crimes.
In a similarly unrevealing trial in May, guilty verdicts were announced
against the so-called Mahdaviyat group, a group linked to the authorities,
who were convicted of inciting violence against Sunni Muslims and committing
political killings. This trial, which involved links between state bodies
and illegal political violence, was held behind closed doors. The sentences
have not been publicly announced but its was reported in the press that at
least one of the defendants was sentenced to death.
Earlier, on January 30, the Supreme Court rejected the appeals against
conviction of ten members of the minority Jewish community in Shiraz who had
been sentenced to prison terms in 2000 for allegedly maintaining contacts
with Israel, considered a hostile foreign power. None of the group were
released.
The conservative backlash set in motion by the sweeping reformist victory in
parliamentary elections in February 2000 showed no signs of abating. By the
end of November 2000, more than fifty daily and weekly newspapers had been
issued with closure orders, and more than twenty leading independent and
reform-minded journalists, editors, and publishers remained in prison. In
January 2001, the authorities closed the philosophical and cultural monthly,
Kiyan. The journal had published academic articles debating the
philosophical underpinnings of the reform movement. The conservative faction
also sought to prevent reformists being elected to the parliament. Before
the June parliamentary election, held concurrently with the presidential
vote, the Council of Guardians vetoed 145 out of 356 candidates nominated
for the seventeen seats, a far higher proportion than in February 2000. In a
further display of conservative power, in August, the parliament was forced
to accept two candidates nominated by the judiciary to the Council of
Guardians. The parliament initially rejected the two nominated jurists,
Mohssen Ismaili and Abbas Ali Khadkhodai, claiming that they lacked adequate
experience, but the head of the judiciary, an appointee of the supreme
leader, refused to withdraw their names. Eventually, the Council of
Expediency, another body appointed by the supreme leader headed by former
president Hashemi Rafsanjani, crafted a rule change whereby the appointments
were ratified without obtaining majority approval from members of
parliament.

DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS
A few members of parliament were willing to confront what they viewed as
conservative attempts to circumvent and undermine their constitutional
powers as the people's elected representatives, and to speak out against
violations of constitutional principles. They included outspoken
parliamentarian Fatima Haqiqatjou, who protested the arrest of journalists
and accused the judiciary of exceeding its constitutional functions. Her
criticisms made her the target of criminal prosecution, and in August she
was sentenced to twenty-two months in prison for "spreading propaganda
against Islam" and insulting state officials. Haqiqatjou appealed her
conviction, denying the charges and also claiming parliamentary immunity for
comments made in the course of parliamentary debate. She remained at liberty
pending her appeal. However, seven other reformist parliamentarians were
facing charges for remarks they had made under the cover of parliamentary
immunity, part of a growing struggle between conservative elements of the
judiciary and reformist members of parliament.
Despite the silencing of the independent press, the debate about human
rights remained at the center of the political struggle in Iran, especially
within the clerical leadership. Reformist clerics repeatedly argued that
there was compatibility between Islam and international human rights
principles; conservative clerics, just as insistently, asserted that appeals
for liberty and respect for human rights were akin to apostasy.
Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari, who was detained in August 2000 for advocating
liberal interpretations of Islam supportive of international human rights
principles, continued to be imprisoned. He had been convicted of apostasy in
a secret trial by a Special Court for the Clergy. In September, however, he
was allowed to leave prison for two days and it was unclear whether or not
he remained under sentence of death.
Access to the country for independent human rights investigators remained
restricted, although representatives of international human rights
organizations were allowed to visit Iran to attend conferences. The U.N.
special representative on Iran, Maurice Copithorne of Canada, continued to
be denied access to the country, but in April he was able to meet in Geneva
with Abbas Ali Alizadeh, the head of the Tehran justice department, the
highest level judicial official he had been able to meet with for several
years.
In May, the International Center for Dialogue Among Civilizations, headed by
the reformist former minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Ataollah
Mohajerani, together with a clerically-supported private university in Qom,
hosted an international human rights conference in Tehran with a diverse
group of participants. Iranians who attended in the conference were candid
in their criticism of domestic conditions.

THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

United Nations
Iran played an active role in multilateral diplomatic efforts in the human
rights field, hosting, in February, the Asian regional preparatory
conference for the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) and entering into
negotiations with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights over a program of technical assistance in the human rights
field. In April, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights renewed the
mandate of the special representative on Iran.

European Union
Relations with the E.U. continued to improve. British government minister
Marjorie Mowlam visited Iran in February: she praised the government's
efforts to combat drug-trafficking but criticized continuing human rights
violations including the clampdown on journalists and the press. In
September, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi met with E.U. commissioners for
wide-ranging talks. Human rights concerns were again reported to be part of
the agenda, but the major emphasis was on expanding trade ties.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited Iran twice following the
September 11 attacks on the U.S. This first visit by a senior British
minister for several years focused on the crisis in Afghanistan rather than
domestic human rights issues in Iran.

United States
Contrary to some initial expectations, oil industry interests closely
associated with the new Bush administration brought no discernible shift in
U.S. government relations with Iran. Restrictions on freedom of expression
and persecution of minority religious communities were roundly condemned in
the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, and the
U.S. continued to voice objections to Iran's alleged efforts to obtain
weapons of mass destruction, its alleged support for international
terrorism, and its opposition to peace efforts between Israel and the
Palestinians.
In April, the Iranian parliament convened an international conference in
support of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, which was
attended by representatives of numerous groups on the U.S. government's list
of terrorist organizations, including Lebanese Hizbollah, and the
Palestinian groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. At the preparatory conference
for the WCAR, Iran supported the insertion of language singling out Israel
and Zionism for special criticism. These high-profile forays into the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute provoked U.S. ire. In April, Attorney General
John Ashcroft named the government of Iran as an unindicted co-conspirator
in the attack on the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1999. In May,
Iran was identified as a state sponsor of terrorism in the State
Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism Report. The Iranian government
responded sharply to this accusation: "The U.S. government, which itself is
one of the supporters of Israeli state-terrorism, is not in any position to
judge us."
In this climate of increasing rhetorical antagonism against Iran it came as
no surprise in June when the International Relations Committee of the House
of Representatives voted to maintain sanctions against Iran for a further
five-year term. The Bush administration had originally signaled a preference
for a two-year renewal of the sanctions regime, but with opposition from
Congress, the administration voiced its support for long-term enforcement of
sanctions. The U.S. government continued to support policies seen as
unfavorable toward Iran in disputes over control over exports of energy
resources from the Caspian Basin region.
If the U.S. and Iran were clearly divided on their policies to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they had more in common with respect to their
shared concern over the Taliban government in Afghanistan. In the aftermath
of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and the
identification of the Afghanistan-based Osama Bin Laden as a prime suspect
in these attacks, the possibility of closer cooperation between the U.S. and
Iranian governments emerged as a prospect for the first time in more than
twenty years.



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