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CCD Board Member David Kilgour Discusses “Iran and Human Dignity”
October 21, 2011 | Printer Friendly

On October 21, CCD Board Member David Kilgour and Shabnam Assadollahi published an article on Advancing Human Rights, an organization dedicated to individual liberty and good governance, which discusses the state of human rights in Iran. The coauthors write that Iran’s human rights record has included discrimination and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, politically motivated arrests and abuse of prisoners, institutional misogyny and other actions that impede gender equality, and numerous other violations to the rule of law.

Please see below for the article:

Continuing his Holocaust denial and efforts to incite hatred against Jews, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently told Iranians that Israel’s existence is counter to the “dignity” of all nations. What, however, is the condition of dignity across Iran today?

In mid-March, the UN Human Rights Council voted for the first time to appoint a special investigator to monitor Iran’s performance under international rights instruments. The resolution, co-sponsored by governments from every region of the world, passed 22 to 7.  

It referenced UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s report expressing “serious concern” about Tehran’s human rights record: “...increased executions, amputations, arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials, and possible torture and ill-treatment of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and opposition activists.” Deploring the persecution of minorities, including Arabs, Armenians, Azeris, Balouchs, Christians, Jews, Kurds and Baha’is, Ban noted the continued execution of Kurds on various charges, including Moharebeh (“enmity against God”). Although there are about four million Kurds in Iran, they are barred from teaching the Kurdish language in regional schools.

Under Iran’s present constitution, key members of the government, parliament, judiciary and military must be Shiites, leaving Sunnis, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others as second-class citizens, facing harsh treatment whenever they practise their faith openly.  Nobel Peace laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi said on Radio Hamseda in Ottawa in April, 2010: “Sunnis are not granted permits to build mosques in Tehran and every time they apply for (a) permit, the application gets rejected.”

Baha’is
The plight of Iran’s approximately 300,000 Baha’is reflects that of other minorities. Noting the increasing arrests, sentencing of their senior leaders, and international denunciation of their trials as completely unjust, Ban added, “The High Commissioner for Human Rights raised their case ... in letters to and meetings with authorities, expressing ... concern that these trials did not meet due process and fair trial requirements.”

The seven leaders were charged in 2008 with espionage and crimes against mullah rule, stemming from their efforts to meet the minimal needs of their community nationally. Following “trial” in 2010, they were sentenced to twenty years in Gohardasht prison, with its appalling conditions, intimidating prisoners, and rare visitations. When one leader’s wife died, her husband of 50 years was refused permission to attend her funeral, which was attended by 8000-10,000 mourners from various religions. The regime’s bizarre “rule of law” reinstated the original sentence after an appeal court reduced it to ten years.

Arab Uprisings
Paul Salem, director of the Middle East Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, observed about events in the Middle East and North Africa: ‘There are new revolutions and heroes to look up to ... and Iran is passé … Iranian officials, as well as leaders of Iran-backed Hezbollah ...have taken a selective approach to the uprisings, cheering the movements in Egypt and elsewhere as an ‘Islamic awakening,’ while rebuking unrest in Syria as a plot by Israel and the West.”

A recent opinion piece in the Anatolia Daily (International Relations Studies Platform for Turkey) by Nir Boms and Shayan Arya noted that President Ahmadinejad demanded UN intervention for the UK riots, but not for the tragedy unfolding across Syria. In late August, Amnesty International said it had the names of more than 1,800 people reportedly killed since pro-reform protests began. Boms and Arya wrote, 

    “...Turkey informed a UN Security Council panel that it seized a second cache of weapons that Iran was attempting to deliver to Syria, in breach of the UN arms embargo… Today there are over 2000 political prisoners in jail (in Iran) and the crackdown continues. Since most (are)...  activists tracking human rights violations, it is very difficult (tracking) all the prisoners .... Nevertheless one human rights coalition, ‘Iran: All Rights Reserved?’, produced a list of nearly 650 prisoners ... sitting in jail while Ahmadinejad goes to give lessons to the UN.”

Institutionalized Misogyny
In 2010, Amnesty International observed: “(Iran) ...discriminates against women from top to bottom.  Women are absent in any of the senior, decision-making posts…”

The winds of change in the Arab uprisings towards equality, freedom and democracy affect Iranian women and girls. Neda Agha Soltan became a symbol of Iran’s long history, culture and principled people. Her murder by a militia sniper in a Tehran traffic jam on June 20, 2009 still haunts the world. 

Another victim was Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian journalist arrested in Tehran in 2003 while photographing the the entrance to Evil prison.  Later found dead in the hospital, her body was not surrendered by the mullahs for examination by the Canadian embassy. Dr. Shahram Azam, after obtaining asylum in Canada, later related his observations on Zahra’s admission to the hospital: fractured skull and bruises everywhere, two broken fingers, missing fingernails, smashed nose and evidence of both flogging and rape.

In 2000, Zohreh Arshadi, a lawyer in Iran until her forced exile, described the institutionalized suppression of females. The penal system, she noted, is a principal means of sustaining inequality of genders. Its premise is that women are deficient in abilities. Iranian women ‘’ have managed to achieve equality in one field only: equal right to imprisonment, exile, torture, and now slaughter… (They) have the unenviable distinction of having a greater share of punishment.’’

Because gender equality is a central tenet of the Baha’i faith, females face continuous problems. In a research study (2009) with former prisoners, Donna Hakimian of the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto, concluded: “... the women’s adherence to Baha’i teachings ...ultimately led to their persecution…”

Iran’s penal laws are contrary to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (not ratified by Iran), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Significantly, they also elicit protests from Islamic legal experts – both Shi’ite and Sunni. While most countries are banning the death penalty, Iran still punishes by cutting off tongues, hands and feet, gouging out eyes, and stoning to death.

Ahmadinejad’s Record
Since Ahmadinejad’s administration took office in 2005, it has crushed dissent, imprisoned protesters, tortured prisoners and escalated the execution rate.

Revolutionary Guard members raid apartment buildings, seizing television satellite dishes to stop citizens from being informed by outside media. They then import new dishes to sell to their victims, thereby profiting from ‘enforcing’ the mullahs’ wishes.

Nuclear Weapons
On September 2, extracts from an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report indicated increasing concern about “the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, ”including” ... the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”  Describing its information as “extensive and comprehensive”,  and adding that “many member states” had provided evidence, the IAEA also said Tehran is preparing to enrich uranium at a new location, an underground bunker near Qom. Uranium enrichment can both produce fuel for a nuclear reactor and be used to make a nuclear warhead.

Having concealed its enrichment program for 18 years, Iran still insists that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. It does not require nuclear energy for industrial purposes . when it has vast reserves of oil and natural gas. The UN Security Council has already imposed four rounds of sanctions for Tehran’s refusal to freeze its enrichment program, but inexplicably they do not yet apply to oil and gas, its major source of income. Six governments are negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. 

Nuclear proliferation is uniquely troubling because the regime threatens Israel with nuclear destruction. Consumed with hatred of Jews, it could use nuclear weapons.

Sanctions
Irwin Cotler, Canadian Member of Parliament and chair of the International Responsibility to Protect Coalition (IRPC), warns that Iran is on an “execution binge”, a “wholesale assault on the rights of its own people…It now leads the world in per-capita executions, many of which are in secret, taking place after arrests, detentions, beatings, torture, kidnappings, disappearances, and brief trials in which no evidence is presented.”

International sanctions, to be effective, must be enforced. Russia and China, which initially supported the UN sanctions resolution, are instead increasing business with Iran. Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have increased their bilateral trade.

We cannot engage in negotiations with Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and combat the nuclear threat while simultaneously ignoring, marginalizing and sanitizing its other threats to world peace.

Regarding Tehran’s incitement to genocide against Israelis, it is astonishing that not one state party to the Genocide Convention of 1948 has to date initiated any of the mandated remedies under international law against Ahmadinejad.

Conclusion
Responsible governments, NGOs and individuals should, along with the IRPC:
Call for the creation of a special tribunal by the Security Council to deal with atrocities by Tehran officials.  This request has already been sent to the 192 member countries of the International Bar Association.

Urge the U.N. to adopt a resolution regarding the issue of women’s and girls’ rights in Iran.

Call for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to:
              Convene a special session to discuss women’s rights in Iran
              Send a special rapporteur
              At in its capacity to stop the repression of women
Call for the disqualification of Iran’s membership at the CSW.

In short, people of goodwill everywhere must stand in robust solidarity with the Iranian people’s thirty year long struggle for dignity.

The article can also be found here:
Advancing Human Rights - Iran and Human Dignity