Emadeddin Baghi, leading human rights activist in Iran

On Monday November 9, the award ceremony for this year’s winner of the Martin Ennals Award for human rights defenders will take place in Geneva. The recipient of the award will probably not be there though. Emadeddin Baghi, one of Iran’s leading intellectuals and human rights activists, will be the first laureate in the award’s eighteen-year history to be denied the opportunity to receive his prize in person since the Iranian authorities are not allowing him to leave the country to accept it.

Iran’s citizens have won more than their fair share of prestigious international human rights awards. Fearless attorney and human rights defender Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2003, the first (and only) Muslim woman to receive that honor. Parvin Ardalan, a prominent journalist and women’s rights activist, was awarded the Olof Palme Prize for 2007 for her activism on behalf of women’s rights in Iran. And this year, Emadeddin Baghi won the Martin Ennals Award for his work to defend the rights of prisoners and to end the imposition of the death penalty. However, instead of expressing pride in the accomplishments of their citizens, the Iranian authorities have not only done their best to try to silence their voices, but won’t even let them collect their awards. (more…)

Why is the Iranian government so afraid of Kian Tajbakhsh? To all appearances, the 47-year-old Iranian-American is a mild-mannered social scientist who taught urban policy at the New School University in New York. He was living quietly in Tehran with his Iranian wife and baby daughter and working on a book when he was arrested on July 9.

So why was he just convicted by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison? Judging from the list of charges piled up against him and the long prison term imposed, one would think he was one dangerous fellow, single-mindedly bent on overturning the Iranian government, working with foreign enemies to undermine Iranian society, and sowing mass chaos. (more…)

Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini’s new book examines the charged issue of honor killings of women that occur in Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, and other countries. Murder in the Name of Honor chronicles many years of careful research and reporting carried out by Ms Husseini, who writes for the English-language Jordan Times, and has won numerous awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award.

Honor killings of women and girls are carried out by their male relatives in order to restore the honor of the family due to a woman’s perceived unchaste behavior. The issue is understandably highly sensitive, and until the intrepid and tireless reporting on the subject by Ms Husseini, the subject was not discussed openly. Largely because of Ms Husseini, the issue of honor killings has become a matter of public debate in Jordan. While the Jordanian royal family has long advocated for changes to laws that provide for lenient sentences for those convicted of honor killings, resistance to change has been persistent among certain sectors of society, who believe that toughening the penalties for those committing honor killings would somehow send a signal that unchaste behavior is acceptable. Amnesty International has campaigned to end the tolerance of honor killings in countries such as Jordan and has called for amendments to laws that allow these human rights violations to continue.

Amnesty International reported that there were at least 16 incidents of honor killings in Jordan in 2008. In March 2008 a man who had killed his married sister in 2007 was sentenced to just three months in prison. He murdered her because of her supposedly “immoral behavior” which included leaving home without her husband’s permission and speaking to other men on her mobile phone.

Ms Husseini will be on a tour of the United States over the next month to promote her book. She will be speaking at a number of public events including:

San Francisco on October 14 at 7 pm at the Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia Street.

She will be speaking and signing her book in Chicago on October 19 at 7 pm at the Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln Avenue at an event sponsored by Amnesty International USA and the National Organization for Women. She will be introduced by Rafia Zakaria, a member of Amnesty International’s Board of Directors and an expert on women and Islamic Law.

New York on October 21 at 7 pm at Bluestockings Bookstore 172 Allen Street.

Washington DC on October 27 at 6:00 pm at Busboys and Poets Bookstore, 2021 14th Street.

We’re happy to bring you some good news in the case of lawyer and human rights activist Shadi Sadr.

We’ve all watched with dismay during that last 2 months as Iran has cracked down on hundreds of thousands of people who have poured into the streets to protest the contested results of June’s presidential election. Behind the scenes, Iranian authorities have conducted a campaign to silence dissident voices — like human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani — through arbitrary arrests and detention.

It was as part of this campaign that Shadi Sadr was detained last month. On July 17, Sadr was walking on a road in Tehran when men in civilian clothes grabbed her and attempted to push her into a car. Sadr lost her headscarf and coat in the ensuing struggle but managed briefly to escape. She was quickly recaptured and beaten with batons, and then taken away in the car.

We are relieved to report that after more than a week in custody, Sadr was released on bail, thanks in part to appeals from Amnesty activists worldwide. Amnesty International is monitoring her situation and will issue further updates as they become available.

Ordinarily, human rights activists would be pleased when the rare major motion picture shining a light on human rights violations comes along. In fact, aside from documentaries, it is very unusual to see issues that Amnesty International has worked on appear on film. However, sometimes a film can so distort an important human rights issue, that it may do more harm than good to the cause.

Sadly, this is the case with the new movie opening this Friday, “The Stoning of Soraya M,” the purportedly true story of the brutal execution by stoning of an innocent Iranian village woman. For one thing, the film is marked by crude story-telling: the main character Soraya is merely a mutely suffering victim while her brutish husband, who falsely accuses her of adultery so that he can marry a teen-aged girl, is a cardboard caricature of evil and malice. More importantly, aside from the numerous inaccuracies and implausibilities, the climax of the film—a bloody and prolonged stoning scene with villagers mercilessly pelting the victim—is so sensationalized that the audience response is likely to be disgust and revulsion at Iranians themselves, who are portrayed as primitive and blood-thirsty savages.

The film is presented as an indictment of Iranian society as a whole, and the setting—a remote rural village of about 25 years ago—is presented as typical of contemporary Iran. In the film, the victim’s aunt (who though she is supposed to be an ignorant village woman, inexplicably speaks excellent English and smokes cigarettes with 1940s femme fatale flourishes) is eager to have the French-Iranian journalist, who stops in the village shortly after the incident, smuggle a tape of her relating the story out of the village. She states that she wants the whole world to know what happened there, presumably so that those on the outside (the west?) can rescue the benighted Iranian people from their barbaric practices.

In fact, Iranians themselves—and in particular Iranian women’s rights activists– have organized and carried out a vigorous campaign against the practice of stoning and have themselves been actively documenting the practice. Opposition to the practice occurs at the highest level of the Iranian legal system; the Head of the Iranian Judiciary announced a moratorium on stoning back in 2002 and it was reiterated in August 2008. Sadly, at least three people have been executed by stoning since then. Interestingly, all three were men.

By criticizing the film, I am not dismissing the importance of the issue. Amnesty International issued a major report on stoning in January 2008, in which it is described how this form of execution is prescribed for adultery—although in practice, it is usually adultery in conjunction with some other crime, such as being an accessory to the murder of a husband. Furthermore stonings are carried out in prison yards by government agents, not by members of the community.

Crucially, we must look at stoning in the overall context of executions in Iran. Stonings represent a tiny fraction of executions in that country. Iran executes more people than any other country in the world except for China. In 2008 it executed at least 346, the overwhelming majority of whom were executed by hanging, sometimes for politically motivated offenses, and often after flawed legal proceedings. But again, Iranians don’t need people from outside Iran telling them what is good for them because Iranians themselves have taken the lead in opposing executions in their country. The renowned Iranian human rights activist Emadeddin Baghi was recently awarded the prestigious Martin Ennals award, partially for his anti-death penalty activism.

I would urge those who really want to see important social issues in Iran critically examined should check out some of the great films made in Iran such as “A Time for Drunken Horses” which deals with poverty among Iran’s Kurdish minority, “The Day I Became a Woman” and “As Simple As That” about the frustrations experienced by women in Iran, and “Santoori” which deals with drug addiction.

An accurate and thoughtful film about executions in Iran would be welcome, but we will still have to wait as the “Stoning of Soraya M” is not it.

There is a misconception that protests against Iran’s contested election results have been confined to Tehran. That is not the case. Although the largest protests have indeed been taking place in Tehran, Iranians in many other cities and towns have been taking to the streets. Unfortunately, the crackdown carried out by Iranian authorities has correspondingly extended to every corner of the country.

Mir Hossein Mousavi hails from Azerbaijan, in the northern part of Iran. The capital of Azerbaijan province, Tabriz, has seen some of the most severe crackdowns.  Seventeen political activists including those associated with the Nehzat-e Azadi (Freedom Movement) were detained on Monday night after they held a peaceful protest in Abresan Square in Tabriz. Security forces entered the dormitories at Tabriz University and detained ten students who had been involved in demonstrations. Student leader Amir Mardani and Dr. Ghaffari Farzadi, a leading member of the Nehzat-e Azadi and a lecturer at Tabriz University, were among those detained.

In the city of Oroumiye, local media reported on Tuesday that two people had been killed and hundreds more detained in a crackdown on about 3,000 people protesting in Imam Street.

In Shiraz, southern Iran, security forces used tear gas as they forced their way into a library at Shiraz University. Reports say that several students were beaten and around 100 were detained. Unconfirmed reports suggest that one person may have been killed. The chancellor of that university, Mohammadhadi Sadeghi, resigned on Tuesday in protest.

Meanwhile, in Mashhad, in the northeast, there were further reports of security forces attacking students and in Zahedan, in Iran’s southeast, two students are among at least three activists who have been detained.

In one particularly ominous piece of news, Reuters reported that Mohammad Reza Habibi, the public prosecutor in the central province of Esfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be charged with engaging in “Mohareb” or “Enmity with God”—a crime punishable by death according to Iranian law. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Esfahan, where there have been violent clashes, or the country as a whole.

Protests are expected to continue today as a large opposition rally has been called. Large crowds can also be expected to congregate for Friday prayers on the following day. Amnesty International has called for the Iranian authorities to refrain from using violence against peaceful protesters and to release all those detained for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association.

Iranian plain clothes policemen beat a demonstrator (c)AFP/Getty

We are glued to news coming out of Iran, literally watching as history is unfolding. Commentators have been grasping for relevant comparisons; is this another Tiananmen Square? Another Prague Spring? Or is it even a Second Iranian Revolution? But no comparisons are appropriate for the phenomenal outpouring of people demanding that their rights be respected.

Why is this happening in Iran? We don’t see massive protests in other Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt when there have been allegations of electoral impropriety.

Adjectives such as fearless, indomitable and awe-inspiring come to mind as we see Iranians continually defying bans on opposition protests to pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. They constantly find ingenious ways to confound the authorities’ attempts to block communications; now that foreign journalists have been prevented from covering rallies, we rely on the videos, photos and eyewitness accounts provided by Iranian citizens to YouTube and their friends and relatives for up-to-the-minute information.

Iranians express their defiance in a variety of other ways: women have been risking their safety and even their lives to walk up to Basij (paramilitaries) and riot police on motorcycles and armed with truncheons to remind them that “we are all Iranians” and asking them to refrain from violence. Even members of Iran’s soccer team playing in a World Cup qualifying match in Seoul wore green armbands, the color of the opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The yearning for freedom and human rights is a mighty force. Some have claimed that human rights is somehow a “western” concept, foisted on the rest of the world by paternalistic and arrogant Europeans and North Americans. Yet despite Iranian authorities’ attempts to portray the protests as being somehow the result of American “interference” it is clear that the impetus for the massive protests comes from the Iranian people themselves.

What will happen? Already the Supreme Leader has made an unprecedented announcement that there will be an investigation into the allegations of election fraud. Another massive rally by supporters of Mr. Mousavi has been called for tomorrow and there is no way to predict where events will lead.

The authorities have reacted to the unrest by use of force—sometimes lethal—as well as by mass arrests of opposition figures, journalists and human rights lawyers. We hope they will not unleash the full fury of the Revolutionary Guards against the demonstrators, which could result in unthinkable deaths and injuries. But we do know that there is no turning back. The Iranian authorities cannot count on the hope that things will just settle down and that the Iranian people will continue to accept the massive human rights violations perpetrated on them.

© AFP/Getty Images

Enormous crowds throng the streets of Tehran and great excitement is in the air.  Commentators note that the June 12 presidential elections in Iran could be the most important election in thirty years.  In the previous presidential election of 2005, only a minority of eligible voters actually went to the polls. No one expects that to be the case this year as the country’s young people—most Iranians were born after the Revolution of 1979—are expected to turn out in large numbers.

As Iranians prepare to go to the polls to elect their president, human rights has surprisingly emerged as a subject of debate among the four candidates.  Human rights activists wonder whether the unexpected airing of this once-taboo subject augurs a positive change.  Is this a step towards a new future of respect for human rights?  At the same time Amnesty International has documented the Iranian authorities’ continued brutal crackdown on wide sectors of Iranian society—women’s rights activists, students, journalists and bloggers, labor rights activists, and religious minorities.

It is clear that the exuberance expressed by the Iranian people in this election is an indication of their desire for a change, and especially for an improvement of Iran’s human rights record. The Iranian authorities should not assume that these yearnings for change will disappear after the election is over. Human rights activists hope that the Iranian authorities will recognize that the population’s demand for an end to human rights violations must be taken seriously, but also that allowing Iran’s vibrant civil society and activists to flourish without repression would create tangible benefits for Iran.

That is why human rights activists look to this historic election and allow ourselves to dream of what a future could be if labor activist Mansour Ossanlu who fought passionately for the rights of transit workers, could be released from prison and could work openly and freely to better the lives of the millions of hard-working Iranian laborers.  Or if Emaddedin Baghi, one of the great public intellectuals of our time, would no longer face constant government harassment in his efforts to advocate for more democracy and an end to executions, especially the horror of juvenile executions.  Or if instead of imprisoning AIDS researchers Kamiar and Arash Alaei on absurd charges of plotting to overthrow the government, these caring physicians would be allowed to carry out their internationally acclaimed work to prevent and treat HIV.  Or if instead of arresting and constantly harassing women rights activists such as Jelva Javaheri, the Iranian authorities could champion these feisty and tireless women in their efforts to improve the lives of Iranian women.

All of these heroes are great and inspiring role models not just for Iranians, but for people everywhere in the world. As the presidential candidates accuse each other of undermining Iran’s standing in the world, we know that allowing Iran’s activists to carry out their work free of harassment would bring favorable international recognition and honor to Iran. Will the discussions about human rights in the presidential debates really result in tangible improvements? This will only happen when the Iranian government really listens to those millions of Iranian voices roaring in the streets around the clock.

Shirin Ebadi

As International Women’s Day approaches on March 8th, it’s time to recognize the struggles and achievements of women’s rights activists around the world.  One of the most vibrant women’s rights movements is in Iran, where every day courageous women risk their freedom and safety to fight for their rights.  While most use peaceful means to end discriminatory treatment of women in Iranian family law, they face increasing persecution from the Iranian government: Women are routinely arrested, imprisoned, threatened and banned from traveling abroad.

Even the most prominent women’s rights activist in Iran, lawyer and 2003 Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, is not immune to this mistreatment.  She has been repeatedly threatened in government-controlled media in recent months and the Defenders of Human Rights Center, that she operates to provide legal assistance to victims of human rights violations, was forcibly shut down by the government last December and her papers and computers seized.

Why is the Iranian government so afraid of its own women citizens calling for equal rights? The government trots out preposterous charges against them such as “acting against national security through propaganda against the state.” How can women walking around a mountainous area north of Tehran to collect petition signatures possibly undermine the state?  How could Alieh Eghdamdoust, recently taken into custody and forced to start serving a three-year prison sentence for participating in a peaceful demonstration in June 2006, possibly be a threat to the security of Iran?

As the Iran country specialist for Amnesty International USA I am constantly challenged on how to craft actions and mobilize activist to combat this disproportionate and seemingly irrational repression of non-violent human rights defenders. And like many human rights activists, I am often frustrated and confounded.  But I am also always inspired by the unrelenting courage and pluckiness of women activists in Iran.  When asked by the judge at her trial why she participated in the demonstration, Alieh Eghdamdoust replied to the judge, “You should participate as well.  Why didn’t you defend your daughters and wife’s rights by attending the legal peaceful gathering?”

I think of Ms. Eghdamdoust’s spirited response as International Women’s Day approaches and I ask you to take action to support our sister activists in Iran.  Please write to the Iranian government and call for an end to the harassment of peaceful women’s rights activists in Iran.  Thank you all and please let us know what actions you have taken and any suggestions you have.