London, Mar. 26, 2008 - The United Kingdom’s Foreign Office has accused the Iranian authorities of committing “serious” human rights abuses.
“Serious human rights violations have continued and there has been significant deterioration in some of our main areas of concern, including a worrying and rapid increase in the rate of executions”, said the Foreign Office’s Human Rights Annual Report 2007 released on Tuesday.
“Against a global decreasing trend in the use of the death penalty, the total number of executions in Iran is increasing year on year. Iran remains second only to China (whose population is over 15 times the size of Iran’s) in terms of total number of executions”, it said. “There have been approximately 300 executions in 2007, including the execution of at least four juvenile offenders”.
“In clear breach of its international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Iran is one of very few countries in the world that still applies the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18. There are reports of juveniles being kept in prison until they turn 18, when the sentence can be carried out. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, over 70 juvenile offenders remain on death row in Iran. We are deeply concerned by this practice and have made representations in several cases”, the report said, adding, “We are also concerned by the way in which executions are carried out. More executions are taking place in public – in August 2007, two convicts were hanged in a busy street in central Tehran. There has also been an increase in collective executions – up to 21 individuals at a time”.
“Cruel and inhuman criminal punishments such as flogging, stoning and amputation remain on the statute books. Despite the announcement of moratoria on stoning and amputation, both punishments reappeared in 2007. Amputation sentences have been carried out on at least seven people found guilty of robbery in Mashhad, Zahedan and Kermanshah. The head of Kermanshah’s Justice Office made a statement confirming that one of the sentences had taken place. He defended the use of amputation as a punishment, saying, ‘If thieves do not want their hands to be amputated then they must stop stealing.’ Prisoners are often subjected to long periods of solitary confinement and denied medical care, and reports of torture taking place during the course of criminal investigations are frequent.
“As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government face international pressure over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and internal criticism for their economic mismanagement and other policies, paranoia has grown within the Iranian government about the threat that media and civil society organisations might pose to the integrity of the Islamic Republic. This, in turn, has resulted in further restrictions on freedom of expression and association, and clampdowns on any form of dissent, opposition or organised protest”, it said.
“Charges such as ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic’, ‘acting against national security’ and ‘organising illegal gatherings’ have become increasingly common.
“An improvement in the situation looks unlikely in the current political context”, the report said.
The report listed Iran among 21 “major countries of concern”, which included China, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe.
it is easy to predict that the success of student activists in imposing their will and demands on government officials at academic institutions, such as the Teachers Training college and Zanjan University (where the students boldly took the initiative into their own hands), would result in a backlash by extreme right-wing officials who would plan an “instructive” counter-attack against the student movement.Hopefully such a reaction will not come. But from an analytic perspective, one must not negate it altogether. We hope that by being alert and preventive measures, the student movement will be able to pass the next few weeks and months with minimum turbulence and costs.
This is the reason that the moment imprisoned students step out of prison, it becomes clear to every one why they were put behind bars: for simply criticizing the president. It becomes instantly clear why they were subjected to interrogations and what questions were asked of them. These are the events that portray the image of this country. Students, social activists and journalists are certainly not on the list of those that dent this image. The publication of the arrest of students because of their criticism of the president brings forth a caricature image of Mahmud Ahmadinejad which does not match the claims that he made at Columbia University or the image that the regime strives to present about its standing.
There are at least 70 young people on death row who at the time of their arrest were under the age of 16. In the past 12 months, Iranian organisations claim that 80 feminists have been arrested and 20 of them have been sentenced from three to five years in jail. A total of 54 journalists have ended up in prison, several were released without trial after serving jail time, while others remain behind bars. In the past 12 months, 34 newspapers and magazines, among them the feminist magazine Zanan, have been shut down.
The families of Majid Tavakoli, Ahmad Ghasaban, and Ehsan Mansouri are releasing a Disclosing Statement of suffering to Ayatollah Hashemi Shadroudi, in an attempt to reveal what has happed to these three students while in prison. This letter states that 80 days after the trial of these three individuals, they are enduring mental and physical injuries as a result of being imprisoned and it has been requested of the judiciary to report on their condition.
Western diplomats and rights groups see the detention of women activists as part of a wider crackdown on dissent, which they say may be in response to Western pressure over Iran’s nuclear work. Iranian authorities have also clamped down on "immoral behaviour", including women flouting the strict Islamic dress code, since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005 with his pledge to revive revolutionary values. The women's rights activists say their campaign is not focused on what they wear, even if outsiders see conservative dress codes as a symbolic and visible barrier to equality.
