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| Author: | Lionel Beehner |
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August 9, 2006
The recent death of activist Akbar Mohammadi in Tehran's Evin prison, followed by the ban of a leading human rights organization, are fresh signals of the low tolerance for dissent under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. Human rights monitors say that in Iran critics are silenced, independent journalists and opposition members are arrested, and minorities are persecuted. Reports persist of torture in detention centers. With attention in the region focused on matters of war and peace—Israel's battle with Hezbollah, Iran’s nuclear program, sectarian warfare in Iraq—human rights violations appear to face less international scrutiny. Some experts argue that Washington's latest soft diplomacy efforts and its emphasis on encouraging regime change in Iran are only damaging the cause of Iranian activists. Others say more forceful action by the United States and others is needed to reverse Iran’s worsening human rights record.
Rights watchdog groups say the regime's moves against government critics have recently intensified. "The situation has deteriorated in terms of targeting independent voices and organizations," says Hadi Ghaemi, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, pointing to a rising number of disappearances, incidents of torture, and summary executions, often by stoning. Experts say the basij, a volunteer military established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the 1979-80 revolution, has cracked down on women, homosexuals, and ethnic and religious minorities like Azeris, Arabs, Christians, and Kurds. Ghaemi says sharia, or Islamic law, is now more strictly imposed by judges than under the previous regime of reformist President Mohammed Khatami. The result, says Karim Sadjadpour, the International Crisis Group's Iran analyst, is that "critics"—journalists, activists, human rights lawyers—"are not as bold as they once were."
Because of Ahmadinejad's conservative stance on cultural issues and embrace of strict Islamic law, writes Bill Samii, a Middle East expert with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Another problem, Samii says, is the president's "appointment of officials with security and intelligence backgrounds for interior ministry and provincial government suggests the human rights situation will only worsen." Prominent Iranian activists, among others, say their country's human rights situation has been adversely affected by President Bush's refusal to disavow the military option to solve the impasse on Iran's nuclear activities. "[T]he threat of foreign military intervention will provide a powerful excuse for authoritarian elements to uproot [human rights organizations] and put an end to their growth," wrote Ghaemi and Ebadi, in a February 2005 New York Times op-ed.
Not much, experts say. "It’s very difficult to do anything from 5,000 miles away when you have no embassy in Tehran," Sadjadpour says, adding that the best U.S. policy should be, like the doctor's oath, "to do no harm." Iranian officials say the United States employs double standards because it supports regimes with poor human rights records like Saudi Arabia. Ghaemi calls the United Nations the most legitimate voice on human rights in Iran but says “its criticism has not been very forceful and not based on any independent investigations.” In a sign of the government's attitude toward the new UN Human Rights Council, it included in its delegation to the Council's opening session Tehran’s prosecutor-general Said Mortazavi, regarded by Western monitors as a rights abuser and implicated in the death of the Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in 2003.
Very little, experts say. For the past few years there has been a formal human rights dialogue between Europe and Iran, but it has produced few tangible results, and last December, Iran suspended the dialogue. "They [Europe] felt like they weren’t holding the major cards," Sadjadpour says, adding that the United States holds more carrots than Europe on this issue and should therefore include human rights as part of the agenda if Washington and Tehran ever hold talks on the nuclear issue. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have criticized the European Union for not exerting enough pressure on Iran on the issue of human rights. But on July 26, the European Union did issue a statement blasting the Iranian government for its arrest of human rights lawyers, including Abdolfattah Soltani, a founder of the DHRC who was sentenced to five years in prison.
It’s better than most Arab states in the Middle East. Some independent newspapers are still permitted. Women generally enjoy more freedoms than in other states in the region, including the right to vote and attend university. Yet these freedoms, Sadjadpour says, "are in spite of the regime, not because of the regime." Further, Iran has had a different recent past than many of its Arab neighbors. "There’s been revolution, war, a reform movement—all of which has given rise to more widespread calls for protection of human rights than other [Middle Eastern] countries," Ghaemi says. "There is a grassroots movement [in Iran] that believes respect for human rights must be enshrined in the government. [Among the opposition] you don’t see much common views of ideology but you see a constant call for human rights and peaceful disobedience campaigns."
Iran's revolutionary history also distinguishes it from most Middle East countries. Roughly three-quarters of its population is under the age of thirty, meaning they were not as strongly influenced by the revolutionary era of the 1980s. "They don't have any special allegiance to the Islamic Revolution. Increasingly they are outspoken when their economic means are not met," Sadjadpour says. He says the failure of Khatami's eight-year reform movement (1997-2005) has resulted in a sense of apathy among young Iranians. "They tried to change the system via the ballot box," he says, "and it didn't work."
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