Eye on Iran: UN Rights Experts Condemn the Recent Wave of Arrest and Sentencing of Civil Society Actors

Join UANI           Top Stories UN: "United Nations human rights experts today expressed grave concern over the recent escalating trend of arrest and sentencing of individuals exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion, peaceful assembly and association. Since 22 May 2014, at least 36 individuals that include journalists, bloggers, filmmakers and authors, many of whom are also human rights activists, have been arrested summoned or sentenced in connection with their journalistic activities or for simply expressing their opinion on social media websites. Some of them have also been charged for 'gathering and colluding against national security' following their participation in peaceful assemblies. 'Convicting individuals for expressing their opinion is absolutely unacceptable,' the experts stressed. 'Freedom of expression and opinion is necessary for the realization of all human rights, and it is a right reserved for all individuals, even if that individual expresses an opinion with which the Government disagrees.' ... On 22 July 2014, Jason Rezaian, a reporter with the Washington Post, and his wife Yeganeh Salehi, a correspondent for the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National, were arrested, along with an unidentified American-Iranian photo journalist and her husband. Mr. Rezaian and Ms. Salehi are reportedly held in unknown locations. 'These cases exemplify the alarming negative trend taking place in Iran. Individuals and journalists exercising their right to freedom of expression and opinion must be protected, not arrested and prosecuted,' they noted." http://t.uani.com/1q4ZfzC IHR: "At least 28 people have been executed during the last week, according to the official and unofficial sources. Four prisoners were hanged in the prison of Rasht (Northern Iran) yesterday morning August 7, reported the Iranian state media... During the last week there have been several unofficial reports about executions in the Baluchestan province (Southeastern Iran). The human rights and democracy activists in Iran (HRDAI) reported that five prisoners, including a mother and son, were hanged in the prison of Zahedan yesterday August 7. The son is identified as 'Osman Dahmardeh' who according to the report was 17 year old (juvenile offender) when he was arrested together with his mother about 2 years ago." http://t.uani.com/1vxyFY7 Reuters: "Iran's parliament has voted to ban permanent forms of contraception, the state news agency IRNA reported, endorsing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's call for measures to increase the population. The bill, banning vasectomies and similar procedures in women, is parliament's response to a decree Khamenei issued in May calling for more babies to 'strengthen national identity' and counter 'undesirable aspects of Western lifestyles'. Doctors who violate the ban will be punishable by law, the ISNA news agency reported. The bill, approved by 143 out of 231 members present in parliament, according to IRNA, also bans the advertising of birth control in a country where condoms had been widely available and family planning considered entirely normal. The law now goes to the Guardian Council - a panel of theologians and jurists appointed by the Supreme Leader who examine whether legislation complies with Islam. It aims to reverse Iran's declining population, but reformists see the law as part of a drive by conservatives keep Iran's highly educated female population in traditional roles as wives and mothers. It also worries health advocates who fear an increase in illegal abortions." http://t.uani.com/1ymGgoF     Sanctions Relief Tasnim (Iran): "Iran's new approach to foreign policy has raised its level at the international arena, President Hassan Rouhani stressed, and promised that the country will turn into a major investment center thanks to interaction with the world. 'Everyone acknowledges that if we take one or two more steps in the foreign policy, the gates will be completely opened (to foreign investment), and you will see that Iran will turn into one of the major investment centers in this region,' Rouhani said in the province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari on Thursday." http://t.uani.com/VfuNua Prague Post: "The Czech Chamber of Commerce (HK) is planning its first-ever business mission to Iran in September to examine the opportunities that may arise if the sanctions against Iran are lifted, daily Lidové noviny (LN) has written. 'We were waiting for the political ice to start melting,' Josef Novák, general director of the Veba textile maker taking part in the mission, told the paper. Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Martin Tlapa has said Iran is one of the markets thanks to which Czech exports could ideally be diversified. The Skoda car maker has also sounded the prospects of its export to Iran, LN said... AZD Praha, a supplier of transport equipment, has already implemented a pilot project in Iran: the delivery of safety equipment in the new railway station on the border with Afghanistan, worth 65 million Kč, LN writes." http://t.uani.com/1uG8IRX Terrorism Al-Monitor: "The Gaza war has contributed to breaking the ice between Hezbollah and Hamas after they have been at odds over the Syrian crisis. During the past three years of severed relations, there has been no public interaction between the officials of either parties, but with the Gaza war escalating, the situation has changed. On Aug. 4, Ali Baraka, a Hamas political official in Lebanon, appeared along with the vice president of Hezbollah's political office, Mahmoud Qamati, in the southern suburbs of Beirut on a joint occasion to support the Gaza Strip... In addition to taking Syria into account, Hezbollah cannot overlook Iran in this regard. Tehran and Damascus both agreed on turning their backs on Meshaal, but Iran is leaning toward Hamas due to strategic interests that guarantee cards for Iran in the Arab-Israeli conflict - the core of which is the Palestinian cause." http://t.uani.com/1su5VO0 Human Rights ICHRI: "Cyber police interrogator Akbar Taghizadeh has been sentenced to three years in prison, two years in exile, and 74 lashes for the murder of dissident blogger Sattar Beheshti, who died under torture while in police detention in November 2012. Giti Pourfazel, the Beheshti family lawyer, told Iranian Students News Agency that the verdict against Sattar's killer was not appropriate. 'In a country where journalists are sentenced to six years in prison, a three-year prison sentence against a murderer is strange,' she noted. Sattar Beheshti, 35, a laborer and blogger, was arrested on October 30, 2012, by Iran's Cyber Police and died under torture by his interrogator on November 3, 2012. His body was buried at Robat Karim Cemetery near where he lived. Beheshti's mother, Gohar Eshghi, has objected to the relatively light sentence. 'On Wednesday afternoon, August 6, news of the sentence was delivered to us by mail. But we do not accept it. It is dastardly and unfair,' she told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran." http://t.uani.com/1kWhF9F Foreign Affairs Reuters: "United Arab Emirates-based energy firm Dana Gas said an international tribunal had issued a favourable ruling in the dispute over a natural gas supply contract between its affiliate Crescent Petroleum and Iran. The tribunal ruled a 25-year contract for National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) to supply gas to Crescent was valid and binding on both parties, and that NIOC has been obligated to deliver gas since December 2005, Dana said in a statement on Sunday. NIOC and Crescent signed the 25-year contract in 2001, with the price linked to oil. But deliveries were delayed as oil prices rose and some officials and politicians in Iran called for a revision to the gas pricing formula. Crescent Petroleum started arbitration proceedings in July 2009; a three-person arbitration tribunal was formed under terms of the contract." http://t.uani.com/1ymIqEB Opinion & Analysis WSJ Editorial: "Soon after seizing power in Iran's 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that in his new Islamic Republic 'there would be freedom of expression, pen and views for all.' It's fair to say the regime has honored that promise only in the breach. The regime's latest journalistic victims are Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post's Iranian-American Tehran correspondent, his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, herself a correspondent for the United Arab Emirates-based National newspaper, and two other journalists, at least one of whom is reportedly a U.S. citizen. Plainclothes agents on July 22 barged into Mr. Rezaian and Ms. Salehi's Tehran apartment, according to the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. They confiscated laptops and other personal belongings and hauled the couple to an unknown location. Mr. Rezaian and Ms. Salehi haven't been heard from since. A likely destination is the political wing of one of Tehran's prisons. It's a fate shared by thousands of less-prominent Iranian dissidents, including labor and women's-rights activists, novelists and filmmakers, Muslim converts to Christianity branded as apostates, and not a few freethinking ayatollahs, among others... President Hasan Rouhani, the purported moderate who took office almost exactly a year ago, hasn't weighed in on the case. Such ambiguity helps feed a media narrative that the arrests are part of an effort by regime hardliners to sideline Mr. Rouhani and his supposedly moderate allies. It's an argument that ignores that Mr. Rouhani served as a top director of the Islamic Republic's security apparatus for two decades before becoming President. He cheered the bloody crackdown on the 1999 student uprising and, a decade later, the even bloodier one on the 2009 Green uprising. Then again, even if Mr. Rouhani is Mikhail Gorbachev in a turban, it's unclear how absolving him of responsibility for cases like Mr. Rezaian and Ms. Salehi's helps the cause of reform. If Mr. Rouhani is as powerless as they say he is to stop the regime from persecuting journalists, then why should anyone believe the Iranian President is fully empowered to negotiate in good faith on the nuclear dossier?" http://t.uani.com/1uG9qPa Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.