For Human Rights in Iran: 2016-10-02

Saturday, October 8, 2016

BBC News, Oct. 7, 2016 - A writer and human rights activist has been sentenced to six years' imprisonment in Iran for penning a story about stoning.
Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee faces years behind bars even though her writing has not been published.
She was convicted of 'insulting Islamic sanctities' and 'spreading propaganda against the system'.
Amnesty International called the conviction 'ludicrous' and the trial 'farcical'.
Victims of stoning are executed by having rocks thrown at them until they are dead. In Iran, most are women accused of adultery.
Ms Ebrahimi Iraee's work describes the emotional reaction of a young woman who watches the film The Stoning of Soraya M - which tells the true story of a young woman stoned to death.
The Iranian authorities found the piece on 6 September 2014, when the writer and her activist husband Arash Sadeghi were arrested by men believed to be members of the Revolutionary Guard.
Ms Ebrahimi Iraee was transferred to Tehran's Evin Prison and held there for 20 days, without access to her family or a lawyer, Amnesty International says.
She says she was interrogated for hours while blindfolded and facing a wall, and repeatedly told that she could face execution for 'insulting Islam'.
She says she could clearly hear the interrogators threatening and verbally abusing her husband in the next cell. Mr Sadeghi has since said that he was beaten and tortured while in custody.

'Punished for her imagination'

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Friday, October 7, 2016

Washington Post- 06 Oct. 2016- As the Obama administration scrambles for options in Syria, officials lament that the United States has no leverage over the Assad regime, Russia or Iran to persuade them to halt their ongoing atrocities, especially in Aleppo. But behind the scenes, the White House is working to weaken a sanctions bill lawmakers in both parties see as providing leverage against Assad regime, Russia or Iran.
According to lawmakers and staffers in both parties, the White House is secretly trying to water down the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would sanction the Assad regime for mass torture, mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The bill, guided by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (N.Y.), would also sanction entities that aid the Syrian government in these atrocities; that includes Russia and Iran.
The bill, named after a Syrian defector who presented the world with 55,000 pictures documenting Assad’s mass torture and murder of more than 11,000 civilians in custody, has 70 co-sponsors, a majority of whom are Democrats.
The House was set to pass the bill late last month, but the White House made an 11th-hour plea to lawmakers to delay. The White House said the vote would upset the then-active cease-fire agreement with Moscow, and Democrats pulled their support, said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the original sponsors of the bill.

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Thursday, October 6, 2016

The Hill, Oct. 5, 2016 - Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday urged the administration to consider a more forceful military component in its approach to ending the Syrian civil war.
'The Obama administration’s approach to Syria has failed miserably. Now is the time for a new strategy—including the necessary military component—that can achieve this more realistic objective,' McCain said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
The call comes as White House Cabinet officials prepare to meet on Wednesday to discuss new options to end the civil war in Syria, after U.S.-Russia talks to cooperate in Syria were officially suspended on Monday.
A National Security Council meeting, which could include the president, could be convened as early as this weekend, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
McCain said he believed Congress would back a more forceful approach against the Syrian regime, despite a seeming lack of support for U.S. airstrikes after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad conducted a chemical weapons attack in 2013 in defiance of President Obama's 'red line' against doing so.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Guardian- 04 Oct. 2016-The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has given a damning assessment of human rights in Iran, highlighting the “alarming rate” of executions and saying little progress has been made under president Hassan Rouhani .
Ban’s 19-page report, released this week, says he remains “deeply troubled” by accounts “of executions, floggings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, unfair trials, denial of access to medical care and possible torture and ill-treatment”.
It adds: “He is also concerned about continued restrictions of public freedoms and the related persecution of civil society actors, the persistence of discrimination against women and minorities and conditions of detention.”
Ban’s report also highlights the plight of journalist and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who recently had her 16-year jail sentence upheld in an appeals court. Mohammadi is locked up partly because of allegations of “establishing and running the illegal splinter group Legam”, a grassroots organisation advocating the abolition of the death penalty in Iran.

Strasbourg (France) (AFP) October 4, 2016 - The European Parliament voted Tuesday to close loopholes in legislation banning the export of equipment that could be used for torture or execution in undemocratic countries.
Legislators updated their 2005 anti-torture legislation to bar European firms from advertising such equipment at trade fairs or online, voting by 612 votes to 11 with 54 abstentions.
'We made the new legislation stronger and more flexible so that the EU can respond quickly to any changes and to the development of new technologies,' said Marietje Schaake, the Dutch liberal lawmaker who steered the legislation through the parliament.
The proposed tighter rules are aimed at blocking the advertising or display of equipment like spiked batons, thumb cuffs and spiked shields that had been legal under the previous legislation.
They also aim to block the transit of banned equipment through EU territory. Even though equipment like electric chairs and spiked thumbscrews were banned, they could pass through Europe under existing legislation.
They would also require transporters, if they have reason to believe the equipment will fall into the wrong hands, to stop the transit of goods that could be used for torture even though they are designed for other purposes.

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Tuesday, October 4, 2016

By Former Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.)
On Sept. 9, the last group of Iranian dissidents residing in Camp Liberty, Iraq left the country for Europe. Although collective international action was slow in coming, its eventual success helps demonstrate that recognition of and sympathy for the Iranian resistance is on the rise.
The dissidents are members of the principle Iranian Opposition, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Thirteen years ago, after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. recognized them as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. But in January 2009, their security was handed over to the Government of Iraq. Since then, they were subjected to several deadly attacks by Iraqi security forces acting at the behest of Tehran or paramilitary terrorists in Iraq affiliated with the clerical regime in Iran.
Some in Congress and elsewhere were concerned that the U.S. had failed to uphold its commitment to protect the dissidents and criticized the Obama administration. But to its credit, the U.S. State Department helped, in the late stages, to guarantee that the resettlement outside Iraq would proceed to its completion. Many dissidents went to Albania, while a number of Western European countries took in smaller numbers of the MEK refugees.

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Monday, October 3, 2016

The regime of Iran holding the world’s highest record in the number of death penalty per capita, saw a spike in the number of people it executed in September. Some even took place while President Hassan Rouhani was participating in the U.N. General Assembly meetings.

The Media Express, October 1, 2016 - Last year, Iran saw an unprecedented spike in its execution rate, with roughly 1,000 executions having taken place by year’s end. The streak has continued this year, and September has seen another spike in executions.

From September 13 to 24, 19 prisoners in Shiraz, Gorgan, and other prisoners were hanged, while 13 prisoners in solitary confinement in Karaj’s Gohardasht and Varamin’s Khorin prisons, and seven 25-30 year old prisoners in Minab Central Prison, were placed on death row. Thousands of prisoners are on death row in prisons throughout Iran, especially Ghezel Hessar prison.
Most of Iran’s death sentences stem from drug charges or, less commonly, “crimes against God”. The Iranian justice system is notorious for its unfair trials in which prisoners are sometimes detained for weeks or months without access to lawyers or their families. Individuals are often detained without explanation and are unable to see their families. It is not uncommon for political dissidents, union organizers, and activists to be jailed without warning, especially those belonging to religious or ethnic minorities.
Blinding, flagellation, and removal of fingers or hands are common and sometimes practiced in public, in violation of international anti-torture and anti-cruelty laws. Iran also executes minors and has executed pregnant women in the past.

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