Survivor of Iran Hostage Crisis To Stage Hunger Strike At Vienna Talks

While Iranian security and intelligence organs continued intimidating, arresting and harassing dissidents, judicial authorities also continued their crackdown and the parliament debated and adopted more laws that further violate human rights, the report said.

The hardliner Iranian parliament elected in 2020 in a low-turnout election, after widespread bans on many other candidates, became emboldened as Ebrahim Raisi won the presidency in June 2021 and hardliners established unchecked power in the country.

HRW said that “Over the past three years, security forces have responded to widespread protests stemming largely from economic rights issues with excessive and unlawful force, including lethal force, and arrested thousands of protestors while using prosecution and imprisonment as the main tool to silence the voices of prominent dissidents and human rights defenders.”

The bloodiest instance of state violence was in November 2019, when nationwide protests broke out as a response to the government raising gasoline prices. Security forces immediately resorted to extreme violence, using military weapons against unarmed protesters killing hundreds. The fate of many among 8,000 arrested remains unknown.

“Iranian authorities repressing popular demands for civil and political as well as economic, social, and cultural rights is causing an entire nation irreplaceable harm,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director for HRW.

The report says that deteriorating economic conditions lead to more protests. Government mismanagement, US sanctions and the Covid pandemic have led to more hardships.

The government has mismanaged and politicized the response to the pandemic. A vivid example that HRW highlights is the arrest of three prominent human rights defenders, Mehdi Mahmoudian, Mostafa Nili, and Arash Keykhosravi, who were planning to file a complaint against the government’s mismanagement.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned the purchase of American and British Covid vaccine in January 2021 that set Iran’s vaccination program back for months, leading to tens of thousands of more deaths when a severe wave of infections hit Iran from June to August.

Human Rights Watch notes lack of transparency in many critical areas, including the investigation in the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner in January 2020 that killed all 176 passengers on board.

The report also noted proposals and legislation in parliament restricting women’s accessto contraception and abortion, putting public health at risk. The hardliner parliament is also mulling over a plan to further restrict internet access, especially access to international social media platforms that allow Iranian to receive and share information.

“Iran continues to be one of the world’s leading implementers of the death penalty. According to rights groups, in 2021 Iran had executed at least 254 people as of November 8, including at least seven people on alleged terrorism-related charges,” HRW said.

Gholam-Hossein Ejei made the call after Iranians as well as the international community saw pictures of Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin with his feet chained to his hospital bed as he was dying of Covid-19. Abtin passed away on January 8 because prison wardens operating under Ejei’s command had delayed his medical treatment for at least 10 days.

Many other Iranian political prisoners have also ended up chained to hospital beds, but they were luckier than Abtin. Nonetheless, some of them developed problems such as kidney failure. Alireza Rajaei, a well-known intellectual and journalist lost part of his face because of neglect in prison.

Ejei particularly warned his colleagues not to use shackles on non-violent prisoners as if it was a new practice and he did not know about that before. Ejei has been holding top positions at the Iranian Judiciary throughout the past four decades, including Prosecutor of Tehran, and Prosecutor General at ordinary and revolutionary courts. Meanwhile, he is known for his hardliner positions regarding how to treat prisoners.

On Tuesday, the Iranian Prisons Organizations, which is a part of the Iranian Judiciary issued a long directive about how to handle matters relating to prisoners. Iranian media outlets such as moderate Aftab News have characterized the directive as a positive change.

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A video broadcast by the Iran International TV last year showed prison wardens beating prisoners and dragging them on the floor in Evin prison's corridors. The Judiciary at the time removed the chief prison warden at Evin, but what happened to Abtin revealed that more changes were needed.

The new directive which includes 8 paragraphs, first defines the rights of inmates upon their arrival and then calls for respecting inmates' human dignity. It also calls for a medical and psychological assessment of the inmates upon their arrival. It also defines prisoners' rights in solitary confinement, which is a notorious method of torture against political prisoners in Iran.

In the new directive, solitary confinement is limited to 10 days for the first time and 15 days for the second time and applies only to violent inmates or those who break the law. Many Iranian political prisoners including former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh have spent several months in solitary confinement.

The directive bans checking in inmates with acute illness and calls for free round-the-clock access to telephone within the first 48 hours of imprisonment so that the inmates could notify their lawyer and family of their situation.

Chief wardens are told to frequently visit new prisoners to make sure that they are familiar with their rights, and to put hygienic items, proper outfit, blankets and bank cards at the inmates' disposal. The cards allow inmates to shop their essential requirements at the prison shop.

The chief wardens also should facilitate contact with individuals who would bail out the prisoner or help them access the right kind of medical care they might need. Meanwhile they should record cases of assault and battery of the inmates by prison guards.

The directive particularly bans torture and discrimination based on sex, nature of accusations, and the inmates' financial status.

If the directive means that wardens were not committed to these principles until now, this could be the most incriminating document against the treatment of prisoners in Iran so far. It was the lack of such rules that led to many deaths in custody in Iranian prisons such as that of environmentalist Kavous Seyed Emami in 2018 and Iranian Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi in 2003.

Amiri, an Iranian national who resides in Britain, was arrested in March 2018 during a visit to Tehran and sentenced to 10 years in prison the following year by the Iranian judiciary on charges of spying.

Due to tensions with Western powers, Iranian authorities banned cooperation with the British Council in 2019 and warned that such activity would result in prosecution.

"We are very pleased to confirm that British Council employee and Iranian citizen Aras Amiri has been acquitted by the Supreme Court in Iran of all charges previously made against her, following a successful appeal lodged by her lawyer," the British Council said in a statement.

Several British-Iranian nationals have been jailed in Iran on similar charges, including Thomson Reuters Foundation worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was sentenced to an additional year in prison in April 2021, shortly before finishing her five-year sentence.

Tehran is engaged in negotiations with major powers in Vienna to revive a 2015 nuclear agreement which the United States abandoned in 2018, subsequently reinstating tough sanctions on Iran's economy.

Report by Reuters

The association representing the families issued a statement on Tuesday, saying that authorities cut off the internet when they gathered at the crash site, to prevent sharing of images from the ceremony on social media.

It said that three people were arrested after they were chased by security forces in a situation that seemed like an abduction. They were kept in detention for several hours and were released after security forces erased the memory cards of their cameras.

A low-flying helicopter was also dispatched to the area to further unsettle the participants, the statement added.

It deplored such acts of “harassment and intimidation”, calling on the Islamic Republic to end the persecution of victims’ families who have nothing else to lose.

Ukrainian International Airways flight PS752 was shot down by two air-defense missiles fired by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) in the morning of January 8, 2020, as it took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 people onboard.

Last week, Canada, Britain, Sweden and Ukraine said they had abandoned efforts to talk to Tehran about reparations for an airliner downed by Iran and would try to settle the matter according to international law.

Alinejad was nominated by Erlend Wiborg, a Progress Party member of the Norwegian parliament.

Wiborg described Alinejad’s nominationin line with Alfred Nobel's will, noting that a very basic factor for peace is respect for people and their freedom. “Respect for people and their freedom of choice will contribute to more peace in the world”, he said.

He highlighted Alinejad’s “fearless way of fight”, which has made her live in exile, and her “activism” that made her a target for a kidnapping plot by Iran’s intelligence agents.

In a tweet announcing her nomination, the New York-based activist said, “It’s important that the fight of Iranian women against gender apartheid is recognized”, adding that “For a peaceful world, it is vital that our struggles with terrorist states is strengthened globally.”

Iran's Intelligence Ministry's plot to abduct the Iranian American journalist drew global outrage from international journalists’ unions and writers associations when it was revealed by US authorities in July 2021.

Among other things, Alinejad has started several online movements against Iran’s compulsory hijab, the latest of which was the trending hashtag #LetUsTalkthat garnered support from hundreds of Iranian social media users.