09.01.2009
Iran:
End Repression in Kurdish Areas
Peaceful Dissidents Jailed, Books and Publications Banned
(New York, January 9, 2009) - The government of Iran should
amend or abolish broadly worded national security laws used
to stifle peaceful dissent in the country's Kurdish areas
and end arbitrary arrests of Kurdish critics and dissidents,
Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 42-page report,
"Iran: Freedom of Expression and Association in the Kurdish
Regions,"
documents how
Iranian authorities use security laws, press laws, and other
legislation to arrest and prosecute Iranian Kurds solely for
trying to exercise their right to freedom of expression and
association. The use of these laws to suppress basic rights,
while not new, has greatly intensified since President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in August 2005.
"Iranian authorities show little tolerance of political
dissent anywhere in the country, but they are particularly
hostile to dissent in minority areas where there has been
any history of separatist activities," said Joe Stork,
deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and
North Africa Division.
Kurds account for 4.5 million of the 69 million people in
Iran, and live mainly in the country's northwest regions.
Political movements there have frequently campaigned for
greater regional autonomy. The main Iranian Kurdish parties
with a long history of activism deny that they engage in
armed activity and the government has not accused these
groups of any such activity since the early 1990s.
"No one would contest a government's right to suppress
violence," Stork said. "But this is not the case here. What
is going on in the Kurdish areas of Iran is the routine
suppression of legitimate peaceful opposition."
The new report documents how the government has closed
Persian- and Kurdish-language newspapers and journals,
banned books, and punished publishers, journalists, and
writers for opposing and criticizing government policies.
Authorities also suppress legitimate activities of
nongovernmental organizations by denying registration
permits or charging individuals working with such
organizations with spurious security offenses.
One victim of the government's repression is Farazad
Kamangar, a superintendent of high schools in the city of
Kamayaran and an activist with the Organization for the
Defense of Human Rights in Kurdistan. He has been in
detention since his arrest in July 2006. The new report
reproduces a letter Kamangar smuggled out of prison
describing how officials subjected him to torture during
interrogation.
On February 25, 2008, Branch 30 of Iran's Revolutionary
Court sentenced him to death on charges of "endangering
national security." Prosecutors charged that he was a member
of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but
provided no evidence to support the allegation. In July, the
Supreme Court upheld the sentence. Kamangar's lawyer has
appealed to the head of the judiciary to intervene, the only
remaining option for challenging the sentence.
[1481] |
