Dr. Majid Rafizadehb
Protecting and promoting
human rights is one of the major promises that Hassan Rouhani and the so-called
moderates continue to give to the people of Iran. As Rouhani enters his fifth
year as president, however, not only has Iran’s human rights record not improved,
evidence suggests it has significantly deteriorated, particularly when it comes
to the situation of minorities such as Sunnis.
A major area that requires more global
attention is the plight of political prisoners, journalists and human rights activists
in jail. Specifically, what is happening to them behind the walls of Iran’s
prisons?
Last month, inmates in Hall 12 of Gohardasht
prison, also known as Rajai Shahr, 20km west of Tehran, were subjected to a
violent and unexplained raid that led to more than 50 prisoners being
transferred to Hall 10, where conditions and treatment were even worse.
Hall 10 had been newly renovated before the
raid, apparently with the explicit intention of putting more pressure on the
prisoners of conscience who the Iranian regime was planning to transfer
there.The prisoners are subject to 24-hour video and audio surveillance, even
inside private cells and bathrooms. Windows have been covered over with metal
sheeting, reducing airflow during summer in a place already known for its
inhumane and unhygienic conditions.
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| Gohardasht Prison (Rajai Shahr) |
In addition, the raid involved the
confiscation or outright theft of virtually all the inmates’ personal
belongings, including prescription medication. Since then, prison authorities
have denied the prisoners access to medical treatment and have even blocked the
delivery of expensive medication purchased for them by families outside the
prison. Withholding medical treatment is a well-established tactic by Iranian
authorities to exert pressure on political prisoners, especially those who
continue activism from jail or strive to expose the conditions that political
prisoners and other detainees face.
Despite the fact that their newfound stress
and lack of sanitation already threatened to have a severe impact on their
health, more than a dozen of the raid’s victims immediately organized a hunger
strike and declared that the protest would continue until they were transferred
back to their former surroundings and had their belongings returned to them.
Others joined the protest, and at the last
count 22 detainees were participating in the hunger strike, most of them
serving sentences for political crimes such as supporting the leading banned
opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. The core group have
been starving themselves for approximately a month now, and their health has
predictably deteriorated.
Shocking events at
Gohardasht prison west of Tehran show that Hassan Rouhani’s promises on human
rights are worthless.
Heart,
kidney, and lung ailments have been reported, and the prisoners are approaching
the point at which they may start dying. Nonetheless, neither the Gohardasht
authorities nor the Iranian judiciary have shown any sign of responding to
their demands or publicly addressing the severity of the crisis. What is worse,
the international community has not been much more attentive.
There has been virtually no push by Western
governments or the United Nations to put pressure on the Iranian regime to save
the lives of the Gohardasht inmates. This is particularly disappointing in
light of the recent shifts in Western policies toward Iran, which come after
years of conciliation and neglect for human rights while the United States and
its allies focused their attention narrowly on the nuclear issue and
prospective trade deals.
During that time, various human rights
activists rightly criticized the world community for putting certain matters of
Iran policy on the back burner even though they had an immediate impact on the
lives and safety of potentially millions of Iranian citizens. It has been
widely reported that Tehran has been cracking down with escalating intensity on
journalists, activists, and other “undesirables,” swelling the ranks of its
political prisoners.
For all their resilience in the face of
violent repression, the Iranian people have precious little outside support
that they can rely on. Every global policymaker and every prominent human
rights activist has a responsibility to prove this conclusion wrong.
Organizations such as the National Council ofResistance of Iran have vigorously responded to the hunger strikes by calling
for the United Nations high commissioner on human rights and the special
rapporteurs on torture and on human rights in Iran to issue public statements
and initiate a coordinated strategy that will impose serious penalties on the
Iranian regime if it does not address the plight of the Gohardasht hunger
strikers.
There is a desperate need for international
inquiries into this and other human rights abuses in Iran. In fact, while the
Gohardasht situation is urgent, once an adequate international response is
made, it should be a template inquiries into crimes against humanity that no
one in the mullahs’ regime has ever answered for.
In the summer of 1988, about 30,000 politicalprisoners were hanged simply for suspected loyalties to anti-theocratic
resistance groups, mainly the PMOI. The incident was largely ignored in Western
media, and despite a handful of statements over the years, no serious inquiry
has been launched to identify the locations of the secretly buried victims or
to pursue charges against those responsible, many of whom retain positions of
influence to this day.
Although that was the single worst act of
repression against Iran’s political prisoners, the Gohardasht hunger strikes
show that the overall pattern of repression remains unchanged, while the
clerical regime remains as indifferent to human suffering as it ever has been.
It goes without saying that the international community as a whole is better
than this; but that community must act accordingly and intervene when Iran’s
political violence threatens to claim new victims.
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