News watch: Iran’s Human Rights Violations

·         So far this year there have been 322 executions, almost as many as the whole of last year, when 381 Iranians were executed.

·         There is no freedom in religion in Iran, as evidenced by the continuing persecution of the Baha’i faith. Recently, seven Baha’is were arrested on charges of spying for Israel. According to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, “these individuals were detained solely on the basis of their faith.” These individuals have also not been given their right to due process.

o   All national and local Bahá'í administrative institutions have been banned by the Government, and Bahá'í holy places, cemeteries and community properties have been confiscated, vandalized, or destroyed.

o   info.bahai.org/persecution_iran.html

·         The Iranian authorities are using prolonged harsh interrogations, beatings, sleep deprivation, and threats of torture to extract false confessions from detainees arrested since the disputed June 12 presidential election, according to Human Rights Watch.

o   http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/08/iran-detainees-describe-beatings-pressure-confess

·         The sentencing of four Tehran bloggers by Iran's Judiciary Court on February 3, 2009, to prison terms, fines and flogging, despite the head of the judiciary's admission that they had been coerced into confessing, violates their right to a fair trial, as well as freedom of the press, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

o   http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/02/10/iran-four-journalists-sentenced-prison-floggings

·         In Iran, same sex sexual acts between consenting adults are crimes. Since 1979, thousands of Iranians have been intimidated, harassed in their own homes, arrested, tortured, subjected to cruel corporal punishment, and executed.

o   http://www.iranrights.org/english/newsletter-4.php

·         Iran is one of the only countries left in the world today that still executes children and child offenders (those accused of committing an offense when they were under 18 years of age).  At least 137 juvenile offenders face execution, but the total number could be much higher as many death penalty cases in Iran are believed to go unreported. Iran is known to have executed at least 17 juvenile offenders since the beginning of 2004 – eight times more than any other country in the world.

o   http://www.amnestyusa.org/all-countries/iran/page.do?id=1011172

There is also another report on their website titled "From protest to prison". It's essentially the more detailed events of post-presidential election of Ahmadinejad after he assumed office for a second term. You can access and study the file if you wish through the following URL:
  http://www.standforfreedominiran.org/educational-resources.html

(Source: http://www.standforfreedominiran.org/)

Last updated: 9th July 2012