So on the heels of large demonstrations this week in Iran which saw protesters calling for an end to Theocratic Rule where hundreds were arrested and beaten, Amnesty International has called on Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to allow United Nations human rights experts to visit the country to help carry out an investigation of what it claims are the worst human rights abuses there in the last 20 years. Sure right. Don't hold your breath AI.
This latest AI report holds the highest levels of political and religious power in Iran responsible for gross human rights violations. These include torture, rape, imprisonment and show trials of prominent opposition leaders. And AI accuses the Iranian regime of covering up these grave abuses rather than investigating them. Well naturally, if they're being ordered from the top it's a given that there will be no investigations. I mean unless there are fake investigations and a few lower echelon players get thrown to the wolves while upper level players get exonerated or conveniently overlooked.
Human rights violations in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years, Amnesty International said today (10 December) in a new report six months on from June's presidential election.
Amnesty's report describes patterns of abuse before, during and, particularly, after the June election, when the authorities deployed the Basij militia and Revolutionary Guards to suppress mass protests at the disputed outcome. It includes testimonies from individuals who were detained during the protests, some of whom have since been forced to flee the country.
One man, Ebrahim Mehtari, a 26-year-old computing student, told Amnesty how on 20 August he was detained and put in a tiny 1.3m x 2m cell. He was subjected to interrogation sessions while blindfolded and accused of 'working with Facebook networks' and protesting against the election result. Interrogators tortured him into making a false confession: 'They frequently beat me on the face; I was burned with cigarettes under my eyes, on the neck, head. I was beaten all over the body including arms and legs. They threatened to execute me and they humiliated me.'
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/...
According to Amnesty International, one former detainee said he was held in a shipping container along with 70 other people at the Kahrizak detention center for 58 days and was told that his son would be raped if he did not confess to antigovernment activities. (He was then beaten unconscious with a baton. - see amnesty link above)
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The report spoke of "many allegations" of torture, including rape, unlawful killings and other abuses, and said that members of militias and officials who have committed violations must also be promptly "held to account."The report was published after Iran’s broadest and most violent protest in months spilled over into a second day on Tuesday, with bloody clashes on university campuses between students chanting antigovernment slogans and the police and Basij militia members.
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http://www.nytimes.com/...
Amnesty says Iran refused to co-operate with its investigation and has denied the organisation entry into the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Many of the cases have been documented previously, but the cumulative effect of the data underlines what Amnesty calls "a clear pattern of systematic gross human rights violations by Iranian security forces condoned or even encouraged by powerful political and religious figures in Iran.
The report says government officials "have done their utmost to ensure that accounts of rape are discredited and not circulated further".
Amnesty has harsh words for the show trials of leading opposition figures. "The trials, broadcast to the nation, featured coerced 'confessions', 'apologies' and incrimination of others. Rather than bringing people to justice, the purpose was to validate the authorities' account of the post-election unrest and to make clear the severe consequences of opposing the authorities."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Iran's security forces have enjoyed a "climate of impunity" during six months of "sweeping repression" to put down mass protests, according to an Amnesty International report released Wednesday that catalogs abuses from rape, killings, torture, and show trials.
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Amnesty International's Iran specialist, Elise Auerbach, said in a statement: "Although the authorities have done everything possible to suppress knowledge of the abuses and to further punish those victims and witnesses who courageously reported them, the massive scale of the violations is impossible to hide.
The report states that detainees who made public accusations of rape against their jailers "have been targeted for further human rights violations" and treated "as a further threat to the state simply for revealing the truth about the crimes they have suffered.
Alleged rape victim Ebrahim Sharifi, who, like Mehtari, has fled Iran to Turkey, told Amnesty: "I provided my testimony to Mehdi Karroubi['s committee] but they came and stole it all. I would not have fled Iran; I would not stay [here] for more than one hour if I could have got some justice in Iran."
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
Many opposition supporters have been forced to flee Iran for their safety. Jon Leyne of the BBC has spoken to some of them including a girl who had been raped, now living in Turkey. He also spoke to two photographers who have been accused of espionage. They had been working for the pro gov't FARS News Agency but snuck out to take pictures of the demonstrations, one of which landed on a Time magazine cover. They say they fear for their lives in Turkey and can't even trust any of their fellow exiles.
BBC video
Here's an Al Jazeera video which talks to those two photographers and the Iranian living in exile documented above, Ebrahim Mehtari, who has been threatened by Iranian agents, told that he needs to stop raising these issues or he'll be dealt with, and we all know what that means.
Power to the People!
moon