Jailed Iranian Rights Activists Ready To Testify Against FM Claims
In response to Iran's foreign minister’s denials of rape in prisons, an imprisoned female activist announced she is ready to testify against the government.
In response to Iran's foreign minister’s denials of rape in prisons, an imprisoned female activist announced she is ready to testify against the government.
In a letter sent to Radio Farda, the Persian Service of Radio Free Europe in Prague, Narges Mohammadi wrote: "In the past few months, detainees have been brought to the women's ward of Evin prison, and … subjected to sexual assault and physical torture. We have witnessed the traces left on their bodies.”
The civil activist, who has been in prison since 2016, also referred to the case of the elderly Baha'i poet and writer, Mahvash Shahriari, who has served 10 years in prison, and was recently arrested without any legal documents against her.
“She spent five months in solitary confinement [and] has suffered mental and physical torture,” emphasized Mohammadi.
She further expressed readiness "to testify in any place" as a "witness" regarding sexual assault and physical torture in prisons.
Amid the mass arrest of protesters within the past five months, numerous reports have been published regarding rape and assault on both men and women by regime officials in prisons, the first report published by CNN in November.
In response to the investigation, the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, described the reports as "biased and false".
The mandate was adopted in Resolution S35/1 on the deteriorating situation of human rights in Iran, especially with respect to women and children as well as minorities, in relation to the protests that began in September 2022 after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
On November 24, the Human Rights Council decided to establish an independent international fact-finding mission on Iran's deadly repression of protests, which has killed over 500 civilians, until the end of the fifty-fifth session of the Council taking place in March 2024.
The UN mission, in particular, asked for information concerning violent crackdown on peaceful protests by security forces, including alleged arbitrary arrests and detentions, sexual and gender-based violence, excessive use of force, torture and other inhumane treatment and enforced disappearances, as well as the deaths of hundreds of peaceful protesters and thousands of arrests.
The mission is also seeking documentation on physical, psychological and sexual abuse of women and girls for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and children’s rights violations in relation to the protests, including in raids on schools, and the incarceration of children in ‘psychological centers.'
The call also asked for information on violations of civil society and human rights activists, and reports of charges that carry the death penalty being applied to protesters for offences that are less than the most serious crimes as well as “restrictions on communications affecting landline and mobile telephone usage, including Internet shutdowns and the blocking of social media platforms”.
According to the statement issued by the UN Human Rights Council, submissions should be sent as soon as possible, but no later than December 31, 2023, to enable the mission’s Secretariat to process the information, including any follow-up if necessary. Information and documentation can be submitted in English or Persian.
The global outcry against the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on dissent, manifested through a wide array of human rights violations, is getting louder as the opposition forces are uniting and the world seems to be acknowledging the popular uprising. The deteriorating state of human rights in Iran, particularly unlawful executions and chemical attacks on schoolgirls, on the backdrop of worsening economic conditions, workers’ strikes, and devaluation of national currency rial has led to new moves by the international community.
In addition to Europe mulling over designating the Revolutionary Guards – IRGC – as a terrorist organization, US lawmakers are pushing for additional sanctions on Islamic Republic’s parliament. Packed with hardliners, the body provides the legal framework for Tehran’s security forces to murder, torture, and imprison dissidents, US lawmakers say as a bipartisan coalition is pressuring the Biden administration to sanction nearly all of its members amid the government’s crackdown on anti-regime protesters.
Pushing for sanctions on 227 out of 290 members of Iran’s parliament, a group of 26 US representatives and senators from both parties said that "the Islamic Republic of Iran lacks democratic legitimacy, and the members of its parliament are not true democratic representatives of the Iranian people."
Led by Representative Claudia Tenney (R, NY) and Senator Marco Rubio (R, Fla), the group sent a letter to the State and Treasury Departments. "We urge you to take further actions—and encourage international partners to join us -- to impose much clearer costs on the Iranian regime for the execution of protesters."
On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price expressed Washington’s unequivocal determination to hold the Islamic Republic authorities accountable for their actions, saying “we are using every authority we have at our disposal to pursue those who are responsible for the atrocious human rights abuses that the Iranian regime has perpetrated against its own people since September of last year.”
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon that so far no one has been arrested for the mysterious poisoning of girls at schools across the country and no chemical agent responsible for the poisonings has yet been found.
The IRGC-linked Fars News Agency had reported the arrest of three individuals earlier on Wednesday.
Vahidi who was assigned by President Ebrahim Raisi at the cabinet meeting Wednesday morning to urgently investigate the incidents also denied that the poisonings, apparently by toxic gases, have caused paralysis in any of the students. He claimed that the symptoms in over 90 percent of the students were induced by stress.
On Wednesday at least 26 more schools were attacked including over a dozen in the capital Tehran, six in Ardabil, two in Kermanshah, and one in Esfahan. In several cases security forces and police used violence against outraged parents who chanted slogans against authorities outside schools.
It is shocking for the public that the government has so far made no arrests or identified suspects, as well as providing extra security around schools. Later on on Wednesday, the United States urged Iran to investigate the poison attacks, a US State Department spokesperson said.
In a tweet Wednesday, prominent journalist Abbas Abdi said the attacks would have already ended if authorities had been as vehement to catch those responsible for the attacks as they are in silencing the poisoned girls’ families.
Children’s parents shouting “Death to the child-killing regime” and “Death to the Dictator” outside a girls’ school in Tehransar in a western suburb of Tehran.
Hundreds of schoolgirls have been hospitalized in various cities across the country since November 30 when the first case of a mysterious poisoning was reported in the religious city of Qom. Attacks have been widespread in Qom and Boroujerd in western Iran so far where tens of schools have been affected. The first attack in Tehran was reported Tuesday. Boys’ schools were attacked only in a few rare cases, including a primary school in Parand Town in the south of the capital, on Wednesday.
Authorities who at first dismissed the reports of poisonings in Qom and attributed the incidents to “children’s pranks” or other reasons including faulty heating, have now admitted that at least 1,200 students were affected by the mysterious fumes.
As many Iranians have said on social media that the attacks are the work of religious zealots who want to prevent girls from attending school, hardliners have tried to blame regime opponents.
Tehran municipality’s Hamshahri newspaper, a hardliner mouthpiece, dubbed the poisoning incidents “A Poisonous Project” and suggestively printed images of opposition figures including the former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) leader Maryam Rajavi, and activist Masih Alinejad on its frontpage Wednesday. “By using the students’ poisonings, anti-revolutionaries are trying to cause anxiety among people,” the newspaper wrote.
Schoolgirls at a Tehran hospital Wednesday suffering from short breath and other symptoms including lethargy.
Prince Reza Pahlavi in a tweet Tuesday accused the regime of responsibility for systematic attacks on girls’ schools. Alinejad has also accused the regime and said it is taking revenge on schoolgirls for their participation in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
Many parents say on social media that they will not send their girls to school to keep them out of harm’s way but Alinejad has called on male students to boycott classes in their schools and universities on Saturday in support of schoolgirls.
State media and hardliners blame the MEK, which has a long record of terrorist attacks in Iran in the 1980s, more often than anyone else. “I have no doubt that the MEK or other hostile and anti-revolutionary groups are involved [in the poisonings],” lawmaker Ahmad Rastineh said Wednesday.
Another lawmaker, Mohammad-Tala Mazloumi, also blamed the MEK and similar groups, which he said aim to disgrace the Islamic Republic and its educational system, while also pointing a finger at Israel.
