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Saturday 11 April 2015Should the U.S. Take Iran’s Human Rights Problem More Seriously?
thetower.org - Over the past few years, the UN has gotten more and more serious about tackling Iran's human rights abuses. But at the same time, under the Obama administration the United States has only grown closer to the Islamic Republic. Why? On March 19, in honor of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, President Barack Obama sent greetings to Persians living both inside and outside Iran. Obama was not the first American president to mark Nowruz—this particular tradition was begun by President George H.W. Bush in 1992—but he was the first to refer to Iran with its official prefix, "The Islamic Republic of...," signaling his willingness to regard the Islamist regime as an enduring political entity, rather than a temporary aberration.
In those 2009 greetings, Obama articulated an "Islamic Republic" doctrine that would shape America's courtship of Iran ever since. "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations," he said. Obama made no mention of the Iran's systemic human rights abuse back then, when the fanatical millenarian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still president, and he made no mention of it in 2015, with the ostensibly moderate Hassan Rouhani now in office. While Obama's 2009 Nowruz address was ambiguous enough to allow us to imagine that human rights might be an element of American engagement with Iran, his 2015 address, which followed several years of public and private engagement with Tehran, effectively called for a united front with the "Islamic Republic" against those "people, in both our countries and beyond, who oppose a diplomatic resolution [of the Iranian nuclear question]. My message to you—the people of Iran—is that, together, we have to speak up for the future we seek." In 2009, Obama asked that Americans and Iranians—he didn't distinguish between government and people at this critical juncture of his speech—not be defined by their differences. This year, he went further, speaking of strategic interests shared by two nations that are centuries apart when it comes to basic human rights and freedoms. More foreign investment and jobs, including for young Iranians. More cultural exchanges and chances for Iranian students to travel abroad. More partnerships in areas like science and technology and innovation. In other words, a nuclear deal now can help open the door to a brighter future for you—the Iranian people, who, as heirs to a great civilization, have so much to give to the world. To Obama, it seems, the heart of the Islamic Republic is essentially benign. He said, for example, that "Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons," even though many analysts have raised serious doubts about both the wording and the significance of the fatwa. He also mentioned that "President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon." He appears to believe that Iran's leaders are ultimately prudent and sensible men. A few days before Obama made his Nowruz speech, Ahmed Shaheed, the UN-appointed Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, issued his seventh report to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Shaheed is a diplomat, academic, and pro-democracy politician from the Maldives, a predominantly Muslim island in the Indian Ocean that, as his Twitter feed records in animated fashion, has itself experienced a severe erosion of democratic rights over the last several years. He also sits on the Board of the Universal Rights Group, a think-tank located in Geneva. Shaheed is the first incumbent in the Special Rapporteur's position, having been appointed in 2011 just as the Human Rights Council began an expansion of its monitoring of specific states. Over the next three years, it added further mandates to include North Korea, Syria, Mali, the Central African Republic and other countries where human rights are routinely and systemically abused—a welcome development, for once, in a body that is still disproportionately concerned with attacking Israel. In August 2014, Shaheed authored a report in which he noted that Iran's penal code These and similar facts demonstrate why Iran stands out even among those states whose record on human rights is unremittingly criminal. Execution of juveniles, execution for adultery, execution for blasphemy, punishment instead of treatment for alcohol and drug abusers—these are crimes against humanity that could potentially become a case for the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is also worth noting that, under Rouhani, there has been an increase in the number of executions carried out by the regime. When I spoke to Shaheed shortly after the release of his latest report, he cautiously expressed hope that there were figures around Rouhani who might be open to a more substantive engagement on human rights. He also speculated that a lifting of sanctions in the context of a nuclear deal might also lead to greater international engagement with Iran, "and therefore exposure and pressure on Iran to improve its human rights record." Shaheed told me, however, that "overall the country is getting worse on human rights practices, certainly since I've been observing it." In Shaheed's view, the right to life is the most pressing of the myriad human rights concerns currently in play in Iran. "At least 753 individuals were reportedly executed in 2014 (the highest total recorded in the past 12 years)," his report revealed. "This includes the execution of 25 women and 53 public executions." Iran's systematic discrimination against women is another pillar of its theocratic regime. "Sitting here at the UN for the last eleven years, I hardly hear anyone talk in any meaningful way about the rights of women in Iran," Neuer told me. Shaheed's reporting is ideally placed to break that particular silence, at least in the corridors of the UN. "Recent legislative attempts made by the Iranian Parliament appear to further restrict the rights of women to their full and equal enjoyment of internationally recognized rights," he wrote. The discrimination, said Shaheed, is especially pronounced in the spheres of education and employment. "A few years ago, nearly 70 percent of the university population was made up of women, but there's been a policy established in the past two or three years designed to push women back from the public sphere," he told me. "The first element of this was the imposition of quotas on women's access to university, thereby in a matter of two years reducing the number of women enrolled at university to less than 50 percent of the total university population." When it comes to employment, Shaheed continued, female participation in the workforce "remains very, very low." The situation is equally grim with regard to freedom of assembly, speech, and religion. Those wishing to set up a political party must first submit their request to a nine-member Party Commission that includes officials from the intelligence ministry. Shaheed's 2015 report states, "The applicant's statute and manifesto must also explicitly state adherence to the Constitution and the principle of the guardianship of the Islamic jurist"—the velayat-e faqih system established by Ayatollah Khomeini following the 1979 Islamist takeover. Of all Iran's beleaguered religious minorities, which include Sunni Muslims, Jews, and Christians, it is the adherents of the Baha'i faith that are in the most vulnerable position. According to Shaheed's report, Baha'is "continue to face discrimination, arrest, and arbitrary detention in connection with their religion. Between September and December 2014, security forces in the cities of Isfahan, Tehran, Shiraz, Hamedan, Karaj, and Semnan reportedly arrested at least 24 Baha'is, bringing the total number of Baha'is in detention to 100." Moreover, the regime's attitude is unashamedly bigoted. "Incitement against Baha'is also appeared to continue this past year," Shaheed's report stated. "On 15 December 2014, Ayatollah Bojnourdi (a high-ranking cleric and a former member of Supreme Judicial Council) stated, 'We never say that Baha'is have the right to education; Baha'is don't even have citizenship rights.'" Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Obama administration's outreach to Iran is the resulting impression of the regime as being, at worst, mildly authoritarian. The omission of fundamental human rights reform as a necessary measure in permitting, as Obama put it, "the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations," places the onus on human rights organizations to prevent any further polishing of Iran's image. In February 2014, a United Nations panel of experts issued a searing report on human rights abuses in North Korea, recommending that the "Security Council...refer the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court for action in accordance with that court's jurisdiction." Bitterly stung by the report, the North Koreans embarked on a round of furious diplomacy to prevent this and other recommendations from being adopted. By November, however, their efforts had been rebuffed, with the UN General Assembly committee that oversees human rights voting 111-19, with 55 abstentions, in favor of an ICC prosecution against the North Korean leadership. Iranian police accost women over their immodest dress. Photo: Amir Farshad Ebrahimi / flickrIranian police accost women over their immodest dress. Photo: Amir Farshad Ebrahimi / flickr It seems, then, that ownership of weapons of mass destruction does not make authoritarian and totalitarian regimes improve their behavior. Nor does it make them more amenable to international incentives to do so, especially when it comes to the most important issue—their human rights records. To the contrary, as North Korea demonstrates, it makes them far less inclined to compromise, and boosts their confidence in the use of violence to suppress domestic opponents. Moreover, since Pyongyang has accused Marzuki Darusman, the UN's independent expert on human rights violations in that country, of misusing "human right issues as a means to dismantle or overthrow the country's system," it is reasonable to conclude that an initiative like an ICC prosecution would be regarded by the Kim regime as precisely that "sparkle of fire" that could trigger nuclear war. All of which sets a gravely negative precedent for the cause of human rights not just in North Korea, probably the world's most heinous offender, but in other countries too. Countries whose belligerent rulers are, quite correctly, taking strategic advantage of an international climate profoundly impacted by the current U.S. administration's belief that a chastened approach to the rulers of the Islamic world is the best way of avoiding another mass deployment of American troops in the Middle East. First and foremost, countries like Iran. |