Why Did Iran Say “NO” to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights?
During the past weeks, a lively momentum has been created amongst Iranian activists to help the UN Special Rapporteur in compiling his report on the country.
Huffington Post, Posted: 7/5/11- Less than a week after the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed former Maldivian Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Iran, Head of Iran’s Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, in a TV interview said, “accepting the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights is not our policy.”
In March, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution establishing a monitoring mechanism for Iran and appointing a Special Rapporteur. Last month, three candidates were considered for this position. The Iranian side, knowing that a Special Rapporteur would be immediately appointed soon, sent a message to Geneva that the Rapporteur on Iran should have three qualifications: Be a man, be a Muslim, and not be from an Arab country. One of the male candidates didn’t seem to cause any controversy for Tehran; Ahmed Shaheed’s appointment met all of Iran’s requirements. Read more
July 5, 2011 Leave a Comment
New Arsenal Emerges in Struggle over Iran’s Internet
From left: Ehsan Norouzi, Issac Mao, Cyrus Farivar, and Mehdi Yahyanejad
NEW YORK, Jun 20, 2011 (IPS) - Millions of Iranians who have lived under an intense level of internet filtering and advanced monitoring systems for years may soon benefit from new technology that sidesteps the censors.
Last week, the New York Times reported that “the [Barack] Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy ’shadow’ Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.”
One of these projects has been dubbed “Internet in a suitcase”. According to the Times, the suitcase - financed with a two-million- dollar State Department grant - could be smuggled across the border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet. Read more
June 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
The U.S. Pressures Iran on Human Rights
Huffington Post, Posted May 20, 2011- Many may be critical of America’s human rights policies, particularly its double standards when it comes to the records of its allies in the Middle East and beyond, not to mention in Bahrain. But human rights activists and organizations have welcomed the Obama administration’s presence at the Human Rights Council in Geneva since 2009. Like it or not, “without a strong U.S. counterweight, non-democratic states such as Cuba, Algeria, China and Pakistan joined forces to blunt the Council’s work and bully other states.”
The UN will appoint a special rapporteur for Iran in the weeks to come.
In Geneva, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the U.S. representative to the Council is a superstar. She is the face of U.S. human rights in town, a master of building coalitions and cooperation with different partners to make things happen. In an interview with me in Geneva, she responded to questions about the urgency and significance of establishing a monitoring mechanism for Iran, the role of politics in U.S. human rights policy, the perception of U.S. hypocrisy towards its friends and foes, her opinion about the Iranian officials’ allegations on the politicization of UN human rights mechanisms, and finally, why the U.S. is going aggressively after Iran’s human rights record. Excerpts from the interview follow: Read more
May 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
Iran Battles U.S. At UN Human Rights Council
Rights situation in Iran has been drawing the focus at the the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Credit:Omid Memarian / IPS
GENEVA, Mar 21, 2011 (IPS) - Forty-nine United Nations member-states have co-sponsored a resolution asking for a special mechanism to monitor Iran’s human rights situation, which is expected to be voted later this week at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).
Instead of responding to the criticism in the four-week long sixteenth session of the Council, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s delegation chose to bash the human rights situation in the United States, the country leading the effort to intensify pressure on Iran.
Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the U.S. representative to the Council, told IPS that establishing a special monitoring mechanism for Iran by the HRC is very significant. “Because the council in the past has been resistant to taking initiative on what we call country specific human rights situation,” she said.
“There is a general sense that countries are often fearful of being criticized and therefore they would protect other countries from being criticized by the council so that when it comes their turn to being criticized maybe others stick with them,” she added. Read more
March 21, 2011 Leave a Comment
Reading Ahmadinejad via Wikileaks: A Freedom Lover or a Two-Bit Dictator?
Huffington Post,Posted: 01/31/11 - In a recent article for the Atlantic, Middle East expert Reza Aslan writes that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not be the hard-line president outside observers actually thinks he is. Based on unverified WikiLeaks documents and remarks by the president himself, the author concludes that Ahmadinejad is, in fact, in favor of greater social and political freedoms and the “Persianization” of Iranian society, but is isolated among others in Iran’s current ruling establishment:
[Ahmadinejad]… is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even “Persianize” Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country’s more conservative factions… But if you oppose the Mullahs’ rule, yearn for greater social and political freedoms for the Iranian people, and envision an Iran that draws inspiration from the glories of its Persian past, then, believe it or not, you have more in common with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than you might have thought.”
Here is why Aslan’s characterization of Ahmadinejad is flawed: Read more
January 31, 2011 Leave a Comment
Reading the Shah, and Ayatollahs in Tehran and What the U.S. Should Learn from the History
Huffington Post- What has been the root of the U.S’. inability to develop a sustainable policy or strategy on Iran for the last 30 years? What was not learnt from the Shah’s fall in 1979 and the nature of the revolutionaries who hijacked a pro-democracy freedom movement? And what are the parallels between the Shah’s regime and the current Islamic government in Tehran?
These are the types of questions that have been raised in my extensive interview with Dr. Abbas Milani, author of the recent book, The Shah, and the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University in California.
While the Iranian government continues to curb social and political freedom in Iran, particularly after the post-presidential unrests which resulted in killing of dozens and arresting thousands of people, the author of a recent book, The Shah, provides a comprehensive image of parallels that contributed to the fall of the Shah and is now being perpetuated by the Islamists in Tehran.
January 24, 2011 Leave a Comment
A Portrait of Iran’s Shah, in Shades of Grey
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Jan 17, 2011 (IPS) - In “The Shah”, a prominent Iranian author and scholar at Stanford University in the United States offers new insights into Iran’s modern history, including the 1953 coup, the revolution a quarter century later, and the current repressive political situation.
“If you understand why the shah of Iran fell in 1979, we understand why the Iranian government is unstable today and based on that, predict what the future of the country will be,” Abbas Milani told IPS.
Drawing on more than 400 interviews and newly released documents by the U.S. and British embassies, “The Shah” traces the rise and fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who died less than a year after his ouster. Read more
January 17, 2011 102 Comments
Iranian Royal Family’s Suicide Tragedy
The Daily Beast- The shah of Iran’s son took his life Tuesday, a decade after his sister died from an overdose. Omid Memarian and Roja Heydarpour on the family heartbreak and what it means for Iran. Plus, Stephen Kinzer reports on the death of the prince.
There is nothing worse for a mother than the death of a child, except, perhaps, the death of two children who took their own lives. That is what the former queen of Iran must endure now that her son, Ali-Reza Pahlavi, 44, was found dead in his home in Boston from a gunshot wound he inflicted on himself early Tuesday morning.
It isn’t the first time Farah Pahlavi has had to grieve a child who committed suicide. Just 10 years ago, former Princess Leila Pahlavi, whose young daughter suffered from anorexia and depression, took a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates, and died in her sleep at 31. Read more
January 5, 2011 62 Comments
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Brutal Artist Crackdown
The Daily Beast. December 25, 2010- The harsh sentencing of a world-renowned director prompted protests from Martin Scorsese and other artists this week. Omid Memarian on escalating repression in Iran.
When world-renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this week, the verdict reverberated both inside and outside Iran.
Not only did authorities in Tehran hand down an exceptionally harsh sentence, they also decreed that the 50-year-old Panahi will be banned from filmmaking, screenwriting and traveling abroad for the next 20 years. According to his relatives, Panahi has also been banned from talking to the media.
Along with Panahi, Muhammad Rasoulof, another filmmaker involved with Panahi’s movie, was also sentenced to six years in prison. Read more
December 25, 2010 107 Comments
Minister’s Sacking Shores Up Ahmadinejad’s Power Base
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Dec 14, 2010 (IPS) - While Iran gears up for a second round of nuclear talks with Western countries next month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s abrupt dismissal of his foreign minister on Monday indicates a new power struggle with moderate conservatives that could alter the tone and face of Iran’s foreign policy machinery in the years to come.
Manouchehr Mottaki is the seventh cabinet minister dismissed by Ahmadinejad over the past five years, while two others have resigned. Ahmadinejad sacked Mottaki while he was on an official trip to Senegal.
Mottaki had held the portfolio since 2005. Read more
December 14, 2010 Leave a Comment
So Long, Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in trouble. Recently, the Iranian president faced an insurrection among lawmakers, who are seeking his impeachment for various law violations. Pro-democracy politicians, reformists, moderate conservatives and even Ahmadinejad’s former allies are still calling for reform. Key religious leaders have repeatedly shown their dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad, who has had to travel to the holy city of Quom several times during the past few months to heal the divide. And observers within Iran believe that, due to multilateral sanctions and the government’s economic policies, the president’s powerbase is eroding.
Ahmadinejad’s “domestic political aggression might lead the country into social and political instability—similar to or even worse than what the country went through after the 2009 Presidential elections,” Ali-Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, a former Iranian lawmaker told The Daily Beast in an interview Thursday. “The move by the Iranian parliament to question and to [try to] eventually impeach Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicates a serious divide amongst the conservatives in power.” Read more
November 25, 2010 2 Comments
Q&A: “There Is No War on Terrorism”
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 10, 2010 (IPS) - “The U.S. intentionally confuses al Qaeda with other groups around the world fighting for their independence or liberation, but it’s [just] a convenient way to whip up support and get people very afraid,” says author and journalist and Reese Erlich.
“There is no war on terrorism,” he tells IPS.
Based on original research and firsthand interviews, Erlich’s new book “Conversations with Terrorists” draws fresh portraits of six controversial leaders: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Hamas top leader Khaled Meshal, Israeli politician Geula Cohen, Iranian Revolutionary Guard founder Mohsen Sazargara, Hezbollah spiritual advisor Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah, and former Afghan Radio and Television Ministry head Malamo Nazamy. Read more
November 10, 2010 72 Comments
Iran Primer: The Youth
by OMID MEMARIAN and TARA NESVADERANI[ primer] Iran’s youth have been politically active since the 1953 ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The death of three students in protests against Vice President Nixon’s 1953 visit — to support the shah after a CIA-backed coup against the elected government — is still a national holiday. The young were key players in the 1979 revolution. Today, their strength is also in numbers. A baby boom after the revolution almost doubled the population from 34 million to 62 million in the first decade. Iran is now one of the youngest societies in the world, skewing politics, the economy and social pressures. The demographic bulge is one of the biggest threats to the status quo.
The youth bloc has been shaped by political and military crises. In the 1980s, they were the majority of combatants in the eight-year war with Iraq; even pre-teen Basij volunteers became human minesweepers. In the 1990s, Iranian youth demanded their post-war due in politics, the economy and society. By 1997, their growing numbers helped elect reformist President Mohammad Khatami. But as he failed to produce change, the young pulled back. The partial youth boycott of the 2005 presidential election was key to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election. Their reentry into politics in the 2009 election seriously altered Iranian politics. Read more
October 1, 2010 63 Comments
Iran’s “Blogfather” Gets 20-Year Prison Sentence
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 28, 2010 (IPS) - A week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told heads of state gathered for the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his government does not jail its citizens for expressing their opinions, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, an internationally known Iranian-Canadian blogger, to 19 and a half years in prison.
On Monday, the conservative website Mashreq announced the verdict issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts.
Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime”, among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years. Read more
September 28, 2010 135 Comments
Iran’s “Blogfather” Gets 20-Year Prison Sentence
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 28, 2010 (IPS) — A week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told heads of state gathered for the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his government does not jail its citizens for expressing their opinions, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, an internationally known Iranian-Canadian blogger, to 19 and a half years in prison.
On Monday, the conservative website Mashreq announced the verdict issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts.
Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime,” among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years. Read more
September 28, 2010 Leave a Comment