The Failure of Quiet Diplomacy

Anybody still reading? Kamran has a post at EA Worldview about the failure of quiet diplomacy, which resulted in the execution of Zahra Bahrami.

Here are his recommendations:

Here are some minimum recommendations for the Dutch government.

1. The Netherlands should lead an international effort to challenge Iran's refusal to accept dual nationality.

2. The Dutch government should lead efforts to bring the issue of human rights in Iran to the European Parliament.

3. The Netherlands should crack down on the operations of Iranian intelligence officers located here because the Dutch-Iranian community feels unsafe. Over the past two years, intelligence personnel attached to the Iranian Embassy in the Netherlands have been seen publicly photographing Dutch-Iranian citizens attending demonstrations and are known to be collecting information.

4. The Netherlands should stop issuing visas for any purpose to personnel of the Revolutionary Guards, the judiciary, and related organisations.

5. The Netherlands should approve the asylum applications of political refugees who left Iran since 2009. Many of their applications have been denied.

6. Respect for human rights needs to become a business concern as wellas a political concern.

7. The Dutch Government should lead an effort to call for the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience in Iran.

8. The Dutch Government should protest the use of (forced) confessions against prisoners of conscience and others.

Read the whole post at EA Worldview.

URGENT ACTION: Protest the Upcoming Execution of Habibollah Latifi

Wouldn't it be nice to be writing a message of good cheer right now to get us all through the holiday season and to make us feel warm and fuzzy? That is what I would like to be doing. Instead I am going to urge those of you who still read this blog despite our erratic postings to send a letter to protest the upcoming election of Habibollah Latifi. After a year spent campaigning for prisoners of conscience, many of us feel that we know them personally. Habibollah Latifi is an Iranian-Kurd who has always denied the trumped up charges against him. The regime continues to ratchet up the charges so that they can justify his execution.

You can be his voice by sending an e-letter and by encouraging others to do so. Thanks.

Young Man to be Executed for a Crime Committed as a Juvenile

Seriously Islamic Republic of Iran? You want to stone a woman for adultery even though no one accused her of it besides some deranged judges? And execute a young man whose co-defendants exonerated him of a murder that was committed when he was 15? Seriously?

Some countries just can't catch a break...

Please protest both the planned stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and the execution of Mohammad Reza Haddadi

Here is what the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran says about the case of Ashtiani:

The terms of the sentence under Iranian law call for Ashtiani to be killed with medium –sized stones, so she will die slowly, in great pain.  She has already been punished with 99 lashes for having an “illicit relationship,” and later again charged, for the same crime, with adultery, which carries the death penalty in Iran.  According to her lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaie, no evidence exists in her file to justify an adultery conviction, and as a member of the Azerbaijani minority, her inability to understand the language of the court prevented a fair trial.

United4Iran has a letter that you can send to halt the imminent execution of Haddadi.

There is a petition to end stoning at Amnesty International and another petition to stop the execution by stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani at Go Petition. Please do what you can.

Halt the Execution of Zeynab Jalalian

Unfortunately, it is time to call for a halt to another execution in Iran. Members of Iran's Kurdish minority are being targeted for harsh sentences. Many are receiving execution sentences after 3-minute trials. Is there anyone anywhere who believes that this is remotely fair? I urge all of the readers of this blog to send a letter calling for a halt to Zeynab Jalalian's execution. United4Iran has made it easy to do. You can click here to send the letter to 30 different embassies and individuals.

Zeinab Jalalian is a 27-year-old Kurdish woman who is facing execution. Her lawyers have been prevented from engaging in any defense. Her trial lasted just a few minutes and resulted in a sentence of execution.

People close to her state that there is absolutely no evidence that she ever took up arms against the state. In fact, her activities took place at a time when many Kurdish groups operated freely and openly within Iran.

Two prominent human rights lawyers have attempted to represent Zeinab, but the authorities have prevented them from taking up her case. The IRI’s Intelligence Ministry and Judiciary have continued to use intimidation tactics to prevent public disclosure of prisoners’ information in order to carry out the death sentences in secret and evade any accountability.

Zeinab’s treatment, along with the treatment of other minorities in Iran's prisons, breaks Iran's own laws and makes a mockery of the nation's judiciary system.

We urge you to do what is right: to call a halt to her execution and an end to her mistreatment and that of others in the IRI’s prisons. We call on you to restore faith in the judicial system by allowing lawyers to defend their clients and by allowing fair trials.

Most importantly, we call on you to halt the sentences of execution handed out to so many representatives of Iran's Kurdish minority, including Zeinab Jalalian.

We call on you to show the world that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not turned its back on its own laws and constitution. Using every mechanism at your disposal to save the life Zeinab and others like her who are in prison because of their beliefs rather than their actions, would be a courageous and immensely welcome gesture.

Please help us make sure that all prisoners of conscience are released safely and guaranteed fair treatment. With your help, Iran can become the nation its people deserve.

Thank you for addressing these concerns, ensuring that international human rights standards are adhered to, and for urging the IRI authorities to immediately halt the execution of Zeinab Jalalian and of all the IRI’s prisoners of conscience

Your Sincerely,

Mother's Day Executions in Iran

Together with a number of volunteers, we have been preparing a campaign to mark one year of crackdowns on dissent in Iran. That campaign focuses on prisoners of conscience in Iran and those political prisoners in danger of execution. This morning, when we got up and turned on my email, the first message was from a dear colleague who linked to the AP article on the early morning execution of 5 of the people we had come to know through our work. "I can't stop crying," she wrote. "I do not know what to do." (She subsequently wrote an elegant post at United4Iran.org)


We can mark their lives.

Shirin Alam Holi was a young Kurdish woman who was accused of planting a bomb. In her own words, she tells us of her arrest: “The interrogators were male, and I was tied to a bed with handcuffs. They used their fists, feet, electric batons, and cables to beat my head, face, body, and soles of my feet. At that time I could not even understand and speak Persian. When their questions remained unanswered, they beat me again till I passed out.”
In a letter written just seven days ago, she wrote:

When I entered this prison my hair was black, now after three (3) years of imprisonment, my hair has started to turn white. I know you have done this not only to me but to all Kurds including Zeynab Jalaliyan and Ronak Safarzadeh… The eyes of Kurdish mothers are full of tears, waiting to see their children. They are in a state of constant worry, in fear that each phone call may bring the news of the execution of their children.

Today is May 2, 2010 and once again they took me to Section 209 of the Evin prison for interrogation. They asked me to cooperate with them in order for me to be pardoned and not executed. I don’t understand what they mean by cooperation, when I don’t have anything more to say than what I have already said.

Mehdi Eslamian was executed a little more than a year after the execution of his brother for allegedly participating in a bombing in Shiraz. He was tortured for 14 days and denied medical care.

Ali Heidarian was a Kurdish rights activist accused of participating in armed conflict as was Farhad Vakili.

Farzad Kamangar was a teacher whose cause has become international. Human rights organizations, Iran's teachers' union, and international education groups all joined together to protest his incarceration and sentence of execution. Kamangar wrote recently:

Is it possible to carry the heavy burden of being a teacher and be responsible for spreading the seeds of knowledge and still be silent? Is it possible to see the lumps in the throats of the students and witness their thin and malnourished faces and keep quiet?

Is it possible to be in the year of no justice and fairness and fail to teach the H for Hope and E for Equality, even if such teachings land you in Evin prison or result in your death?

Others are in danger of execution:

Abdolreza Ghanbari, a school teacher who participated in the December demonstrations on the Shia holiday of Ashura.

Ahmad Danseshpour is alleged to have sent videos and pictures to the MKO and whose mother and father Motahareh Bahrami and Mohsen Daneshpour Moghaddam have also been sentenced to death.

Ali Saremi , member of the MKO, was arrested last year when he attended a memorial for the 1988 mass killings of political prisoners. (It's worth noting here that many members of the Ahmadinejad administration were directly responsible for the killings.)

Ali Massouni is another protester. Ali Omid Mehrnia has relatives at Camp Ashraf (MKO camp in Iraq), as does Alireza Nabavi.

Amir Reza Arefi is accused of having ties with a monarchist group. His sentence is being appealed.

Aziz Mohammadzadeh is another Kurdish rights activist sentenced to death.

Read what others are saying:

Neo-resistance:
They EXECUTED Her: Shirin Alam Hooli

United4Iran: Bios of the 5 Executed Prisoners of Conscience
Enduring America: Iran: Farzad Kamangar’s Last Letter “Is It Possible to Teach and Be Silent?” http://bit.ly/bSoYO3
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran: About Farhad Kamangar

UPDATED: Letter to halt executions: In support of Mohammad Amin Valian

UPDATE: United4Iran has launched a letter writing campaign and has translated this letter into several languages. http://bit.ly/acpgku

This is the letter I wrote to send to Iranian diplomats to protest the harsh penalties against protesters. I used Greenmail to send it. Please use it if you want:

Since the contested election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009, defendants have been executed without recourse to a fair trial or meetings with lawyers. They have been charged with crimes such as Mohareb (“enemy of God”) to justify extreme penalties. These executions are, in fact, murders. The judiciary and the revolutionary courts in Iran are reinterpreting rules and applying severe punishments for activities that are not even considered crimes under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Iran is a signatory. (The specific articles violated are 10, 18, 19, and 20.)

There is widespread concern that more executions will occur in the coming months as a warning to protesters not to assemble or express their desire for civil and human rights. On March 3, we heard that the courts have upheld a death penalty for the student, Mohammad Amin Valian. This young man could be your son, brother, nephew, cousin, or friend. He comes from a deeply religious family and was active in the university’s Islamic Student Association. He is being punished for participating in demonstrations. His only crime is imagining that he could express himself openly and honestly. Even if you believe he was mistaken in his expressions, you cannot believe that he deserves to die or be imprisoned.

We urge you to take the words of the poet Saadi to heart:

The sons of Adam are limbs of each other,
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time affects one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others
Thou art unworthy to be called by the name of a human.

Bani aadam aazaye yek digarand
ke dar aafarinesh ze yek gooharand

cho ozvi be dard aavarad roozegaar
degar ozvhaa raa namaanad gharaar

to kaz mehnate digaraan bi ghami
nashaayad ke naamat nahand aadami

Lodge a protest. Remember that the whole world feels the pain of this young man and his family. In your heart, you must as well. Make yourself heard. Help us stop this execution. Help us make sure that all prisoners of conscience are released safely. With your help, Iran can become the nation its people deserve.

SAVE MOHAMMAD AMIN VALIAN

My friend in Iran asked why no one cares about Mohamad Amin Valian, whose RIDICULOUS death sentence was upheld today. Can you imagine being convicted to death for throwing a stone during a demonstration? One that did not hit or target anyone or anything? This is the regime's recipe for squelching dissent:

Ingredients
12-20 protesters
1 cleric to significantly alter the definition of Mohareb (enemy of God)
1 judge with no humanity

Instructions
1. Take the young people who have gone out in the streets
2. Make sure that they have no famous relatives
3. Charge them with the crime of "Mohareb" (enemy of God)
4. Sentence them to slow and painful suffocation until they die
5. Execute enough of them so that parents lock their youth in their rooms until they turn 40

FROM UNITED4IRAN & GREEN VOICE OF IRAN:

Aaron Rhodes of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran states, “It's an attempt to intimidate other students, other young people like him, who just want to exercise their basic human rights and their political rights," Rhodes says. "Any number of others could be similarly accused, convicted, and face being hung.”

Mohammad Amin Valian was an active member of his University’s Islamic student association. He campaigned for Mir Hossein Mousavi and was targeted by his university’s Basiji-run newspaper according to the Green Voice of Freedom.

What can we do to stop this execution? Here is what the Green Voice of Freedom is advocating:

1) Temporarily change your profile pictures on social networking websites such as facebook and twitter, in order to raise awareness about Mohammad Valian’s death sentence.

2) If you have a weblog, website or other means for spreading the news about Mohammad Amin’s ordeal, we would like to urge you to help in spreading the news about this ridiculous court ruling in the shortest time possible. Remember, the life of a fellow human being is at stake.

3) We would also like to ask any person, organisation or figure that has access to Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi in any way, to inform him of the death sentence and how his statements are being misused by judicial authorities and to cause him to intervene in the matter, in order to prevent further disgrace and shame to the clerical rule in Iran. This is his website: http://www.makaremshirazi.org/

4) Further, if you are in any way able to contact any official or representative in the Islamic Republic or the Iranian Judicial system, we would like to ask you to do your best in echoing the concerns and voices of the Valian family who can at any moment lose their loved one to a corrupt and dysfunctional judiciary system. This link allows us to write to Iranian embassies and diplomatic missions around the world, and to plead the case of Mohammad Amin Alavian: http://www.servisis.co.uk/greenwave/greenmail.html

A Black Mark on the History of Iran: the mass killings of 1988, to never be forgotten

The 1988 mass executions of political prisoners in Iran cannot be called anything other than a black mark on the recent history of Iran. Thousands and thousands of people from many different political backgrounds were put to death in a barbaric way.

Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic republic of Iran, promised everybody that the Iranian revolution would bring freedom, equality, and prosperity. But we never even got close. After 8 years of war with his arch foe, Saddam Hussein, he was forced to accept a peace deal with Iraq in 1988. At that time Iran was already a killing zone for so many young and old who did not want anything more than what they had been promised and worked so hard for: a new and free society. The revolution, which was loved by millions who came to street for democracy and better lives, was co-opted with lies and treachery.

Khomeini’s “final solution” was the personal approval of the mass killing of political prisoners. It cost thousands of lives in August and September of 1988 and will and should be remembered by all people. The killing zone of the Iranian regime takes on new dimensions when you realize hundreds of those executed had finished their horrific sentences and were simply waiting for release.

Thousands of new political prisoners were executed just because they did not want renounce their political and personal beliefs. They were asked a couple of simple questions: Do you believe in God and the Islamic republic? and do you renounce your affiliations with other political organizations? Without knowing the consequences of their answers, many were murdered.

It is not just the number of people who ware killed that makse this an unforgivable crime, but the unprecedented violence that was used in those dark summer months. Many of those killed were teenagers when they were arrested. They were from all parts of Iranian of society: students, intellectuals, leftists, young boys, girls, and women. In the summer of 1988, Iran lost its dreams. Those of us in safety should never forget the horrors they went through.

I do not know anybody in Iran who was not affected by the post-revolutionary violence in Iran. Everyone I know had a loved one or friend who was killed because they could not accept the rules of those monsters.

The Islamic Republic totally denies the mass executions. I do not want to look at this from a political point of view or even an historical perspective. I am not a political activist or ether a journalist, I am just still shaken by the loss of so many young people my age who were tortured and killed. The Islamic Republic used every method they could think of to break people in prison and in some cases even turned them into executioners. Those crimes by the IRI should never be forgotten.
I left Iran four years before this horrific event. In the last 20 years I have met many survivors of this mass killing. I know many people who were not as lucky as me to live in safety. They never saw the sun again. Many people who managed to survive are harmed forever. I would always have respect for them no matter which political movement they represented.

I have seen in many of their eyes pain that I have never seen before. People who are responsible for those killings need to be brought to justice. They should know, wherever they are, whoever they are, that there will come a day when they will have to pay for this. They have committed an act that humanity should never forget. Iranians with all political backgrounds should work together to make sure those memories are documented for generations to come.

My lovely human rights activist friend, who is very committed and works non-stop for human rights in Iran, is currently helping with an event in Amsterdam to remember those who were killed. My friend thinks that we Iranians should be open to dialog. My response was please tell me fist what all those international organizations who attempt to create dialog with the IRI have accomplished? Have human rights improved?

From Amnesty international

“International human rights law requires that the Iranian authorities carry out thorough and impartial investigations into violations of the right to life such as those which were committed during the 'prison massacre', which began in 1988 and continued into the following year, and to identify and bring to justice those responsible. The failure to do so to date and the time that has elapsed since the killings do not in any way reduce this responsibility.“

Twenty-year Anniversary of Mass Executions in Iran

For those of you who speak Dutch, read more here... for the rest of us: here.

In Amsterdam and many other places there will be ceremonies tomorrow to mark the 20th anniversary of the mass executions of political prisoners in Iran.

The Iranian regime seems to be marking that anniversary by executing as many people as they can find guilty of capital offenses and flouting international law.

Twenty years ago thousands of people were killed in Iran. Anyone who could challenge the authority of the fledgling regime was killed. They essentially got rid of an entire generation of leaders: in most cases, people who fought long and hard for the overthrow of the Shah and the implementation of a more just government.

Kamran has been researching these executions for some time now. I hope that he will post here shortly.