Iran: Human Rights

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, has had a long interest in Iran, as have a number of other noble Lords and our colleagues in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, has given us a very disturbing account, as have other speakers. I know that there is an almost constant presence in Parliament of an organisation that flags to parliamentarians its case in relation to Iran.

I pay especial tribute to someone not speaking tonight: the wonderful noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, whose wisdom on the subject of her home country is, in my view, second to none in this House, and whose debate on the subject in December I read with great interest. Unlike some noble Lords, she welcomed the lifting of sanctions on Iran, for the benefit of the Iranian people. Nevertheless she herself pointed out:

“I fear that in my own birthplace I would be put in prison and maybe the UK Government would not be able to help”.—[Official Report, 8/12/16; col. 945.]


Like others, she is very concerned about the abuse of human rights in Iran. She pointed out that Iran signed the Geneva Conventions in 1957 and voted in favour of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless, as has been said, we hear of acts of torture, and the extraction of apparent confessions without a lawyer present. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, made the point that trials may be carried out without legal representation.

Amnesty International notes that the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as freedom of the press, remain heavily curtailed in Iran, with hundreds of activists, journalists, human rights defenders, women’s rights advocates, trade unionists, lawyers, student activists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities being detained and given increasingly harsh prison sentences. The noble Lord, Lord McInnes, spelled out so many groups who are vulnerable in Iran. In December’s debate the noble Lord, Lord Collins, flagged the especial vulnerability of LGBT people. It was shocking to read what the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said in that debate about what she described as the “wretched” situation of Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer who was given the Nobel Peace Prize and who is now unable to return to her country, or continue her work and family life there.

In August 2015 the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology announced the second phase of “filtering” of websites deemed to have socially harmful consequences, and the authorities continued efforts to create a “national internet”. In June 2015 a spokesperson for the judiciary said that the authorities had arrested several people for “anti-revolutionary” activities using social media.

Amnesty has also recorded the execution of at least 73 juvenile offenders between 2005 and 2015, including at least four in 2015. According to the 2014 report of the UN Secretary-General on the situation of human rights in Iran, more than 160 juvenile offenders remain on death row.

Another issue raised by Amnesty is prisoners’ access to medical care. It reports that political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, are denied adequate medical care—a key human right under international law. In some of the cases there is also evidence that that denial is being used as a means to extract “confessions” from political prisoners or to intimidate or punish them.

Then there are the cases that we have already heard about, of the British-Iranian nationals. One whom my right honourable friend Tom Brake has been supporting is Kamal Foroughi, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, also referred. Another who is particularly in the public eye at the moment is Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose specific case I will raise at Oral Questions on 2 February, and whose appeal against her five-year sentence has been declined, as we heard yesterday. I note recent ministerial engagement in this case. Can the Minister confirm to the House that the Government have asked for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release? The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, also made this point.

There has, of course, been much international engagement over Iran’s nuclear programme. As the Foreign Secretary himself said, we know that conflict in the Middle East, especially in Syria, owes much to proxy conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, when she was the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, surely did much commendable work in helping bring Iran back into the global fold. We are now in uncertain times with the election of Donald Trump, who has made his opposition to the deal with Iran very clear. Might we hope that Iran might address some of the issues we have mentioned today as it seeks not to be sanctioned and ostracised once again? It may well hear the lack of sympathy for the regime expressed in this debate. That may mean that Iran should be looking to improve its record on human rights. The UK Government must not hold back in defending their citizens when they are caught in the Kafkaesque situation in which they now find themselves.