Iran: Human Rights

David Linden Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Buck. I thank the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for securing this important debate. A number of hon. Members have spoken on this topic before; having been newly elected to the House in June, I appreciate this first opportunity to do so myself.

Before I speak about the more specific issues, I want to mention the use of the death penalty in Iran. As the right hon. Lady mentioned, the Foreign Office estimates that there were more than 530 executions in Iran in 2016. That figure is simply staggering, although, surprisingly, it represents a decrease on the previous year. Men and women risk capital punishment if they are found to be gay. The human rights record for people from an LGBTQ background is appalling. Even more worryingly, the death penalty continues to be used against juveniles in the country, and the FCO’s report notes that it is issued even in cases that are not deemed “the most serious” under international law, such as drugs offences.

There seems to have been some progress recently: in August, the Iranian Parliament approved a long-awaited amendment to legislation that significantly raises the bar for mandatory death sentences in drugs cases. Evidence given to the Iranian Parliament when the legislation was being drafted revealed that 5,000 people, the majority in their 20s and 30s, were currently on death row for drug-related offences. That in itself should highlight how ineffective the death penalty has been.

I am also deeply concerned about reports of mass executions in 2016: 20 members of the Kurdish minority were executed for terrorism-related offences and later in the same month, 12 people were hanged for drugs-related charges. Hopefully, future FCO reports will show the number of executions falling sharply because of the change in the law. Does it go far enough? Obviously not, but it is a step in the right direction.

I must also mention women’s rights. Women in Iran face intolerable oppression and discrimination on issues such as marriage, divorce and child custody. Women have been sent to jail for publicly speaking out in favour of equal rights. They are severely restricted in Iran, to the point where they are even forbidden from spectating at male sports—including Iran’s national obsession, volleyball. It is deeply troubling that Iran has no anti-domestic-violence legislation and that the legal age for marriage is just 13. For fear of getting emotional, I will not go into all the research around the age of consent, but what happens to young girls is deeply worrying.

Another matter is freedom of expression. There are signs of growing oppression, as Iranian authorities struggle to deal with the impact of new technology on freedom of speech. The de facto third-party messaging application here seems to be WhatsApp, but in Iran a similar app has risen to prominence. Much like WhatsApp, Telegram allows encrypted communication between individuals. According to the Iranian Students Polling Agency, almost six in 10 Iranians use Telegram, but use of the app seems to be shifting. A couple of years ago, two thirds of people polled said that they used it for entertainment purposes, but today only a quarter say the same. Iranians seem to be getting more of their information from the broadcast channels that the app gives access to.

Telegram played a significant role in recent parliamentary elections. Since Twitter and Facebook are blocked in Iran, the app provided a platform for campaigning. The Iranian establishment, however, has stepped up a crackdown on Telegram channels that challenge it and dozens of activists have been arrested in the past few months. In August, the administrator of one political Telegram channel was sentenced to four years in jail. There are fears that the Iranian authorities could now block Telegram altogether; I would appreciate it if the Minister addressed that in his speech. This is a very worrying trend that adds a new dimension to the further repression of freedom of expression.

Another troubling issue that, like other Members, I am incredibly concerned about is the wellbeing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Kamal Foroughi. It is alarming to learn that additional charges have now been brought against Nazanin that could extend her jail term by 16 years. The detail in both cases is extremely harrowing. They have been held in the notorious Evin prison, sometimes in solitary confinement. There are very serious health concerns in both cases; I understand that Kamal is being denied screening for prostate cancer. That is totally unacceptable.

Both trials were, of course, conducted in secrecy. The prisoners had little access to lawyers prior to the trials, which makes a mockery of the justice system. Iran does not recognise dual nationality status, so it treated both prisoners as solely Iranian citizens and did not recognise their rights as British citizens.

There was quite a lot of initial excitement when Hassan Rouhani was elected as President of Iran in 2013, not just because he was seen as a moderate but—in my own context—because he was seen as an honorary Glaswegian. It is perhaps not well known that he studied twice at university in Glasgow. During his time there, he completed his PhD thesis on “The flexibility of Shariah (Islamic law) with reference to the Iranian experience”. I gather from Glasgow Caledonian University that his thesis is still available at the library and can be taken out and read. Anyone who takes the opportunity to read it will be struck by the first line in the abstract, which states that

“no laws in Islam are immutable.”

The thesis demonstrates that a younger Rouhani was willing to embrace a more liberal and moderate approach to society. I conclude with my message to President Rouhani, from one Glaswegian to another: embrace that moderate tone and drastically improve human rights for your people.