Iran: Human Rights

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Buck. We have had a number of debates on this important issue and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) on securing and introducing this one. It is another opportunity to ensure that the abuses of human rights in general and of the human rights of our own citizens—the dual nationals in Iran—are brought to prominence once again. Hopefully, by debating them, we put further pressure on the regime.

I do not know how many Members have visited Iran. I have myself, although it is 10 years since I have been there. Iran has many centres of power and an extraordinary history and culture, but it also has the most shocking and unacceptable human rights abuses, right across the country, thanks to the current Government, who were brought to power in the Islamic revolution of 1979. The right hon. Lady brought to our attention the suffering inflicted daily by the revolutionary Government on their own population—something that we are all aware of. The fact that 40,000 marriages of girls between 10 and 14 years old were approved in 2015 is enough to make us deeply concerned. The right hon. Lady was right to point to the cruelty and the lack of any regard for the human rights of individuals, especially women and—of course—children.

I was not aware that the right hon. Lady’s constituent, Ms Jahangir, had come to her about the mass executions of 1988, but I hope that now the Government are aware of that story—I am sure they already were—at least some further work can be done through the United Nations to bring more of it to light and to expose the appalling crimes carried out and covered up by the current regime. It is clear to me that, as the right hon. Lady said, the UK Government should redouble their efforts to relieve cruelty and suffering in Iran, and take a tough line.

We heard from the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who mentioned again Nazanin Zahari-Ratcliffe and Kamal Foroughi. He said that he hoped that trade deals with Iran following the relaxation of measures that followed the Iran nuclear deal, which many people in Westminster Hall have criticised today, would not mean that human rights fell off the agenda. Of course he is absolutely right, and I do not believe that this Government or any other would want that to happen. Has the Foreign Secretary met the families of those people? I hope that the Minister will enlighten us on that. It is very important that the Foreign Secretary should at least give those families that backing and moral support.

We then heard from the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord), who I know has stood up again for those whose human rights have been abused in Iran. He talked about the prisoners whom we have not mentioned—I do not wish to discuss their cases further today, because I know that their families have asked for them not to be discussed. However, he was right to point out that there are not just the two well-publicised cases of Nazanin and Kamal.

The hon. Gentleman also said that we should not relegate human rights in Iran for the sake of trade deals, and I agree. He also attacked the former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. I heard the interview on the radio this morning: the hon. Gentleman claimed that the former Foreign Secretary was defending the Iranian regime, but what I heard was a defence of the Iran nuclear deal, which I believe we should continue to support, while also putting pressure on the Iranian Government over their shocking human rights record. I believe that the former Foreign Secretary defended that nuclear deal and not the regime’s human rights record. Jack Straw is not here to defend himself today. Having worked with him as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee during his entire time as Foreign Secretary, I know that he was an outstanding Foreign Secretary for this country. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels that he should be criticised in that way.

We had contributions, of course, from our Scottish National party colleagues and then Bob Blackman—sorry, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman); I have been here long enough to know that I should not mention names—talked about the Jewish community in Iran. When I was in Iran 10 years ago, I had the privilege of meeting members of that community. There are still people from the Jewish community living in Iran, particularly in Tehran; I believe that there are about 20,000 Jewish people in Tehran and several synagogues, too. However, those synagogues are patrolled by Iranian police officers.

Having met members of the Iranian Jewish community, I know that they are living in constant fear; there is no doubt about that. I attempted to talk to the one member of the Majlis reserved for the Jewish community, knowing full well that he speaks very good English, but he replied to me in Farsi. He refused to speak to me in English; clearly he was frightened because he knew that others were listening to what he was saying to a westerner.

So Jews live in Iran but the situation is tragic. Many Jewish people of Iranian origin live in the United Kingdom and they still carry their Iranian culture and heritage with them. Indeed, as a child from a Jewish family myself, I was brought up knowing many such individuals, including one who shared chambers with my mother when she was at Middle Temple as a barrister. We had very close contact with them.

Then my esteemed colleague, Clive Lewis—sorry, I am doing it again; my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis)—made a contribution. He was a well-known journalist earlier in his life; he worked for the BBC in Leeds, which is how I first met him. He stood up for journalists and bloggers today—reporters who risk their lives every single day to tell the truth about what is actually happening in Iran.

My hon. Friend was right that democracy is not just about putting a cross on a ballot paper; it is about openness and freedom, including freedom of expression without fear. Yet we know that anybody who tells the truth about the human rights abuses and other cases of cruelty in Iran day to day is under attack and, even worse, under fear of arrest—they are often actually arrested and charged. That is simply not acceptable and it is certainly not democracy.

We know about the history of human rights abuses in Iran; some of those took place even before the creation of the Islamic republic, but the situation has certainly got a lot worse since. We also know that although Iran is a signatory to many human rights conventions, in practice it ignores or restricts them. A lot of the information and evidence about that comes through the UN special rapporteur to Iran and other human rights experts.

For example, as we have already heard this morning, we know that Iran regularly—indeed, all the time—discriminates against and actively oppresses religious minorities: not only the Jewish community but the Christians and Zoroastrians, too. As we have also heard, Iran executes the highest number of people per capita in the world and the second highest absolute number of people.

In 2013, Iran elected a moderate candidate, Hassan Rouhani, as President. However, in spite of the thesis that he wrote while at university in Glasgow, we have seen no significant human rights improvements in Iran since he arrived. In many respects, the situation has become a lot worse. We know—it has been pointed out again today—that the revolutionary guard acts independently of the so-called “moderate”, President Rouhani. The revolutionary guard and similarly conservative state agents regularly use the state apparatus to undermine reformist opponents and anyone who is seen as threatening to the interests of those agents.

Domestic laws and the penal code in Iran tend to define crimes in broad and vague terms; often Iranian people do not know exactly what constitutes a criminal violation, and that violates human rights law. In 2016, Freedom House stated that

“The judicial system is used as a tool to silence critics and opposition members”.

We also know that Iran uses executions to strike fear in the country and to deter socio-political unrest.

As the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet pointed out, Iran executed about 1,000 people in 2015. It has already been said that that is the highest number per capita in the world. According to the United Nations, since Rouhani took office 2,400 executions have taken place in Iran, which is double the number in the same period—about four years—prior to 2010. President Rouhani himself has said that he supports the process of judicial executions and described executions as “God’s commandments”. Currently, there are 5,000 people on death row in Iran for drug offences alone. Iran does not announce all executions officially so the number of executions could be a lot higher than we realise. There are not only public executions in the towns and cities of Iran but mass executions in jails that often go completely unreported.

I want to make a few comments about juvenile executions. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1992, prohibits the use of the death penalty for offences committed by those under the age of 18. Iran is a signatory to a number of treaties, including that convention, which it signed in 1994. It is therefore legally obliged to treat everyone under the age of 18 as a child and any crimes they have allegedly committed as the crimes of a child. Moreover, article 91 of the Islamic penal code, which has been enforced since 2013, grants judges the discretion not to apply the death sentence to children who do not understand the nature of their crimes. However, Iran is still no closer to abolishing the death penalty for children.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister what more the Government can do to secure the release of Nazanin Zahari-Ratcliffe and Kamal Foroughi, and the two other dual nationals currently being held in Iran. I also urge the Government not to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal; instead, they should continue to press the Iranian Government on their record of human rights abuses. I hope that the Minister will give us some reassurance when he sums up.