Human Rights in Iran

Mark Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered human rights in Iran.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am very pleased that this debate was selected. I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss the alarming and deteriorating human rights situation in Iran, which has been overlooked recently. This is matter of great importance to many Members, and I am pleased that Members from all political parties in the United Kingdom are here this morning.

For the past two years, discussions about Iran have focused on the country’s clandestine nuclear programme and the international concern over its purpose. I regretted Her Majesty’s Government’s decision to decouple Iran’s human rights abuses and support for terrorism from the nuclear negotiations. I believe that that was a lost opportunity, and that doing so sent the wrong message to Iran.

Figures announced by Iran’s state media and verified by international non-governmental organisations reveal that more than 2,400 people, including many juveniles and women, have been executed in Iran under Rouhani’s three-year tenure. Last year alone there were 966 executions—the highest number in the past two decades. According to the UN special rapporteur for Iran, Dr Ahmed Shaheed, the number of executions was roughly double that of 2010, and 10 times that of 2005.

In July 2015, the deputy director of Amnesty International’s middle east and north Africa programme, Mr Said Boumedouha, said:

“Iran’s staggering execution toll…paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale.”

Almost one year later, the Iranian authorities have maintained a horrifying execution rate that is nothing but state-sanctioned murder. There were 73 executions, including many public hangings, across Iranian cities in May. It is clear that no change can be expected; we should expect this horrific trend to continue.

Those figures show that Iran is not only the world’s No. 1 executioner per capita, but, according to a recent Amnesty International report, one of the few countries that continues to execute juvenile offenders, in blatant violation of the prohibition of the use of the death penalty against people under the age of 18 at the time of their supposed crime. Repressions of these contraventions are enforced by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its civic unit, the Basij force, with the active support and encouragement of the Rouhani Government. The law in Iran allows girls as young as nine to be executed for crimes or to be subjected to forced marriage to much older men. That is unacceptable by any international standard, and it is more worrying when one considers the barbaric punishments handed down by Iran’s judiciary. As Iran seeks greater integration with the international community, it is appropriate that we remember those harsh realities. Amnesty International said:

“The surge in executions reveals just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world when it comes to the use of the death penalty—140 countries worldwide have now rejected its use in law or practice.”

Today, there are those who argue that those abuses are efforts by the hardliners in Iran who control the security organisations and the judiciary to undermine the moderate Rouhani’s reform-minded Government, who seek a more open relationship with the world. I reject that view. Such an assessment fails because it suggests that there are more powerful forces in Iran than the President, which, in turn, means that Rouhani’s position is merely symbolic and that he is thus incapable of initiating reforms. Most importantly, it ignores the fact that neither Rouhani nor his Government have ever publicly condemned and distanced themselves from executions and the use of public hanging. On the contrary, Rouhani has explicitly supported the use of the death penalty. In a speech in April 2004, he described executions as the enforcement of “God’s commandments” and

“laws of the parliament that belongs to the people.”

Those comments show that Rouhani’s views on executions and human rights abuses converge with those of the Supreme Leader and the judiciary. In addition, they expose the fact that there are no forces inside the current ruling theocracy that want to abolish the use of execution and arbitrary arrests. That comes as no surprise to many of us who recognise the real problems with Iran. One should remember that the notion of a moderate force emerging from within the regime is not a new phenomenon. That illusion emerged during the Khatami era in the late 1990s when a policy of appeasement with Tehran based on incentives and economic interests was proposed.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. What he is saying is backed up by what happened to Mr Mousavi in the green revolution. Although he was no great reformer, there were glimmers of hope, and they have been dashed. I think that that gentleman is still under house arrest.

[Dr Offord]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. I pay tribute to the work that he undertakes on this important issue; he attends conferences in other parts of the country. He is correct to say that there have been people who were considered reformers, but whose efforts have been dashed and whose activities have been curtailed, and they have not been able to provide any kind of glimmer of hope. I will talk more about that later in my speech.

In the month after the nuclear deal, there was a wave of arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders, union activists, dissidents, journalists and dual citizens on bogus national security changes, based on propaganda. I will highlight three cases in which the victims received long prison sentences and are under severe pressure by the Iranian authorities in prison. Mr Saleh Kohandel was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for supporting Iran’s democratic opposition, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran. His crime was to support a vision of a free and democratic Iran, where torture and capital punishment is abolished. In a letter from the prison in May, Mr Kohandel wrote:

“My only crime, in their view, are my political activities, and for this reason I have on many occasions been transferred to the Ward run by the Intelligence Ministry and spent months under torture in solitary confinement.”

Another case of grave concern is that of Mr Jafar Azimzadeh, a labour activist who has been on hunger strike for nearly two months in Evin prison. He has been protesting against his unjust imprisonment and the suppression of ordinary workers, including the non-payment of their salaries. Mr Azimzadeh’s life is at serious risk, as his condition is deteriorating every day. Just last month, the judiciary in Iran sentenced the human rights defender, Ms Narges Mohammadi, to 16 years in prison. According to reports, she has been detained and denied her medication—a necessary treatment—as a means of torture.

Those three political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are at risk of losing their lives in prison if the international community does not intervene to secure their release. In fact, their condition is so serious that a group of UN human rights experts, including the UN special rapporteur on Iran, recently denounced the denial of adequate medical treatment to political prisoners as unacceptable. They said:

“The condition of several prisoners of conscience with serious health problems has been exacerbated by their continued detention and by repeated refusals to allow their access to the medical facilities and treatment they so urgently require.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Edward. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) on securing this important debate on the desperate human rights situation in Iran. Like him, I have attended the annual gatherings in Paris sponsored by the National Council of Resistance of Iran. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. At those meetings there are always many opportunities to talk to Iranian exiles from around the world. Perhaps 100,000 people go to those gatherings whose families have direct experience of human rights violations. All too often they have been denied the opportunity to communicate with family at home in Iran, for fear of repercussions; and, indeed, we meet people who have experienced persecution themselves.

The central charge made by all those who have spoken so far, and which will no doubt be made by those who speak later, is that the Tehran Government have completely failed to live up to international obligations on the most basic human rights. In 2013 Hassan Rouhani was elected—a supposed reformer. I use that word loosely, as I do the word “election”, because it is worth remembering that candidates are filtered by the Guardian Council. That was also the story of the 2016 parliamentary elections. They are not free, democratic elections as we know them. Despite the election of a supposed reformer, the situation has continued to deteriorate. According to Amnesty, nearly 1,000 people were hanged in Iran in 2015, as we have heard. That is the highest number of executions per capita in the world, and it has led Amnesty to describe the rate of executions as

“a horrific image of the planned state killing machine”.

The UN special rapporteur on Iran recently announced the rate of hangings as the highest for 27 years, exceeded only by the period immediately after the 1979 election and the removal of the Pahlavi dynasty.

A matter of particular concern—although everything we have heard is a matter of concern—is the breaches of the convention on the rights of the child, which was ratified by the Iranian authorities in July 1994. Yes, that was a welcome step at the time, if it meant anything; yet since that ratification there have been 81 identified cases—there is a strong, and I think firm, suspicion of many more—of people under the age of 18 being put to death. I reiterate the point about how the situation is escalating: 24 of those juvenile murders have happened since Rouhani came to power, including the case of Alireza Tajiki, who was arrested at the age of 15 and sentenced to death in 2013 on the basis of confessions obtained by torture in the notorious Evin prison. It was notorious under the Shah, but my goodness it is notorious under the present regime as well. Mercifully, through the actions of NGOs such as Amnesty the execution was postponed 24 hours before Alireza Tajiki was due to be hanged. Another instance was the case of Mohammad Reza Haddadi, sentenced for crimes that, again, he committed at the age of 15. He has spent 12 years on death row, and his execution has been postponed six times.

In the spirit of the belief that freedom of religion is the birthright of all of us, of all faiths, wherever we live, it is wholly appropriate to talk about the Baha’i community. As we have heard just now from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) the regime has a propensity to demonise, through the Government-controlled propaganda machine, the peaceable Baha’i community. In 2015 alone there were some 4,200 articles in the state-run media against the Baha’i community—12 to 13 articles demonising them every day. The unjustifiable sentences of 20 years in Evin prison given to seven Baha’i leaders are now in their eighth years. Their only crime was to be members of the Baha’i faith.

Jobs and business licences are denied to the Baha’i community; members are denied Government jobs in the civil service, and jobs in teaching and law. They are denied any position of influence. The security unit of the public places supervision office—a chilling description —decrees that Baha’is

“may not be issued work permits in a wide range of businesses, including hotels and tourism, the food industry, jewellery, publishing, and those related to computers and the Internet.”

In other words, they are left to wither at the bottom of an economic heap in that community.

This has not been an orchestrated debate—far from it—but I would like to highlight the cases mentioned by the hon. Member for Hendon. The imprisoned union activist Jafar Azimzadeh has been on hunger strike for nearly two months in Evin prison. His crime was that he wrote an open letter to the regime’s deputy Minister of Labour, expressing concerns about workers’ rights. We have heard about the families of the Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty, such as the political prisoner Saleh Kohandel, languishing in jail because of support for loved ones in the camp. That is a day-to-day reality for Iranians. I have been involved in campaigns for human rights in Iran over the past 11 years, and one of the sadnesses has been the extent to which the media in this country are not mindful of the issues and do not publicise them. There was a flurry of publicity when the green revolution supposedly was happening, which I alluded to in my intervention, but the world media are too quiet on these issues. They need to be highlighted.

The violations will be condemned by everybody in this Chamber. Every year, the United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning Tehran’s human rights abuses and making recommendations for improvement. Every year, those recommendations are routinely ignored by Tehran. There has been talk—indeed, more than talk; there is practical evidence—of Iran being brought in from the cold, but I urge the Minister to continue his work. This is nothing new; he has a sound record on championing human rights around the world, but he must continue to ensure that human rights abuses are discussed in the international arena. They should be discussed, as we have heard, at the UN Secretary Council. Those found responsible for the ongoing atrocities—there is a long list—should be referred to the International Criminal Court, to face justice. Will this Government make improvements in our relationship with Iran contingent on the end of well-catalogued human rights abuses, religious intolerance, executions and torture?

Our approach to Iran should include an active and direct dialogue with opposition groups committed to democratic change and the most basic human rights that should be common to any civilised society. The debate has moved on. I hope the Foreign Office is mindful of that; it should be. When I first came to this House, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran was a proscribed organisation. The Foreign Office justified that proscription. That proscription was lifted. It has been lifted throughout the world. People understand that the PMOI and Madam Rajavi are fighters for democratic change. That is what she has said, and it is reinforced by the 10-point programme we have heard about.

[Sir Roger Gale]

That proscription was, of course, only lifted following a High Court action. It is believed that there is an underlying concern in the FCO that, although proscription has been lifted, in fact, technically it is still there.

[Mr Williams]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on that intervention. He is right. I have said in debates in the past that there is a grudging acceptance by the FCO that the proscription has been lifted. I deeply regret that there has been a reluctance from the Foreign Office to rise to the terms of that de-proscription. One way it could rise to that challenge would be, as we have heard, to allow President-elect Maryam Rajavi at least to come and talk to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It was rather strange when a few years ago, a Committee room was booked in the name of the former Crown Prince of Iran, who came and talked to some of us. We listened to what he had to say about his democratic message, and yet Maryam Rajavi—who has a big mandate from many Iranian people in the country and in exile—has been denied that opportunity. I hope the Minister will reflect on what the hon. Member for Hendon and others have called for, with regard to a visit in the future.

Iran was once labelled “the great civilisation” by one of its former leaders. Closer analysis showed that it was not a particularly great civilisation in the years preceding 1979. If it was not a great civilisation then, my goodness, it is not a great civilisation now. Its people are denied the most basic human rights, and that must change. I think we will have the consensus of this Chamber on that, and I hope that that includes the Minister.