Comments (0)

By admin, December 11, 2009 7:29 am

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, U.S. President Barack Obama highlighted the peaceful struggles of millions of Burmese, Zimbabweans and Iranians while also acknowledging the following in this much-repeated introduction:

“…Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I…

So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side.”

[Full speech]

Also on December 10th – International Human Rights Day – the PEN Association of thousands of writers posted a report that states:

“Most of us tend to measure a year’s passage by our birthdays, but in the human rights world, each year is marked and measured by December 10: International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the birth of the Declaration of Human Rights. Each December 10 has meaning, of course, but 2009 is particularly poignant.

We’ve witnessed the murders of more writers, journalists, and human rights defenders than we’d ever want to count this year, including Natalia Estemirova, the courageous Chechen activist who was abducted outside her home in Grozny and murdered on July 15.

We’ve also witnessed the mass arrests of writers and scholars in places like Iran, which responded to popular protests over this year’s election results by handing out outrageous sentences to people like Kian Tajbakhsh, who is now serving 15 years in jail.

And we’ve witnessed countries blatantly defying their own laws, such as in China’s arrest and detention of our own PEN colleague, Liu Xiaobo, who is now spending his second Human Rights Day in silence…

And so here at PEN in New York, we are commemorating Human Rights Day by paying tribute to all these brave men and women, in China and all over the world, who are using their pens, using their voices, to stand up for human rights, regardless of the consequences. We stand with them, we stand behind them, and we will continue to fight for them until all our pens, our voices, are free…”

[Full report]

Meanwhile, Amnesty International‘s newly issued report on Iran: Elections Contested, Repression Compounded features Kian’s case:

“…[Kian Tajbakhsh] appears to have been particularly harshly treated on account of his dual nationality and the nature of his academic work.”

[Press release] [Full report]

Comments (0)

By admin, December 10, 2009 11:01 am

“This morning a fresh round of opposition demonstrations erupted across Iran and there have been widespread clashes reported between protesters and various state security forces, the police and the paramilitary Basij militia. The troubles are seemingly focused in the main on Tehran’s universities, as well as those in the provincial cities of Isfahan, Kermanshah, Shiraz, Mashhad, Tabriz and Karaj. Troubles have also been reported elsewhere in Tehran. The protests are testimony both to the extent of grievances still widely held among a large section of the Iranian population and to the bravery of the Iranian people even in the face of state violence and repression…

Iran once enjoyed what was, for the region, a surprisingly open and sophisticated political pluralism and debate. There was even tolerance of criticism – albeit neither of the system of Islamic government à la Khomeini nor of the supreme leader.

However, during the last few months, rights have been severely curtailed. The granting of clemency by supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei to 793 prisoners only highlights the number incarcerated by the regime. Trials of many opposition figures have violated Iranian constitutional and legal norms, and several, including the Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, have been sentenced to long imprisonment on bogus espionage charges. Security forces continue to arrest and harass critical voices and have even targeted the Mourning Mothers, a group of women, including the mother of Neda Agha-Soltan, whose children were killed during post-election protests. Amnesty International reports plans to establish a “cyber police” unit to track down those “spreading lies” and “insults” that will further attack freedom of expression…

It seems likely that state forces will successfully quash today’s demonstrations. However the recurrence of protests and the regime’s use of violence and oppression to suppress the uprisings highlights the ongoing political crisis in Iran and the fundamental lack of legitimacy of the ruling elite. The intolerance of criticism by the Iranian state will surely only further radicalise protesters…”

Comments (0)

By admin, November 10, 2009 3:46 am

Patrick Smyth of the Irish Times has written a piece about Iran’s current turmoil which features Kian:

“…Using the opportunity presented by official anti-US commemorations of the 1979 seizure of hostages in the US embassy, tens of thousands of demonstrators on Wednesday took to the streets of Tehran and other cities in the biggest show of strength in two months…

The regime is ultra-sensitive to criticism of the election: only a couple of weeks ago state television reported supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as warning that questioning the results of the election was “the biggest crime”. An estimated 100 opposition supporters remain in jail, many of them prominent figures who supported, or were believed to have supported, reformist candidates in the June 12th presidential elections.

Many faced mass trials reminiscent of the Moscow show trials of the 1930s, complete with public confessions, some clearly given under duress.

One of those most severely dealt with is the US-Iranian scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, a mild-mannered researcher on urban planning who was not involved in the street protests, and whose cause was taken up in this paper in August by his friends Chandana Mathur, an anthropologist in NUI Maynooth, and her husband Dermot Dix, headmaster of Headfort School in Kells.

On October 20th, the Revolutionary Court sentenced Tajbakhsh to 12-15 years in prison on charges of espionage, co-operation with an enemy government, acting against national security by participating in Gulf 2000 (an internet forum housed at Columbia University), and for once working for the Open Society Institute financed by George Soros.

In reality, it appears, Tajbakhsh’s real offence is holding a US passport. He has been held in the notorious Evin prison for four months, much of it in solitary confinement.

Tajbakhsh had previously been targeted by the Iranian government. Between May and October 2007, he was held in solitary confinement in Evin prison on similar charges. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience and has launched a letter-writing campaign calling for his release … and President Obama and the EU have appealed to the Iranian authorities for clemency.

The government is also under huge economic pressure, wrestling in parliament with a reform package that may inflame the public by cutting subsidies on food, fuel and electricity…”

[Full Article]

Comments (0)

By admin, November 4, 2009 6:03 am

Leading international human rights organizations are urging Iranian authorities to overturn the unjust 15-year prison sentence imposed on Kian by an extra-judicial court presiding over show trial proceedings.

Amnesty International has launched an Urgent Action Appeal letter-writing campaign calling for Kian’s release. Please take a moment to participate!

Amnesty International‘s Middle East and North Africa Programme Director Malcolm Smart, for example, states in the report “Iran must overturn sentences issued by post-election ‘show trial’” that:

“The ‘show trial’ that has so far led to the imprisonment of Kian Tajbakhsh and a number of other reformist politicians and journalists, as well as the imposition of at least four death sentences, was grossly unfair and a travesty of justice…

The authorities should welcome the part that intellectuals can play towards developing the political and social life of their country, instead of locking them up on spurious charges… It appears that Kian Tajbakhsh has been targetted on account of his dual nationality and his academic work, and we consider him a prisoner of conscience.”

In their report “Iranian-American Scholar Prevented From Filing an Appeal ,” International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran spokesperson Hadi Ghaemi emphasizes that:

“The Iranian Judiciary is blatantly trampling over its own rules and regulations. In doing so, the authorities are confirming that Tajbakhsh’s detention, trial and conviction are patently politically motivated… By treating the law in this arbitrary manner, they are also demonstrating that the rule of law means nothing in Iran.”

In “Iran: Overturn Death Sentences; Other Unfair Convictions,” Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa Director Sarah Leah Whitson states:

“Death sentences following unfair trials expose the mockery of Iran’s judicial system… Those responsible need to quash these verdicts and sentences, and ensure that everyone detained, or put on trial, has free and regular access to a lawyer of their choosing.”

In “Why is the Iranian government so afraid of Kian Tajbakhsh?” Amnesty’s Human Rights Now researcher Elise Auerbach concludes:

“By attempting to portray Kian Tajbakhsh as an existential threat to the Islamic Republic and inflicting such a disproportionately harsh punishment on him, the Iranian authorities seem to be going to preposterous lengths to draw in as many elements of society as possible into a continually sucking vortex of fear and oppression.”