The Iran Monitor analyses developments in Iran reported in current Farsi-speaking media inside and outside of Iran under the analytical framework of the new political totalitarianism. It thus tries to increase the awareness of how the Iranian regime's totalitarian state ideology denies freedom, democracy and human rights to the Iranian people. The Iran Monitor is compiled by Senior Fellow Dr Wahied Wahdat-Hagh at the European Foundation for Democracy.

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EFD ANALYSIS

Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi's life is again in danger

On 21 December 2008 Iranian officials shut down and sealed off the human rights centre founded by Shirin Ebadi in Tehran. Eight days later, on 29 December, her law office was searched. Officials seized all her clients' documents and other papers that had been drafted about them. All the computers were also seized. On 1 January, a militant mob protested in front of her house and defaced it with anti-American slogans.

The officials accused Shirin Ebadi of tax evasion but have so far failed to provide any evidence. She has strenuously rejected these accusations.

Shirin Ebadi financed the human rights centre partly out of the money she received for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Lawyers' Association for the Defence of Human Rights and the Association for Mine Clearance worked at the centre.

After the office was closed, Shirin Ebadi told BBC Persian: "We will not stop our work on any account. The shutdown of the office does not mean the end of our activities. In the next two weeks we will produce a report on the human rights violations of the past three months. I think the Iranian government is annoyed about the relevance of our activities and about our human rights reports, which are nevertheless being submitted to the United Nations' General Assembly. I think the Iranian regime is angry because the UN refers to our reports."

Hassan Qashqawi, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, used legal arguments to explain that saying that the office was shut down because it "it had no licence" and that the decision had been ordered by the court. He sarcastically added that "if even bakeries were required to have a state licence, it was obvious that also a human rights centre would also need permission from the state".

However, Shirin Ebadi maintains that, under the law, the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights did not need a licence as long as it did not agitate against Islam, and that it had in any case always complied with all "registration procedures". In 2000 it had registered with the state ministry without receiving a licence. At the time, only verbal assurances had been given that its work was permitted. As Radio Farda reported, Mrs Ebadi describes her position as follows: "Ours is the situation of any person who takes and passes all the driving tests but does not receive a driving licence. Who has in fact acted illegally in such a situation?"

However, when Ahmadinejad's government came to power in August 2005, the same state ministry that had given her verbal assurances described the centre's work as illegal. Ebadi announced that she would turn to international bodies if her legal applications to reopen her centre failed.

Shirin Ebadi has always criticised human rights violations – for example, she complained that the state authorities closed the files on the 1998 political killings without resolving them.

Why does the Iranian state not react to society's demands?

The strategy of lawyers and human rights activists like Shirin Ebadi is to test Iranian attitudes against the benchmarks of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She has often pointed out that Iran's constitution and criminal legislation needed to be changed to enable human rights and democracy to exist in Iran.

However, Iran's rulers refer to Islamic laws that, according to the dominant interpretation, are difficult to reconcile with the principles of universal human rights. What is now required is the removal of anachronistic religious laws that are no longer consistent with the modern needs of the Iranian society.

VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Punishment by stoning continues to be a practice endorsed by the Iranian regime

On 25 December 2008, three people were stoned in Mashhad, after being buried in the earth up to their hips. The size of the stones is laid down in Iran's Islamic criminal code. One of the three men survived since he managed to get out of the hole. The other two died an agonising death.

Among the offences for which people can be condemned to stoning is adultery. At least six people have been stoned in Iran in the past two years, five of them dying as a result of this inhuman act.

Iran's Islamic criminal law states that condemned men must be buried in the ground up to their hips. If the man has admitted guilt, he has no chance of surviving. He is buried in the ground again even if he gets out of his hole, until he has been killed by the stones. As Rooz reported on 31 December 2008, if the man has never pleaded guilty but has been condemned on the basis of witness statements, he may remain alive if he manages to free himself from the ground during the stoning.

While men are buried up to their hips under Islamic law and have a chance of survival, women are buried up to their breast so that there is no chance of survival.

IRAN AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Pasdaran Commander threatens possibility of occupation of foreign embassies in Tehran

Without going into any detail, General Mohammad-Ali Jafari, Supreme Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has suggested the possibility that foreign embassies in Tehran may be occupied again should "extra ordinary situations occur". According to Farsnews, he said on 25 December, that new Bassiji units would be recruited among Iranian students and trained to be able to attack and occupy a foreign embassy like the attack against the US Embassy on 4 November 1979. 

This declaration does not come as surprise, considering that on 1 December 2008, Basirat, an Iranian military newspaper, accused German institutions that give grants to Iranian students of "educating spies who would in due course organise a 'velvet revolution' to overthrow Iran's political system".  In addition to the German foundations active in or on Iran, even the German embassy in Tehran was openly criticised and indirectly threatened (or "warned"): "It can be argued – Basarat continued - that the German embassy in Tehran is currently doing the hard work for the American nest of spies and the German intelligence service is assisting other Western intelligence services in blatantly anti-Iranian activities."

Iranian religious leader renews calls for jihad

On 28 December 2008, Ali Khamenei, Iran's political and religious leader, described Israel as "Kafer-e-Harbi".  Under Islamic law, "Kafer-e-Harbi" are "infidels" who can be treated differently: they "need to be fought through war". They can be killed, enslaved or banished and their property can be taken as "spoils of war". The state of war can be ended only if the "infidel" accepts Islam or submits to Islamic domination. There can only be a peace treaty with the "infidel" in the form of a limited ceasefire, a "Hudna", that can last 10 years at most.

The declarations made by Khamenei, confirm that as long as the Islamist terrorist organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to be controlled by Iran and continue to pursue the realisation of Islamic domination under the Islamist interpretation of peace, any attempt to achieve durable peace will be doomed.  Also, by describing Israel as a "Kafer-e-Harbi", the Iranian regime perpetuates the idea of exporting the Islamic revolution and calls on all Muslims to join the jihad against Israel.

In addition to describing Israel as a "Kafer-e-Harbi", Ali Khamenei has also warned "negligent Muslim countries", explicitly referring to Egypt and Jordan, against pursuing a policy favourable to Israel. At the same time, Khamenei is also making attempts to mobilise Arab governments and Islamic clerics in Arab states when he says that "the time has come for them [Arab countries] to sense the danger for Islam and Muslims". Khamenei also called on the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to form a "united front" against Israel.

He said: "All the Palestinian Mujahid and other faithful of the world of Islam are supposed to defend the defenseless people of Gaza. Anyone who is killed in this legitimate and holy defense is a martyr and is hoped to be among the ranks of the martyrs of Badr and Ohud battles in the presence of the Messenger of Allah (S.A.)." With these statements, Ali Khamenei equates the operations of terrorist organisations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah to the Prophet Mohammed's struggles in Year 3 of the Islamic calendar.

The Iranian leader also criticised European governments for being "indifferent" to the current Gaza conflict and accused them of "having joined the anti-Islamic front". 

INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS

Newspaper closed for not "completely" following the regime's diktat 

The Tehran newspaper Kargozaran was banned on 31 December 2008 after it had published extracts from a statement by a student organisation that had condemned the "Israeli crimes" but that had also added that "it is just as inhuman for terrorist groups to hide out in hospitals and nursery schools with children and civilians dying as a result of attacks."

A spokesperson of the newspaper explained to business newspaper Sarmaye that the editorial team had "condemned Israeli crimes" in various articles and added that the students' opinion was in no way shared by the editorial department. This was clearly not a satisfactory response and Kargozaran was banned nonetheless.

Bloggers under threat: government announces new and stricter controls over the Internet

The Iranian Communications Ministry has announced the implementation of a "project" to control and filter websites and blogs. In addition, a special court is to be created to deal specifically with "crimes in electronic communications". Roozonline reported on 3 December 2008 that many websites and blogs had in the past few weeks been closed down, under what the state termed "national filtering".

As early as 2001, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution appointed a state Committee for the Compilation of Evidence, on the orders of Ali Khamenei. This committee comprises representatives of the Intelligence Service Ministry, the Ministry for Culture and Islamic Leadership, the State Radio and Television Institute, the Organisation of Islamic Propaganda and the Directorate of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Its task is to compile lists of websites and blogs to be blocked, and it is chaired by the Intelligence Service Ministry. Iran is currently using "intelligent robots" to detect certain websites and blogs.

As stated by Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, legal adviser to Iran's senior prosecutor, the state has filtered more than five million websites in Iran.

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