Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you for your kind invitation and providing me with the opportunity to share with the committee my analysis of human rights developments in Iran.
Almost two years into the presidency of Dr. Rouhani, and almost two years after the beginning of the latest round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the west, the human rights situation is unfortunately deteriorating in Iran. Many would think it is counterintuitive. Many would think that nuclear negotiations would be followed by improvement in the state of human rights in Iran. We are seeing the opposite.
The purpose of my presentation today is to try to explain why I believe the latter is the case, and also to indicate the incidents that make the state of human rights worse rather than better compared to the pre-Rouhani, pre-negotiation era.
Just to provide you with my really short analysis, negotiations make the regime in Tehran look weak. Regardless of how small we believe the concessions that Tehran is making to the P5+1 group are, they count for Tehran and make the regime look weak in the eyes of the Iranian public. This is why they're trying to compensate for that perceived weakness with harsher and greater brutality.
Tehran engaged in nuclear negotiations with the P5+1 group from a poor bargaining position. The international sanctions regime and eight years of mismanagement under President Ahmadinejad had taken their toll on the economy, which teetered on bankruptcy. Rouhani, of course, ran for president with the promise of improving Iran’s economy. This is why he was elected by the Iranian public. And because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei understood the sorry state of the economy, he respected the election results and allowed Dr. Rouhani to take over the presidency.
Of course, it was clear to everyone in Iran that it was the bad state of the economy that forced the system to accept and respect the popular vote. It became even more clear to the Iranian public that Iran was weak, when many officials of the Rouhani government, after taking over the government books and gaining fuller access to the state of the economy, found out and admitted in public that the economy they had inherited from Mr. Ahmadinejad was in worse shape than expected.
It was under such dire conditions that on September 17, 2013, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei officially endorsed Dr. Rouhani’s nuclear diplomacy by calling for “heroic flexibility.” Heroic flexibility is something that the regime in Tehran shows when facing the formidable enemy, the United States. It has not shown any flexibility, heroic or otherwise, when facing the Iranian public and the opposition in Iran.
If we take a look at the number of executions in Iran, and I understand that several of our colleagues here today may have newer numbers, at the very least 753 individuals were executed in 2014. This is the highest total recorded in 12 years. Among these executions were 53 public executions. By comparison, there were 580 executions in 2012 and 687 in 2013. Most of the executions were either related to narcotics or homicide, but we certainly believe that the public executions were designed to demonstrate the central government's strength and power. This is all happening during the presidency of Dr. Rouhani.
It's also under the presidency of Dr. Rouhani that the Islamic republic has continued the practice of arbitrary detention of political dissidents. Most notably, Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leaders of Iran’s pro-democracy green movement, are still under house arrest and Dr. Rouhani has not done anything to rescue those respected individuals.
One parliamentarian, a certain Ali Motahari has actually used the podium of the parliament to call for their release. But he was severely beaten last month by vigilante groups close to the Basij paramilitary. Motahari and his driver sought refuge at a local police station in Shiraz, but officers simply watched as the mob landed their blows on Mr. Motahari.
The regime has been equally repressive when it comes to the Iranian press. According to Motahari—the same great parliamentarian, who, by the way, is not pro-western and may not even be pro-western democracy, but who is critical of the state of affairs inside Iran—says that there exists an atmosphere of fear among Iranian journalists who exercise a greater degree of self-censorship than in the past. This, too, is hardly surprising when one takes into consideration that 13 journalists and bloggers have been detained over the past year, bringing the total up to 30.
The jailed journalists include Mr. Serajeddin Mirdamadi, who is a distant relative of Supreme Leader Khamenei; Ali Asghar Gharav, who worked at the reformist newspaper, Bahar; and Jason Rezaian of the The Washington Post, of course, who is wrongly being accused by the intelligence organization of the Revolutionary Guards as being a foreign spy.
There are many other journalists. Arya Jafari and four other journalists from ISNA, the Iranian Student News Agency, were arrested in October because they were providing coverage of public protests against acid attacks on women in the city of Isfahan. Jafari has since been released, and we do not know the fate or destiny of his colleagues from that news agency.
Lesser known imprisoned journalists and bloggers include Sajedeh Arabsorkhi, whose father is a civil rights activist, but she herself was actually unknown until she began her activities and was arrested; and also Zahra Ka'abi, Hamid Hekmati, and many younger Iranians who use the Persian-language blogosphere to express their discontent with the regime.
Newspapers themselves have not faired much better. The reformist daily, Roozan, was closed in December 2014 after commemorating the anniversary of the passing of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was a critic of violations of human rights in Iran. This is actually why he lost his position in the structure of power in the Islamic Republic. The weekly, Setareh Sobh, was closed in January after calling for a fair trial of the opposition leaders under house arrest. Another newspaper, Mardom-e Emrooz, was closed and banned because it showed on its front page a photo of American actor George Clooney wearing a lapel pin to honour the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
Suppression of Iranian workers and labour activists is another area of concern. Eight labour union activists are currently in prison for attempting to organize strikes in protest against lacking pay. Many more are in legal limbo awaiting the ruling of the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Just last week, ahead of the May 1 labour day holiday, two more labour leaders were arrested.
Some of the worst human rights abuses, of course, happened to my Iranian compatriots who are followers of the Bahá'í faith. One hundred of them are in prison. The regime in Tehran considers the Bahá'í faith a direct theological challenge and threat to the foundations of the regime. Whenever I hear the foreign minister of Iran, Dr. Javad Zarif, claim that there are no political prisoners, I certainly believe that we should ask him if he considers the followers of the Bahá'í faith anything but political prisoners. The same thing, of course, applies to Muslim converts to Christianity, followers of mystic interpretation, more liberal-minded interpretations of Islam, the Sufi religion. This is something that has worsened during the presidency of Dr. Rouhani.
There are also many reports of arrests of ethnic rights activists, particularly in Kurdistan and Balochistan region. We can discuss this further in the Q and A session.
So, who are the agents of this oppression? Fundamentally, it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, particularly their intelligence branch, and the Basij militia, which is more or less the youth organization of the Revolutionary Guards, on the one hand, and the intelligence ministry and the revolutionary court, on the other. These institutions have overlapping fields of responsibility, and there is a state of permanent interdepartmental rivalry between them. Sometimes a political activist who has been released by one of these institutions ends up being arrested by another one because of the rivalry that exists between these institutions. Most unfortunately, President Rouhani has not shown any interest in reining in and controlling these institutions.
One of the few things—and this is going to be the last thing I'm going to say right now—that we have seen from Mr. Rouhani is his asking the police not to engage in upholding religious morality on the streets. So the police should only think of law and order, not religion and enforcement of the Sharia law, but he does not do anything to prevent the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, and many other groups, vigilante groups in particular, to express what they think is the right and correct way of practising Islam.
Do allow me to thank you all for providing me with this opportunity to testify before your committee. The human rights issue is unfortunately being overshadowed by the nuclear negotiations, but I certainly believe and I do genuinely hope that the work of your committee could put the focus back on the human rights issue.
Thank you.