Thank you, Dr. Shaheed.
Mr. Chair, and distinguished members, thank you for inviting me to testify before you today.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to address the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. I hope my contribution will be useful to the House of Commons.
Thank you also to Mr. Cotler and to all of you for holding the fourth annual Iran Accountability Week. You have created a valuable forum for all of us who care about the future of Iran and the well-being of all Iranians.
I would like to be clear in my comments that while I will use the words “regime” and “government” in my testimony, I do not refer to every person who works for the Iranian government. There are many individuals within the Iranian government who do not support human rights abuses in the country, but these individuals are either coerced to be silenced, or they remain silent because of self-interest. I believe there are still many good and decent men and women who work for this bad system. I'm sure one day they will join the struggle of the Iranian people for a more open and accountable government.
I was arrested for working as a journalist in June 2009. After 118 days in prison, I was released on bail. During that time I was brutally tortured, physically and psychologically. I was humiliated and threatened that if I spoke about the injustices I witnessed in prison, I could always be brought back to Iran in a bag. Because of this experience, I believe I have a good understanding of how the Iranian regime works, how it tries to frighten the people of Iran, and how it controls them through this fear.
Since coming out of prison, I have been involved in a number of campaigns supporting the basic human and citizen rights of Iranians, including the journalism is not a crime campaign and the education is not a crime campaign, to support the rights of the Baha'i religious minority to teach and study in universities in Iran.
The other “is not a crime“ web names, which I've registered, include dancing is not a crime, happiness is not a crime, and most recently one called being a dog is not a crime, which was started in reaction to inhumane methods of killing stray dogs and the plan by some members of the Iranian Parliament to ban pet ownership in the country.
I'd be happy to talk about that later on, but in this testimony I will focus on journalism.
According to Reporters Without Borders, there are 46 journalists, bloggers, and Internet activists in jail in Iran today. Five journalists have been killed in custody since 1997. The Committee to Protect Journalists says that since 2009 Iran has been one of the top three jailers of journalists in the world.
According to our own journalism is not a crime survey, almost 300 professional and citizen journalists have been arrested and incarcerated since the disputed presidential election in June 2009.
These individuals are not just numbers, but they are fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands who have been taken away from their dear ones. They remain unfamiliar names to the outside world. Very few of these journalists have had the chance to present their cases to the Canadian Parliament and the international community. Many of them have been arrested in small towns and villages across Iran where the human rights situation is even more dismal than in the main urban areas.
I have been lucky to be one of the few journalists whose name is known outside of Iran. This morning I thanked some people who can pronounce my name correctly as well.
The other dual citizenship journalist currently in jail is Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who was arrested in July 2014. According to his lawyer, Jason was charged with espionage and three other serious offences. Jason could be in prison for up to 20 years if he is found guilty. This mockery of justice is typical of what many Iranian journalists are going through every day.
Jason was arrested with his wife and two other friends. His wife and two friends were released soon after, but they have been warned about talking to the media. Most probably based on previous similar cases, Jason's family and friends have been intimidated by the revolutionary guards' intelligence agents who arrested him. The family must have been told that if they said anything about Jason, his situation would get worse and he could spend years in prison.
My family was told exactly the same thing. My torturer beat me before I made a call to my wife, forcing me to tell her to stop campaigning for me. Fortunately, my wife lived thousands of miles away from Iran, in London, England, and was able to continue leading the campaign for my release. I was ultimately released because of an amazing global campaign by my family, colleagues, and friends.
I would like to thank the Canadian diplomats who worked tirelessly for my release while I was in prison.
Jason has also, allegedly, been forced to confess in front of the cameras. The exact content of his forced confession is not clear, but according to a hardline member of the Iranian Parliament, he has confessed to economic espionage, a crime that is not defined in Iranian law and most probably has to do with his work as a journalist reporting on sanctions against Iran.
Forced confessions have become one of the preferred tools of the trade for the Iranian regime in the past 35 years. I was also subjected to a forced confession while I was in prison. The experience made me feel invaded and sullied. I felt raped. It was a rape that happened in front of cameras and then put on YouTube.
Ten months after the arrest of Jason, the Iranian government still has not announced the reason for Jason's arrest and incarceration. We have heard the charges only through an interview his lawyer gave to a news agency associated with the revolutionary guards. This utmost lack of accountability is typical in the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to some legal experts, the charges announced by the lawyer in the interview violate article 24 of Iran's own constitution as well as the government's obligations under article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Also, the judge presiding over Jason's case is a notorious human rights violator. Judge Abolghassem Salavati has been named by the European Union as an individual subject to sanctions for human rights violations. This same judge sentenced me on a variety of charges to thirteen and a half years' imprisonment in absentia after I left Iran. In case you wonder what the six months was for, it was for someone tagging a picture of former president Ahmadinejad kissing a boy on my Facebook wall. Judge Salavati deemed that by not removing the tag, I implied that then president Ahmadinejad was a homosexual.
Journalists in Iran are harassed on a daily basis by officials such as Judge Salavati and his agents. Even those who are not jailed are under constant harassment and pressure. They have to work within the constraints of one of the most intense censorship regimes in the world. Journalists live under constant threat of closure of their newspapers and websites.
The regime has many red lines and red subjects. Crossing those red lines and reporting on those red subjects are considered crimes. In many cases these red lines are left to individual judges, such as Salavati, to interpret. Many judges are persuaded by the security agents and interrogators to interpret the red lines as harshly as possible. In the words of my interrogator, Iranian justice is ultimately in the hands of interrogators and not the judges.
These harsh interpretations of red lines are effective tools to put pressure on publications and journalists. In a recent example, a newspaper was shut down because it insulted the prophet Mohammed, the reddest of the red lines. Of course, what constitutes an insult is not clear in Iranian laws. The newspaper Mardom-e Emrooz, in English “Today's People”, was shut down earlier this year for publishing a picture of George Clooney on its front page in which Mr. Clooney declared, “Je suis Charlie”, after the massacre of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January 2015. Mentioning the quote in the newspaper was deemed to be in support of the insulting cartoons and vicariously insulting their prophets; hence, Tehran's prosecutor general ordered the closure of the popular newspaper.
President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013. He promised reform, greater respect for civil liberties, and more press freedom, but none of these have improved since his election. President Rouhani has not only been silent about human rights abuses in the country, but he has also long denied that journalism is not a crime in Iran and that journalists are not detained or jailed in Iran solely because of doing their jobs.
It is true that the judiciary and the security forces, which are not controlled by the president, are the main human rights violators in Iran, but according to article 113 of the Iranian constitution, the president is the head of the executive branch and in charge of supervising proper execution of the constitution by other branches of the government. Also, according to article 24 of the Iranian constitution, journalists are free to carry out their jobs, and any restriction of the media is unconstitutional. According to the Iranian constitution, the president has a duty to protect freedom of expression; otherwise he has failed his duties.
The least many Iranians expect from their president is to be honest with them. If President Rouhani believes curbing human rights abuses committed by the guards and the security forces is beyond his power, he should share this information with the millions of Iranians who voted for him. If he cannot do anything to stop these abuses, at least he should talk about them; at least he should talk about his lack of power.
I also voted for Mr. Rouhani in 2013, understanding that he was the best of the bad choices available to Iranians. I wanted to believe in at least some of his promises. I'm still hoping he can fulfill some of those promises in the next two years.
I also hope he can hear my testimony today, or preferably, read the Persian translation of it. Iranian intelligence agents translate everything, so I'm sure the translation will get to him one way or another.
I would like to end by saying that this testimony does not represent only my opinions. My words were chosen in consultation with many of my colleagues inside and outside of Iran. They represent the opinions of many in prisons, and censored Iranian journalists in exile and inside Iran.
Thank you very much.