First of all, thank you for your invitation. Thank you as well for your attention to the Iranian human rights situation.
As an Iranian-Canadian human rights lawyer, I will draw your attention to the fact that Iranians, the Iranian people, are interested in human rights and seek a democratic structure. The public culture is not unfamiliar with the principles of human rights. During the past 110 years that Iranians have tried to realize democracy, the rule of law, and recently human rights, they have never experienced such concepts well. Therefore, these people need more support and education.
Education can help Iranian people to master their disunity and enjoy a democratic government. A democratic government can help Iranians have the rule of law and practise human rights. They should have the best-functioning laws. As a human rights lawyer, I have defended numerous clients under very difficult circumstances over 20 years. I'm still in contact with the legal structure in Iran, and well oriented toward the details of the structure of the government.
Before I answer questions on the areas in which there are violations of human rights, it is worth mentioning that the violation of human rights is the product of the government. The violation of human rights is government-produced.
In Iran, human rights are violated in all areas of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights. I'll focus on five main areas of the violation of human rights in Iran. These are human rights situations based on Iranian constitutional law, based on the Iranian penal code, based on Iranian criminal procedure law, based on Iranian family and marriage law, and based on other areas.
First, human rights are violated in both the substantive structure and the administrative structure of the constitution. There are discriminatory clauses in the constitution that are serious barriers to the realization of a democratic structure. However, there are principles in this constitution by which some rights of the people are satisfied if the principles are put into practice. Examples of such rights include a recognition of minorities, the ban on torture, and the right to have a lawyer when referred to the judiciary system.
Another important point on the constitution is the centralization of the power base under constitutional law. The most power, I believe, based on the constitution, is in the not-chosen leadership in Iran. Therefore, in parts of the constitution where people are allowed to choose their president and members of Parliament, they try to follow reformative and peaceful methods for the realization of change in the makeup of the structure. However, such attempts have caused suppression and strict control in numerous cases.
We should focus on the case of Minoo Khaleghi. She was vetted and elected by the people of Isfahan, and after she was elected, they disqualified her from being a member of Parliament from Isfahan.
The second point is that the most important place in the legal system of Iran in which human rights are violated is in the penal code. It has been amended several times during the past 37 years since the Islamic Revolution. I think the Iranian penal code has been changed four or five times. Now we have the new Iranian penal code. If we focus on the new Iranian penal code, we'll find many areas of human rights violations, because the Iranian penal code is absolutely translated from the sharia system.
Based on this, we have denied the rights of minorities. We have inequality between men and women. We have exactly those points in articles 301, 302, and 303 with murder cases between men and women, and between Muslim and non-Muslim. We have inequality and discrimination, and we have a part of the Iranian penal code that allows a husband to kill his wife when he sees she is sleeping with someone in the same bed. We have many areas of human rights violation based on the Iranian penal code, and the Iranian government never tried to change the Iranian penal code to include some of the Iranian government's obligations under the human rights treaty.
The third point is about the standard of a fair trial. I'm going to focus on criminal procedure law. The standard of a fair trial has not been well predicated in the criminal procedure law, and even in the cases in which these standards have been prescribed, they are not administrated well, such as the right of access to a lawyer after being arrested.
Article 48 and article 190 are new Iranian criminal procedure laws focused on the right to have access to a lawyer immediately after arrest. In the nine months they've been in the act, they have never been used and never practised. Right now we have some Iranians in prison who have never had access to a lawyer. I know an Iranian Canadian who was arrested recently in Iran. She was released on bail, but she had no access to a lawyer after she was arrested. I was in touch with her last month.
In all important cases—for example, crimes again the state or crimes again Islam—people are not allowed to access their lawyer immediately after they have been arrested.
Another important part of the regulation of Iranians in which human rights are violated and there is discrimination against women is family law. The issue of marriage is based on the Iranian civil court and based on the new Iranian family protection law.
In some parts of even this new law passed two or three years ago, we have discrimination: discrimination between father and mother for custody and the right to divorce. Unfortunately, in the main area of discrimination in this law that I focus on—article 1041 of the Iranian Civil Code and article 50 of the Iranian Family Protection Act—we have inequality between girls and boys in the right to marry. They can marry under the age of 18, but it's unequal for girls and boys, being 13 years for girls and 15 for boys. Based on this, we have many areas of discrimination, because somehow the father has the right to sell his daughter based on this law. This law never banned this kind of terrible marriage, and this is the new law.