Maziar Bahari: Witness

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(Bob Simon | 60 Minutes – CBS News | 22 November 2009) - Recently freed after four months of interrogation and torture in Iran, Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari tells his story to Bob Simon and writes about his ordeal in the next issue of Newsweek.

In the next two “extra” video segments, “A Peaceful Terrorist” and “Mr. Hillary Clinton” journalist Maziar Bahari explains how he was the most dangerous kind of opponent to the Iranian government and how a strange nickname gave him hope in an Iranian prison. Read the rest of this entry »

The Plight of Iranian Journalists

(Muhammad Sahimi | Tehran Bureau | 8 November 2009) - Except for a brief period in the beginning of President Mohammad Khatami’s first term (1998-2000); and earlier, between 1941, when Allied forces occupied Iran, and 1953, the year the CIA-led a coup against the popular government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, freedom of the press in Iran has been under constant assault over the past century. Hundreds of Iranian journalists have been jailed or driven into exile. Many have been murdered. In short, Iran has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. Read the rest of this entry »

U.S., Iran: So much to talk about

Upcoming discussions with Iran should address its nuclear program and its awful human rights record.

(LA Times | Editorial | 19 September 2009) – The Obama administration has agreed to direct talks with the government of Iran, along with the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, at a meeting scheduled for Oct. 1. Now the question is: What will they talk about? Read the rest of this entry »

Iran: Investigate Security Chiefs in Post-Election Abuse

Nature, Scale of Abuses Indicate Coordinated Efforts Ordered at Highest Levels

(Human Rights Watch | 14 August 2009) - The Iranian government should investigate the nation’s top security officials to determine whether attacks on demonstrators and detainees following the disputed June 12, 2009 election were ordered and coordinated at the highest levels, Human Rights Watch said today. Read the rest of this entry »

Call for the human rights of the people of Iran to be respected

The Right to Peaceful Protest

In the days following Iran’s presidential election on Friday 12 June, many thousands took part in marches and demonstrations across the country, condemning both the process and outcome of the election. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran’s internal affairs: Keep the U.S. out

Submitted by Shervin Boloorian on July 22, 2009 on the FORpeaceBlog.

As Congress prepares to consider more Iran sanctions, it should also consider that confrontational U.S. policies have come nowhere close to changing Iran’s behavior in the last 30 years. On the other hand, in reaction to a contested election, the Iranians have formed an unprecedented home-grown movement for political expression through their own resources, their own desire for democratic progress, and their own sacrifices. Read the rest of this entry »

Statement and Call to Action

July 9, 2009

Dear Friend of United for Peace and Justice,

Over three weeks ago, Iranians held a presidential election. What followed remains unclear, but one thing is for certain: the Iranian government engaged in the suppression of the rights of Iranians to protest their government. Read the rest of this entry »

Killed and Detained Since 12 June

Last updated by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran on 1 July 2009.

Here is the list of those killed and detained in Iran, updated as information becomes available. The list is by no means comprehensive and does not include people arrested at protests on the streets.

Government officials have announced a total of 627 arrests in Tehran since 13 June 2009, 170 people detained prior to 15 June, 457 detained persons on 20 June, and 27 dead. Other sources claim these numbers are much higher. The Campaign believes, based on reports received from within Iran, as many as 2,000 people could be under arrest throughout the country. The following is a list of prominent political personalities, journalists, and students that the Campaign has received.

Click here for alphabetized list

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INTRODUCTION TO LYNN”S TALK followed by THURSDAY 25th TALK at IFTAR

On Thursday September 25th, over 250 US and international religious, political and cultural leaders gathered at a hotel in NYC to meet with the President of Iran in order to press the government of the United States and the government of Iran to engage in serious dialogue as well as to affirm the concept of interfaith dialogue. Given the climate of incendiary rhetoric, members of traditional peace churches that sponsored this event, including American Friends Service Committee, The Mennonite Central Committee, Religions of Peace and the World Council of Churches consider it their responsibility to step in and begin to cultivate the possibility for dialogue and engagement in behalf of peace when governments fail to do so. The previous evening, The Fellowship of Reconciliation hosted a meeting with over sixty peace activists with the president of Iran with the same intention. These groups are not alone in calling for diplomacy and dialogue. Five former secretaries of state urged similar action.

Meetings organized by peace and non-violence organizations and individuals with Ahmadinejad do not mean those attending agree or support specific Iranian governmental policies that are in conflict with the values of the peace community or the accompanying rhetoric about Israel, Jews or the United States. Rather, the intention is to promote the concept of dialogue and engagement precisely because of the vast gulf between governmental positions of the United States and Iran and to better understand the underlying issues of the conflict from the Iranian perspective. Ahmadinejad is a political figure who represents his country but is not identical with the whole of his country. In his role as president Ahmadinejad does not have the authority to initiate war, attack another country, promote or limit nuclear weapons or legislate Islamic law. A populist politician, his domestic policies have been failures, especially in the economic sphere. Moreover, he has not been an active proponent of human rights. On the other hand,  many US media and non-governmental organizations criticizing Ahmadinejad’s provocative rhetoric fail to educate the American public by providing in depth analysis of the underlying historic and geo-political issues that are provoking the wider conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel.

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By Robert Dreyfuss

At least 400 dissidents, activists and intellectuals--a number far larger than previously reported–were murdered in Iran during a wave of officially sanctioned, government death-squad activity that ended in 1999, according to Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Prize-winning human rights lawyer who is currently on a speaking tour in the United States. But Ebadi insists that US threats against Iran and rhetoric about regime change could make things worse, giving Iran’s leaders an excuse to intensify repression.

In an interview with The Nation, Ebadi said that she has documentation for one-third of those killings, and that information about the rest comes from the personal testimony of a man who admitted his role in the November 1998 murders of Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, who were hacked to pieces in their Tehran home. The Forouhars, critics of the Iranian regime, were part of the coalition that supported Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist leader who was toppled by a CIA-backed coup d’état in 1953.

Ebadi, a Tehran-based attorney and former judge who has battled the government over human-rights abuses for years, says that what she calls the pattern of “chain murders” has halted since then. But she warns that the human-rights situation in Iran remains grave. On April 2, Ebadi herself received an anonymous threat in a letter delivered to her office that read: “Your death is near.”
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