Civil Society

December 7, 2010

Punishing Students for Their Opinions

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has released a report detailing abuses against students for dissenting viewpoints. Many high achieving students have been expelled from Iran's universities. “Excluding students from universities based on their political and religious views is a totalitarian practice that ruins careers and removes reform-oriented young people from future professional cohorts,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the Campaign’s spokesperson.
December 1, 2010

Getting to Know a Student Activist: “Freedom is not Free”

United4Iran recently published an interview with the roommate of student activist, Majid Tavakoli, who is currently imprisoned in Iran. Here is what his friend had to say about the speech Majid gave in December of 2009 that led to his arrest:
I, and other close friends, tried to convince him to revise his decision but he was persistent. He reasoned that if we retreat [from] our basic rights, in holding peaceful protests inside campuses, we [would] have to retreat [from] the worst level of dictatorship. He was reasoning that as a prominent student leader, his speech would give the courage to other students to stand for their rights. He used to say: “Freedom is not free.”
November 30, 2010

Legalizing the Murder of Civil Society

Legalizing the Murder of Civil Society reports on a bill that would completely change the legal procedures for registering and operating civil society organizations. Arseh Sevom released a paper analyzing the impact of the proposed law.
June 2, 2010

Men of Violence: New Report from ICHRI

“Holding human rights violators accountable on the international stage sends a strong signal to the Iranian authorities that such individuals are not welcomed abroad and despite their unlimited impunity inside Iran, they are recognized around the world for their atrocities and cannot get away with their crimes indefinitely.”
June 2, 2010

Report: Attack on Civil Society in Iran

In mid-June 2009, millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest a deeply flawed election. In the days and weeks that followed, reports of suppression, deaths in prison, torture, and rape, shocked people all over the world. These crackdowns were predictable given the anti-democratic nature of the Ahmadinejad administration.“Despite the increasingly liberal and pragmatic character of Iranian society, this current administration is highly ideological and hostile to democracy,” Tori Egherman, one of the authors of the report states...While the abuses happen to individuals, they are designed to undermine the democratic development of Iran as a nation. Dr. Sohrab Razzaghi, another author of the report states, “They have chosen to read Iran's ambiguous constitution as fundamentally undemocratic.”
May 26, 2010

Attack on Civil Society in Iran: Introduction

Human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran are happening to individuals, but they are targeted at civil society. This is as true of the mistreatment and torture of those detained for protesting after the 2009 presidential elections as it is of the arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders.