Iran Continues to Intimidate and Harass Women Human Rights Defenders According to Amnesty International

"The Iranian government should support women who campaign for greater realization of their rights rather than repress and bully those who stand up and demand their rights," said Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA executive director. "Iran ought to step up and release defenders of women's rights currently in prison. In addition, the government needs to stop detaining and harassing those who peacefully exercise their freedoms of expression, association and assembly."

This new report comes as Ronak Safarzadeh and Hana Abdi -- two Kurdish Iranian activists -- continue to be detained without charge or trial, or even access to a lawyer. They were arrested in October and November 2007, respectively, for peacefully exercising their rights.

In addition, Amnesty International details 12 women's rights activists, 11 women and one man, who are currently being detained or are otherwise facing persecution because of their peaceful efforts to lobby for legislative change.

The report illustrates how human rights defenders leading the campaign to end legalized discrimination against women are frequently arbitrarily arrested and detained, denied access to lawyers, family members and due process, and sometimes ill-treated with impunity by security officials. Some have been prosecuted on vaguely worded charges, accused of threatening national or public security, apparently as a form of intimidation and to deter them from continuing their campaign to protect and promote women's rights inIran. Others have simply been detained without any formal charges for long periods during which they were held in solitary confinement and denied all access to the outside world, often under a legal provision that allows judges to order indefinitely renewable periods of detention.

The authorities' harassment and intimidation of women's rights activists have become even more evident and acute since the launch by activists of the Campaign for Equality on August 26, 2006. This campaign aims to collect 1 million signatures of Iranians to a petition demanding an end to legal discrimination against women.

"Iranian women activists must be allowed to campaign peacefully for legislative reform," said Elise Auerbach, Amnesty International USAIran country specialist. "Their courageous efforts should be seen as a benefit not a threat to the nation."

Dozens of activists and supporters have been arrested in connection with their activities for the Campaign for Equality, some while collecting signatures for the petition. As of January 2008, the campaign's website had been blocked by the authorities at least seven times. Official permission to hold public meetings has frequently been denied, and campaign activists usually hold their workshops in the homes of sympathizers, some of whom have then received threatening phone calls apparently from security officials or been summoned by them for interrogation. At least one such workshop was forcibly broken up by police who arrested those present, beating some.

Amnesty International is calling for a change in discriminatory legislation which, among other things, excludes women from the most senior positions of state and appointment as judges, denies them equal rights with men in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, and determines that any evidence they give before a court carries only half the weight of that given by a man.

The report calls on the government, Iran's parliament (the Majles) and the judicial authorities who exercise significant influence over the position of women, to abide by Iran's international obligations to uphold women's rights and end discrimination.

For a copy of the new report, Iran: Women's Rights Defenders Defy Repression, please contact the AIUSA press office at 202.544.0200x302 or lspann@aiusa.org.

SOURCE Amnesty International

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