Video

Citizens’ Rights, Part 1: Iran and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
12 May 2016 by Editor

Iran signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1968, and committed to implementing it in 1975 when the Iranian parliament ratified it. But so far, Iran has implemented few laws related to the covenant.

This video series on citizens’ rights in Iran explores through interviews with experts and witnesses the ways in which Iran has protected or breached those rights from 1968 to present.

This episode outlines the formation and enactment of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the process by which Iran joined the Covenant, and the rights the Covenant protects. They include the right to life, freedom of religion and expression, and to a fair trial, as well as freedom of assembly, and the prohibition of discrimination and torture.

 

 

 

Abdolkarim Lahiji, lawyer and president of the International Federation for Human Rights, talks about the enactment of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in the UN General Assembly in 1966, and how Iran joined the Covenant. Lahiji argues that Iran’s enactment of the Covenant was an important step because, fewer than twenty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, these rights – especially in the realms of civil and political rights – were finally defined in precise and detailed terms. Iran took ten years to enact the Covenant. The first international human rights conference was hosted in Tehran at Iran’s request, but was closed to most Iranians.

 

 

 

Shirin Ebadi, lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, talks about personal and political freedoms under the Pahlavi monarchy. Political freedom, she says, was very limited, and elections were merely for show, although there were greater personal freedoms, including religious freedoms. There were, however, exceptions, notably the treatment of Iran’s Baha’i minority. “In order to appease the clergy,” Ebadi says, “they attacked the Hazirat al-Ghods, Iran’s Baha’i religious center, confiscated their documents, and demolished the building.”

 

 

 

Atefeh Gorgin describes the arrest of her husband, the celebrated writer and poet Khosrow Golesorkhi. “In March 1973,” she says, “he was arrested at the premises of Kayhan Newspaper. A week later, they came to arrest me too. My child was two years old when I was detained. They took me away right in front of his eyes.” Gorgin spent three and a half years in prison, while her husband was executed by firing squad. “They wanted to take someone who, even back then, was well known and popular, and break him down in order to show their strength,” she says.

 

 

 

Mohammad Ali Amouei, a former member of the communist Tudeh Party Military Organization, talks about the poverty that afflicted Iran during the Second World War – the consequences of the social, political and economic atmosphere over which the Imperial Court presided. Amouei argues that society was aware of British political interference in Iran, and its influence over the ruling classes.

 

 

 

Ebrahim Yazdi, political activist and head of the Nehzat-e Azadi, or Freedom Movement of Iran, describes the era following the U.S. and British-backed overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953. From that year until the 1979 revolution, he says, the Shah of Iran ruled with great force and authoritarianism. Western advisors kept a heavy presence in Iran, and this led the Iranian society to blame the United States and Britain, along with the Shah, for the repressive atmosphere in which they lived.

 

 

 

Faraj Sarkohi, an Iranian literacy critic, journalist and political activist, describes the political despotism, dictatorship and social injustice he witnessed under the rule of the Shah. He talks about his choice to fight against the Shah’s rule, his first arrest, while in 7th or 8th grade, for buying a banned book, his student activism at university, and further arrests, along with the powerful urge he felt to confront dictatorship.

 

 

More episodes in this series:

Part 2: The First Judiciary Bylaws

Part 3: The First Constitution of the Islamic Republic

Part 4: Khomeini’s Eight-Point Memo

Part 5: The Ambiguous Era of Hashemi Rafsanjani

Part 6: Failed Reforms

Part 7: Ahmadinejad’s Slogans

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