Iran’s contested presidential election of 2009 illustrated for many Iranians the depth of political divisions over citizens’ rights in their country.
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 since it signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1968.
This episode looks at citizens’ rights during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). Interviewees examine conditions both before and after Iran’s contested 2009 presidential election.
Mehrangiz Kar, a lawyer and human rights activist, says that religious radicals involved in the development of Iran’s political system after 1979 considered modernity decadent but came to face a society unlike the one they had envisioned. Because some people – including those who had supported the revolution – chose a modern lifestyle, radicals sought to divide society by painting them as “dark satanic figures” influenced by monarchy and imperialism.
Ramin Jahanbegloo, a philosopher and academic, describes how security forces arrested him at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport in 2006 and forced him to confess that he was part of a conspiracy to overthrow Iran’s political system using “soft subversion” and a network of connections he had formed at international conferences. Jahanbegloo says he was the first person to propagate the discourse of non-violence in Iran, and that authorities arrested him because they perceived the idea of non-violent struggle as a threat.
Ardeshir Amir Arjomand, a former adviser to Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, says that by 2009 he felt that Iranian authorities had completely abandoned the rule of law, and that Iranian society was witnessing the disintegration of the modern state. That, he says, is why, with the presidential election approaching, he joined Mousavi’s campaign. Mousavi’s manifesto on human rights, he believed, reflected a developed understanding of citizens’ rights. But following the election, he says, authorities systematically violated Iranians’ right to a fair election and their right to protest afterward.
Shirin Ebadi, human rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate, talks about her role in raising awareness about the human rights situation in Iran following the 2009 election. She prepared reports to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the European Union. Ebadi describes how the government tried to silence her by confiscating her assets in Iran, imprisoning her sister and her husband, and forcing her husband to confess against her on state television. She also describes how the government pressured her colleague and friend, human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, not to defend her in Iranian courts. Sotoudeh refused and, partly for this reason, was arrested and imprisoned.
Masoud Alizadeh is one of the survivors of Kahrizak Detention Centre, where protesters were severely abused in 2009. He describes his arrest during a demonstration, and the torture and deprivation he and other prisoners endured. He recalls fellow inmates being sexually assaulted by hardened criminals, and the death of a fellow prisoner, apparently from torture-related injuries. While in Kahrizak, he says, he was ordered to confess to the murder of Neda-Agha Soltan, a young protester shot dead on the street during a demonstration in June 2009. He refused. Alizadeh also describes his later detention in Evin Prison, and authorities’ failure to provide justice to those abused at Kahrizak.
More episodes in this series:
Part 1: Iran and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Part 2: The First Judiciary Bylaws
Part 3: The First Constitution of the Islamic Republic
Part 4: Khomeini’s Eight-Point Memo