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Islamic Republic of Iran: 45 years of human rights violations
The history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, established after the 1979 revolution, is that of a continuous violation of human rights, with several paroxysms, the latest of which accompanies the “Woman! Life ! Freedom ! » appeared in 2022, after the murder of young Jina Mahsa Amini.
A woman with an X on her mouth during the demonstration in honor of the lives of Iranian women on December 17, 2022 in Turin, Italy. Getty Images - Stefano Guidi
By: Olivier Favier Follow
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For the second time, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to an Iranian woman,
Narges Mohammadi.
It was his children who received it on December 10, 2023 in his name, around an empty chair. Indeed, the recipient had been incarcerated since November 2021 in Evin prison in Tehran. Imprisoned several times since 1998, her multiple convictions now exceed ten years in prison, a sentence further increased in January 2024 for
"propaganda activities against the State",
which did not prevent her from joining a strike. hunger ten days later. Lawyer
Shirin Ebadi
, winner twenty years earlier, has lived in exile in London since 2009.
According to Amnesty International, Iran holds the sad record, in absolute terms, for executions of women. The last one took place in January. If we add to this that of a young mentally handicapped person,
Mohammad Ghobadlou
- the ninth in connection with the protest movement after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini - and four Kurdish activists - whose confessions were extracted under torture - for a total of 88 killings, we gain a tragic insight into the current state of human rights in Iran.
Revolution and terror
The Islamic revolution of 1979 was marked by terror, which resulted in mass executions of supporters of the former Shah regime, then the following year, of many other opponents. Thus
the Toudeh communist party
, which had nevertheless accompanied the Revolution and had been able to participate in the elections, saw its leadership and a thousand of its executives arrested in 1983. “
If we had no proof that the Tudeh Party was made up of spies, other than the support they received from Russia, that would be enough for us to arrest them
,” Khomeini declared.
Suspicions of espionage against American diplomats and the hospitalization of the Shah in New York, whose return the Islamic Republic demands, lead to the taking of hostages by Iranian
“students”
of 52 diplomats and employees within the United States Embassy in Tehran from November 1979.
They remained there for 444 days
. The call by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad in 1980 for the benefit of the Shiite majority, as well as numerous border incidents, led Iraq to invade Iran in September of that year. same year. An eight-year war ensued, with neither victor nor vanquished.
Thousands of members of the People's Mojahedin Organization, also referring to Shiite Islam, were executed from 1981. They had participated in the establishment of the Islamic regime, but had opposed some of its directions. In the war between Iran and Iraq, they sided with the latter. During the summer of 1988, thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience were summarily executed in Iranian prisons. Human rights NGOs report some 4,000 to 5,000 victims. The
Kurdish rebellion
between 1979 and 1982 resulted, once again, in thousands of deaths and displaced people. The constitution was revised in 1989 to strengthen the prerogatives of non-elected institutions controlled by clerics.
The failure of the “reformers”
In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed the Cultural Revolution. The slogans take up the paradox of the Constitution: it is a question of promoting
“an independent culture”
– of any external influence – and
“the Islamization of culture”
.
Press and media are strictly controlled. Universities are closed for two years and then silenced. “
Undesirable
” teachers and students
are fired. The cultural question remains until today a major issue in Iranian society and politics, including for "
reformers” who were able to express a form of “
protest
”.
Formally, their coming to power in 1997 marks a glimmer of hope. Concretely, at the end of 1998, three leading intellectuals and a couple of political leaders were assassinated in less than two months. We talk about
“chain killings”
. Furthermore, conservative clerics silenced all dissent in the press, leading to strong student protests in the
summer of 1999
. Several demonstrators were killed, dozens disappeared and more than a thousand people were arrested. The conservatives returned to power in 2005, without ever having given free rein to the opposition.
Ayatollah Khamenei, supreme leader since 1989, contests any violation of human rights, systematically blaming Westerners for their own failings, starting with the United States and Israel. In 2009, new elections marred by irregularities were the subject of an unprecedented protest, called
the
“green movement”
. The repression left 150 dead, thousands of other people were arrested and tortured.
Women ! Life ! Freedom !
The violent arrest by the moral police of a young Iranian Kurd,
Jina Mahsa Amini,
for wearing inappropriate clothing, led to her death after two days in a coma, on September 16, 2022. An unprecedented protest movement followed by her geographical and social scope. Attacks on women's rights – and in particular the obligation to wear the hijab – crystallize the protest which clearly calls into question the Regime. Minor girls can be married from the age of 13,
or even younger by exception
. The Kurdish slogan
“Woman! Life ! Freedom ! »
becomes the watchword of the movement. The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch puts the death toll from the revolt in April 2023 at least 537 dead.
Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has counted no fewer than 746 executions in 2023, almost triple compared to 2020. Repression has toughened as the anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death approaches and more after
the Hamas attack on Israel
on October 7, 2023, which diverted the attention of the international community. Sanctions against women not wearing the hijab tightened in September. Iran is today the country where the death penalty is applied the most in proportion to the number of inhabitants – and the second in absolute value behind China. In its ranking for 2023, Reporters Without Borders ranks it 177th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom. The association recalls that
70 journalists
were arrested after the death of Masha Amini and that 19 are still imprisoned to this day.
The Amnesty International association emphasizes, for its part, that discrimination against ethnic minorities – particularly Kurds and
Baloch
– is widespread and repeatedly leads to homicides not followed by investigations. The same goes for religious minorities – first and foremost the
Bahais
, dispossessed of their land, housing and businesses, victims of arbitrary arrests and torture.
LGBT+ people
face penalties including flogging or death.
Afghan refugees
face
live ammunition from security forces and are also imprisoned, tortured and forcibly returned despite international law.
Human rights in the Iranian Constitution of 1979
At the end of 1979, a new Constitution established an Islamic Republic. It definitively abolishes the monarchy overthrown in February. From its preamble, Shiite Islam is defined as a central axis of the institutional system. The regime is headed by a supreme guide, an emanation of the Assembly of Experts, which is made up of Shiite religious dignitaries elected by direct universal suffrage. The Supreme Leader directly or indirectly controls the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, whether they are appointed or elected. The President of the Republic, elected by universal suffrage, is therefore not
the head of state
.
In this same preamble of the Constitution, it is specified that
“The judiciary is of vital importance to safeguard the rights of the people in accordance with the path traced by the Islamic movement and to prevent deviations within the Islamic Ummah. "
No further mention is made of human rights in the said preamble
, an issue addressed in Article 20:
"All citizens of the country, men and women, enjoy equal protection of the law as well as all human, political, economic, social and cultural rights, in accordance with Islamic criteria. »
There is therefore no official recognition of their universality, human rights being strictly regulated by Sharia
–
Islamic law.
► Also read:
Iran: the main protest movements against the regime since 1979
Iran: the major dates of the Islamic Republic
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