Crumbs of human rights

Since the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review in last October, when Iran had the opportunity to declare what actions it has taken to fulfil its treaty obligations and to note other states’ recommendations on how to improve its human rights records, nothing has changed. Inequality and discrimination remained major problems, which can be caught out in relation to both ethnical and religious minorities. Members of religions not recognised by the constitution are persecuted and their rights are still being systematically violated in the country.  A good example for that is the Baha’i community. Various discriminatory measures have been applied in various parts of the public arena against them, amongst other things; the regime barred Baha’is from accessing higher education in universities by considering them “un-islamic” . The authorities have also targeted the members’ private homes and sacred sites. A Baha’i family in the city of Yazd reported that security for...

A week flies by very quickly in our twenties, especially for someone who is awaiting his execution. Saman Naseem has only a few days left. This young Kurdish man was sentenced to death for taking part in a gun battle between Iran’s most powerful security and military organisation (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - IRGC) and the armed opposition group (Party For Free Life of Kurdistan), when he was just 17 years old. Those armed activities led to the death of a member of the IRGC. Saman Naseem, now 22 years old, is awaiting execution for events that occurred when he was a child.  He was tortured by authorities to obtain a ‘confession’ before his trial, sentenced to death first two years ago and then again in April 2013 - after a lower court reviewed the case. His lawyer has also been stopped from pursuing his case for the past six months. Saman’s conviction and death sentence go against Iran’s international commitments on the use of the death penalty against ...