By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHRAN, Iran – New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch released a report calling on the Iranian government to amend or abolish laws that allow the government to arbitrarily suppress and punish individuals for peaceful political expression, association and assembly in breach of international law.

In “‘You Can Detain Anyone for Anything’: Iran’s Broadening Clampdown on Independent Activism,” Human Rights Watch documents the expansion in scope and number of the individuals and activities persecuted by the government over the last two years. The 51-page report accuses Iran of using vague “security laws” to suppress in effect any public expression of dissent. Furthermore, those arrested are subject to prolonged detention without charge, solitary confinement, and torture.

“Dozens of Iranian laws provide the government cover for suppressing any peaceful activity they perceive as critical of their policies,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities can trample over people’s basic rights and still claim to be acting legally.”

Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assumed office in August 2005, the Iranian government has increasingly used “security laws” as a pretext for persecuting civil society activists. A set of laws within Iran’s Islamic Penal Code entitled “Offenses Against the National and International Security of the Country” enables the government to stifle peaceful political activities and deny due process rights to anyone, including women’s rights campaigners, student activists, workers, and journalists and scholars.

The report also claims that Iranian authorities often hold detainees arrested on security grounds in facilities operating outside the mandated prison administration, most notoriously in Section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison. There, detainees are purportedly subject to various psychological and physical abuses during interrogation and in detention.

For more information, please see:

AKI – Political crackdown on public dissent worsens, says rights group – 9 January 2008

Albany Times Union – Human rights? Not in Ahmadinejad’s Iran – 8 January 2008

Human Rights Watch – End widespread crackdown on civil society – 7 January 2008