Iran Treating Badly Human Rights Activist Nasrin Sotoudeh
By Jason Rezaian
September 23, 2020
This past weekend, Iran’s most prominent human rights
defender, Nasrin Sotoudeh, entered the hospital because of heart and
respiratory problems resulting from a nearly six-week-long hunger strike.
Sotoudeh is a veteran of this extreme form of protest, but this time the
circumstances are much direr for her and other political prisoners in the
country.
Iranian
lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh smiles at her house in Tehran in 2013. (Behrouz
Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)
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On Aug. 12, the 57-year-old lawyer stopped eating to
protest the scandalous mistreatment of prisoners of conscience currently
detained in Iran. The refusal of Iranian authorities to take any meaningful
precautions to protect the health of political prisoners during the novel
coronavirus pandemic dramatizes the depths of the government’s contempt for
civil society and basic human rights.
For years Sotoudeh has been on the legal front lines,
defending Iranians who dare to question the Islamic republic’s archaic laws and
their arbitrary enforcement. In recent years, she has represented women who
protested the forced hijab and those calling for the end to the death penalty.
The country’s economy is falling apart — thanks to
decades of state mismanagement, the pressure of indiscriminate U.S. sanctions
and the third wave of coronavirus infections. So you might think that the
regime in Tehran has more pressing battles than suppressing dissent.
At the moment, however, the leaders of Iran simply do
not appear to care about public outrage over the regime’s abuses, whether
domestic or international.
That hasn’t always been the case. “In the past, the
government has backed down when it came to Nasrin and they were not happy they
had to do it,” Reza Khandan, Sotoudeh’s husband, told me in an email. “They are
afraid of her becoming a role model and proving her point. That’s why this time
they are trying to be really hard on her.”
I first met Sotoudeh and Khandan at their home in
Tehran, seven years ago this week. It was a very different time. Sotoudeh had
just been released from Evin prison after serving about half of a six-year
sentence for allegedly acting against national security and spreading
propaganda against the government.
Glad to be reunited with her family, she was far from
satisfied. “I am happy, but I’m worried for my friends who are still in prison
without having committed any crimes,” she said.
Yet she was optimistic, telling me that she thought
her release was a gesture by Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani.
“Rouhani is sending a message to the world and he is engaging, first with his
own people and then with the rest of the world,” she said.
Now, as Rouhani’s presidency stumbles through its final
months, the opposite seems true.
The Iranian political machine has apparently concluded
that there is no reason it should listen to any international pressure or
criticism, since no entity with any international authority is doing anything
to hold Iran to account for its gross human rights violations.
This month the government executed national wrestling
champion Navid Afkari for taking part in anti-regime protests in 2018.
Authorities claim he killed a plainclothes security agent of the state in those
riots, but they have never produced any evidence implicating Afkari in that
death. Before he was hanged, he repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, saying his
conviction was based on a false confession extracted under torture.
President Trump called on Iran to halt the execution,
but the regime proceeded as if it wasn’t paying attention. And that was the end
of it — presumably because the current U.S. administration has taken zero
action to impede the Iranian regime’s brutality. Instead, the punitive measures
on Iran, in the form of blanket economic sanctions and travel bans, end up
hurting ordinary people rather than deterring the regime’s thuggish instincts.
In recent weeks, France’s foreign minister, the German
Judges Association, the European Film Academy, the Berlin International Film
Festival and PEN America have all called for Sotoudeh’s release.
Notably, former vice president Joe Biden, the
Democratic candidate for president, wrote an opinion article in which he
promised to call out “the regime for its ongoing violations of human rights” if
he wins election in November. He singled out Sotoudeh as one of his likely
priorities. If Biden were to stick to that pledge as president, it would be the
most radical change to U.S. policy on Iran after decades of failures.
Human rights activists in Iran have often heard
hopeful words from Washington, but the rhetoric has rarely been followed by
action. Now they are urging American and other international leaders to act
rather than simply pay lip service to the issue.
“Human rights are vital,” Khandan told me.
“Downplaying their importance has already led to human and environmental
disasters. International leaders should take human rights out of their display
cases and bring them to the table.”
A forthcoming documentary film about Sotoudeh and her
work, shot mostly in Tehran and narrated by Oscar-winning actor Olivia Colman,
will ensure that her vital work remains in the forefront of global awareness.
The U.S president might not care, but the rest of the world should remember that activists such as Sotoudeh are giving countless
Iranians a voice against the injustice that they would not otherwise have.
Original
Headline: Why Iran’s leading dissident
is fighting for her life
Source: The Washington Post
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/iran-treating-badly-human-rights/d/122933
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