Interior Minister defends "worrying" plan for NGOs

In an interview with ILNA news agency, the Iranian Minister of Interior defended the plan called "Protection of Organizations," which has caused concern among non-governmental organizations in Iran due to the issue of the entry of the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence agency into the field of verifying the qualifications of applicants.

On Monday, September 4, Ahmad Vahidi, in response to the question that "the new parliamentary bill regarding non-governmental organizations has raised issues that have caused concerns for these organizations," said that "there are no concerns in this regard."

The Interior Minister claimed that this plan is to enable NGOs to "quickly obtain the necessary permits and prevent the dispersion we are currently facing," and that there is no concern about this.

This is while civil society activists told the newspaper "Etemad" in a brainstorming session they held in recent weeks that one of the main objections of activists in this field is the involvement of military institutions in the process of reviewing the qualifications of activists in this sector.

In this meeting, which was attended by 10 analysts and experts in this field, it was emphasized that this approach "is far from the spirit of civic and party activities and removes non-governmental organizations from the form of being popular and turns them into a tool in the hands of established governments."

According to these experts, "There are several articles and clauses that create numerous problems in the activities of the organizations. In general, the fact that the verification of the qualifications of the applicants is the responsibility of the IRGC Intelligence is one of the main problems."

According to the Etemad report, "Moving with the lights off, trying to restrict, involving governmental institutions in the issue, etc. are some of the similarities that this plan has with the cyberspace protection plan."

Recent governments in Iran have always moved to further restrict non-governmental organizations, and on Tuesday, Mehdi Amiripour, deputy director of social partnerships at the country's Social Affairs Organization, said about the state of non-governmental organizations that "I can boldly say that out of the 8,000 organizations registered with the Ministry of Interior, between 15 and 20 percent are active."

In one of the recent newsworthy developments regarding non-governmental organizations in Iran, the charitable organization "Imam Ali Society" announced on June 22 of this year that it had approved the order to dissolve itself, describing the issuance of the order to dissolve it as a way of "weakening civil institutions."

The Imam Ali Society is a charitable non-governmental organization that in recent years has been accused by some media outlets close to the Revolutionary Guards of working against the regime under the guise of helping the needy, an accusation that the organization and a significant number of civil society activists deny.

UN human rights experts on Wednesday expressed serious concern about the “violent repression” of civil society in Iran, including members of labor unions and teachers who have been arrested for protesting low wages and poor working conditions.

Source: Rayo Farda