Two Human Rights Organizations: Iran’s Government Criminalize Justice-Seeking
Two human rights organizations say that Iran’s government, by announcing an unjust ruling against Nasrin Sotoudeh, demonstrates that it considers peaceful activism in pursuit of rights and justice to be a crime. She has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term solely for performing her legal duties.
Human Rights Watch and the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran called on the Iranian government to “immediately and unconditionally release Sotoudeh and other human rights defenders who are spending Nowruz behind prison bars.”
Reza Khandan, Nasrin Sotoudeh’s husband, announced on March 11, 2019, that judicial authorities have formally informed him that 33 years of imprisonment and 148 lashes have been added to Sotoudeh’s current five-year prison sentence. According to Khandan, based on Iran’s penal law, if this verdict is confirmed, Sotoudeh would have to spend 12 years in prison.
Hadi Ghemi, executive director of the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, responded to the ruling by saying: “Nasrin Sotoudeh joins a large group of activists in Iranian prisons who are imprisoned solely for their peaceful activities.”
He added that Iran’s judicial authorities “trample even the most basic standards of rights and justice.”
According to human rights groups, the Iranian government “criminalizes freedom of speech and peaceful assembly” and sentences defenders of these fundamental rights to prison.
Ms. Sotoudeh’s charges consist of a collection of broad security-related offenses, such as “assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security,” “propaganda activities against the system,” opposing mandatory hijab, and providing legal defense to those unjustly arrested.
Khandan told the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that Nasrin Sotoudeh was tried in absentia on December 30 of last year in Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Moghisseh. Ms. Sotoudeh refused to appear in court because she was not allowed to choose her own lawyer and wanted to protest the unjust judicial procedure.
On March 11, Moghisseh told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) that his court sentenced Sotoudeh to five years in prison on the charge of “assembly and conspiracy against the system” and to two years in prison on the charge of “insulting the supreme leader.”
Security forces arrested Nasrin Sotoudeh on June 13, 2018, because she had been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison on September 3, 2016. She had undertaken the legal defense of a woman who had removed her hijab in the street shortly before that.
According to Human Rights Watch and the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, dozens of human rights defenders, including Narges Mohammadi, Atena Daemi, Arash Sadeghi, Golrokh Iraee, Ismail Abdi, Mohammad Habibipour, and others, are currently behind prison bars solely for their peaceful defense of human rights principles.
Source: DW
