What are Iran’s Goals in Iraq?
By: Mustafa Hijri
Currently, Iranian forces alongside with Shiite militias, who are funded and controlled by Iran, are fighting the Daash in Tikrit and other places in Iraq. The Daash , or Daesh, gained international attention following the seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. However, more than a year before Daesh seized control of Mosul, our party publicly warned, based on credible intelligence, that Iranian agents had infiltrated Daesh and that if unchecked, the expansion of this terrorist group would serve Iranian interests in Syria and beyond. Media outlets in the Gulf countries, citing their own intelligence sources, also warned about this reality.
To some analysts and policymakers in the West, these claims might seem puzzling. Some might even dismiss them as yet another conspiracy theory emanating from the Middle East.
However, aside from the intelligence on Iran’s infiltration of Daesh, past Iranian actions, open sources and the consequences of the rise of Daesh can be cited in support of those claims.
First, Iran’s support and funding of various terrorist groups throughout the Middle East is well known. For example, in a report by the Library of Congress on Iran’s Minister of Intelligence and Security, it is stated that Iran “provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224.”
While the Iranian regime adheres to a fundamentalist interpretation of Shiite Islam and is in conflict with the Sunnis, Tehran has on numerous occasions supported terrorist Sunni groups to destabilize strategically important countries in the Middle East. Iranian infiltration of and support for Daesh should therefore come as no surprise, although Iranian forces are fighting the group in Iraq.
Second, once the Iranian regime and its Syrian ally realized that secular forces who were taking the lead in the fight against the combined forces of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah could become a viable opposition force, they capitalized on Daesh’s split from al-Qaida and in various ways made sure that Daesh – which had set out to eliminate all other opposition groups – could become the dominant group in Syria. At the same time, Iraq’s former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, released many members of Daesh from prison that subsequently joined the group in Syria. Iran, the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq and the Assad regime in Syria were fearful that the secular forces in Syria could become an ideologically attractive ally for the Western powers.
To discredit the Syrian opposition and paint it as a radical Sunni movement dominated by a vicious terrorist organization like Daesh, their aim was to compel the Western powers to reconsider their plans for regime change and accept the Assad regime as the lesser evil compared to a possible Daesh takeover in Syria. To this end, Iran and the Assad regime gave Daesh free leeway to establish its control over Raaqah in Syria, from where it later could expand into other parts of Syria and, as it turned out, even Iraq. Although this too might sound as bizarre, reports had for some time indicated the expansion of Daesh was indeed facilitated by Iran and Syria. For example, the Washington Post reported on June 10, 2014, the following: “Moderate rebel groups complain that Daash ’s rise has been aided by the relative disinterest shown by Syrian government forces in the areas under the group’s control, which are rarely subjected to airstrikes and bombardment. That has helped the group set up its own version of a government.”
Third, irrespective of whether one finds existing intelligence or the open sources in that regard as credible, the rise and expansion of Daesh has as a matter of fact served the interests of the Islamic regime in Iran. In other words, irrespective of Iranian intentions and schemes, the consequences of Daesh’s emergence as a formidable fighting force in Syria and, later, its expansion into Iraq has served the interests of the regime in Tehran.
Although Iran is allied with some Shiite groups in Iraq, the regime in Tehran has defined its strategic interests in Iraq in three ways. The first is to preclude the emergence of a federal democracy in Iraq that is stable and economically and politically strong enough to become a regional power with the capacity to block Iranian hegemony. Although the regime in Tehran is rhetorically committed to “friendly” relations with Iraq, it pursues a policy of divide and conquer toward its Shiite-dominated neighbor. The second strategic objective of Iran in Iraq is to make sure that democracy does not take root. In fact, Iran’s concerted effort is to make sure that democracy is associated with chaos and instability. The third Iranian strategic interest in Iraq is to undermine the Kurdistan regional government and make sure that the Kurds do not progress further. Iran is fearful of the Kurdistan regional government and its drive toward independence because of its demonstration effect on other parts of Kurdistan.
It is noteworthy that Daesh first stated that it would seize Baghdad once it consolidated itself in Mosul. However, Daesh instead attacked South Kurdistan. This came at a time when the Iraqi-Kurdish leadership called for a referendum on independence.
In short, Daesh’s expansion into Iraq, which was facilitated by Iran, the Assad regime and the Maliki government, has made Iraq even weaker and thus more amenable to Iranian control. The Iraqi army has been reduced substantially. Meanwhile, Shiite militias that answer to Iran have become the most powerful military forces in Iraq. These militias terrorize the Sunni population and thus perpetuate the sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. In fact, Daesh has helped the Shiite government in Iraq in this regard by eliminating prominent figures and tribal leaders with the Sunni community, thus making the Sunnis even more vulnerable. At the same time, the Kurdistan region’s war with Daesh has drained the limited resources of the Kurdish government, resulted in hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, several thousand dead and injured Peshmergas, as well as other dangerous consequences for Iraq at large and the Kurdistan region in particular.
In the midst of all this, there are naïve journalists, pundits and even some government officials in the Western world who have bought into the propaganda by the Iranian regime’s lobby that it is a force for “stability” in the region. The regime in Tehran, which is the major source of instability throughout the Middle East, is painted in some circles as a possible stabilizing factor in Iraq and elsewhere.
However, as recently warned by General David H. Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, the strategic threat to stability, democracy and western interests in Iraq and Syria is the Iranian regime. According to Gen. Petraeus, Iran is on the verge of creating a terrorist proxy similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus posing a strategic threat to the balance of power in the region.
In spite of the economic siege on South Kurdistan, the Kurdish government and the brave Peshmerga forces have managed to not only withstand the multiple military attacks by Daesh, but also to push back this terrorist group from Kurdish territory. Once Daesh is defeated, a war between the Peshmerga Forces and the militias of Iran in Iraq is likely. This is likely to start in Kirkuk and other strategically important places.
To prevent a situation where the West has to decide whether to fight a war with Iran’s proxies in Iraq, the United States and its allies should increase their support for the Kurdistan region. Only through a visible presence in combination with financial and military support for the Kurdistan region can the West undermine Iran’s drive for hegemony in the Middle East.
jueves, 26 de marzo de 2015
viernes, 13 de marzo de 2015
"A republic of the Mind"
REPUBLIC OF THE MIND
Although it was crushed soon after I left, the self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan lives on for me as a republic of the mind that you can never completely destroy, writes Mark Colvin.
This is a story about five days I spent in a place that never existed.
It happened 35 years ago, on my first major assignment as a foreign correspondent.
It was five months in to the Iranian hostage crisis: just a couple of months after the events depicted in the film Argo.
April 1980.
If you've seen that film, although it bends the truth considerably as it goes on, its first half is a reasonable depiction of the chaotic, violent and utterly unpredictable atmosphere of Tehran at that time.
Then on April 24 came the US rescue raid, Operation Eagle Claw, which failed so spectacularly in the Dasht-e Kavir desert, with American aircraft crashing into each other in a sandstorm.
My cameraman Les Seymour and I covered the reaction to that, including an anti-American demonstration of an estimated half a million people when we were beaten up by young Hezbollah thugs.
After a few more days, the stories in the capital began to seem repetitive: another car bomb, another riot, but somehow nothing new to say.
Let's go and cover an actual war, was basically how the BBC correspondent Alex Brodie pitched it to me. Let's go to this place up in the north-west that's trying to make itself independent of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.
The self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan was a place that did not exist in the eyes of the country's central government, of the United Nations, or in the consciousness of most of the world.
But it was a place that had been fighting for its life since the spring of the previous year. A place whose capital had been besieged and sacked by the Iranian army, with its American equipment inherited from the Shah, but then retaken by ill-equipped Kurdish Peshmergan.
Alex's friend and interpreter, Bahram Dehqani Tafti, an Anglo-Iranian poet and teacher not long out of Oxford university, said he'd come with us and translate.
We took a plane to Tabriz, and drove towards Kurdistan with absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
Eventually we reached a ramshackle sort of border post, an oddity given that officially there was no border: how could there be, to a place that didn't exist?
The sergeant told us to go and see his major, and detailed a young recruit to sit in the car as we drove there. He sat between me and Bahram, with his rifle between his knees, idly picking his teeth with the sight at the end of the barrel.
Don't look, said Bahram, but he's got the safety catch off.
The next five minutes on a bumpy track were spent praying he wouldn't blow his head off, in which case we'd undoubtedly get the blame.
It was the first time, but not the last, in my career that I was to reflect how closely foreign correspondent work still resembled Evelyn Waugh's great comic novel Scoop.
When we reached the major, Bahram somehow persuaded him to let us continue.
Before dusk we were in Mahabad, the capital, a neatly laid out town that bore few traces of the mighty battle to recapture it only a few months before.
What I remember, after the near anarchy of Tehran, was an aura of peace and military discipline: well-organised, neatly dressed soldiers who knew how to handle their weapons.
"A Kurd kills with one shot," one of them told me. "We have always been short of ammunition."
In Mahabad, we met the Kurds' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ezzedine Husseini, a man who had always argued for a secular republic and insisted that clergy like himself had no business running a country, and their political leader, Dr Qassemlou, a Sorbonne-educated democrat who spoke eight languages and espoused Kurdish nationalism all his life.
Then we drove south, because that's where the Iranian Army counter-attack was coming from.
We thought they were a long way off, south of Sanandaj, but before we got to Saqqez, halfway there, a helicopter gunship rose over a bluff about 100 metres away, its heavy machine gun pointed straight at us. It hovered for what seemed like an hour but was probably a minute, then peeled away.
I was congratulating myself on my own coolness not long after when we stopped. Then I got out off the car and my knees literally gave way. I was on the ground in a heap. Your body tells the truth about fear, even when you try to lie.
We got to Saqqez and debated whether to go on. There was a convoy leaving for Sanandaj straight away, and maybe not another till the next day.
We erred on the side of caution and sat talking to local Kurdish leaders, drinking small cups of this sweet coffee and smoking. We wondered if we should have just gone on in the convoy. Then a man, white-faced and shaking, came in and started talking to the chief. The remnants of the convoy we would have taken were on their way back.
We filmed the damaged trucks that had survived, the survivors and the charred bodies of the dead. An air-to ground rocket attack is an ugly thing.
I've seldom felt so remote from the world. We got lost on the way back to Mahabad, in the dead of night. We pulled into a hamlet and asked the way. It was the provincial capital, after all. "I've heard of it," came the unhelpful reply.
We found it the next morning.
Eventually we got back to Tabriz, then to Tehran. Two days later, on his way to my hotel to translate and transcribe the interviews, Bahram Dehqani Tafti was pulled over, driven to Evin prison, and murdered.
Sanandaj soon fell, then Saqqez. Mahabad held on a long time, but it fell, too. Sheikh Ezzedine spent his last 20 years in Swedish exile. Dr Qassemlou went into exile too, and Iranian government agents assassinated him in Vienna in 1989. No-one was ever charged.
Iranian Kurdistan never existed for the world. Neither Iran nor the big powers have ever wanted a Kurdish state: not in Iran, Iraq, Syria or Turkey, regardless of who's in power.
But it has lived on for me, always there, when I saw how Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds just over the border in Halabja, and now when I see ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa and driven at huge cost out of Kobane.
It wasn't a Utopia, just a reasonable attempt at a decent autonomous state, and although it was crushed, it lives on for me in a parallel reality, a republic of the mind of the sort that you can never completely crush.
This is an edited version of a speech delivered at the Melbourne Town Hall at a night of storytelling to mark the 5th anniversary of the Wheeler Centre, on the theme "Five".
Mark Colvin is the presenter of ABC Radio's current affairs program PM.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/colvin-a-republic-of-the-mind-my-visit-to-iranian-kurdistan/6115558
Although it was crushed soon after I left, the self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan lives on for me as a republic of the mind that you can never completely destroy, writes Mark Colvin.
This is a story about five days I spent in a place that never existed.
It happened 35 years ago, on my first major assignment as a foreign correspondent.
It was five months in to the Iranian hostage crisis: just a couple of months after the events depicted in the film Argo.
April 1980.
If you've seen that film, although it bends the truth considerably as it goes on, its first half is a reasonable depiction of the chaotic, violent and utterly unpredictable atmosphere of Tehran at that time.
Then on April 24 came the US rescue raid, Operation Eagle Claw, which failed so spectacularly in the Dasht-e Kavir desert, with American aircraft crashing into each other in a sandstorm.
My cameraman Les Seymour and I covered the reaction to that, including an anti-American demonstration of an estimated half a million people when we were beaten up by young Hezbollah thugs.
After a few more days, the stories in the capital began to seem repetitive: another car bomb, another riot, but somehow nothing new to say.
Let's go and cover an actual war, was basically how the BBC correspondent Alex Brodie pitched it to me. Let's go to this place up in the north-west that's trying to make itself independent of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.
The self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan was a place that did not exist in the eyes of the country's central government, of the United Nations, or in the consciousness of most of the world.
But it was a place that had been fighting for its life since the spring of the previous year. A place whose capital had been besieged and sacked by the Iranian army, with its American equipment inherited from the Shah, but then retaken by ill-equipped Kurdish Peshmergan.
Alex's friend and interpreter, Bahram Dehqani Tafti, an Anglo-Iranian poet and teacher not long out of Oxford university, said he'd come with us and translate.
We took a plane to Tabriz, and drove towards Kurdistan with absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
Eventually we reached a ramshackle sort of border post, an oddity given that officially there was no border: how could there be, to a place that didn't exist?
The sergeant told us to go and see his major, and detailed a young recruit to sit in the car as we drove there. He sat between me and Bahram, with his rifle between his knees, idly picking his teeth with the sight at the end of the barrel.
Don't look, said Bahram, but he's got the safety catch off.
The next five minutes on a bumpy track were spent praying he wouldn't blow his head off, in which case we'd undoubtedly get the blame.
It was the first time, but not the last, in my career that I was to reflect how closely foreign correspondent work still resembled Evelyn Waugh's great comic novel Scoop.
When we reached the major, Bahram somehow persuaded him to let us continue.
Before dusk we were in Mahabad, the capital, a neatly laid out town that bore few traces of the mighty battle to recapture it only a few months before.
What I remember, after the near anarchy of Tehran, was an aura of peace and military discipline: well-organised, neatly dressed soldiers who knew how to handle their weapons.
"A Kurd kills with one shot," one of them told me. "We have always been short of ammunition."
In Mahabad, we met the Kurds' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ezzedine Husseini, a man who had always argued for a secular republic and insisted that clergy like himself had no business running a country, and their political leader, Dr Qassemlou, a Sorbonne-educated democrat who spoke eight languages and espoused Kurdish nationalism all his life.
Then we drove south, because that's where the Iranian Army counter-attack was coming from.
We thought they were a long way off, south of Sanandaj, but before we got to Saqqez, halfway there, a helicopter gunship rose over a bluff about 100 metres away, its heavy machine gun pointed straight at us. It hovered for what seemed like an hour but was probably a minute, then peeled away.
I was congratulating myself on my own coolness not long after when we stopped. Then I got out off the car and my knees literally gave way. I was on the ground in a heap. Your body tells the truth about fear, even when you try to lie.
We got to Saqqez and debated whether to go on. There was a convoy leaving for Sanandaj straight away, and maybe not another till the next day.
We erred on the side of caution and sat talking to local Kurdish leaders, drinking small cups of this sweet coffee and smoking. We wondered if we should have just gone on in the convoy. Then a man, white-faced and shaking, came in and started talking to the chief. The remnants of the convoy we would have taken were on their way back.
We filmed the damaged trucks that had survived, the survivors and the charred bodies of the dead. An air-to ground rocket attack is an ugly thing.
I've seldom felt so remote from the world. We got lost on the way back to Mahabad, in the dead of night. We pulled into a hamlet and asked the way. It was the provincial capital, after all. "I've heard of it," came the unhelpful reply.
We found it the next morning.
Eventually we got back to Tabriz, then to Tehran. Two days later, on his way to my hotel to translate and transcribe the interviews, Bahram Dehqani Tafti was pulled over, driven to Evin prison, and murdered.
Sanandaj soon fell, then Saqqez. Mahabad held on a long time, but it fell, too. Sheikh Ezzedine spent his last 20 years in Swedish exile. Dr Qassemlou went into exile too, and Iranian government agents assassinated him in Vienna in 1989. No-one was ever charged.
Iranian Kurdistan never existed for the world. Neither Iran nor the big powers have ever wanted a Kurdish state: not in Iran, Iraq, Syria or Turkey, regardless of who's in power.
But it has lived on for me, always there, when I saw how Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds just over the border in Halabja, and now when I see ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa and driven at huge cost out of Kobane.
It wasn't a Utopia, just a reasonable attempt at a decent autonomous state, and although it was crushed, it lives on for me in a parallel reality, a republic of the mind of the sort that you can never completely crush.
This is an edited version of a speech delivered at the Melbourne Town Hall at a night of storytelling to mark the 5th anniversary of the Wheeler Centre, on the theme "Five".
Mark Colvin is the presenter of ABC Radio's current affairs program PM.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/colvin-a-republic-of-the-mind-my-visit-to-iranian-kurdistan/6115558
Remembering Sheikh Ezzaddin Hosseini
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF SHEIKH EZADDIN HOSSEINI
http://rojhelat.info/en/?p=8223
The characteristic Sheikh Ezaddin Hosseini (in Kurdish Şêx Êzedîn Hisênî) who was famous for its national and religious role, lost his life due to illness four years ago in a hospital in Sweden. This is a short presentation of his character. He was born in 1921 in the city Bane, East of Kurdistan (Rojhelat). He grow up in a religious family.
Sheikh Ezaddin and his father performed a constant struggle and process against Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was in power in Iran during that time. He also had a close and continuous contact with Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (in Kurdish, Şêx Mehmud Berzencî) who was a Kurdish leader in town Silêmanî in Southern Kurdistan.
Despite of being a religious person, however he joined a Kurdish political community (JêKaf, Komeley Jiyanewey Kurdistan) as a member in Bokan city in 1943. After the Iranian revolution overthrew in 1979, fled the leader Reza Shah. During this time it was Kurdistan for a short time under control, and neither the Iranian forces or the government had no control of the Rojhelat. He was elected as a member of the Kurdistan diplomatic representative groups in order to negotiate with the new next in the Iranian regime, and he was elected as the all Kurdish political passenger portions and the people of Kurdistan. He was actively attended almost all the meetings with the Iranian regime existing rights of the Kurds in Rojhelat and Iran.
After the massacre and the bloody crimes of the Iranian regime in Sine in 1979, he attended a meeting with the regime’s leaders, Rafsanjani, Bani Sadr, Beheshti and Taleghani. He asked, what is the difference between a crown and a turban? Where he answer that they do not exist any difference, but that the crown has been replaced with a turban, they was no change and nothing has changed in reality, they both are same to the Kurds. After some ongoing and regular meetings with the Iranian regime, he pronounced that because of the lack of clarity about containing and quality of those authorities and the Iranian regime promised to the Kurdish parties, and Kurds decided to boycott the referendum of the Iranian Islamic regime.
About a month later, he was invited by the Iranian regime to a meeting in Tehran and Qom, during the journey to meet Khomeini, the Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and a number of officials in the Iranian Islamist regime. After Khomeini’s declaration of Jihad against Kurdish nation in November 1979, Sheikh with many fighters went to Kurdistan mountains.
Later on, because the Iranian governments responded Kurdish demand for freedom and their rights by attacks, mass killings and massacres, Sheikh Ezaddin invited Kurdish people to join the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, Thousands of Kurds in Rojhelat joined the Kurdish freedom fighters to protect themselves and fight for their rights and freedom.
In 1985 he went towards the border of South Kurdistan mountains and continued his struggling. Finally, he went to Sweden in 1990. Again he continued his national campaign for Kurdish question and played an important role in the establishment of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK).
Sheikh Ezaddin died on February 10, 2011, in “Akademiska sjukhuset” a hospital in Uppsala, city of Sweden
http://rojhelat.info/en/?p=8223
The characteristic Sheikh Ezaddin Hosseini (in Kurdish Şêx Êzedîn Hisênî) who was famous for its national and religious role, lost his life due to illness four years ago in a hospital in Sweden. This is a short presentation of his character. He was born in 1921 in the city Bane, East of Kurdistan (Rojhelat). He grow up in a religious family.
Sheikh Ezaddin and his father performed a constant struggle and process against Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was in power in Iran during that time. He also had a close and continuous contact with Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (in Kurdish, Şêx Mehmud Berzencî) who was a Kurdish leader in town Silêmanî in Southern Kurdistan.
Despite of being a religious person, however he joined a Kurdish political community (JêKaf, Komeley Jiyanewey Kurdistan) as a member in Bokan city in 1943. After the Iranian revolution overthrew in 1979, fled the leader Reza Shah. During this time it was Kurdistan for a short time under control, and neither the Iranian forces or the government had no control of the Rojhelat. He was elected as a member of the Kurdistan diplomatic representative groups in order to negotiate with the new next in the Iranian regime, and he was elected as the all Kurdish political passenger portions and the people of Kurdistan. He was actively attended almost all the meetings with the Iranian regime existing rights of the Kurds in Rojhelat and Iran.
After the massacre and the bloody crimes of the Iranian regime in Sine in 1979, he attended a meeting with the regime’s leaders, Rafsanjani, Bani Sadr, Beheshti and Taleghani. He asked, what is the difference between a crown and a turban? Where he answer that they do not exist any difference, but that the crown has been replaced with a turban, they was no change and nothing has changed in reality, they both are same to the Kurds. After some ongoing and regular meetings with the Iranian regime, he pronounced that because of the lack of clarity about containing and quality of those authorities and the Iranian regime promised to the Kurdish parties, and Kurds decided to boycott the referendum of the Iranian Islamic regime.
About a month later, he was invited by the Iranian regime to a meeting in Tehran and Qom, during the journey to meet Khomeini, the Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and a number of officials in the Iranian Islamist regime. After Khomeini’s declaration of Jihad against Kurdish nation in November 1979, Sheikh with many fighters went to Kurdistan mountains.
Later on, because the Iranian governments responded Kurdish demand for freedom and their rights by attacks, mass killings and massacres, Sheikh Ezaddin invited Kurdish people to join the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, Thousands of Kurds in Rojhelat joined the Kurdish freedom fighters to protect themselves and fight for their rights and freedom.
In 1985 he went towards the border of South Kurdistan mountains and continued his struggling. Finally, he went to Sweden in 1990. Again he continued his national campaign for Kurdish question and played an important role in the establishment of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK).
Sheikh Ezaddin died on February 10, 2011, in “Akademiska sjukhuset” a hospital in Uppsala, city of Sweden
Iranian Kurdistan News- March 9th
Home / Iran / Iranian Kurdistan News in brief / Iranian Kurdistan News in brief – March 9, 2015
Iranian Kurdistan News in brief – March 9, 2015
Posted on March 9, 2015 by Editorial Staff in Iranian Kurdistan News in brief
Iranian Kurds remember Halabja chemical attack
Students commemorated the anniversary of the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja in ethnically Kurdish cities in what is unofficially known as Iranian Kurdistan. Last week, Kurdish students at Tehran University’s Social Sciences Department organized an event for the 27th anniversary of the Halabja attack and another, less well-known, chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Sardasht, located in northwest of Iran. The commemoration was part of the annual tradition of remembering those died in the Halabja chemical attack in Iraqi Kurdistan. Warplanes of the government of former dictator Saddam Hussein dropped internationally banned chemical weapons on March 16, 1988, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians and injuring tens of thousands more. Last week, students in the Kurdish-populated regions organized similar activities in cities of Mariwan, Bokan, Jawanroud and elsewhere. According to news reports, about 1,000 students, academics, Iranian members of parliament and Halabja residents attended the anniversary in Tehran University. Sardasht and Piranshahr’s representative to the Iranian parliament also attended the commemoration…rudaw.net
Where are Kurdish political prisoners sentenced to death?
Despite the transfer of prisoners sentenced to death two week agao, Saman Nasim, Sirwan Najawi, Ibrahim Issapour, Ali Afshari, Habib Afshari and Younes Aghaiyan from section 12 of Urmiye prison, their relatives have not been given a clear answer so far. According to Human Righst Activists in Iran “HRANA”, all 6 political prisoners on Wednesday 18th February from section 12 of Urmiye prion were transferred to a unknown place. Because of the Saman was just 17 years during his detention and according to international law this is a subject to the convention for the Rights of Child, different organizations and human rights groups showed reaction because of the risk of execution. Now despite after 12 days of the transfer of the prisoners, there is no information available on the condition and the fate of the political prisoners. One of Saman’s close relatives said: ”We have not been given any information, we only got his items handed back to us.” An informed source regarding Younes Aghaiyan and Sirwan Najawi said: ”The families has been told verbally that their children are in the prison of Zanjan, despite several days since the claim have been mentioned, the families has not been able to confirm any meeting or contact or any information regarding their condition.”…diclehaber.com
23 Kurdish women activists in Iranian Prison
Local lawyers in Iranian Kurdistan say that 23 Kurdish women activists are currently behind bars in Iran. According to the lawyers, 21 of the women have been sentenced to a total of 68 years in prison. The remaining two women, Amal Sheikho and Zeynab Jalalyan, have been sentenced to life. Among the jailed women were two from the Iranian Kurdish city of Mahabad in east Kurdistan (Rojhelat) who were jailed for four years in total, and four from Bahai Urmia who received terms of seven years in total. The lawyers also revealed that nine other Kurdish women have been jailed, but neither the reason for their detention, nor the time they are slated to serve is known. More than 100 female Iranian activists are in jail, say the lawyers. Iranian authorities are often criticised for violating women’s rights. basnews.com | Ekurd.net
Free Jalalian
March 8, 2015
Rights groups call on UN experts to intervene on behalf of a Kurdish woman activist on the seventh anniversary of her arrest on Women’s Day
http://justice4iran.org/publication/call-for-action/rights-groups-call-on-un-experts-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-a-kurdish-womens-rights-activist/
London, 8 March 2015 – In a petition filed this week, REDRESS and Justice for Iran have urged the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to intervene on behalf of a female Kurdish activist who is currently serving a life sentence in Iran after she was arrested on International Women’s Day seven years ago.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment. They also request that she is protected from further torture and ill-treatment and given access to all the necessary medical treatment, including urgent care for a degenerative eye condition that is causing her to lose her sight.
In 2008, Jalalian was sentenced to death for “enmity against God” (moharebeh) by Kermanshah Revolutionary Court for her alleged membership in the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an armed Kurdish opposition group. She was not granted access to a lawyer during her summary trial and was sentenced to death despite the lack of evidence about her participation in the armed activities of the PJAK. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest. One of her last activities took place in an early visit to the Iranian Kurdistan prior to her arrest in March 2008, when she visited a girls’ high school in Kamiaran to talk about the importance of International Women’s Day and distributed flowers to the students.
Jalalian is currently serving a life sentence in Khoy Prison, western Iran. Prior to being transferred to Khoy Prison in early 2015, Jalalian was held in Dizel Abad Prison, near Kermanshah, where she received inadequate treatment for a series of ailments that her family believe result from the beating she has endured. Before her trial, Jalalian spent eight months in pre-trial detention in a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre, where she says she was subjected to severe torture and ill-treatment to force her to confess to false charges. This included long interrogations while being blindfolded, beatings, flogging under her feet, threats of rape and solitary confinement. She also says she was tortured during a period of detention in Evin Prison in 2010.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment.
Jalalian suffers from intestinal infections and internal bleeding. She also suffers from conjunctiva, but prison authorities have repeatedly refused to allow her access to an eye specialist outside of the prison to get the required surgical treatment. Her health has deteriorated to a point that she currently needs assistance to perform daily tasks. Her eye condition is reported to be rapidly deteriorating. On 16 June 2014, Amnesty International issued an urgent action calling on the Iranian authorities to give Jalalian the medical treatment she required.
Since Jalaian has been jailed her family has only been able to visit her a few times and has only been allowed to have two-minute telephone conversations with her once a week.
A copy of the Petition has also been submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For further information, please contact: Shadi Sadr, Justice for Iran Executive Director, at shadi.sadr@justiceforiran.org; +44 (0) 2034411499 (office) and +44 07707049084 (mobile) and/or Eva Sanchis, REDRESS Communications Officer, at eva@redress.org; +44 (0) 207 793 1777 (office) and +44 07857110076 (mobile).
About the co-authors of the Petition:
REDRESS is an award winning human rights organisation based in London which works internationally to combat torture by seeking justice and reparation for torture survivors. Since 1992, it has consistently fought for the rights of torture survivors and their families in the UK and abroad. REDRESS has intervened in a range of leading torture cases.
About the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a UN-mandated body of independent human rights experts that investigates cases of arbitrary arrest and detention that may be in violation of international human rights law. Currently under the purview of the UN Human Rights Council, it was established in 1991 by the former Commission on Human Rights as one of the Special Procedures created to monitor human rights violations. After verifying information from a variety of sources, including NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and victims’ families, the Working Group issues opinions on the compliance with international law and sends urgent appeals to governments to ascertain the whereabouts and condition of those allegedly detained. It can also conduct fact-finding visits to countries that have extended an invitation to the Working Group
Rights groups call on UN experts to intervene on behalf of a Kurdish woman activist on the seventh anniversary of her arrest on Women’s Day
http://justice4iran.org/publication/call-for-action/rights-groups-call-on-un-experts-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-a-kurdish-womens-rights-activist/
London, 8 March 2015 – In a petition filed this week, REDRESS and Justice for Iran have urged the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to intervene on behalf of a female Kurdish activist who is currently serving a life sentence in Iran after she was arrested on International Women’s Day seven years ago.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment. They also request that she is protected from further torture and ill-treatment and given access to all the necessary medical treatment, including urgent care for a degenerative eye condition that is causing her to lose her sight.
In 2008, Jalalian was sentenced to death for “enmity against God” (moharebeh) by Kermanshah Revolutionary Court for her alleged membership in the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an armed Kurdish opposition group. She was not granted access to a lawyer during her summary trial and was sentenced to death despite the lack of evidence about her participation in the armed activities of the PJAK. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest. One of her last activities took place in an early visit to the Iranian Kurdistan prior to her arrest in March 2008, when she visited a girls’ high school in Kamiaran to talk about the importance of International Women’s Day and distributed flowers to the students.
Jalalian is currently serving a life sentence in Khoy Prison, western Iran. Prior to being transferred to Khoy Prison in early 2015, Jalalian was held in Dizel Abad Prison, near Kermanshah, where she received inadequate treatment for a series of ailments that her family believe result from the beating she has endured. Before her trial, Jalalian spent eight months in pre-trial detention in a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre, where she says she was subjected to severe torture and ill-treatment to force her to confess to false charges. This included long interrogations while being blindfolded, beatings, flogging under her feet, threats of rape and solitary confinement. She also says she was tortured during a period of detention in Evin Prison in 2010.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment.
Jalalian suffers from intestinal infections and internal bleeding. She also suffers from conjunctiva, but prison authorities have repeatedly refused to allow her access to an eye specialist outside of the prison to get the required surgical treatment. Her health has deteriorated to a point that she currently needs assistance to perform daily tasks. Her eye condition is reported to be rapidly deteriorating. On 16 June 2014, Amnesty International issued an urgent action calling on the Iranian authorities to give Jalalian the medical treatment she required.
Since Jalaian has been jailed her family has only been able to visit her a few times and has only been allowed to have two-minute telephone conversations with her once a week.
A copy of the Petition has also been submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For further information, please contact: Shadi Sadr, Justice for Iran Executive Director, at shadi.sadr@justiceforiran.org; +44 (0) 2034411499 (office) and +44 07707049084 (mobile) and/or Eva Sanchis, REDRESS Communications Officer, at eva@redress.org; +44 (0) 207 793 1777 (office) and +44 07857110076 (mobile).
About the co-authors of the Petition:
REDRESS is an award winning human rights organisation based in London which works internationally to combat torture by seeking justice and reparation for torture survivors. Since 1992, it has consistently fought for the rights of torture survivors and their families in the UK and abroad. REDRESS has intervened in a range of leading torture cases.
About the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a UN-mandated body of independent human rights experts that investigates cases of arbitrary arrest and detention that may be in violation of international human rights law. Currently under the purview of the UN Human Rights Council, it was established in 1991 by the former Commission on Human Rights as one of the Special Procedures created to monitor human rights violations. After verifying information from a variety of sources, including NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and victims’ families, the Working Group issues opinions on the compliance with international law and sends urgent appeals to governments to ascertain the whereabouts and condition of those allegedly detained. It can also conduct fact-finding visits to countries that have extended an invitation to the Working Group
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