Amnesty International has released today a new, 71-page report on escalation of crackdown in Iran, entitled ‘We are ordered to crush you’: Expanding repression of dissent in Iran [PDF]
Describing how Iran looks more and more like a totalitarian state, Ann Harrison, Interim Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme said today: “In Iran today you put yourself at risk if you do anything that might fall outside the increasingly narrow confines of what the authorities deem socially or politically acceptable. Anything from setting up a social group on the internet, forming or joining an NGO, or expressing your opposition to the status quo can land you in prison.”
Excerpt from the report’s introduction:
Since the 2009 crackdown, the authorities have steadily cranked up repression in law and practice, and tightened their grip on the media. They have stopped public protests using articles of Iran’s Penal Code that make demonstrations, public debate and the formation of groups and associations deemed a threat to “national security” punishable by long prison sentences or even death. Lawyers have been jailed along with their clients. Foreign satellite television channels have been jammed. Newspapers have been banned. Dissidents and critics who write in newspapers or on websites, or speak to the media, risk being charged with offences such as “spreading propaganda against the system”, “insulting officials”, “spreading lies with intent to harm state security” or occasionally the “offences” of “corruption on earth” or “enmity against God” which can carry the death penalty.
February 28, 2012
Civil Society, Politics