Following the United Nations Human Rights Council's appraisal of human rights conditions in Iran, Radio Farda speaks with a number of rights activists about their cause.
Abdolkarim Lahiji, vice president of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, says more than 70 human rights activists are in Iran’s jails, but according to Mohammad Larijani, the secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, these prisoners are either “terrorists or those who have received money from western countries to cause riots in Iran.”
Payam Akhavan, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor and cofounder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, maintains that U.N. pressure alone cannot make the Islamic Republic administration change its policies, so the international community should support Iranians advocating for human rights.
Jailed Rights Activist In Critical Condition
Shiva Nazar-Ahari, a member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters who was arrested in December, has been kept in solitary confinement for 60 days, fellow committee member Sepehr Atefi tells Radio Farda.
“In a phone conversation with her family that lasted about 30 seconds, Shiva said she was in critical condition,” he says. She has been transferred to a smaller, cage-like cell -- so small that she cannot even move her hands and feet, Atefi adds.
He also says that Parisa Kakaei, another of the seven committee members who are currently detained, was being interrogated for 8 hours to make a coerced confession, but she refused to do so.