To mark the end of the Iranian year (March 21), the reformist website Rooz published reports on the state of human rights in Iran.
The following are excerpts:[1]
"Over the past year, there was an escalation in the violation of human rights in Iran. This year, 1,100 human rights activists, journalists, students, women's rights activists, and cultural and social activists were arrested, and many of them are still in prison. Human rights organizations in Iran warned about this phenomenon and asked that these illegal actions be stopped, but to no avail. The prisoners are subjected to humiliation, curses, and beatings, and they do not have basic rights, nor do they receive the food to which they are entitled according to law.
"Thus, for instance, the Students' League for the Defense of Political Prisoners warned that 'in cities like Ahvaz, Urmia, Zahedan, and others, the state of political prisoners is several times more worrying and more grave than that of their colleagues imprisoned in Tehran. Execution orders have been issued against some of them, many of them are tortured, and many have been transferred to unknown prisons.'
"According to Iranian law, all prisons must be under the supervision of the 'Prisons Organization,' but in fact only 11 prisons are formally under its supervision. Many prisons connected with the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the police, and the Iranian military do not operate under the supervision of the Prisons Organization, and thus torture and many other violations of human rights are carried out there more easily and far from scrutiny.
"In the past year, 300 students have been expelled [for political reasons], and many dozens were summoned to disciplinary councils.
"Likewise, since January 2005 at least 66 Baha'is were arrested, of whom at least nine are still in prison.
"Likewise, this year has seen harsher enforcement of censorship of the press, the Internet, literature, and poetry. Teachers have been imprisoned, poverty has worsened, workers hungry for bread have been thrown into prison, the high cost of living and the violence have been denied, and the oil money that was promised would go to the Iranians has gone to the pockets of the Russians or to the 'workers' in Lebanon [i.e. Hizbullah].
"At the center of Iran's policy this last year has been nuclear energy and the goal of acquiring the atom bomb. For the sake of this goal, the military and security forces have taken over Iran's fate. The extremist forces in Iran have enlisted the world against Iran, and thus the Security Council adopted two resolutions against Iran, with another resolution on the way.
"In the last year it has become clearer that the 'Taliban in Iran' rose [to power] with the goal of leading 'the Islamic Middle East' against 'the Greater Middle East' that America wants to establish – a goal which in the world political balance has no meaning other than war. In the last days of the year, the Iranian extremists who claim that they rose to power as representatives of the 'Hidden Imam' are promoting a policy of armed peace, the very least of whose sparks is liable to turn it into a horrible war."
A March 12, 2007 article analyzing last year's achievements, published March 12, 2007 in the weekly Sobh-e Sadeq, the mouthpiece of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei among the Revolutionary Guards, cited the following achievements of Ahmadinejad's government in the nuclear program:
1. The completion of the nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment of uranium to the level of 4.5%.
2. The production of 250 tons of UF6.
3. The continued operation of the Arak heavy water facility.
4. The preparations for the construction of a 360-megawatt nuclear plant operating on heavy water.
5. Iran has become a "rising nuclear power," after years of submitting reports to the IAEA about every kilogram of yellow cake and every gram of enriched uranium.[2]
[2] Sobh-e Sadeq, (Iran), March 12, 2007.
