(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed a report issued on 12 January 2004 by the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, Ambeyi Ligabo, following his 4 to 10 November 2003 visit to Iran. The organisation urged the Iranian authorities to implement the report’s recommendations. “The observations and conclusions of this official […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed a report issued on 12 January 2004 by the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, Ambeyi Ligabo, following his 4 to 10 November 2003 visit to Iran. The organisation urged the Iranian authorities to implement the report’s recommendations.
“The observations and conclusions of this official UN document confirm the dramatic situation for press freedom in Iran, which RSF has been condemning for years,” the organisation’s secretary-general, Robert Ménard, said.
“The Iranian authorities accepted the principle of this visit, so we call on them now to implement the conclusions and proposals made by the special rapporteur for a rapid reform of the press code and criminal code, and an improvement in the judicial practices that currently allow widespread abuses in the trials of prisoners of opinion,” Ménard said.
“Much like the special rapporteur, we expect the release of all the journalists who have been imprisoned simply for doing their job. We also hope that [journalist] Zahra Kazemi’s murderers will not benefit from impunity and that her body will be repatriated at once to Canada, in accordance with her son’s wishes,” Ménard added.
Ligabo found a decline in respect for freedom of expression in Iran, with increasing numbers of newspapers being closed and journalists being imprisoned, often beyond what is legally allowed for provisional detentions. The systematic repression of all critical opinion regarding political and religious institutions has ushered in a climate of fear and encouraged self-censorship.
The special rapporteur also noted the arbitrary procedures being followed by judicial institutions, in violation of the most elementary rights of defendants, who are tried behind closed doors without a lawyer present. Ligabo saw very harsh prison conditions, with long periods of solitary confinement that are tantamount to torture.
Ligabo urged Iran to revise its judicial procedures and make them conform to international standards, and to adopt a human rights charter. He said the revolutionary courts should no longer have authority over crimes of opinion and called on the authorities to end prison sentences for crimes of opinion and press offences.
Ligabo was the second rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights to make an official visit to Iran. Louis Joinet, the chairman of the working group on arbitrary detention, visited Iran from 15 to 27 February, but his recommendations had no effect (see IFEX alerts of 4 March and 19 February 2003).
Both rapporteurs expressed the same expectations regarding press freedom and respect for human rights in Iran.
RSF hopes that the changes recommended by Joinet and Ligabo will be implemented with monitoring by international bodies, in particular, by human rights organisations and the European Union, which has been conducting a constructive dialogue with the Iranian regime on human rights issues since 1998.
