To mark Human Rights Day, Amnesty International today launches its first-ever Persian-language website to increase access to information on rights violations in Iran amid an escalating crisis of impunity – and what amounts to an all-out assault on human rights across the country.
The new website offers an overview of Amnesty International’s calls for justice, equality and freedom around the world, and features the organization’s statements and research on Iran, particularly over recent years.
It includes reports and legal analysis of shocking human rights violations committed by the Iranian authorities, and recommendations to the international community to tackle this crisis of impunity through the establishment of an independent mechanism to collect, preserve and analyze evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran to facilitate future criminal proceedings.
“The website arrives as Iran suffers from a deepening human rights crisis, with hundreds of individuals on death row following unfair trials – including those arrested as children – and thousands persecuted or arbitrarily detained for peacefully exercising their human rights. Meanwhile, the families of thousands of people killed or forcibly disappeared by the authorities are left waiting for truth and justice,” Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, Diana Eltahawy, said.
“Human rights defenders and dissidents who do speak out against repression and injustice endure grave human rights violations while the Iranian authorities have rained down bullets on protesters who take to the streets, inflicting deaths and serious injuries. Our new Persian-language website will serve as a torchlight that illuminates and exposes these crimes.”
The website features Amnesty International’s documentation of the Iranian authorities’ lethal crackdowns on protests in November 2019, and more recently in 2021. It also contains reports on past and ongoing crimes against humanity related to the 1988 prison massacres. Meanwhile, hundreds of Urgent Actions and statements on behalf of people whose lives or physical security are at imminent risk are evidence of the torture epidemic in Iran’s prisons, the implementation of corporal punishments such as flogging and amputations and the use of the death penalty, including as a tool of political repression.
Amnesty International has documented human rights violations in Iran since the mid-1960s. The new website contains Persian translations of around 300 research reports, press releases, public statements and Urgent Actions related to Iran, and will be regularly updated with new publications.
“Amnesty International’s Persian-language website represents a major effort to increase access to information on human rights and further engage Persian-speaking audiences in Iran and around the world with the organization’s research, legal analysis and campaigning work,” said Diana Eltahawy.
“It also signifies Amnesty International’s ongoing commitment to support the people of Iran in their courageous struggle against repression and discrimination, while bolstering calls for truth, justice and reparations for the countless victims of arbitrary detention, discrimination, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, extrajudicial executions or other unlawful killings.”
The new website also provides an overview of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Amnesty International’s research and activism around the world on 18 key concerns including armed conflict, child rights, climate change, corporate accountability, the death penalty, detention, discrimination, enforced disappearances, freedom of expression, Indigenous people, international justice, refugees and migrants, sexual and reproductive rights, and torture.
While Amnesty International’s outputs on Iran generally appear in Persian or English, some reports on human rights violations and entrenched discrimination suffered by Iran’s ethnic minorities, including Ahwazi Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks and Kurds, have also been translated into Arabic, Turkish or Kurdish, and we will continue making these translations.
Amnesty’s founding and growth
Founded in 1961 on the idea that, together, people can change the world, Amnesty International has since grown into a worldwide movement of over 10 million people who have campaigned for the release of tens of thousands of people unjustly imprisoned for their beliefs or peaceful activities. The movement has also contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in more than two-thirds of the world and achieved changes in laws and standards to combat torture and unfair trials.
Amnesty International campaigns for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all and those responsible for human rights violations are held to account. Only when the last unjustly detained man, woman or child has been freed, when the last torture chamber has been closed, when the death penalty has been abolished everywhere and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a reality for the world’s people, will our work be done.
Amnesty International maintains full independence from any and all governments, political ideologies, economic interests or religions. The organization neither seeks nor accepts any funds for human rights research from governments or political parties and we accept support only from businesses that have been carefully vetted.
The vast majority of the organization’s income comes from small donations from private individuals around the world who are committed to the cause of promoting and protecting human rights everywhere.
Amnesty International’s power to achieve impact is reinforced by its Urgent Action network, consisting of over half a million members globally who take action at short notice to defend people whose lives or physical security are at risk.
Source » amnesty