| On the Margins: Arrest, Imprisonment and Execution of Kurdish Activists in Iran Today
INTRODUCTION
In July 2006, Farzad Kamangar, a high school teacher in the city of Kamyaran in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and Kurdish rights activist, was arrested by IRI security forces. Following his arrest, Kamangar was held for nearly four years in various detention centers. During Kamangar’s detention, he endured repeated instances of severe torture.
In a letter Kamangar wrote from prison, his suffering speaks for itself:
They took me to a room [where they questioned me]. When writing down my information [I had to disclose] my ethnicity, and every time I answered “Kurdish,” they beat me with a whip that looked like some kind of hose. They also insulted me and beat me because of my religion. They beat me to their heart’s desire because of the Kurdish music that was on my mobile phone. They tied my hands, sat me in a chair, and put pressure on the sensitive parts of my body. They also took off my clothes and threatened me with rape by harassing me with batons and sticks. My left leg was badly damaged [while I was] there, and I passed out from simultaneous electric shocks and blows to my head. Ever since I regained consciousness, I feel like I have lost my sense of balance and I shake uncontrollably.1
For years, Farzad Kamangar engaged in non-violent political activism on behalf of Iran’s Kurdish minority. Government authorities reacted to Kamangar’s work with arrest, detention, torture and eventually the ultimate punishment: on May 9, 2010 Kamangar was executed.
The hanging of Kamangar and four other individuals—three of whom were also Kurds—provoked an immediate outcry that extended beyond Iran’s borders. International newspapers ran leading stories about the executions.2 Veteran Iranian political observers speculated that the hangings signaled an effort by the government to cow Iranians in advance of the first anniversaiy marking the large-scale civil unrest that followed the disputed June 12, 2009 presidential election.3
Evidence released by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) and other human rights organizations has demonstrated that the IRI has engaged in a coordinated and systematic campaign of intimidation and repression of political and civil activists, journalists, academics, human rights defenders and others perceived to be opposition to the government, most visibly since the June 2009 election and subsequent protests.4 For the Kurdish community, however, the hangings of these individuals were part of a pattern of discrimination by the IRI that has continued unabated since well before June 2009. In the words of one veteran Kurdish activist:
While the whole of Iran discovered the brutality of the Islamic Republic of Iran following the election disputes in June 2009, we Kurds have known about it for more than 30 years, from the very establishment of the Islamic Republic.5
While many of today’s generation of Kurdish activists employ non-violent methods to advocate for their rights, Kurdish fighters (or peshmerga) in the late 1970s and early 1980s were actively involved in armed struggle with the IRI. Currently, the IRI views even peaceful Kurdish activists as violent separatists who threaten the Iranian state.6 Many peaceful political, civil and human rights activists from Iran’s Kurdish minority, like Kamangar, continue to face harassment and threats of execution simply for taking steps to protect their rights as enshrined in Iran’s own Constitution7 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)8, to which Iran is a signatory.
Evidence demonstrates that the IRI’s arrest of Kurdish activists follow a pattern. First, local branches of the government’s intelligence and security apparatus typically initiate a pretext for arrest, such as allegations related to other illegal activity. Most often these relate to espionage, possession of arms or other materiel, or drug trafficking.9 Such pretexts are not, however, always invoked—in some instances, Kurdish minorities have been targeted for simply being in possession of a pamphlet or CD made by Kurdish political parties.
Kurds have been living on the Iranian plateau for centuries. The Western border of what is now the Islamic Republic of Iran with Turkey and Iraq, where much of the Kurdish population is situated, has remained largely unaltered for five centuries despite numerous changes in the leadership of the Iranian state.10 Due to their location, the Kurds often acted as a form of customs and border police until the last century.11 Today, Kurdish Iranians comprise about 10% of Iran’s total population and are spread throughout Iran’s northwestern region in the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Ilam, and West Azerbaijan.12 Although most Kurdish tribes were formerly semi-nomadic13, presently the Kurdish population is mostly concentrated in urban centers like Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Kurdistan, and other cities including Kermanshah, Mariwan, Saqqez, Mahabad and Paveh.14 Following Iran’s ethnic Azeri population, centered in the far northwestern provinces of Iran, the Kurds rank as the second largest ethnic minority population within Iran’s borders.15
While accurate statistics are hard to come by, it is estimated that the majority of Kurdish Iranians are Sunni Muslims, while a sizable minority are adherents of Shi’a Islam, the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Shi’a Kurdish population, and a smaller minority who follow the Yaresan, or Ahl-i Haqq religious tradition,16 is largely centered in Kermanshah and Ilam Provinces.17 * The main languages spoken in the Kurdish regions of Iran are South Kurmanji (also known as Sorani), North Kurmanji (also known as Bahdinani), and Gorani.18 The ability to teach these languages in schools has long been an issue of contention between the Kurdish population and the central government in Tehran.19
Similar to the economically disadvantaged position of the Baluch and Arab ethnic minorities in Iran, the Kurds have lived in relatively impoverished circumstances over the last century.20 In the mid-1970s, about 30% of Kurdish families lived below the poverty line, compared to about 21% of families in the central provinces of Iran.21 A relative lack of investment from Iran’s central government in its provincial regions combined with insufficient and heretofore undeveloped local resources and the enduring legacies of tribal feudalism, pastoralism and incomplete land reform projects have resulted in lingering economic instability22 and mounting unemployment.23
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic does not contain any discriminatory provisions targeting Kurdish Iranians or any other minorities, and indeed, it prohibits such mistreatment.24 However, in practice, IRI officials have often targeted Kurds for any manner of public display of their ethnic culture, language or traditions.25
Over the last decade, international institutions and human rights groups have grown increasingly critical of the Iranian government’s treatment of the Kurdish Iranian community.26 In September 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination addressed this ongoing issue and expressed concern regarding the social, political, economic and cultural limitations imposed by the IRI on certain minority communities, including the Kurdish community.27
As of the publication of this report, there are an estimated 14 Kurds on death row in Iran. The family and friends of some of these death row prisoners maintain that their loved ones are merely peaceful activists who have been wrongfully accused of involvement with armed groups.28 Other prisoners do not deny their involvement with armed groups, yet maintain that they themselves did not engage in violent acts against the Iranian state.29 Yet most—regardless of charge—have alternatively been subjected to coercion and torture in interrogations,30 denied the right to a fair trial,31 and in some instances, prevented from appealing their death sentences.32
In March 2012, the imposition of the death sentence against Kurdish political prisoners in Iran was elevated to a matter of international concern by Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, at the 19th regular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. As part of his report detailing recent human rights concerns in Iran, the Special Rapporteur appended a table listing the names and alleged offences of Kurdish political prisoners sentenced to death by the IRI.33 In response, a number of member states voiced concern about the rising rates of execution in the IRI and the discriminatory application of the laws to ethnic minorities in Iran, and in particular the Kurds.34
Should the death penalty against these activists, in fact, be implemented, they will join other Kurdish activists like Farzad Kamangar who were executed without a fair trial or basic due process safeguards. Beyond those on death row, scores of Kurdish activists continue to suffer well-documented discrimination and harassment that results in arbitrary arrests, detention, severe and prolonged torture, and unjust convictions.
This report is the second in a series from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) on human rights abuses against Iran’s Kurdish minority. IHRDC’s previous report, Haunted Memories: The Islamic Republic’s Executions of Kurds in 1979, provided a detailed account of the unlawful summary trials and executions that took place in the Kurdish regions of Iran during August and September of 1979.35 This second report documents the Iranian government’s arrests, imprisonment and executions of Kurdish political activists from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election to the Iranian presidency in 2005 up to the present day.
The first section of this report gives a short background and history on how the ascendency of the current regime in Iran, the IRI, affected the Kurdish community, as well as the relationship between the Kurds and successive IRI presidents. The second section documents individual cases of the IRI’s treatment of Kurdish activists, including those who were executed, those who fled Iran, and those who are currently in jail and/ or on death row. The third and final section discusses the IRI’s legal responsibility and obligations under international human rights law and Iranian Constitutional law.
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