The experiences of all detainees from the various civil society sectors featured in this report have in common deprivation of the rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association that led to their arbitrary arrest, violence accompanying arrest, torture and ill-treatment in detention, and prosecution. All spent time spent in Evin 209. Experiences in detention are described in the next chapter.

Most of the individuals featured in this report are no longer being detained. Court authorities release detainees on bail without providing set trial dates or issue suspended sentences in order to keep those detained under the constant threat of re-arrest and renewed detention. These practices grant the government the appearance of leniency in allowing activists to remain outside of prison. Yet freedom in these instances is conditional, and the government always has the option to threaten setting trial dates or activating suspended sentences in order to keep activists in line.

In recent years, women’s rights activists in Iran have been among the most organized groups working toward improving the human rights situation of women, men, and children in Iran. Over the past two years their activities have largely been in the form of national campaigns, such as the One Million Signatures Campaign (a project to raise general awareness about discriminatory laws against women and working to change those laws), the Campaign to End Stoning Forever, as well as smaller-scale projects such as the campaign to allow women’s attendance at national soccer matches. Government authorities under the Ahmadinejad administration have not responded well to the work of women’s rights activists and have carried out their own campaigns to silence and intimidate the movement’s supporters.

Notwithstanding the constitutional protection of the right to peaceful assembly, the Iranian government has variously attempted to deny this right to women activists by refusing to issue permits, threatening organizers ahead of scheduled events, and disrupting demonstrations and arresting attendees. A woman’s rights activist told Human Rights Watch,

There is a legislative directive about getting permits for demonstrations, but it’s used arbitrarily. Conservative groups that gather in front of embassies don’t need permits and don’t have their gatherings disrupted. But groups that are seen as critical of the government, even when they have permits, are harassed. They close our NGOs, and they don’t give us permits to hold seminars in public buildings. Sometimes they will give us a permit for a public gathering and then revoke it at the last minute. Before our scheduled demonstration of June 12, 2006, agents from the Ministry of Information made threatening phone calls to organizers and regular folks who had been receiving text message announcements and warned them not to attend. We had to issue several public statements that the gathering would be peaceful, but on the day of the event, the police and security forces weren’t even letting people stand together in groups of two or three.

The wave of major crackdowns on the women’s movement can be traced to the summer of 2006. A pivotal event, the June 12 demonstration mentioned by the activist quoted here, is detailed below.

A broad coalition of activists put out a call for a June 12 peaceful demonstration in Seventh Tir Square in Tehran to ask for changes to laws that discriminate against women. The demonstrators had not obtained a permit, arguing that the government denied permits on political grounds and that Article 27 of the Constitution guaranteed their right to peaceful assembly. That day prior to the start of the demonstration at Seventh Tir Square, police and security forces arrived to prevent participants from joining the event, and forcibly disbanded the crowds that were gathering. In her blog, journalist and women’s rights activist Asieh Amini, who was attending the protest, described how police and security forces attacked the demonstrators:

They said, “Get up.” We said, “We’re not doing anything, we’re just sitting here.” They said, “Get up!” We said, “Sitting in a park isn’t a crime!” They said, “We’re telling you nicely to get up or else…” And that was all the time we had for conversation. We didn’t have anything to say to each other and both sides knew this. Then they hit us, meaning, “We’re not joking!” And those of us sitting and standing said, “Why?!” They kicked us out of the park, with force and beatings. We started walking around the park calmly and peacefully. They kicked us out and beat us. Someone yelled, “Shame on you; I’m your mother.” The response was, “I don’t have a shrew like you for a mother!” and she pushed her so hard that the crowd yelled in protest. We left—they took us—to the other side of the park. We picked up the signs we had made that said “change anti-women laws” and “We want the rights of a full human being.” We started chanting, “We are women, humans, but we have no rights” and “Oh woman, oh presence of life…” This time they started hitting us from all sides. And they weren’t just men. There were women with chadorswho yelled, “Don’t argue with the police,” and then when there were arguments, insults and kicks would ensue from beneath those chadors.

On June 14, a spokesperson for the Judiciary confirmed that the security forces had arrested 42 women and 28 men on charges of “participation in an illegal assembly.” All of these were detained in Evin 209. Authorities released from pretrial detention all but one of the detainees by July 18 (Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoini, the parliamentarian mentioned above, was the only prisoner who was not released. He spent an additional 130 days in Evin 209, much of that time in solitary confinement, before authorities released him in October). However, the charges against the detainees remained outstanding, and the judiciary proceeded to prosecute some of the demonstration’s organizers.

The Sixth Branch of the Revolutionary Court set March 4, 2007, as the date to try five prominent women’s rights activists who had played a role in planning the demonstration: Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Shahla Entesari, Fariba Davoudi Mohajer, and Sussan Tahmasebi. On the day of the March 4 hearing, supporters of the women gathered peacefully outside the courthouse in protest of the continuing harassment of the activists. Security forces violently broke up the gathering, arrested 33 of the demonstrators, including the four women who had shown up for their court date, and transferred them to Evin 209.

By March 8, authorities had released all but two of the women, Shadi Sadr and Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh, who remained in Evin 209 until their release on March 19, having spent the period March 6-15 in solitary confinement (authorities also placed Shahla Entesari in solitary confinement, from the first day of her arrest on March 4). All were released on bail ranging from the equivalent of US$50,000 to $200,000. The March 4 trial was abandoned, but as the following sections document, the government prosecuted and convicted many women’s rights activists on security charges.

On April 1, 2007, Mahboubeh Hosseinzadeh and Nahid Keshavarz, who had been among the 33 arrested in March, were arrested by security forces along with two other women and a man as they prepared to collect signatures in Laleh Park in support of the One Million Signatures Campaign. After a hearing at a branch of the Revolutionary Court, officials released the other three detainees on April 3, but they transferred Hosseinzadeh and Keshavarz to Evin Prison—this time to the women’s general ward, not Section 209—on unknown charges pursuant to a judicially authorized temporary detention order. They were released 13 days after their arrest. It is likely that the charges against them remain outstanding.

On April 13, Asieh Amini, Shahla Entesari, Farideh Entesari, Nahid Entesari, Rezvan Moghaddam, and Azadeh Forghani responded to a summons. Officials interrogated them about their participation in the March 4 peaceful protest in front of the courthouse, and the court charged them with “illegally assembling to act against national security,” disobeying the police,” and “disturbing the general order.” Azadeh Forghani received a two-year suspended sentence, and Shahla Entesari received a three-year sentence, two-and-a-half years of which are suspended for five years.

On April 17, the Special Security branch of Tehran’s Public Prosecutor’s office issued additional summonses against other women who had participated in the March 4 gathering: Parvin Ardalan, Noushin Ahmadi, Maryam Mirza, Elnaz Ansari, Nasreen Afzali, and Zara Amjadian. That same day, the Sixth Branch of the Revolutionary Court in Iran also handed down sentences for two of the women who had been arrested during the June 12, 2006 demonstration in Seventh Tir Square: Soosan Tahmasebi received a sentence of two years in prison, one–and-a-half years of which was suspended. The court sentenced Fariba Mohajer Davoodi in absentia to four years in prison, one year of which is suspended. Mohajer Davoodi was in the United States visiting family at the time of her trial, and she has remained in the United States after the court handed down its sentence.

On July 2, Delaram Ali, a 24-year-old sociology student and member of the Campaign for One Million Signatures, responded to a summons from Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court by inquiring why she had been called to appear. Apparently in punishment for her challenging inquiry, the court handed down a sentence of two-and–a-half years in prison and 10 lashes for participating in the peaceful gathering of June 12, 2006.” On November 4, an appeals court in Tehran upheld her conviction on charges of on charges of “acting against national security” and “advertising against the system” and reduced her sentence by only four months.

Document: http://hrw.org/reports/2008/iran0108/index.htm