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Iranwire – The Iranian foreign minister has rejected widespread evidence that tens of thousands of people had been arrested during the anti-government protests that have swept Iran for more than four months, and that “no journalists” had been sent behind bars for doing their job.
Contrary to what Hossein Amir-Abdollahian suggested in an interview published by U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) on February 8, the authorities have cracked down hard on the demonstrations triggered by the September death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehran’s morality police.
Human rights activists say security forces have killed more than 520 people and illegally detained over 19,000 in connection with the protests.
Following biased trials, the judiciary has handed down stiff sentences to protesters, including capital punishment to about 20 people, mostly on non-murder charges. At least four of them have been executed so far amid international outrage.
Meanwhile, the authorities have detained, summoned and threatened dozens of journalists. Some of those arrested have been released but have been handed prison sentences.
Since the beginning of the year alone, at least eight journalists and photographers have been sent into custody for simply carrying out their journalistic activities. Four of them have been released on bail and are awaiting sentencing.
“Allow me to point out that when you say tens of thousands have been detained, well, this is not exactly accurate,” Amir-Abdollahian told NPR, adding that“those who were detained were people who played a role in the riots on the streets. That being said, hundreds were carried away.”
The minister also claimed that “no journalist was detained” during recent protests.
“We cannot confirm the detention of journalists in Iran. It’s very easy to relabel the person who has been detained. You could, at any moment, call that person in question a defendant of human rights, a journalist, among others,” he said.
The international community and United Nations officials disagree with Amir-Abdollahian’s views.
Last month, the UN human rights chief says that the Iranian government has “weaponized” criminal proceedings and the death penalty to “punish” protesters and “strike fear” into the population in an effort to suppress dissent.
The Iranian government “would better serve its interests and those of its people by listening to their grievances, and by undertaking the legal and policy reforms necessary to ensure respect for diversity of opinion, the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and the full respect and protection of the rights of women in all areas of life,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement on January 10.
In November, the UN’s top human rights body, the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, backed a resolution to establish a fact-finding mission on human rights abuses committed by Iranian authorities in their bloody crackdown on the ongoing protests.
The mission is mandated to “collect, consolidate and analyze” evidence of rights violations, “especially with respect to women and children,” linked to the ongoing wave of protests, and to “preserve evidence” with a view to future prosecution.
