Endangered Scholars Worldwide

Endangered Scholars Worldwide IRAN The brutal crackdown on protestors by the authorities in Iran following the recent illegitimate election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to the arrest and injury of hundreds if not thousands of students and academics, many of whom were beaten and are at risk of torture. This farther blackens Iran’s already dismal record with respect to schol­ ars, students, and researchers, as well as adding to the government’s already egregious record of human rights abuse. Among those arrested, we have learned as we go to press, is k ia n t a j b a k h s h , who, on the evening of July 9, 2009,was arrested for the second time in at his home in Tehran by Iranian security forces and is currently being held at an undisclosed location. Although Kian had no involvement in the recent protests surrounding the contested reelec­ tion of Ahmadinejad, he, like the many hundreds of people who have been arrested in Iran in recent weeks, is at serious risk of being tortured in order to extract a forced confession. Please sign our petition calling for Dr. Tajbakhsh’s immediate release at www.socres.org/endangeredscholars. W hile we are unable to individually list the names of all the students and academics who have been arrested and whose lives are in danger, we would like to follow up on the report in our previous issue on the arrest of students from Amir Kabir University, Iran, following a rally in Februaiy that was violently broken up by police. The students were subsequently accused of affiliation with Mojahedin-e Khalgh (MEK), an organization proscribed as terrorist, although other student activists have vigorously denied this claim. Six students who have since Information current, to the best of our knowledge, as ofJuly 13, 2009. Endangered Scholars W orldw ide v been released on bail have reported being tortured in an effort to force them to confess to illegal activities. Meanwhile, four students—a b b a s HAKIMZADEH, MEHDI MASHAYEKHI, MASOUD DEHGHAN and MAJID t a v a k o l i—remain in prison. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the mother of Abbas Hakimzadeh, who has been able to visit her son, has reported that he has been tortured and beaten and was in poor physical and psychological health. The three other students are also feared to be at continuing risk of torture. In an unrelated case, b e h r o o z j a v i d -t e h r a n i , a student activ­ ist turned prisoners’ rights campaigner, has developed serious health problem as a result of torture and hunger strike. Human Rights Watch has reported fresh bruises and wounds to his body and the loss of 50 percent of his eyesight due to head injuries inflicted by his interroga­ tors in prison. Behrooz was arrested in 2005 following an interview he conducted with another political prisoner, a k b a r m o h a m m a d i , shortly after the latter died in suspicious circumstances during a hunger strike. After his arrest Behrooz was accused of membership in the Mojahedin-e Khalgh by the same judge who made this accusation against the Amir Kabir students listed above. Although his sentence was subsequently commuted and he is now eligible for release on parole, he remains in the infamous Gohar Dasht prison, where several prisoners have recently died in suspicious circumstances. According to Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, “Behrooz Javid-Tehrani, who is critically ill, is in prison for his peaceful political dissent and his human rights advocacy; he should never have been imprisoned in the first place and he should be released at once or he will likely die in prison.” Also still in jail in Iran are fa r z a d k a m a n g e r , a Kurdish Iranian teacher sentenced to death in February 2008, and d r . m o s t a f a a l a v i, an Iranian doctor and researcher sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in August 2008 for “plotting...