News

Based on the reports by Human Rights and Democracy Activists in Iran, many supporters of the Mourning Mothers are under medieval and excruciating solitary confinement conditions at ward 209 of Evin prison. Attacks by the Ministry of Intelligence against supporters of the Mourning Mothers began on Sunday February 7, 2010 at 10:30 pm and peaked on February 9th. It is reported that during these attacks at least seven mothers were arrested and taken to solitary confinement in ward 209 of Evin prison. Five Ministry of Intelligence agents participated in the extremely violent and barbaric attacks.

Over sixty years ago, countries adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” That fundamental right has echoed for decades in conferences, treaties, and declarations. In 1995, in the Platform for Action adopted in Beijing, 189 governments agreed that laws that discriminate against women undermine equality, and pledged to “revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex.” Yet inequality, even in its most overt form, has not been vanquished. While discrimination against women persists around the world in many forms, laws that explicitly discriminate against women demonstrate State backing of discrimination, and symbolize governments’ clear disrespect for the fundamental right to equality for women and official endorsement of women as people of lesser worth.

As the review of Iran’s human record under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process concluded at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Iranian government demonstrated its utter lack of respect for internationally accepted norms by simultaneously accepting and rejecting recommendations of UN members with regard to addressing the critical situation of human rights in Iran, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today.

“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” - George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four). Thus begins the Rajapakse era, with the arrest of Gen. Sarath Fonseka. I did not and do not consider Sarath Fonseka to be a hero, any more than I consider Mahinda Rajapakse and Gotabhaya Rajapakse to be heroes. Still I believe Fonseka’s arrest should be a matter of gravest and most intimate concern to all those who value democratic freedoms, because it symbolises the conclusive triumph of a new political commonsense which equates Mahinda Rajapakse (and his brothers) with the country and thus damns any opponent of Rajapakse rule as an enemy of the nation. A democracy which equates opposition to the powers that be with treachery to the nation is no longer a democracy but an autocracy.