News

Following increasing threats and harassment earlier in the year, Nobel laureate and women's rights advocate Shirin Ebadi has been unable to return to Iran since the June 2009 presidential election. She has, however, remained vocal in her defense of human rights, and as a result, her 47-year old sister, Noushin--a professor of dentistry who is not engaged in any human rights work or political activity--was arrested in her home in Tehran by security officials on Monday, December 28. The previous week, Noushin Ebadi had been contacted by officials and ordered to tell her sister to stop her work.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Uzbekistan. The Observatory has been informed by reliable sources about the judicial harassment faced by Ms. Umida Ahmedova, a women human rights defender, photographer and film-maker from Uzbekistan.  According to the information received, on December 16, 2009, Ms. Umida Ahmedova was informed by the Mirobod Department of Internal Affairs that she was facing charges of “slander” and “insult” (respectively Articles 139 and 140 of the Uzbek Criminal Code) of the Uzbek people.

At least five people, including human rights activists, have been arrested in Iran while on their way to attend the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri, a senior cleric who criticized the Iranian government’s crackdown on demonstrators in the aftermath of the June contested presidential elections. Their whereabouts are unknown, and they are at risk of torture or other ill-treatment. Shiva Nazar Ahari and Kouhyar Goudarzi, two human rights activists and members of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), and Saeed Haeri, were arrested by police officers and officials from the Ministry of Intelligence on 20 December in Tehran. They were taken from a bus which was about to drive to the northern city of Qom, where the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri took place on 21 December. Also on board the bus were civil society activists and relatives of some of those arrested following the disputed 12 June 2009 presidential election.

With Great sadness, I learned this morning that Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a Shiite Scholar, a political activist, and a champion of human rights passed away this morning at the age of 87, writes Hossein Alizadeh. Ayatollah Montazei was a political philosopher and a social activist, who spent many years in jail, exile and under house arrest. He was the founder of a new political school in Shiitte Islam, known as Velayat-al-Faghih, which calls on Shiite religious leaders to lead the Muslim societies as their political leaders.