Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to join my colleague the member for Cook in speaking to this motion on the violation of human rights in Iran. Iran is often, and is currently, in the international spotlight given the intense international pressure it continues to face over its nuclear enrichment program. But today I want to draw attention to Iran’s record on human rights, which continues to be of grave concern, especially its treatment of ethnic and religious minority groups, women and those whom the state labels as political dissidents. Cases of regular human rights abuses in Iran are well documented and have been for some time. Many examples exist of ethnic and religious minorities facing institutionalised discrimination and persecution in Iran. Though the Iranian government may insist otherwise, it is evident that such persecution is both government sanctioned and official government policy.

Iran has the largest Baha’i community found anywhere in the world, yet Baha’ism is omitted from the list of recognised religions in Iran’s constitution. Baha’ism is seen by the Iranian authorities as a deviant and misguided sect, and Baha’is are regularly subject to harassment and discrimination carried out by the state either in the name of stamping out heresy and religious deviancy or under the auspices that Baha’is serve as Israel’s proxy force in Iran.

Since 1983, Baha’i assemblies have been banned in Iran, and participation in Baha’i activities remains liable to prosecution. Over the last two years there has been an increase in Baha’i property and land confiscations by the state and an increase in the number of Baha’i leaders who have been arrested and detained without charge. In addition, for Iran’s Baha’i community, institutionalised discrimination has seen a ban on access to higher education, the denial of inheritance rights, the withholding of business and property licences and continuing discrimination in the workplace—measures that are designed to slowly strangle the Baha’i community in Iran.

Christians are also subject to discrimination and state persecution in Iran. They include members of the Protestant church and the Assyro-Chaldean and Armenian Orthodox churches. Whilst the Assyrian community in Iran has some autonomy in determining its own internal state of affairs, Assyrian Iranians face discrimination in institutions that exist outside their communities’ control, especially at the lower levels of public courts.

Other minorities that face differing degrees of discrimination and/or active persecution in Iran include Sunni Muslims, who make up Iran’s largest religious minority. Most Kurds and Turkmen are Sunni Muslims. Sunni Kurds have seen their aspirations for greater autonomy and respect for their rights to religious freedom denied, and clashes between the Iranian military and the armed Kurdish insurgency have often resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians and the razing of Kurdish villages.

In Iran, political opposition to the state is still outlawed and political opposition groups are often met with force or intimidation. Severe restrictions on freedom of expression and opinion still exist. Instances of torture and ill-treatment in detention are still rife, and the Iranian authorities are still able to act with relative impunity, given the absence of both an independent media in Iran and the mechanisms necessary to monitor and investigate human rights abuses.

The rights of women are of particular concern to me. Disturbing cases continue to emerge of female victims of sexual abuse and rape who have been sentenced to death for the crime of sexual promiscuity, and just in June of this year hundreds of women’s rights activists were violently assaulted by Iranian police during a peaceful demonstration on the streets of Tehran.

The key obstacle to human rights in Iran remains its clerical elite, whose authority still overrides Iran’s national law, including the human rights protections contained in Iran’s constitution. Iran’s repeated failure to meet basic human rights standards remains its greatest failing as a member of the international community, and this failure only exacerbates the international scrutiny that Iran currently faces.

Human rights law establishes a universal standard intended to protect the lives and welfare of ordinary people. Unlike so much of international law, human rights law effectively bypasses the nation-state and speaks directly to the people, regardless of where they may live. Like anyone else, Iranians have an inalienable right to demand the protections promised to them under international law.

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