THE HIDDEN SIDE OF IRAN Discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities of person. Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5: No one shall be subjected to in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition spirit of brotherhood. Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimi- without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nation to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective rem- basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person edy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. by law. Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security October 2010 Copyright AFP N° 545a Cover: Iranian Kurds hold up pictures of four prisoners who were executed in May 2010. They are (from right to left): Farhad Vakili, Shirin Alam-Huli, Mehdi Eslamian (two pictures), Shirin Alam-Huli again and Farzad Kamangar (far left). Three of them belonged to the Kurdish minority. 2 / Titre du rapport – FIDH Ethnoreligious Distribution Map of Iran --------------------------------------------------------------4 Preamble ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7 Legalised Discrimination --------------------------------------------------------------------------------8 The Constitution ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------8 The Civil Code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Islamic Penal Code (IPC) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Selection Law --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Employment and Education Regulations ------------------------------------------------------- 11 Ethnic minorities ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Arabs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Azeris ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15 Baluchis---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Kurds ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Religious minorities ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 19 Baha’is ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Christians -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Sunni Muslims -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Sufis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Others ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 24 Conclusions and Recommendations ----------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Annex: Concluding Observations of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discri- mination (CERD), August 2010 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 FIDH – LDDHI. THE HIDDEN SIDE OF IRAN / 3 Copyright: Mapsof.net 4 / THE HIDDEN SIDE OF IRAN. LDDHI – FIDH Preamble The Iranian government ratified the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 1968, well before the Islamic revolution. Since then, the government has regularly submitted state reports to the independent body established by this Convention to monitor its respect by States parties: the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). CERD examined the eighteenth and nineteenth periodic reports of the Islamic Republic of Iran in August 2010. In order to provide alternative information to the UN independent experts on the situation of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, FIDH and its Iranian member organisation, the Iranian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LDDHI) submitted this report to the CERD. The examination by the CERD of the Iranian government’s periodic report was followed by the adoption of a series of recommendations to the Iranian authorities in order to improve implementation of the Convention in Iran (see Annex). The Iranian authorities do not allow FIDH to visit Iran. LDDHI operates in exile and the offices of DHRC, which is also a member organization of FIDH, were closed down by the Iranian regime in December 2008. This report is therefore based on documentary sources, and it has been impossible for FIDH and its member organisations to carry out a field visit in order to complete this documentary research. ****** In 2003, in its Concluding Observations concerning the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination made several recommendations to the Islamic Republic for its next periodic report,1 namely to: - provide an estimate of the demographic composition of the population; - consider reviewing the definition of racial discrimination contained in its domestic law (i.e. Article 19 of the Constitution) in order to bring it into full conformity with Article 1, paragraph 1, of the Convention; - include more information in its next periodic report concerning the measures it has adopted to enable persons belonging to minorities to have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue and to have it used as a medium of instruction; - ensure that all persons enjoy their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, without any discrimination based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, in accordance with Article 5 (d) of the Convention; - permit students of different origins to register in universities without being compelled to state their religion; - consult with organisations of civil society working in the area of combating racial discrimination during the preparation of the next periodic report. However, the eighteenth and nineteenth periodic reports of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) have either failed to address those issues or attempted to gloss over the stark realities. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Iranian League for the Defence 1. CERD/C/63/CO/6, 10 December 2003. FIDH – LDDHI. THE HIDDEN SIDE OF IRAN / 5 of Human Rights (LDDHI) took the opportunity provided by the CERD’s examination of the IRI’s periodic reports to highlight the deteriorating state of discrimination against ethnic groups and religious minorities and to demonstrate that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not fulfilled any of the above recommendations. However, our report does not touch upon the last of the CERD’s recommendations, as the IRI has not even claimed to consult independent civil society organisations. 6 / THE HIDDEN SIDE OF IRAN. LDDHI – FIDH Introduction A general outline of principles of governance in the Islamic Republic of Iran is essential in order to fully understand the roots of the severe discriminations against ethnic communities and religious minorities in Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a fully fledged theocracy based on the theory that divine law is the unique source of legitimacy and political authority. Divine law in this sense, however, is even much more narrowly interpreted and is tantamount to the canonical beliefs of a very small group of clerics within the Twelfer Ja’afari School of Shi’a that follows and adheres to the concept of “Velayat-e Faqih.”2 This concept, formulated by the founder of the IRI Ayatollah Khomeini, contends that during the period of waiting for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam of the Shi’a, one Shi’a canonist, in his capacity as the worldly representative of the Absent 12th imam has absolute power and is the sole authorised interpreter and enforcer of the divine law - the Vali Faqih.3 Thus, he exerts control over all aspects of civil and political society. The State itself is conceived as an institution and instrument of the divine will, which is applied through a clerical oligarchy. Hence, divine truth and clerical authority are identical. Article 110 of the Constitution lists all the powers granted to the Supreme Leader, appointed by an assembly of clerics - the ‘Assembly of Experts’ - for an unlimited