Country info - Iran
What are we deporting families to?
Compiled by RAC Canberra

The Australian government has struck an "historic" deal with Iran, furthering its attempts to deport over 200 Iranian refugees. For most of them, deportation will mean terrible persecution, and for some it will mean death.

Everyone knows that Iran is a repressive regime. Ethnic and religious minorities are persecuted, as is anyone who questions the regime.

Nearly 500 people were persecuted in public last year. Just recently a 50 year old actress receiving an award stepped over and planted a light kiss on the forehead of a young actor on stage. For this she was sentenced to over 700 lashes.

Those of us who have made friends in detention centres know first hand stories of young girls forced into conversion and marriage as young as 14years of age; their religion not in the constitution so the law does not protect them.

We know good people whose only crime was to criticize the government and who fled fearing the law which allows execution for such things as tearing down a poster of the leader.

Australia says to some they should face their courts, yet the UN and the US State Human Rights reports explain how unlikely it is people will be given a fair trial or a reasonable sentence.

The Immigration Department says they are 'failed'asylum seekers, and that Australia has no obligation to accept them. And it has given details of Iranian asylum seekers, their families and their claims, to the Iranian government!

WE SAY that Australia has failed these people.

Their claims for asylum have been carelessly and unfairly dismissed by officials who have failed to understand the situation they face, or who have simply not been interested.

Already the High Court has forced the Refugee Review Tribunal to reconsider a number of asylum claims which had been unfairly rejected by the system.

How can anyone who knows the situation in Iran not give some credence to stories of people who tell us that what we know happens regularly, has happened to them?

And yet in our current law and process it seems enough for the refugee tribunal to just say "I don't believe you"! And thus they become Mr Ruddock's "failed refugees", destined to be sent back to a fate few Australians could imagine.

Australia takes fewer asylum seekers per population than any other western country. Surely we can afford to be compassionate to the small number of those currently in our camps?

Australia has grown rich on the back of our migrants. It is not merely coincidence that the cities and states most well off economically are those with the most migrants. Those suffering most economically right now are those with fewest migrants.

Surely this issue requires a humanitarian response from fellow human beings?

The unfairness of the immigration system is a growing scandal. No-one should be deported without their case being properly and independently reviewed. And no-one should be deported to possible death.

This is what we are deporting people back to:

A Glance at the Record of the Mullahs of Iran
This summary made by Pamela Curr, Greens spokesperson, Melbourne.
Full details: http://www.iranncrfac.org/

* 120,000 executions on political grounds; victims include pregnant women, elderly women and schoolchildren
* 30,000 political prisoners massacred in 1988
* Over 170 forms of physical and psychological torture
* 800,000 persons admitted to jails every year
* Stoning, hanging in public, eye gouging, amputation of fingers, hands and legs, beheading, and flogging in public carried out as "punishment"
* Discrimination against women in law and practice
* Suppression of religious and ethnic minorities
* 450 terrorist operations around the world, including bombings, hijacking, abductions and assassinations
* 140 terrorist attacks against the Iranian Mojahedin in Iraq since 1993
* 474 public executions have been announced in 2002; a 50% rise compared with the previous year
* 80 newspapers and periodicals have been closed down by the regime since April 2000. Dozens of journalists remain in jail. Rapporteurs Sans Frontieres called Iran "the biggest prison for journalists."
* Under the mullahs' regime, Iran has highest suicide rate in the world (200 fatal suicide attempts for every 100,000 heads of population).
* 1,500 Iranians leave the country every day, fleeing the mullahs' repression.

United Nations' Report

In his report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in March 2002, the Commission's Special Representative for Iran, Professor Maurice Copithorne:

• expressed concern at the "apparent rise in flogging and execution, over the public application of such punishments and over their apparent application in some cases to minors" and the "recent cases of stoning to death."
• described the massacre of political prisoners in Iran in 1988 as one of "the blackest events in the history of the Islamic Republic."
• noted that the widespread feeling of "frustration" and "disillusionment" among the people in the country "certainly seems to have been reflected in the disturbances in August in Sabzevar and in October in Tehran."
• emphasized that "accepted norms of fair trial are frequently ignored. Many of the punishments are gross violations of international human rights norms, including in particular the use of stoning."
• noted that "the treatment of intellectuals and dissidents, particularly by the security forces and the Judiciary, reveals a fearful intolerance of alternative views."
• referred to the "serial murders" carried out by the mullahs' Intelligence Ministry, pointing to "the apparently widespread view that the trial was a cover-up and that the real motives behind the killings, as well as the likely knowledge of them of senior figures, had yet to be revealed." He also stated that Khatami's "Minister of Information (Intelligence) was quoted in the press as characterizing these murders as 'insignificant mistakes,' adding that the people have forgiven 'those concerned.' In the view of the Special Representative, taking anyone's life, not least when the act is politically motivated, can never be characterized as insignificant. The Minister's comments are surely an insult to the memory of the victims and to their family members. They also reflect an appalling disrespect for the most basic of human rights, the right to life, and by a member of the Government at that."
• expressed concern at "the suppression of various types of expression continued in the period under review," pointing out that "more newspapers and journals were banned or temporarily suspended" and more arrests were made.
• noted that "the prison population has increased over 40 per cent in the previous year, and the prisons were now housing more than 100,000 inmates beyond their capacity."
• stated that "over the years, the Special Representative has frequently expressed his concern over the status of women in Iran" and that "there can be no doubt that the treatment of minorities in Iran does not meet the norms set out in the Declaration on Minorities or in article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor March 31, 2003 found at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18276.htm

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