This month, the last month of the year, Human Rights Day was commemorated. Every year, all over the world, people and organizations hold ceremonies to celebrate this day on December 10th. The main goal of this day is to prevent human rights violations by cruel governments and to protect human rights and freedom. Although after World War II, many effective rules are in place, but still there are many countries who implement human rights abuses, especially against minorities.
These countries are spread from east to west, even into Latin America, but the majority of them are in Asia and especially the Middle East. Bangladesh is one of them which gained its independence from West Pakistan in 1971, but still there are many human rights abuses in this country. Although most of its population are Muslim, there is a significant Hindu minority.
Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research and Public Relations, who has been working day and night for a long time to re-establish the rights of Hindus in Bangladesh, believes that minorities have been gravely persecuted in this country. He pointed out that the government takes no practical steps to help minorities.
There are many Hindu refugees from Bangladesh who are living in India. Most of them left their country in fear of persecution by the authorities. Shipan Kumer Basu. President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, believes that the international community should pay more attention to Hindu-Buddhist-Christians minorities in Bangladesh, since their rights and desires are not considered by the government.
He mentioned the Hindu minority in Bangladesh and stated: “The Bangladeshi government is celebrating the victory of independence, but the minority community is not able to celebrate this victory.” He gives an example of how the government has focused on Islamizing the country by adding Bismillah to the constitution, and removing 17 writings by Hindu writers from school and college textbooks and that the official religion of the country is Islam. He warns that no one is safe in the country. “It is necessary to liberate our beloved motherland Bangladesh again and then it would be right to celebrate the real Victory Day and to taste victory,” he declared.
“The religious government of Iran have tortured, prisoned and executed thousands of thousands of people during its 42 years of rule,” Sirwan Mansouri, a Kurdish journalist and human rights activist based in the Middle East, said. “We see that the Iranian regime executed a journalist Rohollah Zam, on the eve of Human Rights Day. Zam was an Iranian journalist in exile in France, who managed a telegram channel named: AmadNews, in which he revealed the regime crimes and corruption.”
In another kidnapping, he added, “the regime planned to take an Iranian Arab opposition member from Sweden to Turkey. Habib Asiwed was the founder and leader of “The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz” which is called in Arabic Alnezal. He was deceived by a woman connected to the Iranian authorities and traveled to Turkey to meet her, but was kidnapped by a drug trafficking group managed by Naji Sharifi Zindashti, who was working for Iran`s regime and taken to Iran. Now he is in prison and may be facing the death penalty. In another case, Arsalan Rezaei is an atheist refugee in Turkey who managed an Instagram page named “Khorafatkadeh,” which means superstitions. In his page, he published his views about atheism, and Shiite superstitions. He has been threatened several times by the Iranian Cyber Army and authorities and even some days before his death, he showed some of the threats on his page. He was killed by multiple stab wounds.”
Hengaw is a human rights NGO. It is located in Iraqi Kurdistan(KRI), and publishes news about the latest human rights abuses on its website in several languages among them Persian and Kurdish. Arslan Yarahmadi, the Kurdish human rights activist, is the founder and manager of Hengaw. He believes that the most important factor towards human rights in Iranian Kurdistan is the systematic human rights abuses by governments. ”Unfortunately, the lack of proper education about global standards on human rights in Kurdistan, even in local organizations level, and lack of independent human rights organization from political parties, is one of the main reasons for human rights abuses in the region.” Hengaw publishes the latest data about the human rights situation in Kurdistan.
According to Hengaw, statistics regarding human rights violations in Iranian Kurdistan in just autumn are as follows: “11 Kurdish citizens were executed, 109 were arrested due to their political, civil and religious activities, 4 were shot dead by armed forces of Iran and the other 4 were wounded, 11 kolbar were shot dead and 35 were injured, 2 were killed as a result of mine explosion and 6 were injured and finally 24 Kurdish activists were sentenced in total to 83 years in prison.”
He proclaimed: “With respect for human rights, providing a decent budget for education can lead to better human rights instruction especially in social affairs.” However, much work must be done to change the human rights situation in Iranian Kurdistan. Amin Khawalah, a Kurdish journalist who works on human rights abuses, believes that the Iranian regime has a goal to implement grave human rights abuses in Iran. He reminds us that during the last year, there were demonstrations as a result of the rising oil prices and proclaimed: “There are still thousands of demonstrators in prison, some of whom have been sentenced to long-term prison sentences.”
He then referred to the Covid-19 pandemic and declared: “While all over the world, the government tried to free prisoners during the pandemic or to let them to go home, the Iranian authorities instead transferred the infected prisoners to cells and cut off their connections with the outside world. Another aspect of human rights abuses is the lack of a proper judicial process for political prisoners. Most of them have no access to a lawyer and the authorities don`t let lawyers be present in court trials. The regime puts pressure on them and their families and forces them to do TV interviews and confess against themselves and then uses these confessions both in their trial and to scare people not to protest about their rights in the future.” He believes that these pressures finally force most of the political prisoners, journalists and human rights activists to leave the country and to live in exile, but even outside the country, the government doesn’t leave them alone and tries to assassinate or kidnap them.
In Khawalah`s opinion, the international community must be determined to eradicate these human rights abuses: “The UN must force the Iranian regime to respect international rules and to respect human rights and to stop human rights abuses toward its people inside and outside the country.”