Human Rights

Iran human rights group condemns government treatment of critics

The Iranian government is engaged in systematic human rights abuses, an Iranian human rights group said in an annual report released Sunday.

The Defenders of Human Rights Centre, a group founded and headed by 2003 Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, condemned the government for continued harassment and intimidation of dissidents, students, reporters, labor activists and other government critics.

The government of Iran declared the Centre illegal in 2006 and threatened to arrest its leaders.

The report criticized the government's increased policing of women's veils and the harsh punishments meted out to women found to be insufficiently covered, considering the practices to be violations of womens' rights.

Last year, Ebadi called for a UN probe into allegations that the Iranian government was denying women's rights.

(Published by Jurist 20, 2008)