The Judiciary System of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemned 597 Iranian citizens to a total of 302 years of social rights deprivation, while representatives of religious minorities received sentences amounting to a total of 3776 months in prison.
A file of the ‘Documents and Statistics’ Division of Iran Human Rights (IHR) analyzed the situation of human rights under the regime of the ayatollah in 2011.
A Christian news agency, Mohabat News, made it public.
The file states: “Obviously there are many obstacles for anyone trying to access this type of data since the Islamic Republic of Iran does not allow activists and human rights defenders to do their job, that of gathering information on basic human rights violations. Moreover there is no freedom of the press and reports of this kind are denied any validity”.
As a result the organizations that deal with these problems can only investigate a small part of the numerous human rights violations in the country.
Reports based on the findings are then drawn up with as much precision as possible.
But even with all the difficulties and obstacles, it is possible to detect certain tendencies, specifically the tendency of the regime to put more and more pressure on religious minorities, not just Christians, but any religion that differs from the Shia version of Islam, though mainly this pressure is directed at the ‘non-traditional’ Protestant Christian religions.
A rough estimate shows that 2751 cases were reported in 2011. According to human rights experts, that corresponded to one million and 120,000 violations of human rights convention articles that Teheran had agreed to respect.
The report states there were 498 death sentences and 529 people were officially killed in different provinces of the country in the last year.
Moreover the Iranian justice system sentenced 597 people to a total of 302 years of social rights deprivation.
This is true for the entire population without any distinction. However if we look closely at the religious minorities, which occupy a separate section in the estimate, very interesting data emerges.
The number of cases studied which involved representatives of religious minorities amounted to 214. This meant that last year 378 people were arrested. In at least nine instances religious minorities were prevented from carrying out religious ceremonies they were preparing to celebrate.
There have been four beatings, thirteen cases of vandalism or the closing down of shops and properties belonging to members of religious minorities, 30 cases of assault on staff employed by members of religious minorities and on three occasions, ceremonial burials of people that had disappeared were blocked.
On 18 occasions members of religious minorities were precluded from conducting financial transactions and in 106 cases they were summoned to security or judicial authorities’ offices.
In addition, there have been reports of 186 violations of human rights at the expense of representatives of religious minorities .
A hundred and sixteen representatives of religious minorities have been sentenced to a total of 3572 months in jail, 204 months of suspended jail sentence, 25 million Rial in fines, 250 lashes and 1716 months of social rights deprivation.
In the 214 cases that appear in the report, 274 violations at the expense of religious minorities were found. These violations involved 876 people.
The Baha’i are the most affected with 100 cases reported, the Dervish come second with 46 cases and Christians third with 29, Sunni Muslims come just after the Christians with 26 cases and the Ahl-e-haqs last with 6.
In percentage the Baha’i have 47% of the cases, the Dervish 21%, Christians 14% and the Sunni 12%. The Salafis also appear in the picture with 2% and Ahl-e-haq with 3%, other minorities have 1%.
The report according to those who drafted it reveals only a fraction of a much larger picture, the picture of human rights violations in Iran at the expense of religious minorities.