The latest images of Kurdish human rights activist and prisoner Mr. Mohammad Seddigh Kaboudvand are alarming and unsettling. The dark shadow of the month-long intense strike and decade-long torture in Iranian notorious prisons has wreaked havoc on this prisoner of conscience. Would this image of enduring anguish bring global outrage? Would this epic image of political resistance become a fleeting record of brutality to dissipate in oblivion in the barrage of “visual amnesia”?
Where is global solidarity? Where is popular support for fighting injustice? Where is the sense of sympathy for a committed human rights activist and journalist now on his third hunger strike? Is the world going to stand by as Kaboudband is drifting away? Would the US administration adamantly call for his release beyond a symbolic protest? Would presidential candidate Bernnie Sanders make a direct plea to the Iranian government to end “its intransigent policy” as he did for the IRA hunger strikers in 1981 before it is too late?
Kaboudvand, the prominent Kurdish human rights activist, the director and co-founder of the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization and journalist is on hunger strike for a third time; his life is in grave danger after going on a new hunger strike since May 8 against new charges that have been leveled against him. According to his wife, Parinaz Baghban Hassani “he has been summoned to the Judiciary thrice and each time charged with a new accusation,” including sending a message of solidarity to the city of Kobani for their resistance against the Islamic State.
Both his doctor and the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization have also warned about his health declining rapidly. He suffers from a heart condition, high blood pressure, and neurological disorders all caused and complicated by his lengthy imprisonment and ill treatments in the notorious Evin prison. He has been denied visits, leave, and proper medical attention and care.
Kabouvand was imprisoned in 2007 and sentenced to 10 years and half on the preposterous charge of posing “a threat against national security and publication of a magazine entitled payam e mardom “the Message of People” He had been arrested for co-founding a human rights organization to promote Kurdish human rights, civil liberties, fair elections, equal political representation, and cultural and linguistic rights for the Kurdish population. He has become the symbol of political resistance in a country that has arrested, imprisoned, abused, and hanged thousands of prisoners, a country that has a legacy of torture and extending or changing penalties of prisoners who have no legal recourse but to use their body as the locus of protest to challenge and improve their condition.
Kaboudvand has been recognized as the Amnesty International’s prisoner of conscience and been the recipient of several prestigious human rights awards including the British Press Award in 2009, Human Rights Watch Hellman/ Hammett grant award in 2009. Sarah-Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch said about him, “His experience is harsh testimony to the plight of journalists, dissidents and other peaceful critics in Iran.” He was offered the International Center for Human Rights’ award in 2014, which Kurdish journalist and writer, Ava Homa received on his behalf in Canada. The US State Department on the occasion of World Press Day on May 3, 2016 recognized Kaboudvand’s courageous dedication and commitment to defending truth as a journalist.
These acknowledgments are all a worthy tribute to a vibrant and unwavering spirit of a human rights defender, a journalist with remarkable capacity to defend the truth. His plight, however, calls for a more concerted, stronger, more sustained global campaign to put pressure on the Iranian government to release him. Unfortunately, the irony lies in the fact that the western countries that claim to have a global vision on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and have created many human rights agencies with national and international trajectories to promote and protect human rights are no longer intervening nor advocating resolutions against atrocious violations of human rights in Iran, a precedence for which was laid in 2013 when 52 countries sponsored a resolution to mandate Iran’s compliance with international law. Human rights unfortunately is now lost in the endless web of diplomacy, niceties of sanction reliefs market driven politics and policies; particularly for European countries foreign policy is now preoccupied with political compromise and consensus, trade and investment which reached $50 billion in one month.
The regressive impact of the nuclear deal on Kurdish human rights is undeniable as human rights resolutions and statements have become less frequent, less visible, and less forceful. The deal in essence digressed attention from the deteriorating human rights violations which according to Dr. Ahmad Shaheed, had continued to be a matter of serious concern, with no prospect for improvement. Such a digression has created a higher human cost as a whole and more draconian penalties, in particular, often amplified when human rights is coupled with politics of ethnicity. Predictably, the Iranian government has not adapted to the world community demands but it is the world community that is adapting to the Islamic Republic's priorities, none of which entails human rights, improving prison conditions, unfair legal recourse, ethnic and religious discrimination, and women’s rights, for which Kaboudvand has been imprisoned. His last hunger strike is testament to a great spirit that should frighten and enlighten the world to act before he starves himself to a tragic death so that in the words of Yeats, the great Irish poet "the common people will raise a heavy cry against that threshold".
* Dr. Amir Sharifi, Kurdish American Education Society Los Angeles
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Where is global solidarity? Where is popular support for fighting injustice? Where is the sense of sympathy for a committed human rights activist and journalist now on his third hunger strike? Is the world going to stand by as Kaboudband is drifting away? Would the US administration adamantly call for his release beyond a symbolic protest? Would presidential candidate Bernnie Sanders make a direct plea to the Iranian government to end “its intransigent policy” as he did for the IRA hunger strikers in 1981 before it is too late?
Kaboudvand, the prominent Kurdish human rights activist, the director and co-founder of the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization and journalist is on hunger strike for a third time; his life is in grave danger after going on a new hunger strike since May 8 against new charges that have been leveled against him. According to his wife, Parinaz Baghban Hassani “he has been summoned to the Judiciary thrice and each time charged with a new accusation,” including sending a message of solidarity to the city of Kobani for their resistance against the Islamic State.
Both his doctor and the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization have also warned about his health declining rapidly. He suffers from a heart condition, high blood pressure, and neurological disorders all caused and complicated by his lengthy imprisonment and ill treatments in the notorious Evin prison. He has been denied visits, leave, and proper medical attention and care.
Kabouvand was imprisoned in 2007 and sentenced to 10 years and half on the preposterous charge of posing “a threat against national security and publication of a magazine entitled payam e mardom “the Message of People” He had been arrested for co-founding a human rights organization to promote Kurdish human rights, civil liberties, fair elections, equal political representation, and cultural and linguistic rights for the Kurdish population. He has become the symbol of political resistance in a country that has arrested, imprisoned, abused, and hanged thousands of prisoners, a country that has a legacy of torture and extending or changing penalties of prisoners who have no legal recourse but to use their body as the locus of protest to challenge and improve their condition.
Kaboudvand has been recognized as the Amnesty International’s prisoner of conscience and been the recipient of several prestigious human rights awards including the British Press Award in 2009, Human Rights Watch Hellman/ Hammett grant award in 2009. Sarah-Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch said about him, “His experience is harsh testimony to the plight of journalists, dissidents and other peaceful critics in Iran.” He was offered the International Center for Human Rights’ award in 2014, which Kurdish journalist and writer, Ava Homa received on his behalf in Canada. The US State Department on the occasion of World Press Day on May 3, 2016 recognized Kaboudvand’s courageous dedication and commitment to defending truth as a journalist.
These acknowledgments are all a worthy tribute to a vibrant and unwavering spirit of a human rights defender, a journalist with remarkable capacity to defend the truth. His plight, however, calls for a more concerted, stronger, more sustained global campaign to put pressure on the Iranian government to release him. Unfortunately, the irony lies in the fact that the western countries that claim to have a global vision on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and have created many human rights agencies with national and international trajectories to promote and protect human rights are no longer intervening nor advocating resolutions against atrocious violations of human rights in Iran, a precedence for which was laid in 2013 when 52 countries sponsored a resolution to mandate Iran’s compliance with international law. Human rights unfortunately is now lost in the endless web of diplomacy, niceties of sanction reliefs market driven politics and policies; particularly for European countries foreign policy is now preoccupied with political compromise and consensus, trade and investment which reached $50 billion in one month.
The regressive impact of the nuclear deal on Kurdish human rights is undeniable as human rights resolutions and statements have become less frequent, less visible, and less forceful. The deal in essence digressed attention from the deteriorating human rights violations which according to Dr. Ahmad Shaheed, had continued to be a matter of serious concern, with no prospect for improvement. Such a digression has created a higher human cost as a whole and more draconian penalties, in particular, often amplified when human rights is coupled with politics of ethnicity. Predictably, the Iranian government has not adapted to the world community demands but it is the world community that is adapting to the Islamic Republic's priorities, none of which entails human rights, improving prison conditions, unfair legal recourse, ethnic and religious discrimination, and women’s rights, for which Kaboudvand has been imprisoned. His last hunger strike is testament to a great spirit that should frighten and enlighten the world to act before he starves himself to a tragic death so that in the words of Yeats, the great Irish poet "the common people will raise a heavy cry against that threshold".
* Dr. Amir Sharifi, Kurdish American Education Society Los Angeles
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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