By Elizabeth Wang
WASHINGTON — All eyes on Iran have been focusing on the country’s intensifying nuclear program since Geneva negotiations were implemented at the beginning of 2014. But a panel of experts said on Tuesday that focus should be shifted to other human rights issues under Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.
“I think if we understand this human rights issue not just as the right thing to do morally, but that opening up this closed society is absolutely critical to the peace and stability of the region, we’ll begin to utilize it as a tool in the ward against dictatorship,” said David Keyes, executive director of Advancing Human Rights organization.
Keyes opened the panel with anecdotes of luncheons with foreign ministers who claim to be unaware of the political prisoners like Majid Tavakoli, one of Iran’s most prominent student leaders.
“I said, when will one of Iran’s most famous political prisoners be free and [Iranian diplomat Javad Zarif] says ‘I don’t know who that is….’And I think we’re aware of the information,” Keyes said. “There are lists of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners but many people don’t get the link between internal freedom and external peace.”
According to an article published in the National Council of Resistance of Iran website, “Since Hassan Rouhani has assumed office as the president of the Iranian regime, there has been a rise in human rights violations in Iran. Some 800 have been executed in Iran during the past year in Iran, including many in public,” including a prisoner recently hanged on Sunday.
What Keyes and the other panelists agreed on is needing to fix these issues from inside Iran. The media, especially western media, they said, need to be clearer on what the issues are. They said journalists need to be more informed about the issues, but that comes from a fundamental lack of education in our schools. Keyes said:
“Emboldening dissidents also encourages those movements inside Iran. There’s nothing more fearful for a dissident than feeling alone and isolated and not cared about by the rest of the world. We can do an enormous amount to increase the strength of dissident movements inside authoritarian countries simply by speaking out and supporting them. This helps gives them the impetus to rise up against those who throw them in prison. I think that’s another issue that the West doesn’t understand.”
Foreign policy analyst Michael Ledeen, a former State and Defense department official, agrees that media should be shaped to define the real problems happening in Iran. But he acknowledged it would be no easy task.
“We have journalists talking about the world in ways that alarm you, and me, obviously,” Ledeen said. “If you want to fix that, you have to fix the schools. That is a really big undertaking.”
When approaching the nuclear issue, Foundation for Defense of Democracies scholar Ali Alfoneh said there are a few things to keep in mind. Though leaders in Iran believe nuclear bombs are desirable, the long term and short term goals differ, he said. If the U.S. can tie nuclear negotiations with human rights issues, there can be progress.
“We need to be stronger and forgiving,” Alfoneh said. “Even if somebody we believe is working for the regime, even that person is our family member, we are better.”
