A new threat to Iranian prisoners

When the new coronavirus was discovered in Iran, one of the government’s first announcements had nothing to do with health policy and everything to do with internal politics. It handed down prison sentences totalling 58 years for eight of the country’s most prominent environmental scientists, all of whom are members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF).

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) arrested the PWHF members after countrywide protests in 2018, which were sparked by the government’s mismanagement of another public health crisis — an unprecedented water shortage. The IRGC went on to arrest the eight environmentalists and detain the deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment, along with water conservation expert Kaveh Madani, who was held for 72 hours and then fled the country. A ninth PWHF member, Kavous Seyed-Emami, died two weeks after his arrest, while being interrogated. The authorities insisted that he died by “suicide,” but evidence showing an injection and bruising on his body suggests otherwise.

The authorities took advantage of Seyed-Emami’s death to force the other environmentalists to sign confessions. One of them, Niloufar Bayani, a former United Nations environmental consultant and graduate of McGill University, sent repeated letters to the authorities, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing her torture in graphic detail. In a recent letter, she wrote that interrogators showed her a photograph of SeyedEmami’s corpse and warned that she, her colleagues and family members would suffer a similar fate, “unless you write whatever we want.”

Iran is now facing another public health emergency and cannot hide its magnitude in the same way it did with its environmental crisis. In just over a month, the coronavirus has spread to every province and the numbers have skyrocketed to more than 23,000 confirmed cases and 1,812 fatalities, according to official figures (though many experts have suggested that the numbers are much higher). And yet, no quarantines have been put in place.

Instead, the Islamic republic is covering up the gravity of the situation and deflecting responsibility. President Hassan Rouhani dismissed the pandemic as hysteria and rejected plans to cancel Iranian New Year celebrations. Iraj Harirchi, the country’s deputy health minister and head of its coronavirus task force, was found to be infected after playing down the severity of the epidemic while appearing clearly ill at a press conference. The authorities even arrested an individual for filming victims in a morgue, as well as several high-profile Iranians who tweeted about the official response to the pandemic.

Ayatollah Khamenei immediately blamed Iran’s “enemies” for exaggerating the threat of coronavirus and enlisted the IRGC to help contain what he speculated to be a “biological attack.” In his televised speech on Sunday, marking the Persian New Year, Ayatollah Khamenei rejected American humanitarian assistance, suggesting the U.S. created the virus and is attempting to spread it throughout the country. Iran’s state-run media has also been advancing the conspiracy theory that the virus is an American-engineered bioweapon and that “Zionist elements” have targeted Iran with a particularly deadly strain.

The environmentalists are being blamed for the pandemic, as well. IRGC-backed Twitter accounts have linked the PWHF to the virus and bioterrorism, while Tehran’s prosecutor general, Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, spread false claims that they were part of a “joint CIA-Mossad project to create crises in certain environmental areas.” In reality, the environmentalists were declared innocent by numerous Iranian officials, including the head of the Department of Environment and the minister of intelligence.

In both cases, the IRGC pointed to scapegoats instead of offering empirical solutions to address these national emergencies.

Most of the environmentalists, along with many other political prisoners, are being held in Iran’s Evin Prison, where at least five inmates have contracted the virus. The overcrowded wards in Evin have now run out of medical, sanitary and hygienic supplies. Last week, the environmentalist with the shortest prison sentence of four years, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, was included in a reported mass pardon in an apparent effort to curb the outbreak, although only prisoners with less than five-year sentences were eligible.

In recent weeks, the UN Environment Programme reiterated its call for the release of the PWHF members, and a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran demanded the temporary release of all Iranian political prisoners. In solidarity, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a renowned human rights lawyer who’s also being held in Iran, declared a hunger strike until all of Iran’s political prisoners are released.

This pandemic will forever change the way governments confront global crises and serves as a wake-up call to get serious about co-ordinating coherent international strategies. It has proven that what happens abroad, particularly in authoritarian countries, matters at home. We will only be able to overcome these challenges with transparent governments that respect the rights of their citizens, instead of stoking enmity and suppressing information and science. The Islamic republic can start by releasing the scientists who dedicate their lives to preventing these crises and preserving our planet.

Ana Diamond is the co-founder of the Alliance Against State

Hostage Taking. Yonah Diamond is Legal Counsel at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.