Rights Disregarded: Prisons in the Islamic Republic of Iran
(March 18, 2015) – Today the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) has released its newest report, “Rights Disregarded: Prisons in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The imprisonment of successive generations of activists, human rights defenders, and journalists, and other citizens by governments both before and after the Revolution of 1978-79 have turned the country’s prisons into a central stage in Iranian political and cultural life. This report examines that stage by taking a tour of fifteen detention facilities across Iran through the eyes of inmates past and present.
In exploring previously-unreleased testimony and other accounts including letters and memoirs from current and former political prisoners, the report presents a broad-ranging investigation of prison conditions and the treatment of political prisoners in Iran’s penal system. Iran’s prisons are shown to suffer from extreme overcrowding, poor hygiene and water quality, inadequate medical facilities, violence targeting political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and chronic abuse of prisoners by the authorities.
Rod Sanjabi, IHRDC’s Executive Director, stated, “For years, all evidence coming from inside Iran’s prison system has readily demonstrated that the reality of prison life in Iran is extremely grave,” adding, “It is apparent that the Islamic Republic has not endeavored to uphold either international instruments like the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners or its own domestic prisons regulations, both of which are habitually and indeed systematically ignored by the Prisons Organization and the Judiciary that oversees it.”